Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Leonardo da Vinci's painting alone is worth more than the price paid for the collection

The Polish government has bought a world-famous art collection, including a rare Leonardo da Vinci painting, for a fraction of its market value.

The Czartoryski collection was sold for €100m ($105m; £85m) despite being estimated at about €2bn.

It includes Rembrandt and Renoir works, and Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine.

The head of the Czartoryski family, which owned the collection, said it was a "donation", but the board of its foundation resigned in protest.

The Czartoryski Foundation's management board said it was not consulted about the sale, which was negotiated between Poland's culture ministry and Adam Karol Czartoryski, a descendent of Princess Izabela Czartoryska, who founded the collection in 1802.

Mr Czartoryski, the foundation's head, said he was following his ancestors who "always worked for the Polish nation".

"I felt like making a donation and that's my choice," he said.

The collection is made up of about 86,000 artefacts, as well as 250,000 manuscripts and books. Most of the artworks are housed in the National Museum in the southern city of Krakow.

All are now the property of the Polish state.

Image copyright EPA Image caption Mr Czartoryski, left, said he "felt like making a donation" and signed the collection over to the Polish state

The ruling conservative and Eurosceptic Law and Justice party has been pushing to nationalise important businesses and cultural artefacts, as part of a focus on national pride.

Minister of Culture Piotr Glinski said the sale "ensures the right of the Polish nation to the collection".

The collection contains a vast array of artworks, artefacts and historical items including:

Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine

Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan

Drawings by Renoir

Manuscripts by the composer Chopin

Etruscan and Greek vases

Roman and Egyptian antiquities

A chair said to come from the house of William Shakespeare

Armoury with extensive collection of Polish, Islamic and European arms

A notable absence though is Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man, which was looted by the Nazis and remains missing from the collection.

Poland's culture ministry said negotiations for the collection had taken several months.

The Czartoryski Foundation's board of management said it did not oppose selling the collection to the government, but that it was concerned that selling without due diligence - including estimating a fair price - may be against its bylaws, Reuters reported.

Chairman Marian Wolkowski-Wolski told the news agency there was a risk of the collection's eventual dispersal out of public control.

Lady with an Ermine, painted in 1490, is one of only four portraits of women by Leonardo Da Vinci.

It shows Cecilia Gallerani, a young woman in the Milanese court who was mistress to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

His nickname at court was "the white ermine" - explaining the animal's presence in her arms.

Image caption Research shows Leonardo painted Lady with an Ermine in three stages, adding the animal in later versions

It was stolen from Poland by Nazi forces during World War Two, but later repatriated and restored to its owners.

In 2014, new techniques revealed that the painting had been changed at least twice - with the eponymous animal only being added in a later version.</s>The Polish government has snapped up an art collection, including a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, for a fraction of its real value.

It has paid 100 million Euros (£85 million) for a collection of artworks which have been housed in the private Czartoryski Museum in Krakow.

The collection, which comprises 86,000 objects, includes da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine," Rembrandt's "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" and works by Renoir.

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.

Such is the discount that the deal is being seen as effectively a donation by the foundation to the country.

But the deal was opposed by the management board of the Czartoryski Foundation which resigned in protest.

Painted in 1490, Lady in 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.</s>The Polish government has purchased a world-famous art collection, including one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings, for a fraction of its value.

The Czartoryski collection of about 86,000 pieces, based in the city of Krakow, includes da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine and works by Rembrandt.

It was sold for €100m ($105m; £85m) despite being estimated at about €2bn.

The management board of the Czartoryski Foundation resigned in protest at the bargain price.

The board says it was not consulted about the sale, which was negotiated between Poland's culture Ministry and the head of the family which owns the collection, Adam Karol Czartoryski.

Mr Czartoryski said he was supporting the Polish nation by accepting the offer, effectively making a large donation to the state.

He said he "felt like making a donation" and that it was his choice to make.

In addition to the artworks, the Czartoryski collection includes about 250,000 manuscripts and books. All are now the property of the Polish state.

Poland's culture ministry said negotiations for the collection had taken several months.

Lady with an Ermine, painted in 1490, is one of only four portraits of women by Da Vinci.

It shows Cecilia Gallerani, a young woman in the Milanese court who was mistress to Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan.

His nickname at court was "the white ermine" - explaining the animal's presence in her arms.

It was stolen from Poland by Nazi forces during World War Two, but later repatriated and restored to its owners.

In 2014, new techniques revealed that the painting had been changed at least twice - with the eponymous animal only being added in a later version.

Other famous works in the acquired collection include Rembrandt's Landscape with the Good Samaritan and drawings by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Parts of the collection have been housed in the National Museum in Krakow in Krakow for many years.</s>Poland's Culture Ministry secured a deal Thursday to buy a precious private art collection that includes a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, securing the masterpieces for future generations.

The collection includes some 86,000 objects, among them da Vinci's 'Lady with an Ermine,' Rembrandt's 'Landscape with the Good Samaritan' and works by Renoir.

Some 250,000 manuscripts and other library items also are part of the collection, which has been housed in the private Czartoryski Museum in the southern Polish city of Krakow.

It is understood, on the open market, the collection could have easily raised €2bn.

The purchase comes as the nationalist ruling Law and Justice party strives to build national pride with a focus on positive aspects of Poland's heritage.

Piotr Glinski, the culture minister and deputy prime minister, signed an agreement with Adam Karol Czartoryski, the descendent of an aristocratic family that gathered and preserved the collection over the past two centuries.

The state treasury paid €100 million, which Glinski acknowledged is a fraction of its value, making it to a large extent a donation to the country.

The da Vinci painting is only one of four female portraits by the Italian Renaissance master.</s>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s Culture Ministry has signed a deal to buy a precious private art collection that includes a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, acting to ensure that it would remain part of Poland’s patrimony for further generations.

The collection includes some 86,000 objects, among them da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” and Rembrandt’s “Landscape with the Good Samaritan.” The collection, which also includes some 250,000 books and other library items, has been housed in the private Czartoryski Museum in the southern Polish city of Krakow.

Piotr Glinski, the culture minister and deputy prime minister, said Thursday that the state had signed the agreement to buy the collection from the Princes Czartoryski Foundation.

The da Vinci painting is only one of four female portraits by the Italian Renaissance master.</s>The Polish government has signed a cut-price deal to buy one of Poland’s greatest private art collections including a rare Leonardo da Vinci portrait, in a bid to keep the collection in the country.

Piotr Glinski, the Polish culture minister, hailed the agreement to purchase the Czartoryski Collection for £85 million but immediately ran into a row with the collection's trustees who questioned the legality of the deal.

The vast collection of some 330,000 paintings and artefacts with a total market value estimated at over £1.5bn belonged to Prince Adam Czartoryski, a scion of one of Poland’s leading aristocratic families.

The prince is a descendant of Princess Izabela Czartoryska, who founded the collection 200 years ago, filling it with work of old masters and some of the greatest contemporary names of the day.

But the board of the Czartoryska Foundation, which managed the collection before the state purchase, resigned on mass in protest over the deal, claiming the prince had not consulted them before selling the collection for a “fraction of its true value”.

It includes works by Rembrandt and Renoir, as well as the centrepiece - da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine" - which was painted in 1490 and it is one of only four female portraits produced by the Italian master.

Malgorzata Omilanowska, a former culture minister and a professor of art history, described the cut-price deal as “more nationalisation with compensation than a purchase”.

She also questioned whether the prince even had the right to sell the items without the board’s approval and why the government deemed it necessary to spend millions of pounds of tax-payers money on a well maintained collection that is in any case open to the public.</s>Poland's culture ministry on Thursday bought a private art collection worth an estimated two billion euros that includes Leonardo da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine".

The 15th-century portrait of a young woman holding a white ermine, a kind of short-tailed weasel, is one of just four known paintings of women by the Renaissance master. Another is the Mona Lisa.

"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.

Sitting alongside him among marble columns and chandeliers and under a fresco was Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski, president of the foundation that sold the collection.

"I am basically just following my ancestors who always worked for the Polish nation," the 76-year-old prince, who lives abroad, told the audience.

Glinski said the country paid 100 million euros (dollars) plus tax for the tens of thousands of items, "a small fraction of the market price."

In addition to the Da Vinci, which is insured for about 350 million euros ($365 million), the collection's other big names include a Rembrandt, drawings by Renoir and Chopin's letters.

When asked by reporters why he was willing to accept such a low sum, Czartoryski said: "Listen, in life you do the things the way you feel like it. I felt like making a donation and that's my choice."

His ancestor Princess Izabela Czartoryska founded the collection in 1801 to preserve Polish and European works while her country was partitioned by neighbors Austria, Prussia and Russia.

The culture ministry in turn has said it wants to ensure the collection never leaves the country, which was a possibility as long as it was owned by the Princes Czartoryski Foundation.

The transaction was not without controversy, as the foundation's Polish board of directors quit last week in protest, saying the negotiations were conducted without their knowledge.

"Lady with an Ermine" is among only 15 Da Vinci paintings in the world, according to art expert Janusz Walek.

"If we compare that to other painters, like Titian or Rembrandt, then that really isn't a lot," said Walek, author of a book on Da Vinci's portraits of women.

The Italian master painted the revolutionary portrait, measuring 54 by 39 centimeters (21 by 15 inches), between 1488 and 1490.

The small oil painting on wood depicts Cecilia Gallerani, the multilingual teenage mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan and one of Da Vinci's patrons.

The Italian nobleman, who commissioned the portrait, makes his own cameo in the painting, as art historians believe the ferret-like animal in Gallerani's arms is an allusion to him.

"The ermine, a symbol of purity, was in the duke's emblem," said Grazyna Bastek, curator of Italian painting at the National Museum in Warsaw.

Gallerani is believed to have held onto the painting till her death in 1536 but what happened to it over the next 300 years remains a mystery.

The Czartoryski family bought it in Italy around 1800 and took it to Poland, where the invading Germans looted it in 1939. But it was restituted after the war.

"For many, many years the painting was not very well-known. It was only when it began to tour the world in the 1990s that its value rose," Walek said, citing exhibitions in places like Italy, Sweden and the United States.

"This is really the first modern portrait in European painting," he added, explaining that it is not a mock-up but an incredibly lifelike representation that even manages to convey Gallerani's inner thoughts.

Glinski said the state treasury will transfer the Da Vinci painting and the rest of the collection to the National Museum in Krakow for all the world to see.</s>The Polish government bought a massive private art collection that includes works by Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt for $105 million, a fraction of its market value. The highly controversial transaction between the populist right-wing government and a prince with ties to the Spanish royals was made official on Dec. 29.

The collection was started more than 200 years ago by Izabela Czartoryska, a patriotic princess who wanted to preserve it for future generations of Poles. It contains 86,000 pieces such as “Lady with an Ermine” from 1490 by da Vinci, drawings by Auguste Renoir, as well as 250,000 historical documents. Hundreds of works of art that have been looted from the collection over the years and are currently missing, including a piece by Raphael, were included in the sale, should they ever be found.

The Czartoryski family art is estimated to be worth around $2 billion, and the government touts the sale as a good deal. But the political opposition and liberal commentators in Poland look at the amount differently, seeing it as a gargantuan, unnecessary cost to taxpayers. They say it’s $105 million for… nothing.

Here’s why: the collection, as legally stipulated in its statute, was never supposed to be sold, and was required to be made available to the Polish public. The argument against the sale goes: it was already a national, public treasure even if it wasn’t owned by the government.

“They purchased a collection which was and will be available [to the public],” said Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk, an activist and politician from the left-wing party Razem to Polish radio station TokFM (link in Polish, as are all of the following.) The money, she said “should be spent on something that you don’t have.”

Her party added an additional, historical criticism of the sale in a statement on Facebook: “The Czartoryskis bought the ‘Lady with an Ermine’ for money they got from exploiting peasants—our ancestors. Now the Czartoryskis will get money from our pockets from that same painting. The descendants of peasants never received reparations for years of indentured servitude.”

Others, including two former ministers of culture, criticized the deal for a lack of transparency.

In order to make the sale possible, the statute of the foundation that manages the collection, which was established in 1991, was changed earlier this month. The deal was struck by the head of the foundation, Adam Karol Czartoryski, a Polish-Spanish prince and descendant of Izabela, the collection’s founder. The rest of the board resigned, saying that they were not included in the negotiations with the government. They said they could no longer trust Czartoryski.

What are the government’s reasons for the purchase? One, ostensibly, is the threat that the artworks could be sold abroad. Piotr Gliński, the minister of culture said in May that Poland could lose the “Lady with an Ermine.” That’s an unlikely scenario, according to experts, who say the painting, so expensive, old and rare, is impossible to sell. More important, the purchase fits with the ruling party’s politics, which emphasize Polish national pride.</s>Poland's government has purchased a private art collection that includes a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, acquiring the works for a fraction of their true market value.

The collection comprises some 86,000 objects, among them da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine", one of only four female portraits by the Italian Renaissance master.

It also includes Rembrandt's "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" and works by Renoir. Poland’s state treasury paid 100 million euros for the entire collection, but its estimated worth is around 2 billion euros.

Prince Adam Karol Czartoryski, whose ancestors founded the collection, says he voluntarily parted with the works as an act of patriotism.

Click on the player above to see the full video report on Poland’s art acquisition.</s>WARSAW: Poland's government announced on Thursday it had bought a Leonardo da Vinci painting from a private foundation, in a transaction that forced a federal budget amendment and stirred acrimony about how the deal was arranged.

The State Treasury bought the 1490 "Lady with an Ermine" along with thousands of other pieces of art from the aristocratic Czartoryski Foundation for the equivalent of just over 100 million euros (US$105 million). "It is a fraction of the market price of the collection," Piotr Glinski, Poland's minister of culture told journalists.

The government bought the collection, which includes Rembrandt's "Landscape with the Good Samaritan", as part of its broader drive to nationalise important businesses and cultural artefacts.

But the management board of the Czartoryski Foundation has resigned, saying it was not consulted about the purchase.

The da Vinci painting is on public display at the Wawel castle in Krakow.

The year-old government, led by the conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS), has long talked of buying the "Lady with an Ermine" and more than 80,000 items in the private collection, considered one of Europe's most important.

"I felt like making a donation," the Foundation's president and founder, Adam Czartoryski said, when asked why was he was willing to part with the collection for so little. "It's my choice."

The Foundation's board of management said it did not oppose selling the collection to the government but that selling without due diligence, which would provide the basis for estimating a fair price, may be against its bylaws.

Marian Wolkowski-Wolski, chairman of the board, told Reuters the board was also worried the collection was being sold at a fraction of its worth and that there was a risk of its eventual dispersal out of public control.

Polish media have reported that the government had been willing to spend up to 1 billion zloty (US$235 million) on buying the painting and the entire collection.

The Da Vinci painting, 54.7 cm by 40.3 cm (1'9" by 1'3"), is insured for 331 million euros for travelling, according to government officials, and the entire collection is valued, according to different estimates, at between 8 billion zloty and 10 billion zloty (2.3 billion euros, US$2.4 billion).

The government's budget is squeezed but it expects to undershoot its deficit goal this year. This has enabled a budget amendment to allow the formation of a reserve pool for the purpose of "purchase of cultural goods, including historical monuments, and the rights to cultural goods with a special importance for the Polish State".

In 1991, after the fall of Communism, Adam Czartoryski established the Foundation in Krakow and, for financial and logistical reasons, left the collection amassed over two centuries under the National Museum structure.

Minister of Culture Piotr Glinski said the whole collection would now become a permanent part of the Museum.

"This ensures the right of the Polish nation to the collection," Glinski told journalists. "There is a difference between having something on deposit and being its owner."

The last painting attributed to da Vinci to go on sale, "Salvator Mundi" in 2014, was variously reported to have fetched a sum ranging between US$75 million and US$127.5 million.
The Polish government buys the internationally-known Czartoryski collection of art. Based in the city of Kraków and consisting of around 86,000 pieces, this features works by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.