A marble sculpture fragment depicting the cuirass-clad torso of a Roman emperor hammered for $34.3 million at Sotheby’s on October 21, nearly three times its $12 million estimate and the highest amount ever fetched by a Roman antiquity at auction. Artnet News reports that the hammer price topped the $28.6 million commanded by a bronze sculpture of Artemis accompanied by a stag in 2007, as well as the $24.5 million brought in by a marble nude of Aphrodite in 2021, both at Sotheby’s.
“The result speaks to the extraordinary rarity of the work,” Margaret Schwartz, global head of European and ancient sculpture at Sotheby’s, told the platform. “Opportunities to acquire a Roman Imperial marble of this quality are exceptionally rare, and bidders recognized that this was a museum-caliber sculpture with outstanding provenance, remarkable preservation, and profound historical importance.”
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Believed to have come from Salona, in ancient Rome (today Croatia), the larger-than-life-size sculpture possibly stood in a temple in the city’s civic forum. The marble of which it’s made has been traced to the Aegean island of Paros, and it’s thought to have been carved in Rome by Greek sculptors. The armor depicted connects the torso to Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire.
The New York Times reports that prior to World War II, the work was the property of the heirs of nineteenth-century Graz, Austria–based collector Wilhelm Aloys Maximilian Neumann. As the war ground to a close and Soviet forces advanced on Austria, the family hid the sculpture in their home; it was rediscovered years later, when the house was being renovated. The work was acquired for $7.4 million through a 2010 Sotheby’s auction by the same mystery buyer who sold it Wednesday night as part of a large collection being peddled under the title “Magnum Opus.”