Talking about his collecting taste for an interview in Architectural Digest in 1976, Yves Saint Laurent said 'all these things shimmer across the centuries'. He was walking through his Left Bank apartment, designed by Jean-Michel Frank in the 1920s, surrounded by an eclectic mix of opulent Second Empire decor, Art Deco furniture, seventeenth and eighteenth century Italian bronzes, Thai Buddhas, and works by artists such as Warhol, Leger, Picasso and Modigliani to name but a few. Saint Laurent had met Pierre Bergé in 1958, when not only a fashion empire but a collecting empire had been born. As Bergé said in the introduction to the Yves Saint Laurent sale held at Christie’s in 2009, 'The collection being auctioned…was assembled over the last fifty years by two men with a passion for art and culture, determined to bring together the finest paintings, objects, and furniture without bias or prejudice whilst remaining true to their tastes and, above all, their ideal'. On the decision to sell after Saint Laurent’s death in 2008 he explains 'And so goes the life of works of art: they pass from hand to hand, from house to house, from one continent to another. That is their destiny. Their only purpose is to be admired and loved'.

Mahes, literally 'savage lion,' was the son of Bastet or sometimes of Sekhmet and was called Miysis by the Greeks as well as Mios or Mihos. Appropriate to his name, he was said to aid the sun god in the fight against the evil giant serpent Aphoris and was also viewed as a war god and a guardian of sacred places. He is mostly depicted in small faience amulets, cf. C. Andrews, Amulets of Ancient Egypt, 1994, pl. 23b, and less frequently in bronze. In this example, the god is shown striding forward with his left leg advanced, left arm lowered, the right arm bent at the elbow and the hands fisted, perhaps once holding attributes. Traces of gilt armbands and bracelets are preserved and he wears a pleated kilt with a tripartite headcloth with copper inlaid striations. The eyes were once inlaid (one partially preserved) and the head is surmounted by a tenon for attachment of additional attributes.