The ''Guennol Lioness'' is a 5,000-year-old
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
n statue allegedly found near
Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...
,
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
. Depicting a muscular
anthropomorphic leonine-human, it sold for $57.2 million at
Sotheby's
Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...
auction house on December 5, 2007. The
sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
had been acquired by a private collector,
Alastair Bradley Martin, in 1948 from the collection of
Joseph Brummer
Joseph Brummer (1883 – 14 April 1947) was a Hungarian-born art dealer and collector who exhibited both antique artifacts from different cultures, early European art, and the works of modern painters and sculptors in his galleries in Paris a ...
, and had been on display at
Brooklyn Museum of Art
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
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
Edith Porada (22 August 1912, Vienna – 24 March 1994, Honolulu) was an Austrian-born art historian and archaeologist, a leading authority on ancient cylinder seals and a professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University.
About
P ...
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
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
'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
''L’Homme qui marche I'' ( ''The Walking Man I'' or ''The Striding Man I'', lit. ''The Man who Walks I'') is the name of any one of the cast bronze sculptures that comprise six numbered editions plus four artist proofs created by Swiss ...
'' (''Walking Man I'') by
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. Beginning in 1922, he lived and worked mainly in Paris but regularly visited his hometown Borgonovo to see his family and ...
sold for £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) and surpassed ''The Guennol Lioness'' as the
most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction.
The
limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...
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
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such ...
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.
History
The ''Guennol Lioness'', an
Elam
Elam (; Linear Elamite: ''hatamti''; Cuneiform Elamite: ; Sumerian: ; Akkadian: ; he, עֵילָם ''ʿēlām''; peo, 𐎢𐎺𐎩 ''hūja'') was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretc ...
ite figure believed to have been created circa 3000–2800 B.C., was on loan to the
Brooklyn Museum of Art
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
until it was purchased at auction by an English collector. Its historical significance is that it is thought to have been created at approximately the same time as the first known
use of the wheel, the development of
cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
writing, and the emergence of the first cities.
Such
anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.
Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...
figures, merging animal and human features, can be seen in the top and bottom registers of the trapezoidal front panel of the famous
Great Lyre from the "King's Grave" (circa 2650–2550 B.C.), discovered by British archaeologist Sir
Leonard Woolley
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 – 20 February 1960) was a British archaeologist best known for his Excavation (archaeology), excavations at Ur in Mesopotamia. He is recognized as one of the first "modern" archaeologists who excavat ...
early in the twentieth century at
Ur in present-day
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
.
Many ancient
Near East
The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...
deities
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...
were represented in anthropomorphic figures. Such images evoked the Mesopotamian belief in attaining power over the physical world by combining the superior physical attributes of various species. It is possible that the nearby
Sumer
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of c ...
ians borrowed this powerful artistic hybrid from the
Proto-Elamites
The Proto-Elamite period, also known as Susa III, is a chronological era in the ancient history of the area of Elam, dating from . In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the ol ...
.
[ Porada, Edith. “A Leonine Figure of the Protoliterate Period of Mesopotamia”, ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol. 70, No. 4. (October–December 1950), 223–226.] The
lion
The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...
ess was the frequent subject of veneration among cultures with exposure to the characteristic hunting techniques of the
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
that feature well-coordinated hunting by its female members.{{citation needed, date=February 2019
See also
*
List of most expensive sculptures
This is a list of the highest known prices paid for sculptures.
Most valuable sculpture
Alberto Giacometti's ''L'Homme au doigt'' was auctioned for $141.3m at Christie's in May 2015, the highest price for any sculpture at auction.
Giacometti's '' ...
Further reading
*Aruz, Joan (ed.), et al
''Art of the First Cities: The Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus''(exh. cat.). New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003, 42-44, 105-107.
*Zettler, Richard L. and Lee Horne (eds.). ''Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur'' (exh. cat.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998, 53-57.
References
External links
BBC including photograph
Elam
Limestone statues
Sculptures of lions
Sumerian art and architecture
Sculpture of the Ancient Near East