New york, Sotheby´s: G'riss um römische Skulptur

New York - Völlig überraschend für alle Experten ist eine römische Skulptur in New York für das Achtfache des Schätzpreises versteigert worden. Die vermutlich aus dem zweiten Jahrhundert stammende "Marmorgruppe mit Leda und Schwan" erzielte bei Sotheby's 14,3 Millionen Euro, wovon selbst die Verkäufer verblüfft waren.

Vier Bieter hatten sich hochgetrieben, letztlich hatte ein anonymer Sammler per Telefon das letzte Gebot abgegeben. Die Figurengruppe war seit mehr als 200 Jahren im Privatbesitz und war erst vor kurzem wieder von Experten in England entdeckt worden.

Noch weiter ging die Schere bei einer gut 2.200 Jahre alten Königsbüste aus Ägypten auseinander: Für sie hatten die Schätzer etwa 75.000 Euro angesetzt - letztlich wurden knapp 2,8 Millionen eingefahren. Die ganze Auktion von Altertümern wurde daher weit erfolgreicher als erwartet. (APA/red)

quelle: derstandard.at/1323222667184/Auktion-Gri...m-roemische-Skulptur

es ging dabei um folgendes objekt: www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogu....lot.N08810.html/16/

der preis erinnert mich an die zwei stücke aus einer grazer sammlung, die vor ungefähr einem jahr versteigert worden sind (torso einer kaiserstatue, "laokoon-gruppe" mit satyrn) ...

Met Stretches to Buy Roman Head It Once Exhibited (plus Sotheby’s Big Oops!)

Marble head of Zeus Ammon, Roman Imperial, c. 120-160 A.D., bought
yesterday at Sotheby's by Metropolitan Museum for $3.56 million
(presale estimate: $800,000-$1.2 million)

Through prior display in its own galleries, the Metropolitan Museum
may have increased the price it had to pay last night at Sotheby's for
the Roman Imperial head (above) from the collection of Dodie
Rosekrans, the San Francisco-area socialite and arts patron who died a
year ago.

The evening auction of antiquities also occasioned a bizarre turn of
events, when the astonishing $3.72 million that Sotheby's last night
said had been paid for an Egyptian basalt head of a king, Early
Ptolemaic Period, c. 304-200 B.C. (also from the Rosekrans
Collection), turned out to be too good to be true. In an e-mail from
its press department last night, Sotheby's exulted that the Egyptian
head, estimated at only $100,000-150,000, had "sold to an online
bidder," making it "the highest price paid by an online bidder in a
live auction at Sotheby's"...

...or maybe not. Today Sotheby's amended its pricelist, downsizing the
final price for the Egyptian head from $3.72 million to a mere
$392,500. Spokesperson Lauren Gioia told me this was "merely a
sale-system error. The lot was purchased by the online bidder for
$392,500" (who may have been astounded to learn about his megabucks
"purchase" in the post-sale announcement). At this writing, the
realized price has not yet been corrected in Sotheby's online
catalogue entry for the piece.

But back to the Met: According to Sotheby's catalogue entry for the
19-inch high marble head of Zeus Ammon, it was exhibited by the Met
from March 2007 to April 2008. The Met's imprimatur might help to
account for its more than doubling the auction house's $800,000-$1.2
million presale estimate of hammer price. It was knocked down to the
Met for $3.1 million, for a final total of $3.56 million with buyer's
premium.

In June 2007 the Met stretched even more above Sotheby's estimate for
an antiquity, when it paid $3.18 million for one of many Albright-Knox
Gallery deaccessions---the Elamite (southeastern Iran) copper figure
of a horned hero, ca. 3000-2800 B.C., estimated at a mere $150,000 to
$250,000.

There are no worries about the Zeus head's running afoul of the UNESCO
Convention restricting the importation of cultural property leaving
its country of origin after 1970. That's because, according to
Sotheby's catalogue entry: "The head was recorded as being on the art
market in Rome in 1931" and was donated in 1954 by a subsequent owner
to the Art League of Daytona Beach (which later sold it).

But the Metropolitan Museum has in the last few years acquired some
nine objects, posted on the object registry of the Association of Art
Museum Directors, which since 2008 has listed museum acquisitions for
which information is lacking as to whether ownership history conforms
to the 1970 rule. The most recent of these Met acquisitions is a head
of Antinoos, Roman, c. 130-138 A.D., received by gift in 2010.

Perhaps the most striking of the works posted by the Met on AAMD's
registry for antiquities with murky pre-1970 provenance is a rare,
over life-size Greek bronze statue of a man, c. mid-2nd to 1st century
B.C. It was a partial gift in 2001 from Robert and Renée Belfer, who
gave the remainder in 2010. They bought it from the controversial
Phoenix Ancient Art in the same year that they partially donated it to
the Met.

Here's my photo of this beautifully modeled Greek bronze, installed
just inside the entrance to the museum's Leon Levy and Shelby White
Court:

Here's the Met's much better photograph of that statue on its website.

But the biggest and by far most surprising price paid yesterday at
Sotheby's antiquities auction was the $19.12 million from an anonymous
buyer for a Roman Imperial marble of Leda and the Swan, c. 2nd century
A.D.:

According to Sotheby's catalogue entry, this sculpture was
rediscovered only last year. It had been estimated to bring only $2-3
million.

www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2011/12/...o_buy_roman_hea.html