The 600-lot auction of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé this past February at the Grand Palais, in Paris, lived up to its hype as the sale of the century. Staged by Christie’s in partnership with Pierre Bergé & Associés, the three-day, six-session marathon earned €373.9 million ($483.8 million) and set a slew of fine- and decorative-art records (see "Beyond Celebrity").

But the impressive stats don’t tell the whole of this singular art world story. Previously unreported details have emerged about how, at the eleventh hour, the megaconsignment landed at Christie’s despite Sotheby’s having long held the inside track. And observers are still assessing whether some of the record prices might have owed more to the YSL mystique than to the decorative allure of the associated lots. Finally, controversy lingers over a pair of Chinese bronzes whose winner has refused to pay for them.

In the most dramatic sabotage in auction history, Cai Mingchao, an antiques dealer and consultant to the Beijing-based Lost Relics Recovery Program, bid on and won two 18th-century Chinese bronze animal heads for €15.8 million ($20.3 million) each. Days after the sale, Cai held a press conference in the mainland capital to announce that the bid was a protest and a patriotic act; he had no intention of paying for the pieces, which the Chinese government had tried to force Christie’s to pull from the sale, claiming they were looted in the 1860s, along with other objects, from the Emperor Qianlong’s Summer Palace.

Asked about the current status of the rare bronzes and the outstanding bill, Christie’s CEO Edward Dolman states, "We still have not heard anything official from the buyer, and nothing will happen until the buyer tells us definitely what he’s doing." Dolman adds that other interested purchasers "have come forward... but if we can’t negotiate a satisfactory sale, [the pieces will] just end up back in the Pierre Bergé collection."

Communicating through Robin Fournier-Bergmann, of the Fondation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent, in Paris, Bergé has declined comment, citing the situation’s lack of resolution. He did, however, defiantly tell a crowd of journalists assembled for the Grand Palais auction: "I’ll donate the bronzes to China on the condition that the Chinese government respects human rights, gives liberty to Tibet and accepts the coming of the Dalai Lama."

Even with Cai’s $40.6 million subtracted, the auction’s final tally is still the highest ever for a single-owner sale. Landing this record-setting event was a major coup for Christie’s, which was not Bergé’s first choice as venue. There is a history of bad blood between him and François Pinault, the auction house’s owner and the founder and majority shareholder of the luxury-retailer PPR. In 1999, Yves Saint Laurent was acquired by Gucci, a subsidiary of PPR, which then broke a promise made before the deal to Bergé and his personal and professional partner, Saint Laurent, by granting the American designer Tom Ford complete artistic control of the YSL brand. Angered by this betrayal, Bergé created Pierre Bergé & Associés as a competitor to Christie’s Paris in 2002, after failing in a bid to take over the French auction syndicate Hôtel Drouot.

When Bergé decided to go to auction, Sotheby’s was understood to be the favored candidate, having not only expertly exploited the breach with Pinault but also cultivated a special relationship with the consignor. In November 2004 the firm organized a little-noticed but solid sale in New York of property from his collection that earned $1.3 million. The following month, the house realized a record $4.8 million for George de Forest Brush’s The Indian and the Lily, a 19th-century American picture that had hung in Bergé’s New York apartment, in the Pierre Hotel. In addition, Art+Auction has learned, Sotheby’s figured prominently in a multimillion-dollar bridge loan to Bergé (further details of which have not been forthcoming).