ArtArt History
The most expensive painting ever sold may not be by the artist on the label.
Specialists still disagree over how much of it Leonardo actually touched.
Source
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More art facts
Art facts that are really stories about people. The Mona Lisa became the most famous painting in the world because it was stolen in 1911, the Easter Island heads have bodies, and European painters spent three centuries using a pigment ground from Egyptian mummies. Each one links to its source.
- The Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting because it was stolen in 1911.
- A famous painting hung upside down in galleries for 75 years.
- An artist sold tins of his own excrement at the price of gold.
- A banana taped to a wall sold for 6.2 million dollars.
- When one sculptor secured exclusive artistic rights to the blackest pigment ever made, another artist retaliated with the world's pinkest pink, sold to everyone on Earth except him.
- The largest art theft in history is still unsolved, and the museum leaves the frames hanging empty.