Raymond Hekking put in many years making an attempt to encourage the environment that the Mona Lisa portray he acquired from a French antique store in 1953 was the actual issue and the one in the Louvre Museum was a fake.
Now Christie’s auction household has set the ‘Hekking Mona Lisa’ up for sale, hoping the tale of his campaign to realise his desire will assistance compensate for the truth it is a duplicate.
“It seems like the Mona Lisa but the top quality of the execution is not Leonardo da Vinci,” Christie’s Global Director of Aged Grasp Painting Pierre Etienne explained.
“Unfortunately on that place the desire is a little bit in excess of.”
Hekking’s argument was that the original painting was never ever returned soon after an early 20th century theft, ending up in the shop in the village of Magagnosc in his indigenous Provence though the gallery in the French capital was duped by a duplicate.
Several newspaper cuttings testify to his badgering of the media and a Pathe newsreel item from the 1960s demonstrates U.S. journalists turning up to inspect the copy when the real Mona Lisa was loaned to the United States.
The portray was completed by an unfamiliar artist in the early 17th century, all-around 100 yrs immediately after the unique by the Italian Renaissance master entered the royal selection of Francois I, Christie’s said.
It has a tutorial selling price of 200,000-300,000 euros and the online auction ends on June 18.