The French
sculptor's Eternal Springtime was created from a single block of marble around
1901, according to art experts.
The
sculpture's buyer has not been disclosed by Sotheby's New York.
The
previous highest price paid for a Rodin was $16.6m (£11.5m) in February and
that work was in bronze.
The
bronze, called Iris, Messenger of the God, is considered Rodin's most audacious
and sexually explicit work.
Several
versions were cast and one of the others was once owned by the late British
artist Lucian Freud. Stallone's was particularly prized as it was cast in
Rodin's lifetime.
Eternal
Springtime features a floral motif base of two lovers in a passionate embrace.
It
was modelled during Rodin's most active period and was intended as part of
Rodin's most famous collection of sculptures, The Gates of Hell. In the end, it
was not included - in the same way that Rodin's most famous individual work The
Kiss was not.
It
is thought that Eternal Springtime's subject - the happiness of two young
lovers - was ultimately assessed as being too jovial for the tragedy played out
in The Gates of Hell.
Eternal
Springtime was very successful and was translated several times into bronze and
marble.
Other
highlights of the Sotheby's sale included an important pointillist painting by
Paul Signac.
The
Port Houses, Saint-Trope sold for $10.7m (£7m). The painting depicts the French
Riviera town of Saint-Tropez in 1882.
The
painting had been in the same family for nearly 60 years.
The
auction record for a Signac work is $14m, paid in 2007.
An
early portrait of Claude Monet's wife Camille was also in Monday's auction and
sold for $49.4m (£34m).
The
most paid to date for a work by the French impressionist is $80.4m (£56m), set
in June 2008 at Christie's in London for Le Bassin aux Nympheas,
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