Carla Bruni will go under the hammer in New York next month, according to auctioneers Christie's.

It was taken in 1993, when Bruni was one of the world's top fashion models.

It is expected to fetch $3,000 to $4,000 when it is sold in New York on April 10, according to the Christie's web site.

The full photo can be seen here at the Christie's website.

Ms Bruni, the first non-French first lady of France arrives in Britain today and is likely to attract as much, if not more, attention than her husband during the couple's state visit.

The Italian-born supermodel, now a pop singer, has seemed less starry-eyed than her husband about their whirlwind, high-profile romance and marriage.

President Nicolas Sarkozy fell for her when they met only last November at a dinner party arranged to provide some distraction for the new incumbent of the Elysee Palace whose wife had divorced him.

The surprise was the overtly public nature of the romance, with the couple courting, and wooing the media, during a cosy weekend at Disneyland Paris.

It has seemed more pop than politics ever since.

Ms Bruni's former boyfriends include Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, Kevin Costner and Donald Trump.

She married a French philosopher she fell for while living with his father - upsetting the philosopher's wife, who, after her divorce, promptly set about penning a successful book thinly disguised as a novel, about the theft of her husband.

Sometimes described as one of the most beautiful women in the world, Ms Bruni switched from modelling to music to record an album which enjoyed sales of more than two million copies in Europe, despite a lukewarm critical reception.

A record of musical arrangements of poetry followed, but the attention it - and she - received was as nothing compared with what happened the minute she was linked to the President of France.

Then in January it was revealed that this daughter of one of the wealthiest industrial families of northern Italy was in fact the daughter of another millionaire Italian who had had an affair with her mother.

It all added to the glamour and heady pop-star world which had engulfed the President of France.

Ms Bruni once said that the men she got on with best always had a strong feminine side.

The fact that she is politically centre-left and once criticised the right-wing attitude of Mr Sarkozy towards immigration clearly did not inhibit their romantic progress.

But it is her husband who has been accused of cheapening the French Presidency by overturning decades of French style to parade his private life in public.

Ms Bruni, by contrast, has been hailed as behaving with as much dignity as she could muster given the ever-present paparazzi and her husband's clear desire, until recently, to push the glitzy side of life as part of an iconic celebrity team more than the politics.

During the state visit to the UK, the French first lady will spend time with Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wife Sarah, helping promote the charitable organisation The White Ribbon Alliance For Safe Motherhood.

And she is likely to heed the advice already given to the President - to let the serious role of the highest office in France shine brighter than the "bling".

The full photo can be seen here at the Christie's website.