FIGUERAS, Spain, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- A Spanish judge has ordered the personal secretary of surrealist painter Salvador Dali to pay for retouching one of the artist's originals.
John Peter Moore, 85, and his wife Catherine Perrot, must pay as much as $1.26 million to the Gala-Dali Foundation for having cut, doctored and exhibited under a different title the painting "Double Image of Gala," which was stolen from New York's Knoedler Gallery in 1974, EFE reported Friday.
In 1992 the painting surfaced at an exhibit at the Perrot-Moore Art Center in Cadaques, Spain, retouched and bearing the title "Dali Painting Gala."
The couple was ordered to pay for the restoration of the painting to its original state and cover the legal costs of the Gala-Dali Foundation, which brought the lawsuit.
After the painting was stolen, the insurance company reimbursed Dali for the work, which had been valued at $125,000.
The case marks one the first times Spain's judiciary has acknowledged an artist's intellectual rights.
