The Famous Venus of Willendorf exhibited at Vienna, Austria. The most famous neolithic piece of art in the world.
The Venus of Willendorf, also known as the Woman of Willendorf, is an 11 cm ( in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between 24,000 and 22,000 BCE. It was discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems.[1] It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The "Venus of Willendorf" is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna.[2] Several similar statuettes and other forms of art have been discovered, and they are collectively referred to as Venus figurines, although they pre-date the mythological figure of Venus by millennia. The Willendorf figure was named following a model already over fifty years old, and shares many characteristics with other figures. The nickname, urging a comparison to the classical image of "Venus," is now controversial. According to Christopher Witcombe, "the ironic identification of these figurines as 'Venus' pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste".[5] Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits.
Size: 2736px × 3648px
Photo credit: © Vidura Luis Barrios / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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