PARIS - A French judge has ruled against halting the sale of disputed Chinese bronze fountainheads heading for Christie's auction block as part of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's estate.
The judge has also ordered the association that sought to prevent the sale to pay euro1,000 in fines each to the auction house and to the firm of Pierre Berge, the longtime partner of the French fashion icon.
The bronze heads of a rabbit and a rat disappeared from the summer Imperial Palace on the outskirts of Beijing when French and British forces sacked it at the close of the second Opium War in 1860.
The issue has cast a shadow over a three-day auction, starting Monday, of 733 works of art collected over half a century by Saint Laurent and Berge.
