She has graced the covers of glossy magazines and has been the subject of Banksy’s pop-art, but now Kate Moss has been immortalised in 18-carat gold.

A 50kg gold statue of the supermodel, worth £1.5 million, was unveiled this morning in the British Museum as part of the Statuephilia exhibition.

The work, entitled Siren, was created by sculptor Marc Quinn, best known for his sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant, which stood on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.

The statue of Moss, described as an “Aphrodite of our times”, now stands in the British Museum’s Nereid Gallery alongside legendary Greek heroines such as the Crouching Venus, a statue of Venus caught bathing.

The sculpture, which is hollow, weighs about as much as the supermodel herself according to the artist, and is believed to be the largest gold statue made in the world since Ancient Egyptian times.

Quinn said of his choice of Moss as a subject: “I thought the next thing to do would be to make a sculpture of the person who’s the ideal beauty of the moment.

“But even Kate Moss doesn’t live up to that.”

This is not the first time Quinn has used the iconic figure of Kate Moss in his work, after he made Sphinx, a whitewashed bronze sculpture of the supermodel.

The golden Kate, who stands in a yoga position, is not alone in the exhibition in the British Museum. She has 200 Damien Hirst skulls for company, which commandeer the historic wall cases of the Enlightenment Gallery.

She is also accompanied by a Noble and Webster work, sculpted entirely from mummified animal parts.

And Anthony Gormley, creator of the iconic Angel of the North, fills the front hall with his Case for an Angel I, the precusor to his celebrated winged sculpture.

The Statuephilia exhibition of contemporary sculptures will run at the British Museum from October 4 to January 25.

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