Italy rows with German company in puzzling Da Vinci case
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A legal row has broken out between Italy and a German toy company over a jigsaw puzzle bearing the image of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
The original drawing is housed in the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. Reproductions on merchandise are popular and the drawing was used as the emblem of the Skylab 2 US space mission in 1973.
Germany company Ravensburger began selling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle bearing the image more than a quarter of a century ago.
The Gallerie dell’Accademia demanded in 2019, however, that the company begin paying royalties for 10 per cent of sales. The toy-maker declined.
In 2022, a court in Venice ordered the company to pay and that the company should give the Italian culture ministry €1,500 for each day it delayed payment.
But a court in Stuttgart has now ruled that Ravensburger is entitled to reproduce the image because copyright law applies for only 75 years after a work’s publication.
The Italian culture ministry told The Times: “The German ruling is abnormal. It disregards a ruling of a court in another state.”
“The Stuttgart court’s ruling will be challenged… before every court, national, international and European,” the culture ministry said.
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