Evita shroud earns $198,000

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From BBC News:

The silk shroud of Argentina's most famous first lady, Eva Peron, has sold for more than three times its pre-sale estimate at a controversial auction. The shroud was bought for 130,000 euros by the head of an Argentine airline, at a Christie's sale of memorabilia belonging to the Peron couple. Mrs Peron, known as "Evita", died in 1952, but remains an icon in Argentina. Some Argentines had opposed the sale in Rome and have planned a protest in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires.

The memorabilia was auctioned by a humanitarian foundation created at the behest of Juan Peron, by his former secretary, Antonio Mario Rotundo. Mrs Peron's shroud and her husband's personal library fetched the highest prices at the sale, which ranged from a pair of safes to a brown bearskin. The total cost for the shroud, including Christie's commission, was 160,100 euros (£108,000; $198,000).

Mr Peron had it made in 1971 to wrap his wife's remains, when they made their final trip back to Argentina from Milan. The chairman of Aerolineas Argentinas intends to donate his purchase to the government, a company spokesman said. In an interview after the auction, Mr Rotundo said the money would go to benefit the Argentine people - through health, educational and humanitarian programs. "In the end, the result is just as Evita would have wanted: The money is going to those who need it most," he said.

During her husband's first presidency in the 1940s and early 1950s, Mrs Peron had campaigned in shantytowns - and became a saint-like symbol of the poor. Some members of Mr Peron's party, which has dominated Argentina's politics for 50 years, opposed the sale. A former aide to the Perons believed the items should be displayed in a museum. "These items are things that should not be sold and bought by people with money looking for a piece of Peron memorabilia, they belong to all Argentines," Juan Gabriel Labake told Argentine newspaper Clarin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3525428.stm