Figurine of Woman in white dress sitting on rock
- Title:
- Figurine of Woman in white dress sitting on rock
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown (reproduction)
Unknown (original)
- Photographer:
- Mericle, Danielle
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
Late 4th to early 3rd c. BCE
- Site:
- Tanagra, Boeotia, Greece (original)
- Location:
- Goldwin Smith Hall, former Temple of Zeus space, Cornell University
previously, 726 University Avenue
Tanagra, Boeotia, Greece (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0589
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 465
465 (sticker underneath pedestal)
600 - File Name:
- CCC_0589.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 21.5 (H) cm
- Culture:
- Greek
- Style/Period:
- Hellenistic Greek
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
terracotta sculpture in the round, mold-made (original) - Subject:
- Tanagra figurines
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 25 (with pedestal) x 23 (without pedestal) (centimeters, height x height)
pedestal: 14.2 x 12 (centimeters, width x diameter) - Description:
- This is a plaster cast of a terracotta figurine of a seated woman housed in Berlin. The figure sits upright on a high rock with her right leg crossed in front of her left. She is wrapped fully in a himation with the hem of her chiton visible beneath. Under the garment she holds her right hand up to her chest. In her lowered left hand she holds an object in the form a ball inside of a cone, identified as a flower. She turns her head slightly to her left and looks calmly ahead. Her curly hair is parted in the middle and tied in a bun in the back and she wears a thick fabric headband fastened at the front with a small, circular knot or brooch. In the original, a dove with outstretched wings rests on the woman's left shoulder. The bird was included in this cast but is now missing from it, as an attachment hole on the shoulder indicates. The skin is white, the garment is stippled beige, and the hair is a pale reddish brown. The cast is in relatively good condition, although the head has been broken away and glued in place. The burial sites in and around the Boeotian town of Tanagra underwent large-scale looting in the 1870s in pursuit of Hellenistic terracotta figurines known then, as now, as Tanagra figurines, or simply as Tanagras. The Hellenistic figurines discovered in the graves there--most commonly depicting women and girls in acts of leisure or daily life, and also depicting Aphrodite, Eros, young men and boys, and grotesque figures--appealed greatly to the sensibilities of the time and quickly became popular among collectors and the general public. By 1873, the Greek government made attempts to control the looting and established official excavations around the area. Smaller-scale grave-robbing continued alongside these less-than-thoroughly documented excavations. In addition to looting, forgery and extensive restoration of these mold-made objects became lucrative practice when demand for the objects was at its highest. Many major museums acquired such fakes, and, with the use of thermoluminescence dating, some 20% of the collection of Tanagra figurines in the Berlin Antikensammlung have been shown to be modern creations (Goedicke in Kriseleit and Zimmer, 80). The original of this object is genuine and is said to have come from Tanagra.
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
TC 6689 - Bibliography:
- Reynold Higgins, Tanagra and the Figurines (London: Trefoil Books, 1986)
I. Kriseleit and G. Zimmer (eds.), Bürgerwelten (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1994), no. 6
Illustrated catalogue of the series of Fritz Gurlitt's Tanagra figures (London: Obach and Co., 1885), no. 2
Violaine Jeammet, ed., Tanagras. Figurines for Life and Eternity. The Musée du Louvre's Collection of Greek Figurines (Valencia: Fundación Bancaja, 2010)
Griechische Terracotten aus Tanagra und Ephesos im Berliner Museum (Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1878), no. 5 - Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Berlin, Antikensammlung (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.