Mona Lisa Painting on Sale in Christie's Auction

Antiquarian Raymond Hekking spent years trying to convince the world that the Mona Lisa painting he bought from a French antique shop in 1953 is a real painting and the one in the Louvre Museum is a fake.

Christie's auction house has put the 'Hekking Mona Lisa' up for sale to realise Hekking's dream. Sources say that the painting the Hekking Mona Lisa is not a mechanical reproduction but an authentic 17th-century copy of the  iconic image, and has its own story.

"It looks like the Mona Lisa but the quality of the execution is not Leonardo da Vinci," Christie's International Director Pierre Etienne said, adding that the dream is a bit over.

"The original was never returned after a theft in the early 1900s, and it ended up in a shop in the village of Magagnosc, while the gallery in Paris was duped with a copy," Hekking's argues.

Its indicative price is €200,000-300,000 and the online auction ends on June 18.

Several newspaper clippings testify to his condemnation of the media, and a news item from Pathe from the 1960s shows that American journalists turn up to inspect the copy when the actual Mona Lisa was loaned to the United States.

Christie's said the painting was painted by an unknown artist in the early 1600s, about 100 years after the original copy of the Italian Renaissance master entered the royal collection of François I.