York World in 1920; the owner, Mrs Andrée Lardoux Hahn, sued for defamation of property in a notorious court case, which involved many of the major connoisseurs of the day, inspecting the two paintings side by side at the Louvre; the case was eventually heard in New York before a jury selected for not knowing anything of Leonardo or Morellian connoisseurship, and settled for $60,000 plus court expenses, which were considerable. The owner's account, Harry Hahn's The Rape of La Belle (1946) is a classic of populist conspiracy theory applied to the art world. After decades in an Omaha vault, the Hahn La Belle was sold at auction by Sotheby's on January 28, 2010 as "by a follower of Leonardo, probably before 1750"; it brought $1.5 million, a price three times higher than Sotheby's pre-sale estimate. The buyer was an unidentified American collector. A 19th-century copy of La Belle Ferronnière is conserved in the Musée des beaux-arts, Chambéry. The Louvre painting is identified in pre-Revolutionary inventories of the French royal collection. Notes External links La belle ferronnière, Musée du Louvre Paintings by Leonardo da Vinci Paintings in the Louvre by Italian artists Portrait paintings in the Louvre 1490s paintings 15th-century portraits Portraits of women