WARSAW (Reuters) - 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 ($105 million). "It is a fraction of the market price of the collection," Piotr Glinski, Poland's minister of culture told journalists.