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Spanish police have arrested a man in Madrid for trying to sell a fake Leonardo da Vinci painting in Italy for €1.3m (£1.1m).
French customs officers intercepted the suspect two years ago at the Modane border, where he was found travelling with the forged portrait in his vehicle, reported The Guardian.
The man, in his 40s, was suspected of being on his way to a buyer based in Milan, Italy.
While at first everything looked in order, the customs officials found the man’s export permit, though valid, had expired.
They seized the portrait, ostensibly of Italian aristocrat Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, and alerted the Spanish police.
The permit said the portrait being transported was a Leonardo da Vinci work valued at €1.3m (£1.1m) and was being taken for sale in Milan. The permit having expired meant that transporting the art was illegal.
The Spanish police, informed in July 2022, went to the French border to recover the artwork and sent it to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid for an expert analysis.
The analysis concluded that the work was a fake.
That is when the Spanish police arrested the man.
“The experts’ report concluded that the work was a copy of the Milanese portraits painted around the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century,” the police said in a statement on 13 August.
“The painting was probably painted, with fraudulent intent, at the beginning of the 20th century. As such its value is between €3,000 (£2,564) and €5,000 (£4,273), and it can categorically be ruled out as being by Leonardo or any other Italian artist of the time.”
The fake painting was supposed to have been made by da Vinci when he was in the employ of Duke Ludovico Sforza in Milan between 1482 and 1499.
A police spokesperson confirmed that a Spanish man in his 40s was arrested in connection with the case. “An export licence isn’t a guarantee of a work’s authenticity. In this case, the licence was being used as a means of claiming the painting was original,” the spokesperson said.
“Once it became apparent that the licence had expired, the painting was confiscated and an investigation was opened. As soon as the investigation determined this was an alleged case of smuggling, the arrest was made.”
