EARLY SPEDOS VARIETY, CIRCA 2600-2500 B.C.

This impressive Cycladic marble female figure exemplifies the best of the Spedos style, exhibiting the balance and elegance of the form. Her lyre-shaped head is slightly tilted back, projecting her slender well-centered nose upward, and is atop an elongated neck that is slightly concave along its length. Her shoulders are rounded, gently sloping to her curving arms that cross her torso, folded right over left, with her fingers delineated. Her female anatomy is indicated with rounded breasts and incised pubic triangle, with her curving upper legs below. Also noteworthy is the extensive surviving red pigment on the front of the body, as well as ghosts along the upper portion of the head that were probably once painted blue.

P. Getz-Gentle, the leading scholar of Cycladic art, considered this “a large, robust, and carefully carved work combining round modelling with precise incision work” (see p. 30 in Getz-Gentle, 2006, op. cit.). Although she only published this figure towards the end of her academic career in the 2006 Katonah exhibition, Getz-Gentle informed that it was previously in a French private collection since at least the 1960s. The figure presented here has much in common with a complete figure now in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, no. 158 in J. Thimme, Art and Culture of the Cyclades, and both figures may be the work of the same individual. For another figure with a similar treatment to the upper torso and arms, now in the British Museum, see pp. 56-57 in J. L. Fitton, Cycladic Art.