PARIS, Aug 10, 2009 (AFP) - A Fernand Leger painting and Yves Saint Laurent's own Mercedes Benz and Hermes luggage go on sale in November in a second smaller auction of the YSL-Pierre Berge collection, one of the world's great private collections.

Photo: AFP/File/Cyril Folliot

Far smaller than the record-smashing 700-item February sale, which fetched 342.5 million euros (491.9 million dollars) in the biggest private art sale in history, the 1,200 works to come under the hammer from November 17 to 19 are estimated at between three and four million euros, Christie's said Monday 10 August.

Like the first sale, proceeds are to benefit HIV research and the fight against AIDS, said the auctioneers, organisers of the three-day sale in conjunction with Berge's own auction house.

Works to be auctioned are largely from the pair's country hideaway on the Normandy coast, a three-storey place with a sea view built in 1874 for wealthy Americans that the two had redecorated to evoke writer Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time."

But the most expensive piece, a 1950 Fernand Leger estimated at between 80,000 and 120,000 euros, is from the Paris home of Saint Laurent, who died aged 71 in June last year.

Other mementoes from the king of couture include his 2007 Mercedes Benz for 30,000 to 50,000 euros, three Hermes suitcases in crocodile leather at 4,000 to 6,000 euros and 10 of his signature jewels kept in his bedroom from 800 euros each.