Sold: World’s best known Da Vinci replica goes for €210,000 in Paris auction
Source: euronews
By Shannon McDonagh & AFP • Updated: 10/11/2021
A faithful copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa dating from more than 400 years ago has sold for €210,000.
The painting spent some time in Artcurial auction house, Brussels, before being transported to Christie’s in Paris for an auction that took place yesterday.
Leonardo’s original, which French King Francois I bought from the painter in 1518, can be found in Paris’ Louvre museum and is not for sale.
But this version, dating from around 1600, is so similar to the original that experts say it is likely that the artist had close access to Leonardo’s version.
Original estimates guessed the copy would fetch €150,000-200,000.
‘Everyone wants to own a high-quality version of Mona Lisa’
This copy is widely known as Hekking’s Mona Lisa, after ex-owner Raymond Hekking, an antique dealer who died in 1977. He procured the work from an art dealer in nice during the 1950s.
Hekking purchased the painting for just €2.57 and spent a great deal of his life convinced it was the true Mona Lisa and produced a publicity campaign claiming so.
«She is the perfect illustration of the fascination the Mona Lisa has always inspired and which she exerts more and more,» muses Pierre Etienne, International Director of Old Master Paintings at Christie’s.
«She is the dream of a man with a passion for art. She is his Ideal. Raymond Hekking was her staunch defender among art historians and the world’s media in the 1960s. She will be his Muse, he will be her Poet.”
D.M. Dellaqueva 