The Polish government has snapped up an art collection, including a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, for a fraction of its real value.

It has paid 100 million Euros (£85 million) for a collection of artworks which have been housed in the private Czartoryski Museum in Krakow.

The collection, which comprises 86,000 objects, includes da Vinci's "Lady with an Ermine," Rembrandt's "Landscape with the Good Samaritan" and works by Renoir.

There are also 250,000 manuscripts in the collection which has been sold to the nation under an agreement reached between Adam Karol Czartoryski, the descendant of an aristocratic family that gathered the works, and Piotr Glinski, the culture minister and deputy prime minister.

Such is the discount that the deal is being seen as effectively a donation by the foundation to the country.

But the deal was opposed by the management board of the Czartoryski Foundation which resigned in protest.

Painted in 1490, Lady in Ermine, is one of just four portraits of women by da Vinci.

The painting was stolen by the Nazis but later recovered and returned to its original owners.