ATTRIBUTED TO THE NAXOS MUSEUM SCULPTOR, LATE SPEDOS VARIETY, CIRCA 2500-2400 B.C.

The present figure can be attributed to the Naxos Museum Sculptor, an artist who takes his name from an excavated example now in the local museum. Getz-Gentle considers him one of the most independent-minded and prolific sculptors of the Late Spedos variety and lists more than twenty sculptures attributed to his hand, to which the present figure can be added (see pp. 81, 161 and pls. 69-70 in Personal Styles in Early Cycladic Art). As Getz-Gentle observes (op. cit., p. 82), “the most strikingly unusual aspect of the sculptor’s style, not seen again until the Chalandriani variety, is the absence or near-absence of a visible mid-section”. The sculptor either uses the right forearm to construct the top of the pubic triangle, as here, or places the abdominal line directly beneath the right arm.