More than simply being a visual delight, The Lawrence Room’s ‘Greek terracotta figurine of woman (Muse?)’ is an enigma, as its identification is far from certain. In fact, the catalogue entry states that the figurine ‘may represent one of the Muses, goddesses of the arts, or a Siren’, showing the inconclusive identity of the bare-breasted woman holding a kithara. In this essay, I will explore and analyse these different suggestions, and subsequently look into the meaning and value of identification itself.
Fig 1. ‘Greek terracotta figurine of woman (Muse?)’ (c. BC 330-200). The Lawrence Room, Girton College. Reproduced by kind permission of the Mistress and Fellows of Girton College. (https://www.lrc.girton.cam.ac.uk/catalogue/lr-767/).
Our Tanagra figurine is very unusual for many reasons. From the more trivial, such as the fact that most Tanagras portray standing, not sitting women, to the more significant: most Tanagras were not erotic figures; instead they represented ‘real’ women who were well dressed, with almost no diaphanous drapery (Bell 1993: 40). Our piece, however, contradicts these patterns, with her right breast clearly visible. This gives our figure a certain eroticism, which may account for the Lawrence Room’s suggestions that the figure is an erotic mythical figure, such as a Siren. This is a credible suggestion to some extent, as Sirens are often depicted with kitharas and bare-breasted (Fig. 2). However, invariably Sirens have feathers, which our figure is distinctly lacking. This casts a significant shadow over her identification as a Siren.
Fig. 2. Detail from Python’s (attr.) vase: ‘Odysseus and the Sirens’ (c. 340 BC). Paestan Red Figure. Antikensammlung Berlin. Via www.theoi.com (https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/antikensammlung/home/).
.jpg)
Despite this, the figure’s bare right breast does still point towards the fact that the female sitter may be an erotic figure. It could therefore be hypothesised that the figure is the goddess of eroticism herself, Aphrodite. This accounts for her partial nudity, and this suggestion also explains her depiction with a kithara: there are other comparable terracotta figurines who are identified as Aphrodite, as in Fig. 3 (see Stefani 2009: 123).
Fig. 3. ‘Aphrodite playing a kithara’ (c. 150 BC). Terracotta. Museum of Pella Via Wikimedia Commons (http://www.pella-museum.gr).
The gallery also suggests that the figurine could represent a Muse. This is entirely plausible given that Muses are commonly portrayed with kitherai. This suggestion is further corroborated by the fact that the figure seems to be in a non-domestic setting: seated on a rock, which could represent Mount Helicon, the residence of the Muses. The fact that Boeotia (where our figurine was found and, apparently, made) is the region in which the famous mountain is situated adds weight to this suggestion, as it provides a reason for a koroplast choosing a Muse for his subject.
Given the collection’s valid suggestion that the figurine represents a Muse, because of the kithara she holds, why not draw together both the eroticism of the figurine (the exposed breast) and the musical element (the kithara) to come up with a new possible identity for the figurine: Sappho? This famous poet was described as the ‘tenth muse’ and was also closely identified with erotic poetry. The re-identification of a muse figure as Sappho is not new: Nagy has argued that the seated ‘muse’ on the Achilles painter’s white-ground lekythos (Fig. 4) is actually Sappho (Nagy 2019). This idea is further supported by the fact that very few of the Tanagra figurines represented deities and divine beings, so a mortal, such as Sappho, would not be out of place.
Fig. 4. The Achilles Painter’s ‘Muses on Helicon’ (c. 445 BC). Lekythos.
Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich Via Egisto Sani on Flickr (https://www.antike-am-koenigsplatz.mwn.de/en/).
A further suggestion springs from this idea. There is in fact another, even more appropriate figure to bring into the light – the prominent female lyric poet, Corinna. The argument for identifying Corinna may even be stronger than that for Sappho. This is because Corinna actually came from Tanagra, and her dates fit with the suggested dates for the figurine. Although some now think that Corinna is to be dated to the Hellenistic period, she is traditionally dated to the fifth century BC. It seems that Corinna enjoyed great popularity with the people of Tanagra: there was a monument to her in the streets of the town and a painting of her in the gymnasium (according to Pausanias), and so it seems plausible that the figure of a Muse/woman with a kithara produced and sold in Tanagra could easily have been identified with the local Corinna. Furthermore, Corinna’s name (‘little korē’) itself points to a link to the Tanagra figures, since korē means not just maiden, but small votive image (Plato, Phaedrus 230b).
We have created a list of possible identifications for the Tanagra figurine. Of course, this is by no means an exhaustive list and we must be aware that imposing fixed meanings and identities onto any object is a dangerous thing (a theme discussed by Goldhill and Osborne 1994: 1-11). In fact, labelling an object can be restrictive: by having the comfort of knowing what an object ‘is’, we cease looking at it in its context, and stop asking ourselves probing, and perhaps more interesting, questions about it, instead limiting ourselves to superficial admiration of the aesthetic qualities of the object.
An individual in any period, depending on their level of education, age or sex, may well ‘identify’ our figurine as any (or none) of the suggestions mentioned above. Aware of the variety of these identifications, we must ask ourselves which we chose to believe. Do we believe the koroplast making it, for example, or the nineteenth-century Athenian art dealer selling it? The truth is that we do not even have the means to discover what these people thought in the first place. And so we must each come to our own, individual conclusion about the identity of the figurine. The object therefore regenerates with every viewer, and so the object has neither a final meaning, nor resting place, be that in a tomb or a museum case.
In order to highlight this point, I will now consider further possible ‘identities’ of the figurine throughout its history. First, we must go back to the Hellenistic period, when our figurine was nothing more than a lump of clay. This is the first ‘identity’ of this object. The figurine gains another identity in the hands of the koroplast, as she now becomes, according to one interpretation, a study in drapery - Bell (1993: 40) calls Tanagra figurines ‘by nature, drapery studies’ - and also a source of income for the maker.
Once purchased, the Tanagra would again take on new meaning, this time in a domestic setting: an adornment for the house (Higgins 1967: il-l). As the figurines were quite cheap objects, in this setting, our figurine might not represent a display of her owner’s wealth, but may instead have been an aesthetically-pleasing decoration (or toy) in the house. After the death of her owner, our figurine again might assume a new, this time funerary, meaning. Although there is still dispute over the role of such figurines in a funerary context, the female playing a kithara is a figure associated with the cult of the dead, and so our figurine, possibly interpreted as Aphrodite by her owner, might accompany him or her into the underworld, promising the continuity of music and pleasure after death (Stefani 2019: 123). Since we don’t know anything about the archaeological context of our figurine we cannot be sure that this particular object did actually assume both of the domestic and funerary identities mentioned above (although first-hand analysis might reveal signs of wear suggesting pre-burial use, for example). It has nevertheless been argued that most Tanagra figures did fulfill both purposes (Higgins 1967: l).
The figurine next embodies new meaning when it is re-discovered by peasants cultivating land in Boeotia in the early 1870s. To these people, the figurine represented a much-needed source of income – the vast numbers of figurines they began to dig up were, to them, a cash crop. We know that our figurine was found through clandestine excavations, as the first official archaeological excavation took place in 1874, a year after ours was sold. Our figurine was then taken to Athens and purchased by the Honorable John Saumarez, who in turn brought it to England. The figurine, now in late-nineteenth century Europe, assumed a new role, to demonstrate her owner’s wealth and education (Saumarez was in fact educated at Eton and Cambridge). This is because Tanagras, having only been discovered a couple of years prior to our figurine’s purchase, had captivated the imagination of Europe’s elite, and had become unbelievably popular and desirable objects. There are several reasons for their popularity, including the fact that the (mostly) female statuettes agree with the Belle Époque’s ideals of feminine beauty and fashion, and the fact that the 1870s was the period where archaeology was gaining newfound attention (notably, Schliemann’s excavation of Troy was taking place at this time). The figures gained so much popular attention that Oscar Wilde even references them in The Picture of Dorian Gray, having the eponymous character liken his lover to ‘the delicate grace of the Tanagra figurine’.
This popularity, unsurprisingly, led to a huge number of forgeries being produced, and consequently, there is even a suggestion that our figurine may be a forgery reconstructed from different parts to make a new whole. However, we should not forget that ‘original’ Tanagras were frequently constructed as composites themselves (Higgins 1967: 101-102).
It is also interesting to note that the colour on our figurine was probably retouched during this period, most likely before it was bought by Saumarez. This shows the obsession at the time with the colouring of the figures, as it was because of the Tanagra figurines that we know that ancient sculpture was, in fact, painted. This gives the Tanagra yet another identity – a piece of archaeological evidence to support a growing theory, controversial at the time, that ancient Greek statues were, originally, painted (Ribeyrol 2018).
Our figurine (original or fake) must then have been gifted, by Saumarez, to his daughter Evelyn, for she gave it, when she was nineteen, to her college, Girton, in 1902. This is yet another change in meaning for the figurine: from the male world of connoisseurship to a new world of female agency and education – the object is given by a female student to a newly-established female college. Having thus entered Girton’s collection in the Lawrence Room, it might be assumed that our figurine would cease to adopt new identities, but I would suggest that, by being chosen as one of the possible subjects for Girton’s Humanities Writing Competition, the Tanagra figurine has once again assumed a new identity: as a source of inspiration for Year 12 students.
We have now established that the figurine has manifold meanings depending on the context in which it is discussed, from this we might say that meaning is inherently unstable and not fixed by the koroplast/maker. This suggests a strong connection with ideas about the interpretation and meaning of literature. Roland Barthes is famous for having announced ‘the death of the Author’ (rejecting the idea of stable meaning), in a similar way this Tanagra with its multiple identifications might make us want to announce the death of the Koroplast.
Polly Shorrock is a Classics undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge. She is interested in the reception of Ancient Greece and Rome, both within these cultures themselves, and in subsequent periods. She is particularly interested in exploring classical influences in film. She is also a keen rower, and can often be found on early mornings freezing to death somewhere along the Cam!
Comentários