Bids for Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose (Cuckoos on a blue and pink carpet) smashed the pre-sale estimate by Christie's of 18 million euros.

The price was slightly larger than the $33 million paid for Matisse's L'Odalisque, harmonie bleue, in 2007.

Bids for the collection hit 206 million euros (£180 million) on Monday, making it the most expensive private art collection ever auctioned, with two days still left to run.

Six world record bids for works by major modern artists, and dozens of lesser sales, confirmed the global reputation of the collection amassed over half a century by Saint Laurent and his lifelong companion, Pierre Bergé.

Works by artists including Piet Mondrian, the Dutch abstract painter, Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor, and Marcel Duchamp, the French innovator, earned record sums, well above earlier estimates.

By contrast, the much-anticipated Pablo Picasso work "Musical Instruments on a Table" flopped. Bidding fell short of the 25 million euro guide price, the biggest in the collection, and the piece was withdrawn unsold.

Bianca Jagger and Viscount Linley, the chairman of Christie's, were among the famous faces present at a sale that experts hope will give the depressed art market a much-needed boost.

The sale came after the auction house sidestepped a legal controversy earlier on Monday, when a Paris court rejected China's bid to stop the sale of two 18th-century bronze fountain heads.

The bronze heads of a rabbit and a rat - which were part of a celebrated water fountain at the imperial Summer Palace outside Beijing - disappeared from the imperial compound at the close of the second Opium War in 1860.

They were looted along with the ten other heads, each representing an animal of the Chinese zodiac, after the palace was burned down by French and British forces, and China has said they belong in a museum.

However, Mr Berge has steadfastly refused to return the two heads to China, saying he acquired them legally.

At the weekend he added salt into the wound by saying he would agree to give them back - if Beijing gave Tibet its freedom and improved its record on human rights.

The proceeds from the sale will be used to create a new foundation for Aids research and to fund the Bergé/Saint Laurent Foundation, which honours the late designer's work.