The Guennol Lioness had been on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art for nearly 60 years and extensively published. The sculpture was acquired in 1948 by Alastair Bradley Martin and his wife Edith, whose revered Guennol Collection of choice masterworks across countless periods and cultures has been celebrated by scholars and museums for decades. Its creation was contemporaneous with the first known use of the wheel, the development of writing, and the emergence of the first cities. The sale was 97% sold by lot and 100% sold by value with 80% of the sold lots exceeding their high estimate.Дiminutive in size, but monumental in conception, The Guennol Lioness was created approximately 5,000 years ago in the region of ancient Mesopotamia. $16.7/22.2 million), the highest total ever for a sale in this category. The Guennol Lioness was included in a sale of Antiquities which brought a total of $64,955,839 (est. Hildesley brought the hammer down to several rounds of applause, the successful bidder, who was standing in the salesroom, would only identify himself as an English buyer who wishes to remain anonymous. An intense battle ensued between that bidder and one determined client on the phone. When the bidding reached $27 million, a new bidder, standing in the back of the salesroom, raised his paddle for the first time.

After auctioneer Hugh Hildesley opened the bidding at $8.5 million, four bidders jumped into the fray.

Before the sale, a great connoisseur of art commented to us that he always regarded the figure as the В‘finest sculpture on earthВ’ and it would appear that the market agreed with him!В”ДЄ total of five different bidders, three on the telephone and two in the room, competed for the 3 Вј inch limestone treasure. Keresey and Florent Heintz, experts in charge of todayВ’s sale said, В“It was an honor for us to handle The Guennol Lioness, one of the greatest works of art of all time. The lioness was the frequent subject of veneration among cultures familiar with the well-coordinated hunting of female lions.NEW YORK.- This afternoon, in a packed salesroom at SothebyВ’s, The Guennol Lioness, one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands, sold for a remarkable $57,161,000, a record for any sculpture at auction.i That outstanding price also eclipsed the previous record for an Antiquity at auction and more than tripled the pre-sale high estimate of $18 million.

It is possible that the nearby Sumerians borrowed this powerful artistic hybrid from the Proto-Elamites. Such images evoked the Mesopotamian belief in attaining power over the physical world by combining the superior physical attributes of various species. Many ancient Near East deities were represented as anthropomorphic figures. Its historical significance is that it was made about the same time as the first known use of the wheel, the development of cuneiform writing, and the emergence of the first cities. This lioness-woman sculpture is an Elamite figure believed to have been created about 3000вЂ“2800 B.C. On 3 February 2010, however, the second edition of the cast of the sculpture L'Homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) by Alberto Giacometti sold for ВЈ65,001,250 ($104,327,006) and overtook the Guennol Lioness as the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction. It easily exceeded the record of Pablo Picasso's Tete de femme (Dora Maar). ДЄt the time of its 2007 sale, the price paid at auction for the Guennol Lioness was the highest paid for a sculpture to that date. One day before the auction, experts had been estimating that the highest bid would be between $14 million and $18 million. It was described by Sotheby's as 'one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands'. The limestone sculpture is just over 8В cm (3.25В in) tall. The sculpture was on loan to the Brooklyn Museum of Art until it was purchased at auction by an English collector. The sculpture sold for $57.2 million at Sotheby's auction house on December 5, 2007. It shows the form of a muscular anthropomorphic lioness-woman. The Guennol Lioness is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue found near Baghdad, Iraq.

Guennol lioness