Limestone Mesopotamian sculpture sells for 57 million dollars!

[Taogem]

 Mesopotamian sculpture sells for record 57 million dollars.



 NEW YORK (AFP) - A tiny and extremely rare 5,000-year-old white limestone sculpture from ancient Mesopotamia sold for 57.2 million dollars in New York on Wednesday, smashing records for both sculpture and antiquities.

The carved Guennol Lioness, measuring just over eight centimeters (3 1/4 inches) tall, was described by Sotheby's auction house as one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands.

"It was an honor for us to handle The Guennol Lioness, one of the greatest works of art of all time," Richard Keresey and Florent Heintz, the experts in charge of the sale, said in a joint statement.

"Before the sale, a great connoisseur of art commented to us that he always regarded the figure as the 'finest sculpture on earth' and it would appear that the market agreed with him," they said.

Five different bidders, three on the telephone and two in the room, competed for the sculpture. The successful buyer was identified only as an English buyer who wished to remain anonymous.

The sale easily broke the previous record for the highest price for a sculpture at auction, which had stood at 29.1 million dollars and was set just last month at Sotheby's in New York by Picasso's "Tete de Femme (Dora Maar)."

It also beat the 28.6 million dollars paid for "Artemis and the Stag," a 2,000-year-old bronze figure which sold also at Sotheby's in New York in June and held the record for the most expensive antiquity to be sold at auction.

Described by Sotheby's as diminutive in size, but monumental in conception, The Guennol Lioness was created around 5,000 years ago -- around the same time as the first known use of the wheel -- in the region of ancient Mesopotamia.

The piece was acquired by private collector Alastair Bradley Martin in 1948 and has been on display in New York's Brooklyn Museum of Art ever since.

Keresey described the work before the sale as "one of the oldest, rarest and most beautiful works of art from the ancient world."

"This storied figure, in its brilliant combination of an animal form and human pose, has captured the imagination of academics and the public since it was acquired by the Martins in the late 1940s," he added.

The figure depicts a standing lioness looking over her left shoulder, her paws clenched in front of her muscular chest.

Experts have speculated that the figure may have played a role in some ancient belief system or mythology in Mesopotamia, which today lies in parts of modern day Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.

[Enchantra]

That's quite the price for that piece!
What intrigues me is that it's missing most of it's legs, so we don't know if this lioness was portrayed with more human feet or more lion-like paws.

What little I know of techniques this probably was polished using sandstone as that was a common thing to use in sanding and polishing.  Any metal tools 5000 years ago would have been copper as bronze came just a bit later.  So carving with soft copper would have been quite the exercise in patience.

[bobby1]

A beautiful sculpture!
Using a soft metal as a carving tool is very effective and even used today. The advantage comes from the fact that the abrasive (likely at the time was powdered garnet or similar material) embeds in the surface of the soft metal and gets retained longer before abrading away during use.
I have used a copper tube and Silicon Carbide abrasive in this manner to drill a hole in an agate piece that I made.
Bob

[Taogem]

What intrigues me is that it's missing most of it's legs, so we don't know if this lioness was portrayed with more human feet or more lion-like paws.

The Journal of the American Oriental Society talks about how "the legs are cut off above the knees and the stumps are smoothed off. One stump bears a dowel hole suggesting that the lower legs were made separately, perhaps of a different material.

Works from antiquity were carved or painted at a time when almost nothing, in scientific terms, was understood about the physical universe, so their creation was linked to elaborate belief systems in which animals and all manner of physical phenomena were intimately intertwined with the well-being and progression of humanity. Link...

Here are a couple more views..

 

[MrsWTownsend]

That's pretty amazing.

[Bentiron]

The male lion may have roared the loudest but they knew which one brought home the food, the lioness, no wonder she was venerated.  I think I could find something else to do with 57 million dollars though.