$34.3M Roman Marble Busts Through Antiquity Record at Sotheby’s

An ancient fragment of a statue of a Roman emperor sold last night at Sotheby’s for $34.3 million, a sum that the house has deemed an auction record for a Roman antiquity. The three-and-a-half-foot-tall marble fragment depicts only the emperor’s torso, adorned in an elegant bronze cuirass. According to Sotheby’s, it once belonged to a larger statue of an emperor from the Julio-Claudinian dynasty and dates to the 1st century CE. Like many Roman statues, it is a copy of a Greek one.

An officer from Türkiye’s anti-smuggling police unit holding an approximately 2,000-year-old marble head of Zeus Turkish authorities have seized a marble head depicting the ancient Greek god Zeus in Izmir’s Konak district in western Turkey. The sculpture, which is believed to date to the Roman period around 2,000 years ago, was recovered during an operation conducted by the İzmir Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office with officers from the Anti-Smuggling and Intelligence branches of the provincial police department.

A Claude Monet painting sold for €50 million ($56.2 million) at Sotheby’s in Paris on Thursday, setting a record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in France. The painting, Iris, sparked a 45-minute bidding battle between six collectors before selling to a private buyer in Asia, represented on the phone by Sotheby’s deputy chairman Jen Hua. It had been expected to fetch between €22 million and €30 million.

Three works by Paul Cézanne have been removed from the “Le Temps Retrouvé: The Schlumberger Collection” evening sale at Sotheby’s Paris on Thursday coinciding with Art Basel Paris. The three works: La Ferme, Arbres au Bord de la Rivière and Ciel Entre les Arbres, carried a combined estimate of $1.57 million to $2.24 million (€1.4 million to €2 million) and were painted between 1862 and 1864. The paintings are being returned to the artist’s hometown in Aix-en-Provenance to be displayed at the Musée Granet along with the artist’s other work. Sotheby’s said it has been holding discussions with the Schlumberger family and the town of Aix-en-Provence which, with the support of the French Ministry of Culture, now intends to acquire the artworks for the museum.