Sale of $1.4 M. Forged Leonardo da Vinci Painting Foiled by Customs Officers

A Spanish man has been arrested in Madrid for his part in the attempted sale of a forged painting purported to have been by Leonardo da Vinci, according to the Guardian.

The arrest comes two years after French customs agents in Modane, near the Italian border, confiscated the work, thanks to an expired export license that the man presented. He was en route to sell the faux Leonardo for around €1.3 million ($1.4 million) to a buyer in Milan.

The export license was authentic, because it was expired, authorities grew suspicious. Eventually, the man was charged with smuggling and arrested.

The expired license prompted a call to Spain’s Policía Nacional in 2022. After recovering the work, which depicts the Italian military commander and aristocrat Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, from the French border, authorities opened an investigation into the matter and sent to the painting to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid for analysis. 

“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,” Spanish authorities said in a statement. “The painting was probably painted, with fraudulent intent, at the beginning of the 20th century. As such, its value is between €3,000 and €5,000 ($3,200 and $5,400) and the painting can categorically be ruled out as a being by Leonardo or any other Italian artist of the time.”