Bronze Artemis sells for $28.6 million, sets records

An important, 2,000-year-old Roman bronze of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, brought $28.6 million this afternoon at Sotheby's in New York, becoming both the most expensive antiquity and piece of sculpture from any period to sell at auction.

London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi won the bidding for an unnamed European collector.

"You're not likely to find anything of this quality outside the Louvre," Eskenazi said, soon after the gavel went down.

The heroic yet graceful 36-inch figure, clad in gladiator sandals and a billowing dress, quadrupled its $7 million presale high estimate.

The Artemis price edged the previous sculpture record of $27.5 million paid in May 2005 for Brancusi's "Bird in Space" at Christie's in New York. It more than doubled the previous antiquities record, held by a Roman marble statue of Venus that sold for $11.6 million at Christie's in London in 2002.

The huntress — with a small stag at her side — is among the most significant of 207 artworks and objects sold by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York and offered at Sotheby's this spring.

The recent sale attracted dealers, collectors and curators from around the world.

The Albright's Asian, African and other antiquities so far have brought $32.5 million (not including today's amounts), more than double the $15 million presale estimate for the entire group. The museum says it will use the proceeds to purchase modern and contemporary art.

Tomorrow at Sotheby's New York, Old Master paintings and European works of art at estimated at up to $1.6 million finish the Albright sales.

When the Albright acquired the Artemis from a Manhattan art dealer in 1953, the purchase was reported in Time magazine as a "major acquisition," with the statue embodying "a windblown freshness and grace that no later sculptor could have improved on."