MONA LISA REPRODUCTION FETCHES $3.4M AT AUCTION

A European collector bought a 17th-century copy of Leonardo da Vinci's 16th-century Mona Lisa painting for the equivalent of US$3.4 million, in an auction at Christie's in Paris on Friday.

Known as the Hekking Mona Lisa, after its owner who unsuccessfully argued that a copy he had bought in the 1950s was the real thing, is one of many reproductions of the original, which hangs in the Louvre. “This is madness, this is an absolute record for a Mona Lisa reproduction,” Christie's said. Fourteen bidders vied for it in an international auction; last-hour bids soared to 2.4 million euros from 500,000, before a final bid of 2.9 million was made. In 2017, Christie's New York sold da Vinci's Salvator Mundi for US$450 million, making it the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction.