Explore the abstract of this artwork, Guennol Lioness.
The Guennol Lioness [ˈɡwɛnɔl] is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue allegedly found near Baghdad, Iraq. Depicting a muscular anthropomorphic leonine-human, it sold for $57.2 million at Sotheby's auction house on December 5, 2007. The sculpture had been acquired by a private collector, Alastair Bradley Martin, in 1948 from the collection of Joseph Brummer, and had been on display at Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City from that time to its sale in 2007. It is called "Guennol" after the Welsh name for "Martin", the name of the collector. In 1950 Edith Porada described it as a lioness "because of the feminine curves of her lower body and the absence of male organs" while conceding the possibility "that the figure represented a sexless creature".At 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, easily exceeding the record of Pablo Picasso's Tete de femme (Dora Maar). 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 £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) and surpassed The Guennol Lioness as the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction.The limestone sculpture measures just over 8 cm (3.25 in) tall. It was described by Sotheby's as "one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands." One day before the auction, experts had been estimating that the highest bid would be between $14 million and $18 million. The sale price of the lioness-woman exceeded the $28.6 million paid for Artemis and the Stag, a 2,000-year-old bronze figure that Sotheby's also sold in New York during June 2007 and which then held the record for the most expensive antiquity to be sold at auction.
Artemis and the Stag Brooklyn Museum of Art New York City bronze Lion sculpture lion Alastair Bradley Martin Baghdad Joseph Brummer Edith Porada Brooklyn Museum L'Homme qui marche I most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction Sotheby's Tete de femme (Dora Maar) Mesopotamia limestone anthropomorphic leonine-human Alberto Giacometti Iraq anthropomorphic Pablo Picasso