A REPLICA of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa fetched about 3.4 million dollars at an auction in France on Friday (local time). The painting sold about ten times its estimate at an online auction by Christie’s Auction House in Paris, reported NHK World. The reproduction is believed to have been painted in the early 1600s, about 100 years after the Mona Lisa, which hangs in the Paris Louvre.

 

Leonardo da Vinci created his work on a wood panel, while the replica is on canvas. The copy has been dubbed the “Hekking Mona Lisa”, after French art collector Raymond Hekking, who purchased it from an antique shop in 1950s, reported NHK World. Hekking expended great effort in attempting to prove his acquisition was in fact the real Leonardo work.