French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s newly re-discovered marble masterpiece titled “Andromeda” will be up for sale in Paris in May, auction house, Artcurial, said on this Friday.
The auctioning of the sculpture is of particular importance as it has remained in the hands of the same family for roughly 130 years, according to the director of Artcurial’s impressionist and modern art department, Bruno Jaubert, reports Reuters.
Rodin, renowned the world over for works like his bronze “The Thinker” and “The Kiss” made from marble, gave his sculpture of the mythical woman Andromeda to a friend and client, a Chilean diplomat living in Paris in the late 19th Century.
“The family who received it as a present from Rodin in 1888, from generation to generation, conserved it until 2017,” Jaubert explained, proudly adding that he and a colleague found it earlier this year during an inventory in Spain.
The sculpture is estimated to auction for between 800,000 and 1 million euros ($859,400 to $1.07 million U.S. dollars)and will be on exhibition at the auction house from March 18 to 28, coinciding with the centenary of Rodin’s death in 1917.
