The art world has long been a breeding ground for forgery and fraud. Some fakes have been so carefully crafted that they fool even the best art experts.
But what happens when these alleged masterpieces turn out to be mere copies? Over the past few decades, numerous stories have emerged about fake artworks that were later exposed as such. Here is one of the most recent.
An art dealer was arrested by authorities in France and Spain for attempting to sell a fake painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
According to Spanish police, the dealer was a man in his 40s who claimed the counterfeit was worth nearly $1.5 million.
After two years of investigation, the perpetrator was finally arrested. In 2022, the man had tried to bring the painting from Spain to Italy.
But at the border in Modane, about 120 kilometers from Milan, French customs officials confiscated the card from his vehicle. Ultimately, it was the lack of papers that caused the man’s plan to fail.
Under Spanish law, any work of art over 100 years old requires an export license. The man had a license that said the painting was worth $1.4 million.
It was a portrait of the Italian military commander Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Leonardo is said to have painted it when he was working for Duke Ludovico Sforza in Milan between 1482 and 1499.
However, since the license had already expired several months ago, the man had smuggled the painting across the border.
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