[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-14-at-11.08.26-AM.png?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tA Constantin Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i sculpture formerly owned by S. I. Newhouse, a media magnate who was at one time among the world\u2019s top art collectors, sold at Christie\u2019s on Monday night for a hammer price of $93 million, breaking the modernist sculptor\u2019s auction record. With fees, the total came to $107.6 million<\/p>\n
\n\tThe work started with a $82 million bid and recieved half a dozen bids before selling to a buyer represented by Maria Los, deputy chairman, head of client advisory Americas. It recieved a gentle round of applause after it sold.<\/p>\n
Dana\u00efde,<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>a bronze head dating to 1913, carried a $100 million estimate upon request going into the sale, placing it well above the artist\u2019s current auction record. In 2021, the polished bronze and marble sculpture La jeune fille sophistiqu\u00e9e<\/em>(Portrait de Nancy Cunard)<\/em>, dating to 1928\/32, sold for $71.2 million at Christie\u2019s New York in 2018. The next three results for Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i are $57.3 million for La muse endormie<\/em>, a patinated bronze with gold leaf sculpture that sold in 2017 at Christie\u2019s New York; $29.2 million for the oak sculpture Madame L.R. (Portrait de Mme L.R.)<\/em> at Christie\u2019s Paris in 2009; and $27.5 million for the marble and stone sculpture Oiseau dans l\u2019espace<\/em> at Christie\u2019s New York in 2005.<\/p>\n Dana\u00efde<\/em><\/em> is titled after the subject of a Greek myth, in which, per Christie\u2019s, the brother of King Danaos demanded the King\u2019s 50 daughters as wives for his sons. \u201cBy order of the king, the Dana\u00efdes\u2014with the exception of one\u2014kill their husbands on their wedding night. As punishment, they are banished to Hades and condemned to filling jars from which the water quickly leaks out.\u201d That myth was also taken up by Auguste Rodin, as well as other artists, around the same period as Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i. <\/p>\n \n\tThe just-sold Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i sculpture references Egyptian sculpture and East Asian statues, with a gold leaf and black patina. There were six bronze casts made of the work, with four in institutional collections: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Tate in London, and the Kunst Museum Winterthur in Switzerland. Per Christie\u2019s, it is the only gilded example still in private hands.<\/p>\n \n\tAside from the gilding, the sculpture was highly desired for its provenance. Prior to Newhouse, it was originally bought by Eugene and Agnes Meyer in 1914 at Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i\u2019s first solo exhibition at Alfred Stieglitz\u2019s 291 Gallery in New York. It passed to his daughter who sold it to Newhouse in 2002 for $18.2 million, which set a record for the sale of a sculpture at the time.<\/p>\n \n\tChristie\u2019s was clearly banking a lot on the sale, having enlisted actress Nicole Kidman for a two-minute ad produced by Studio 11F in which she walks into Christie\u2019s New York headquarters to take a private view of the work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/s-i-newhouse-constantin-brancusi-sells-christies-breaks-record-1234785976\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Screenshot-2026-05-14-at-11.08.26-AM.png?w=1024″] A Constantin Br\u00e2ncu\u0219i sculpture formerly owned by S. I. Newhouse, a media magnate who was at one time among the world\u2019s top art collectors, sold at Christie\u2019s on Monday night for a hammer price of $93 million, breaking the modernist sculptor\u2019s auction record. With fees, the total came to $107.6 million The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1942349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1942349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942349\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1942349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1942349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1942349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}