Polish government bought a private art collection worth 100 million Euros (£85 million) that includes Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine”. Painted in 1490, Lady with an Ermine, is one of just four portraits of women by da Vinci. The painting was stolen by the Nazis but later recovered and returned to its original owners.
Collection of artworks which have been housed in the private Czartoryski Museum in Krakow comprises 86,000 objects including da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine,” Rembrandt’s “Landscape with the Good Samaritan” and works by Renoir.
Leonardo da Vincis Lady with an Ermine
There are also 250,000 manuscripts in the collection which has been sold to the nation under an agreement reached between Adam Karol Czartoryski, the descendant of an aristocratic family that gathered the works, and Piotr Glinski, the culture minister and deputy prime minister.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as Polish citizens, we are now all owners of the Czartoryski collection,” Culture Minister Piotr Glinski said to applause at the signing ceremony at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Leonardo da Vincis Lady with an Ermine
