After a lengthy investigation, police have arrested a Spanish man in connection to a forged Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) painting that was misleadingly valued at €1.3 million (£1.1 million). French Customs officers thwarted the sale in 2022 thanks to an expired export license raising suspicion.

The unnamed man was halted by customs agents in Modane, on the French border. He was travelling from Spain to the Italian city of Milan where he allegedly planned to sell the fake painting for a lofty sum. It was quickly seized after the authentic export license was found to be expired, prompting a call to Spain’s Policía Nacional to report the illegal attempt to smuggle artwork into Italy.

But this was not the only dubious element of the attempted million-pound sale. According to the permit, the piece was a genuine Leonardo portrait of the Italian military commander and aristocrat Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (1440/41-1518). Leonardo painted these types of portraits when he was living in Milan in the employ of the Duke Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), from about 1482 to 1499. Trivulzio had commissioned Leonardo to sculpt his tomb based on the design for equestrian statue of Francesco Sforza (1401-1466), although neither of these monuments were ever realised.

An export license, however, cannot guarantee an artwork’s authenticity. The purported Leonardo painting was subsequently sent to the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid for careful analysis, where experts concluded that it was in fact a forgery.

“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,” said the Spanish authorities 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.”

A spokesperson for the Spanish Police explained that “in this case, the licence was being used as a means of claiming the painting was original. Once it became apparent that the licence had expired, the painting was confiscated and an investigation was opened. As soon as the investigation determined that this was an alleged case of smuggling, the arrest was made.”

Authorities recently located a perpetrator in Madrid and arrested him for allegedly smuggling a painting made with fraudulent intent.