A digital copy of the work “Madonna Litta”, by Leonardo da Vinci was sold by 150.500 dollars in the Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg in an auction organized jointly with the Binance platform, through which the main Russian museum joined the crypto art.

At your first NFT auction (Non-Fungible Token), the institution also sold “Garden corner at Montgeron”, by Claude Monet, by 74.000 dollars and “Judit”, de Giorgione, by 65.000 Dollars; “Composition VI”, by Vasili Kandinsky, by 80.000 Dollars; Y “Lilacs”, the Vincent Van Gogh, by 75.000 Dollars.

NFTs are a special type of cryptographic digital file that represents something unique and cannot be interchangeable, such as cryptocurrencies or other tokens that are fungible. In this way it allows to create unique digital works of art, indivisible, transferable and with the ability to prove their scarcity, for which they become a new type of merchandise in the art world.

The director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Pyotrovsky, pointed out that although “the new technologies, in particular the blockchain, have opened a new chapter in the development of the art market”, the museum does not plan to raise large amounts of money with the auction.

The buyer of the digital canvas of the Renaissance genius, bearing the signature of the director of the Hermitage and the exact date and time of the signature to prove the unique character of the pieces, was Anonymous_8zz0 and the auction starting price was 10.000 Dollars.

For each painting, two copies of NFT were created: one was stored in the Hermitage and the second was put up for auction, money that will go to the funds of the gallery, reported the museum.