Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
2 Cycladic
Torso of a Statuette
Marble of poor quality. The head and legs (at the feet) are broken away. There is no indication of arms. A groove runs between the legs, visible at the back and front.
Flat and violin-shaped, but not a "violin idol" since it has legs and a head, this torso has been termed Early Cycladic. The arms are roughly indicated by a horizontal groove as being held across the front of the body. It appears to be an idol of what is now termed the Spedos varity (Thimme, Getz- presziosi, 1977, pp. 270, 469, nos. 169, 170).
In an age where there are so many spectacular, beautifully polished or patinated forgeries of so-called Cycladic idols, the condition of the statuette and its style, as well as publication by the foremost scholar on the subject, all insure its authenticity (and the genuineness of similar survivors).
In modern museum installations the standard Cycladic statuettes are always shown as standing, but their poses, even when complete from head to toe, suggest they were made to be shown stretched out on a flat surface, as if laid out for a "wake." To be sure, the flutists, the seated harpers, and the paired figures supporting a third smaller image between them are rarer illustarations of standing and seated postures, but the awkward construction of most "idols" is not a sign of primitivism but a product of ritual uses. Since the giant statuettes, almost stuatues, were broken across the bottoms of the neck and the legs at the knees for placing in small, rectangular tombs, the figures were clearly created for some other purpose and afterward interred with the deceased (Vermeule, C., 1971, pp. 37-38, fig. 46; Vermeule, E., 1964, pp. 56-58). They were not gods, goddesses, or votaries, like statues on Cyprus from the early archaic period when Near Eastern influence was at its height onward, since they are not found in shrines. It seems logical, therefore, that they played a part in cermonies of passage to another life and were then laid in tombs as they had been laid out ceremonially above ground.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
