Guennol Lioness
“Compared to contemporary art, antiquities are terribly undervalued,” says Hicham Aboutaam of Phoenix Ancient Art. This remark was made in response to the sale at Sotheby’s in New York of a 3 inch tall ancient limestone sculpture of a lioness for $57.2 million in December 2007. To date that was the highest ever paid for a sculpture.
The statue, known as the Guennol Lioness, is 5,000 years old and originates from Mesopotamia, where it was discovered not far from Baghdad, Iraq in the early part of the 20th century by archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley.
The winning price almost doubled the previous high which had been paid for a sculpture, and was three times the estimate of the piece’s value before the sale, at $18 million. In November of 2007 a Picasso bronze sold for $29.2 million, the previous high price, the “Tete de Femme (Dora Maar).”