An ex-hooker who paid a hitman to kill his wealthy Manhattan art-dealer husband in what a judge dubbed a deadly twist on a “tale as old as time” was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday.

“This was not a close case,” Judge Ramos said Wednesday as Sikkema sat at the defense table in Manhattan federal court in a tan jail jumpsuit. “He made it happen.”

The judge also noted that he did not “doubt that there was a time where there was true love” in the pair’s marriage, and that the ugly divorce fight was “a tale as old as time.”

“The crime that he committed is enough to require the most serious sentence,” added the jurist.

Jurors saw evidence that Sikkema funneled Alejandro Triana Prevez — the couple’s former security guard — about $9,000 before and after Prevez snuck into his estranged husband’s Rio de Janeiro bedroom and stabbed him 18 times in the face, chest and throat, killing him.

“Today’s life sentence holds Daniel Sikkema accountable for a cold, calculated murder-for-hire plot,” Manhattan US Attorney Jamie McDonald said in a statement Wednesday.

“For months, the defendant manipulated friends, family, and employees to execute a killing driven by greed,” McDonald added. “His actions demonstrated a profound disregard for human life and the rule of law.”

Before his death, Brent Sikkema had worked with contemporary artists such as Kara Walker and Brazil’s Vik Muniz from his prominent Chelsea gallery, Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Daniel Sikkema maintains his innocence and plans to appeal his conviction on murder-for-hire and conspiracy charges, his lawyer Richard Levitt said in court Wednesday.

Levitt didn’t dispute at trial that Prevez killed the victim, but argued in vain that the killing was part of a deadly robbery instead of a murder-for-hire scheme.

Triana Prevez is still separately awaiting trial in the art dealer’s death after being arrested in Rio.