For the Love of God: Damien Hirst’s skull sells for £50m

...Not his actual skull, that is; his skull-based work, adorned with almost 9,000 diamonds, entitled For the Love of God.

Never one to shy away from publicity, Damien Hirst's skull-based project entitled For the Love of God (reputedly named after his mother's comment when he told her about the work) that caused a stir when it was unveiled earlier this year, has been sold for the full asking price of £50 million to an anonymous group of investors.

The work - a platinum cast of the skull of a Georgian man, completely covered by 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than £4 million in the centre of its forehead - was first shown in Hirst's Beyond Belief exhibition at the White Cube Gallery in June this year, and has since been looking for a buyer.

Of the £50 million paid for the work, the most ever paid for a work by a living artist, it is thought that Hirst himself could get up to 75%, with most of the remainder going to the gallery. The sale brought the value of the works from the exhibition sold to around £174.4 million.

But while Hirst is no stranger to controversy, some of the latest comment around the work has conjured up the spectre of plagiarism once again, a claim he has previously refuted. Jewellers Butler & Wilson were the first to point out the similarity between his work and their own brooches and earrings which feature a skull motif, and more recently, artist John LeKey has gone on record to accuse Hirst of stealing his ideas.

LeKay, a London-born artist working in New York, told The Times recently that he had been producing similar works since the early 1990s. Inspired by Mayan skulls, his works are adorned with crystals to make them glisten and sell for the more modest price of around £1,200. He told The Times: When I heard he was doing it, I felt like I was being punched in the gut. When I saw the image online, I felt that a part of me was in the piece. I was a bit shocked. The outcome remains to be seen, but Hirst, already a multi-millionaire before the skulls sale, will surely want to respond to the allegation