Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted cast of a human skull has been bought by a group of anonymous investors for its asking price of £50 million, the artist’s representatives claimed yesterday.

It is, by a huge margin, the most paid for a work by a living artist.

Entitled For the Love of God, the skull was first displayed at the White Cube Gallery in Mayfair, Central London, in June where thousands queued for a two-minute viewing in a high-security darkened chamber.

Studded with more than 8,500 ethically sourced diamonds, it has been variously described as “an anthropomorphised disco ball”, “the first 21st-century work of art”, “a cosmic wonder”, “the vulgar embodiment of modern materialism” and, by Hirst himself, as “quite bling”.

His aim, he said at the unveiling, was to come up with “the maximum celebration you could make against death”.

Typically, Hirst’s own role in the creation of the object was conceptual rather than hands-on. It was also financial — he funded most of the £15 million project out of his personal fortune, estimated at £130 million. He could receive 75 per cent of the proceeds of the sale.

Frank Dunphy, Hirst’s business manager, said that the full $100 million (£50 million) price of the artwork would be paid in cash. He denied reports in The Art Newspaper that the price had been discounted to £38 million. As part of the deal, the buyers will be required to show the skull for two or three years in museums around the world, he added.

Laurence Graff, the London jeweller and art collector, said that the buyers were probably not “diamond people”, because the skull’s price was so much higher than the value of the diamond content. Graff looked at the skull when it was on show but decided not to buy it. “I’m in the diamond business and I would only be interested in diamonds at diamond prices,” he said.

The deal sets the seal on an extraordinary summer for Hirst, 42, that has established him as a cash-generator without parallel in the contemporary-art market.

It began in June when his Lullaby Spring, a medical cabinet with pills mounted on razor blades, sold at Sotheby’s for £9.6 million, a record for a living artist’s work at auction.

Then a pair of exhibitions of his work at the White Cube galleries in Mayfair and Hoxton, East London, raised £130 million for Hirst and Jay Jopling, his London dealer.

Nothing, however, has matched the impact and range of responses generated by For the Love of God.

Hirst bought the “perfectly shaped” skull from an Islington taxidermy shop two years ago. Radiocarbon analysis suggested that it had probably belonged to a European man who died in his mid-thirties in the 18th or early 19th century.

Bentley & Skinner, the Hatton Garden jewellers, built a life-size cast of the skull from 32 platinum plates and combed the world market for the 8,601 diamonds required to cover it. They found it difficult to source so many precious stones without inflating the price of diamonds on the open market.

The platinum plates were hand-lasered with thousands of holes and the diamonds, which have a total weight of 1,106.18 carats, were individually set. They include a 52.4 carat “internally flawless, light, fancy pink, brilliant-cut diamond” which is mounted in the middle of the forehead.

A spokeswoman for White Cube said that Hirst had “retained a participation in the work, which means that he can ensure that it is made available to a broader audience and displayed internationally”.

Hirst, who has a home in Mexico, said that he had been inspired by Aztec skulls covered with turquoises. But John LeKay, a London artist based in New York, told The Times in June that he had been covering soap and wax skulls with crystals since 1993 and that Hirst had stolen his idea.

Hirst, who was raised in Leeds and educated at Goldsmiths College, London, has polarised opinion on his march to the top of the art world. Several other artists besides LeKay have claimed that Hirst has copied their ideas. He responds that artists have always borrowed from each other. His detractors belittle his level of input into the works made in his name, citing his staff of more than 100 working in factories in London and Gloucestershire. His supporters point out that many great artists, from Rubens to Andy Warhol, operated a similar system.

Most of all, there is disagreement over whether Hirst’s work justifies the prices it commands. He says: “An artwork is only worth what the next guy is going to pay for it.”

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