THE latest work by Damien Hirst, a human skull studded with diamonds, is to be put on sale for £50m, making it the most expensive item to be created by a living artist.

The price dwarfs the £7m Hirst received for his shark in a tank, which was sold to Steve Cohen, an American financier, two years ago - and far exceeds the £4m which Lucian Freud, the American Jeff Koons and the German Gerhard Richter can command for a single work of art.

But while the price of the other artists’ work depends on their own talents, the value of Hirst’s creation relies heavily on the value of its raw materials.

It will make use of 8,500 jewels, including £10m-worth of diamonds. One of them alone, weighing 55 carats, is valued at about £4m.

The Bond Street jewellers Bentley & Skinner have worked with Hirst on assembling the piece, which is called For the Love of God. It goes on show in early June at White Cube’s new gallery in London’s West End as part of a new exhibition of work by the former enfant terrible of the Young British Artist movement.

The design of the skull is similar to ancient Mexican jewelled skulls from the Mayan civilisation. Hirst has a house in Mexico.

White Cube, which is run by Jay Jopling, husband of the artist Sam Taylor-Wood, has arranged tight security arrangements. Eighteen months ago the police thwarted a plot to steal the £200m Millennium Star gem from an exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. In 2000, police foiled a raid on the same De Beers jewel when it was on show at the Millennium Dome.

Until now, only dead artists have broken through the £50m barrier. The record came last autumn with the £70m achieved for Jackson Pollock’s No 5, 1948.

Feelers have already been put out to see who might buy Hirst’s skull. The purchaser will most probably be from America, Russia or the Middle East. Cohen is one possible buyer, even though the shark in formaldehyde that he bought is now so decayed that another had to be made to replace it.

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