Condition: New, Made in Greece.
Material: Pure Bronze
Height: 7,5 cm - 2,95 inches
Width: 9,5 cm - 3,74 inches
Length: 3,3 cm - 1,18 inches
Weight: 465 g
The
ancient Cycladic culture flourished in the islands of the Aegean Sea
from c. 3300 to 1100 BCE. Along with the Minoan civilization and
Mycenaean Greece, the Cycladic people are counted among the three major
Aegean cultures. Cycladic art therefore comprises one of the three main
branches of Aegean art.
Cycladic sculptures
The best-known art of
this period are the marble figures usually called "idols" or
"figurines", though neither name is exactly accurate: the former term
suggests a religious function which is by no means agreed on by experts,
and the latter does not properly apply to the largest figures, which
are nearly life size. These marble figures are seen scattered around the
Aegean, suggesting that these figures were popular amongst the people
of Crete and mainland Greece. Perhaps the most famous of these figures
are musicians: one a harp-player the other a pipe-player. Dating to
approximately 2500 BCE, these musicians are sometimes considered “the
earliest extant musicians from the Aegean.”
Marble harp Player (EC II; Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe)
The
majority of these figures, however, are highly stylized representations
of the female human form, typically having a flat, geometric quality
which gives them a striking resemblance to today's modern art. However,
this may be a modern misconception as there is evidence that the
sculptures were originally brightly painted. A majority of the figurines
are female, depicted nude, and with arms folded across the stomach,
typically with the right arm held below the left. Most writers who have
considered these artifacts from an anthropological or psychological
viewpoint have assumed that they are representative of a Great Goddess
of nature, in a tradition continuous with that of Neolithic female
figures such as the Venus of Willendorf. Although some archeologists
would agree, this interpretation is not generally agreed on by
archeologists, among whom there is no consensus on their significance.
They have been variously interpreted as idols of the gods, images of
death, children's dolls, and other things. One authority feels they were
"more than dolls and probably less than sacrosanct idols."
Suggestions
that these images were idols in the strict sense—cult objects which
were the focus of ritual worship—are unsupported by any archeological
evidence. What the archeological evidence does suggest is that these
images were regularly used in funerary practice: they have all been
found in graves. Yet at least some of them show clear signs of having
been repaired, implying that they were objects valued by the deceased
during life and were not made specifically for burial. Furthermore,
larger figures were sometimes broken up so that only part of them was
buried, a phenomenon for which there is no explanation. The figures
apparently were buried equally with both men and women. Such figures
were not found in every grave. While the sculptures are most frequently
found laid on their backs in graves, larger examples may have been set
up in shrines or dwelling places.
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