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Here's one way to get a head.
Sotheby's auction house has helped reunite the decapitated noggin of an ancient sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite with the rest of its marble body.
On Tuesday, the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Atlanta's Emory University placed the high bid of $968,000 for the headless figure during a Sotheby's auction. The auction house then put the museum in touch with a Houston collector who sold curators the statue's head for $55,000.
Now, for the first time in more than 50 years, the $1 million Aphrodite will get her head put back on her white marble shoulders - although it will take months to complete the cleaning and re-attachment, said Jasper Gaunt, the museum's curator of Greek and Roman art.
The statue "is one of the great iconic images of Western art and it's one of the finest and most complete known in the world," Gaunt said. The sculpture dates back to the late 1st century and early 2nd century A.D., when the nearly 4-foot-tall creation probably stood in a "wealthy Roman country villa," Gaunt said.
Over time, the representation of the goddess of love and fertility was buried or lost - and then found again some time between the Renaissance and 18th century, he said.
Between 1836 and 1950, Aphrodite somehow lost her head - and the two pieces later fell into the hands of different Park Avenue collectors. About three months ago, when New Yorker Lee Thaw consigned Aphrodite's body to Sotheby's, an antiquities expert came across an old engraving of the whole figure and thought he recognized the head as one that was auctioned by Sotheby's in 2002, a Sotheby's spokesman said.
The owner of Aphrodite's head brought it to New York for analysis - and then agreed to sell it, the spokesman added.
"Because of my colleague Florent Heintz's research skills, Aphrodite has regained not only her head, but also her history," said Richard Keresey, director of Sotheby's antiquities department.
dan.kadison@nypost.com
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