105
104
9
Seated feMale figure
WitH croSSed legS
Cyclades, said to be from Amorgos
Late Neolithic period
(V–IV millennia BC)
Marble, H. 18.5 cm, W. 13.3 cm
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
Brussels, inv. A.3029
The Neolithic period saw the earliest
traces of sculpture in the Greek world.
Many materials were used, including
terracotta, bone, shell and stone.
1
Representations vary from extremely
abstract (“pebbles”) to much more
realistic.
2
This well preserved marble
sculptur
e is one of the finest examples
of a very rare class and its simple lines
and clear geometric shapes found
surprising echoes in twentieth-century
art. It represents a seated female
figure with her legs crossed in front
of her, one above the other, rather
than actually crossing. The head and
neck form a single column, separated
from the body only by a groove,
and with a protruding nose and an
engraved line for the mouth or chin.
The upper body is a broad, flat and
rectangular shape, leaning backwards
from the lower body. The shoulder
line is very long, the rounded forms
of the upper arms visible at front
and back. The arms are bent at right
angles, while the fingers, separated by
grooves, seem to touch at waist level.
The breasts are clearly modelled,
as if hanging from either side of the
neck. The lower body is a heavily
rounded mass with strongly protruding
buttocks, separated by a groove.
A horizontal bulge below the waist
marks the lower part of the stomach.
The lower legs are very prominent,
knees and toes marked with knobs.
The left foot of the figure is clearly
visible. The underside of the figure is
flat and slightly curved. History: The
sculpture was bought from Manolis
Segredakis (1891–1948) a well-known
Cretan art dealer, based in Paris, in
1929.
3
It had been published two years
earlier by D.G. Hogarth in a volume of
essays in honour of Sir Arthur Evans as
“in private possession”.
4
The statue
then appeared with a large photo in
a 1919 article by Étienne Michon in
Cahiers d’Art
,
5
a journal published by
Christian Zervos and devoted mainly
to contemporary art. Zervos himself
was very interested in Cycladic art
and acquired some pieces from,
amongst others, Segredakis who was
a friend.
6
Zervos published several
important books on early Greek art
and this statue is referred to in his
L’Art des Cyclades des débuts à la fin
de l’Âge du Bronze
(1957). Pat Getz-
Gentle considers that the publication
in
Cahiers d’Art
was a favour to
Segredakis, giving free publicity to his
ownership of the piece.
7
At any rate,
the piece was sold that same year to
the Brussels museum. A letter dated
13 April 1929, from Segredakis to
Fernand Mayence, then Senior Keeper
of the Antiquities collection, explained
that he was sending the piece to him
so he could decide if he wanted to buy
it. In a further letter dated 14 July, he
expressed his hopes that the Brussels
museum would acquire the piece and
said that others were also interested
in it, including the Museum at The
Hague, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, and the modern sculptor
Lipschitz. The acquisition of the piece
was accepted a few days later. The
Royal Museums of Art and History
had already bought some pieces from
Segredakis in 1914, but nothing since
then. From 1929 until his death in
1948, however, the museum regularly
acquired objects from him, including
several Mycenaean items.
Provenance
: In a letter dated 6 July
1929, Segredakis referred to the
statue as: “la statuette pré-hellénique
en marbre des îles grecques”. In
her publication of the piece the
following year, Violette Verhoogen,
the curator for Greek antiquities in
Brussels, described it as Cycladic or
from the islands.
8
It was apparently
Saul Weinberg, in 1951, who for the
first time referred to it as “found
long ago, apparently on Amorgos”
(p. 123). Since then, this has become
its alleged provenance. If the author
had a well-founded reason for giving
Amorgos as its find place, he did not
put it in writing.
When this figure was first published,
in 1927, it could be compared to
only one other, in the Ashmolean
museum in Oxford.
9
Since then,
several seated female stone figures
have come to light. Most notable
is the “Fat Lady” of Saliagos, the
only one of these sculptures found
in some sort of context. She was
discovered during excavations on
Saliagos, an islet formerly connected
to the nearby island of Antiparos, in
the Cyclades.
10
She is quite similar
in general appearance, with a heavy
rounded lower body and a thinner,
upright upper body, possibly originally
also close to rectangular in shape
although the shoulder line appears
more curved. Her legs are actually
crossed and her buttocks more
rounded. The underside presents
two grooves, one a continuation of
the line separating the buttocks, the
other crossing it at right angles. This
figure has lost its head and right arm
and is heavily weathered, considerably
altering its appearance. Where the
Saliagos statue markedly differs from
the Brussels one is in size since it
measures only 6.7 cm (without the
head). Recent excavations in Greece
have brought more Neolithic figurines
to light, mainly terracotta ones. They
show that human representations, in
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