Leonardo da Vinci's “Mona Lisa” is the most famous painting in the world.
The mysteriously smiling woman has been fascinated for centuries, whose identity - probably the merchant's wife Lisa del Giocondo - could never be proven with absolute certainty.
Leonardo had brought the unsigned and undated portrait with him to France in 1517, where he spent his old age at the invitation of his last patron, the French King Francis I.
He lived in the Clos Lucé castle in Amboise on the Loire until his death in 1519.
Franz I bought “Mona Lisa” for 4,000 gold florins, and in 1518 it entered the royal collection.
The "Joconde", as it is called in France, was shown to the public for the first time in 1798 in the newly established museum in the Louvre.
Several copies, there are said to be more than a hundred, were made of the emblematic portrait over the course of time.
Sotheby's auctioned a 17th-century copy in New York in January 2019 for just under $ 1.7 million (with a premium).
A few months later, at Sotheby's in Paris, another replica changed hands for 552,500 euros.
More famous than all the others, however, is the "Hekking copy", which is also dated to the 17th century.
Christie's Paris has been auctioning it since June 10th as the only lot in an online auction that runs until June 18th.
This picture changed his life
The American art dealer Raymond Hekking (1886 to 1977) found the painting in an antique shop near Nice in the 1950s for allegedly three francs. He had it cleaned, then it changed his life. Stubborn and obsessed with his image, he did everything possible to prove that his version was the original by Leonardo - and not the one in the Louvre. His evidence builds on the legendary theft of "Mona Lisa" in 1911. The painting was only found in Florence in 1913 and returned to France.
The theft and return gave him his first international press appearance and contributed to his fame. Hekking organized the second appearance: In the 1960s, he made room in European and American media for his thesis that it was not the original “Mona Lisa” that returned to the Louvre after the theft, but a copy - and that his version was made by Leonardo come from. Even if it is clear that the original hangs in the Louvre today, it is to be expected that the estimate of 200,000 to 300,000 euros will be far exceeded with this history.