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The Leica M-A owned by the late pontiff is one of the most valuable models ever sold at auction.
Say formaggio!
A blindingly white-and-silver Leica camera owned by the late Pope Francis sold at a European auction this weekend for about $7.5 million, nearly 100 times its estimate.
It was one of the most expensive Leica models ever sold, according to Leitz Photographica Auction, which announced it would auction the Pope’s mechanical camera for charity in September. The record is still held by a 100-year-old prototype that sold for $16.7 million in 2022.
The camera company presented a personalized Leica M-A film camera and its Noctilus-M 50 mm lens to his holiness last year. In a statement, the auction house said Pope Francis had decided to auction the Leica and donate the proceeds “in keeping with his commitment to charity and social causes.”
The camera kit features several unique elements that distinguish it from its base model, which retails for about $6,300 for the body and another $8,500 for the lens, before taxes. It carries a distinctive serial number of 5000000, which is valuable to collectors, and its white-painted top plate includes an engraving with Pope Francis’s motto miserando atque eligendo (which translates to “by having mercy and choosing,” drawn from a homily on the call of Saint Matthew by Saint Bede the Venerable). The flash cover is engraved with the keys of Peter.
Both the body and lens caps are engraved with the Coat of Arms of the State of Vatican City, and the camera and lens include an etching that reads “AD MMXXIV,” the year Leica presented the Pope with the gift in Roman numerals.
It’s unclear whether Pope Francis got to use his camera much, but he didn’t own it very long. He passed away this spring at the age of 88, several months after receiving the gift.
Though the pontiff did not specifically express his views on photography, he was a vocal supporter of art and artists. “Architects and painters, sculptors and musicians, filmmakers and writers, photographers and poets, artists of every discipline, are called to make beauty shine,” he said during a 2016 address to the Pontifical Academies, “especially where darkness and greyness dominate everyday life.”
