A statue of Hitler on his knees by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was auctioned for a record-setting $17.2 million.

The wax sculpture titled Him, called ‘one of the most shocking and disquieting works of art to have emerged in the post-war era’, was expected to make between $10million and $15 million at Christie’s auction house in New York.

Cattelan’s previous record was $7.9 million for a statue of himself peeping through a hole in the floor.

The statue was completed in 2001 and is supposed to disrupt the viewers sense, with the work appearing like a small child from behind, yet with Hitler’s face offering a sinister contrast, as the Independent mentions.

The statue had previously caused controversy when it was installed in a former Warsaw Ghetto, a place where thousands of Jews died under Nazi rule.