Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker sold for €11.6 million. Photo: PATwo early casts from Auguste Rodin’s masterpiece The Gates of Hell have sold for a total of more than €12 million at a New York City auction.
The Thinker sold for €11.6 million, a new record for the figure. Sotheby’s has not said who bought it.
A later cast of the statue was auctioned for just under €9 million in 2010.
The full-scale sculpture was commissioned by publish-ing magnate Ralph Pulitzer in 1906 and made under Rodin’s supervision.
Ugolino and His Children, from 1883, sold for €735,571. The Kiss, from 1909, did not sell.
The pieces were consigned by a private collector.
The Gates, based on Dante’s Inferno, was never fully realised. Philadelphia’s Rodin Museum owns the first bronze cast of The Gates.
The Gates, based on Dante’s Inferno, was never fully realised
A French painting owned by Madonna sold at Sotheby’s for more than €5 million.
Sotheby’s did not say who bought Fernand Leger’s Three Women at the Red Table for €5.4 million. The abstract work had a pre-sale estimate of €3.8-€5.3 million.
Proceeds of the sale will go to the Ray of Light Foundation, which supports girls’ education in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries.
Madonna said she wanted to “trade something valuable for something invaluable” in countries where female education is rare or non-existent. She bought the work at Sotheby’s in 1990 for €2.5 million.
Leger created the work in 1921 as part of a series depicting women with still-life compositions.