Anon. Artemis and the Stag (1st century BC – 1st century AD)
The 91.4-centimeter-tall statue of the goddess is a work from the early Roman Empire depicting Artemis, the goddess of hunting and wilderness creatures in ancient Greece.
The sculpture itself is almost well preserved and is a very rare masterpiece in the classical era. The sculpture was supposed to have a bow in the goddess's right hand, but unfortunately it no longer exists.
According to the earliest documented owner, Hugo Jandolo, the work was unearthed in the 1930s during the renovation of the Church of Saint-Lateran in Rome.
After research by modern archaeologists, the sculpture was originally supposed to be a gift from Emperor Nero to the aristocratic Pisoni and Lateran families in the 1st century AD.
The sculpture was exhibited at the Albright Knox Museum of Art in Buffalo, N.Y., for more than fifty years in the 20th century, but the museum decided to sell it because it couldn't make ends meet. Finally, on June 7, 2007, Sotheby's in New York sold it for $28.6 million, making it the most expensive sculpture ever made. The work was purchased by an anonymous private buyer and lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for display to this day.