Gallery reaffirms terms and conditions of sale and contacts websites in attempt to stop touts reselling for exhibition
Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani. In an attempt to stop ticket touts, the National Gallery has reaffirmed that resold tickets will be invalid. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The National Gallery is to take action against touts attempting to make a profit from the resale of tickets for its Leonardo da Vinci exhibition.
Tickets, sold at face value for £16, are reaching up to £400 on sites such as eBay and Viagogo. But the gallery said those that have been resold would be cancelled, holders of resold tickets would not be admitted to the exhibition and they would not receive a refund.
"We are obviously very disappointed at the resale of these tickets for profit," said a spokeswoman for the gallery. "The resale of tickets for the Leonardo da Vinci exhibition is against the terms and conditions of their sale and this information is printed on the tickets. Our website clearly states: 'Tickets that have been resold will be cancelled without refund and admission will be refused to the bearer.'"
The gallery is also taking direct action, contacting websites and companies that are reselling tickets to ask that they "stop immediately", although the spokeswoman would not comment on how they are identifying the reselling outlets.
Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan is described by the gallery as "an unprecedented exhibition" which is the "most complete display of Leonardo's rare surviving paintings ever held". It contains more than half of all the surviving da Vinci paintings and seven paintings which have never been shown publicly before. Paintings have left galleries in Italy and France for the first time, "a great triumph in diplomacy", according to Nicholas Penny, the gallery's director.
Advanced tickets sold out rapidly, with people queuing for three hours every morning for one of the 500 tickets made available each day.
Tickets to the exhibition, which runs until 5 February, have been strictly limited to allow observers to get the full impact of the rare paintings on show, instead of the normal health and safety limit of 230, 180 visitors will be allowed each half hour.
Ed Parkinson, director of Viagogo, said: "Terms and conditions that aim to prevent people reselling tickets are unfair. If someone has paid for a ticket they can no longer use, they have the right to recoup their cost. Equally, someone looking for tickets deserves the security offered by Viagogo, and should not have to take their chances with touts."
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