A Spaniard was arrested in Madrid for his involvement in the attempted sale of a fake painting allegedly by Leonardo da Vinci. Guardian.
The arrest came two years after French customs officials confiscated the work in Modane, near the Italian border. The man had presented an expired export license. He was on his way to sell the fake Leonardo to a buyer in Milan for around 1.3 million euros.
The export license was genuine, but because it had expired, the authorities became suspicious. Eventually, the man was charged with smuggling and arrested.
The expired license led to a call to the Spanish Policía Nacional in 2022. After the work, depicting the Italian military commander and aristocrat Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, was seized at the French border, the authorities launched an investigation into the matter and sent the painting to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid for analysis.
“The experts’ report concluded that the work is a copy of the Milan portraits painted at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries,” the Spanish authorities said in a statement. “The painting was probably painted fraudulently at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, its value is between 3,000 and 5,000 euros (3,200 and 5,400 dollars) and it can be categorically ruled out that the painting was by Leonardo or any other Italian artist of the period.”
