Tanagra figurine
As Tanagra figurines antique molded terracotta and burnt female figures in a sitting or standing position from 15 to 35 cm height from the Boeotian city of Tanagra are referred to in Central Greece. The Koroplastiken served as grave goods and good luck.
History
Partly terracotta girl figures of this kind ( Koren from Ancient Greek: αἵ κόραι " the girls " ) were already known from excavations at other places, but archaeologically little attention. The interest of archeology and art market was in 1874, and then awakens after a farmer plowing his field discovered a burial of the dead city of Tanagra and a considerable amount of well-preserved terracotta figures were discovered. In the same year a first publication appeared about it. The miniature figures received since its name from its location Tanagra, a small ancient town in the valley landscape of Asopus in Ostböotien (Greece ), now an archaeological site 40 km north-northwest of Athens and 25 km east of Thebes. In the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the figures for the Greeks were very popular and widely spread through export in the Hellenistic culture. It was also due to their popularity further production, as in Alexandria, Taranto and Myrina. The origins of the characters go back to at least the 5th century BC. Indication of this is the Boeotian poetess Korinna, the praises in Boeotian language to the women of Tanagra, her hometown, wrote at this time:
" Ἐπί με Τερψιχόρα [ καλῖ καλὰ Ϝ εροῖ ' ἀισομ [ έναν Ταναγρίδεσσι λε [ υκοπέπλυς · μέγα δ ' ἐμῆς γέγ [ αθε πόλις λιγουροκω [ τί ] λυ [ ς ἐνοπῆς. [ ... ] λόγια δ ' ἐπ πατέρω [ ν κοσμείσασα Ϝ ιδιο [ παρθ [ έ ] νυσι κατά [ ρχομη πο ] λλὰ μὲν Καφ [ ισὸν ἱών - [ ... ] "
"I [ was ] Terpsichore, Beautiful old ways sing - The white-robed women of Tanagra Great joy, the city has At my water clear voice. [ ... ] Say, originally from fathers time, Embellish with my own art I lift now on for the girls. Often I sang the Kephisos Song to song [ ... ] "
Description, meaning and production
The small terracotta figures, almost without exception, is genteel women, which corresponded to the ideal of beauty and fashion of the time. The garments with partly magnificent folds are elegant and often wrapped tightly around the body, the hairstyle is, though sometimes veiled, aristocratic and coiffed consuming. The accessories - for example, precious earrings or compartments, also pointed hats - complete the picture. There were also a few figures of gods among them, such as Aphrodite.
We now know not why just in Tanagra so early in the history of those measured at the local living conditions, atypical figures were made. In the small, more rural place, the inhabitants were certainly dressed and coiffed as the urban ladies Athens or later, Alexandria's much simpler. It would move the reputation of the Boeotians to be and always been a little art -friendly anti- Athenian in a new light.
Since they were originally intended as grave goods especially frühverstorbener women, it is assumed that each figure as an ideal or desired image of a perfect woman - beautiful, wise and gifted in the arts - acted and the dead should also stand in the underworld. The possibility of a votive is contemplated. In the Greek world the goddess Aphrodite was the female beauty ideal, the nine Muses, the educational measures for music, science, rhetoric, sculpture, painting, calligraphy and the rich, aristocratic Athenian Modemaß for the appearance, hairstyle and clothing. Also the living ladies, especially in Athens, were the figures as talismans and good luck charms, which they always had in their vicinity. Loss and destruction were considered bad luck. They were presented with as a child and had it down to the grave as a companion.
The production of the Tanagra figurines happened professional and quasi industrially by the artist ( altgr. κοροπλάστης - dolls former) prefabricated molds of wood, possibly after living models. As with large figures ( the Chinese terracotta army compare ) of the head was made separately and fired placed later on the finished body and bonded with clay. In some cases projecting arms were fired individually by the body. Through a mostly rectangular small back opening escaped the fire gases from the hollow interior of the closed figure, which should prevent the cracking or tearing of the artwork by the hot air expanding. After cooling, the figures were given a white undercoat, which enabled their artful painting after drying. Some characters just had this primer flaking large areas of color result. The pigment colors have survived the ages in many cases and project to the appropriate treatment of the finds in almost its former glory. Some large museums such as the Louvre, the British Museum in London, the Berlin Collection of Classical Antiquities, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg and the Greco-Roman Museum in Alexandria exhibit many of the figures.
Reception
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke put the figures a poetic monument, by extolling the beauty of small terracotta figurines in his 1906 poem written in Paris Tanagra. Is also found in Oscar Wilde's work the term. The main character Mabel Chiltern in An Ideal Husband he likened to a " Tanagra statuette ." In the late work of French artist Jean -Léon Gérôme the " Tanagra " motif appears several times. His life-size Marmorakt Tanagra was one of the sensations at the Paris Salon of 1890 The highly detailed running personification of the ancient city holds on the outstretched left palm a terracotta figure.; next to the pedestal on which it sits, is a reference to the archaeological context, a pickaxe and half protruding from the ground Tanagra statue to see. In the 1890s Gérôme represented in a self-portrait at work on this sculpture, two other pictures show his idea of ancient Tanagra studios in which the characters were given their color painting and continued to be sold over the counter to the customers. Generally speaking, the graceful and lively polychrome antique figures the refined taste in art of the fin de siecle, and the strong Competing demand among museums and private collectors led to the re-creation, but also the production of fakes.