Cycladic Female Figurine Analysis

The Cycladic Female Figurine, located at the Walter’s Museum of Art in Baltimore, is a small sculpture originating from the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea sometime between 2500 - 2400 B.C. The sculpture depicts the nude female figure covering her stomach with her arms, with little to no facial features. The nose and breasts are protruding out of the figure while the rest of the figure remains flat. The neck of the figure is long and slender, which connects to a half circle with a nose that extends beyond the flat surface. The color of the piece is a greenish brown, and the material of the sculpture is made of marble with a very smooth surface. While the figure itself is mostly bare, the harsh and continuous lines carved out in parts of the marble indicate that it was important to portray her

The lines carved into the figure and the body parts that extend beyond the sculpture are significant to capturing the detail and importance in the figurine, but it is in the scale and composition that we start to decipher the purpose in the figurine. This Cycladic figurine is relatively small, at around sixteen inches tall, four inches wides, and one and a half inches in depth. It is displayed in such a way that the figure appears to be hovering over the pedestal when it is actually positioned upright in a vertical position, held in place by a pole. This implies that the original figurine was meant to lay on it’s back horizontally, and not vertically. Position on the pedestal is one suggestion that the figure it only upright so the viewer can see the piece, but the way in which the arms are folded as well, as if signifying burial after death. The Cycladic figurine lacks dimension; it is highly stylized and contains little to no detail that could be found in other ancient Greek art, which suggests that this figurine is commonplace and not one of a