Damien Hirst's Diamond Skull: Vanitas for the Art Market

Damien Hirst's 'For the Love of God' (2007) is a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull encrusted with 1,106.18 carats of diamonds, produced with London jewelers Bentley & Skinner at a reported cost of £14 million. The title derives from an exclamation by Hirst's mother. The work was offered for £50 million, then the highest price for a living artist, and sold in 2007 to an investment group including Hirst himself, sparking controversy over transparency. Hirst cites influences from Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon, and Aztec crystal skulls, and the piece engages the vanitas tradition of Dutch and Flemish painting. It has been exhibited at White Cube in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where it directly conversed with Golden Age vanitas painters. The skull embodies Hirst's lifelong obsession with mortality, seen also in his Natural History series and spot paintings, forcing death to compete with desire and wealth.