Record price for Assyrian sculpture
The controversial sale of a 3000-year-old stone relief resulted in a doubling of the world record price for an Assyrian artwork at auction in New York.
The 2.1m-high panel, excavated from an ancient palace by a young British adventurer in 1845, had been expected to raise about US$11.94 million (NZ$18.26m), the previous highest sum paid for such an artefact. Instead it netted US$27.25 million for the Virginia Theological Seminary near Washington.
Described as the finest treasure of its type to reach the art market in decades, the carving of a god-like ‘‘winged genius’’ from the ruins of the Northwest Palace of Nimrud, in Iraq, was the star attraction at Christie’s antiquities sale on Wednesday night.
Its inclusion in the auction was made in defiance of a demand from the Iraqi government, which had contacted Interpol and Unesco, the United Nations cultural organisation, to try to stop the sale and repatriate the carving.
A spokesman for Iraq’s ministry of culture said that the sale marked a ‘‘continuation of the destruction of Iraq’s cultural heritage’’.
A spokesman for Christie’s told The National newspaper that while it was ‘‘sensitive to claims for restitution’’, the relief had been removed from the Middle East long ago with the explicit permission of the Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Sultanate, which controlled the region at the time.
The carving was one of many commissioned by King Ashurnasirpal II for his palace. A large number were removed by Austen Henry Layard, a Victorian explorer. In 1859 an American missionary bought three relief panels for US$75 each for a professor at the seminary. The sale will fund the preservation of the seminary’s remaining two panels and benefit its scholarship fund. – The Times