Long lost lions from French king Charles V’s tomb to be auctioned

A sculpture of two lions carved for the tomb of French king Charles V that was thought lost in the French Revolution will soon go under the hammer in London, auction house Christie’s said Tuesday.

The 14th-century marble work by French artist Andre Beauneveu, which had been held in a private British collection for more than two centuries, will be sold on July 6.

The lions were carved as near mirror images of each another, with strikingly detailed manes and one baring its teeth.

Beauneveu was commissioned by the king shortly after he came to the throne, and was tasked with constructing four family tombs.

The lions were sculpted over two years from 1364 to 1366, according to Christie’s, and placed at the foot of Charles’s tomb in what was then the Abbey of Saint Denis in Paris.

But the family tombs were dismantled in 1793 by France’s revolutionary government, and the lions were purchased in 1802 by Thomas Neave, a British aristocrat.