Tanagra Figurine – Classics 237

Nota Bene: The following narrative, while based on facts about similar artifacts, is conjecture. Since precise information on the provenance of this object is lacking, I have made informed approximations of its life up until the present day.

Manufacture

In the Boeotian town of Tanagra in the early 4th century BCE, a certain terracotta workshop was overwhelmed with demand for the latest craze: affordable figurines depicting ordinary women wearing festival finery. This team of craftsmen, each with different skill sets and levels, worked together to mass produce these figurines, which locals purchased as decorative pieces for the shrines in their homes. While some other local workshops were beginning to make more sophisticated and intricate versions of these figures, featuring both front and back detail and a variety of accessories like fans and hats, this particular team of artists stuck with a simple, classic approach to their sculptures: the careful, naturalistic moulding of their figures’ drapery, the outspoken elegance of their posture, and their vivid coloration spoke for themselves. Besides, this new style of making figures depended on a two-part mould system, which was more labor intensive and offered more opportunities for error.

Starting the work process for the day, the first craftsman selected a mould for the front of the figure. This concave terracotta mould featured a woman with one arm akimbo and a striking contrapposto leg–a popular choice. He filled this mould with malleable clay; while the clay hardened, he prepared the simple form for the back of the figurine. Once the clay had hardened, he removed it carefully from the mould and attached the back. From here, a more detail-oriented artisan on the team took over, making the front and back portions of the hollow figurine appear seamless and touching up details of the design which had been lost in the preliminary moulding process. When he was satisfied with the figure’s appearance, he covered it with a slip of clay and water and passed it on to a fellow craftsman, who had been laboring over the kiln to prepare it for the day’s firing. While the sculpture baked into hard terracotta, a final craftsman readied his paints, mixing the pigments with water, to put the finishing touches on the figure. When the firing process was complete, the painter delicately applied bright red paint to the figure’s hair, a soft peach to her face, and a darker red to her drapery. The completed figurine joined many similar pieces in the workshop, and would soon be sold.

Because of the age and visual appearance of this particular figurine, it was likely manufactured in the same way as the archetypical Tanagra figurines of the same era. Figurines like this one were produced all over the Hellenistic world, but the bulk of such finds have been at Tanagra in Boeotia, where they were excavated from a cemetery in the late nineteenth century (Dillon 231). Tanagra figurines were produced throughout the Hellenistic era (4th through 2nd centuries BCE), and usually “depict fashionable women…elegantly wrapped in thin himations” (“Tanagra Figurines”). This figurine is dated by the Van Buren Collection to the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE, matching up with the time period of the Tanagra figurines; in addition, the period of the excavation of most of these figurines shortly predates the initial acquisition of the bulk of the Van Buren Collection, adding to the likelihood that this figurine was found in Tanagra and was not an imitation of the style from elsewhere in the Mediterranean.

Issues of provenance aside, this figurine has numerous visual elements which at the very least closely mimic the classic Tanagra style, so it is reasonable to infer that it was manufactured in a similar way. This figurine is notable for its elegant drapery, which accentuates the form of the depicted woman’s body and her outstanding pose. Her hair is braided in a crown around her hair, and she appears to be wearing earrings. Sheila Dillon writes of the figurines, “The ladies of Tanagra wear sumptuous clothing, which they manipulate with style…They have elaborate fashion hairstyles, sport earrings, and strike poses which are both elaborate and self-possessed” (Dillon 231). A quick search of museum catalogues reveals the popularity of poses similar to this particular figurine’s among the Tanagra women, with one hand rested on a hip and the opposing leg stepping forward somewhat provocatively. Dillon also notes that “many preserve a great deal of polychromy” (231). Traces of pigment on the figurine’s head reveal that her hair was once painted red and her face was pinkish orange. This coloration is in accordance with the convention of the Tanagra figurines, as red was the most common color used for hair and other accents, and the faces were pale (“Tanagra Figurines”).

The final and most compelling piece of evidence that this figurine was manufactured in the Tanagra fashion is its hollow inside, indicating that it was mould-made. Tanagra figurines were made by covering a mould, usually made of terracotta after a wax model, with clay; once hardened, the clay would be removed from the mould, the details of the sculpture would be perfected, a white slip of clay and water would be applied, and the figurine would be fired (“Tanagra Figurines”). While later figurines were made with a two-mould system for 360 degree detail, figurines from the early 4th century had simple, unsculpted backs like this particular figurine does, so this piece likely dates to that era (“Tanagra Figurines”). Water-soluble pigments in shades of red and pink were used to paint the finished figurines (“Tanagra Figurines”).

Once completed and sold, these figurines were used as decorative votive objects in homes, shrines, and tombs (“Terracotta statuette of a standing woman”). Because of the large quantity of these figurines that has been discovered, their apparent popularity, and the ability of the mould manufacturing process to be reproduced indefinitely, I have inferred that these figurines were made in bulk. The depiction of ordinary people in art rather than primarily religious and political figures was an innovation of the Hellenistic era, so charming figurines at this time were likely a striking novelty.

Original Use

Myrrhine had just turned ten when her father returned from several months away for business. As he embraced her and her mother, he presented her with a small bundle, which, he explained, he’d purchased for her from a workshop on his way back into Tanagra. Myrrhine eagerly unwrapped the bundle, revealing a delicate figurine of an elegant lady, painted in vibrant hues of orange- and purple-red. As she marveled at the gift, captivated by the statuette’s elegance, her father explained that figure would be placed as a votive on the family’s hearth altar to Hestia, especially for her protection. Myrrhine reluctantly but obediently allowed her father to remove the figurine from her hands and place it on the hearth altar. She stood for a while, gazing up at it; the figurine reminded her of the finest ladies she had seen out and about in the town on festival days, and how the sight had filled her with longing to someday be just like them.

Some days, when her father was away and the house was quiet, Myrrhine would stand on her tip-toes and take the figure down from the altar to hold and play with. She had no siblings, so she would sometimes sit for hours with the figure across from her, playing astragaloi by herself. One day, a knucklebone went astray and knocked the figure down; to Myrrhine’s horror, a crack had formed in the lady’s neck, and she started to cry. Hearing her weeping, her mother came to the hearth, and reassured her that the goddess would not be angry at a child for playing. Myrrhine and her mother covered the crack with some spare paint and placed it back on the altar. Myrrhine remained so fond of the figurine that her parents nicknamed it “Little Myrrhine”; in five years, when she left the house to marry, she took the figurine with her.

Small decorative pieces such as Tanagra figurines were most commonly used as votive objects for household altars, so it is likely that this figurine was originally purchased for this or a similar function. Although these are images of ordinary, mortal women, finery of the sort these figures wear was usually only brought outside for significant ceremonies and festivals, so despite their “secular appearance,” these figures were evocative of religious solemnities, and would have been placed in household shrines (“Terracotta statuette of a standing woman”). Greek households had multiple altars to domestic deities, including a hearth dedicated to Hestia, on which such a figurine may have been placed (Garland 134). Since Hestia was the major female deity worshipped in every household, I have inferred that a votive figurine of a woman may have been placed on an altar or shrine dedicated to her for the protection of the women and girls of the family. While most small pieces like this figurine ultimately had religious functions, Meagan Young writes, “they were also enjoyed as domestic decorative objects and, in some cases, even served as children’s toys.” This more casual and personal interpretation of these figurines’ function led me to consider what this artifact may have meant to someone besides the head of household conducting religious observances.

The elegant and confident portrayal of mortal women which the Tanagra figurines offer, along with the potential use of such objects as toys, led me to consider that this object could have held great significance to a young girl in its early lifetime. As Sheila Dillon articulates, these figurines’ “affordability and portability offered positive representations of women’s lives to a broad range of women, who could take pleasure in the charming statuettes” (234). From this conceptualization of these artifacts’ cultural significance for women, as well as my personal affection for the figurine, I imagined the character of a young Boeotian girl who treasured the figurine when it was brought into her home. In observing the breakage and repair of this particular figure’s neck, in comparison to the near-perfect condition (with the exception of the worn-off paint) of other existing Tanagra figures, I have conjectured that at some point in this figure’s life prior to excavation, it may have been damaged–perhaps not so drastically as to completely remove the head, but enough to weaken the terracotta in that area. To fulfill this possibility, I designed the scenario of the thrown astragaloi, or knucklebones, from the widespread popularity of the game with young girls (Garland 95). On the whole, I have sought to explore the intersection of household religion, rare positive representation of mortal women, and girlhood and its potential results through the lens of this type of figurine.

Reuse

Myrrhine was homesick, scared, and isolated in her new household, with her new husband. She had not travelled far out of Tanagra for her marriage, but she missed her birth family terribly, and she felt overwhelmed by the responsibilities of managing a household. Her husband was a good man, and well-off enough to own a house with slaves and upstairs women’s chambers for Myrrhine, so she felt guilty for her emotions. She was comforted, however, when she was brought before her husband’s shrine to Hestia to become an official member of the household, and she noticed several small terracotta figurines, not unlike her own, adorning the altar. Nevertheless, Myrrhine did not necessarily want her own beloved statuette, her “Little Myrrhine,” to join them on her husband’s shrine, even if that would be religiously correct. Selfishly, she wanted to save the figurine as a reminder of her old life–it seemed to her that if her husband owned the statue, he would own every part of her and her past, as well. Myrrhine therefore kept her little figurine in her own bedchamber, where it could remind her of home.

As Myrrhine grew older, she settled into the marriage and her role in the household. She had children of her own, and she found herself rarely thinking of her former home, except in occasional fond nostalgia. Myrrhine’s eldest daughter, Agathe, began to express her affection for the little figure in her mother’s room when she was about ten years old. Seeing the similarity between herself and Agathe, Myrrhine readily let her take the statuette back to her own bedroom, where she knew it would be equally admired and loved.

Small terracotta figurines like the Tanagra pieces, while primarily considered to be votive and grave objects, were inherently multi-use, also serving as decorative objects or even toys (Young). In creating this narrative, I have imagined that this figurine served all of the above purposes for various people: Myrrhine’s father initially acquired it as a votive object, Myrrhine herself used it as a toy before it became a decorative object and token from home in her new household, Myrrhine’s daughter takes it as a decorative piece (and perhaps also a toy), and eventually, the object will be buried in a family tomb. Such reuse and reinterpretation of objects adds to the longevity and usefulness of an item such as this, which, although it has no practical purpose, was likely of great significance to those who owned it.

In creating the narrative of Myrrhine’s use of this figurine during this second phase of her life, I considered how much young women’s lives were disrupted by marriage and the sort of emotions which such a seismic event must have stirred up. As pointed out by Robert Garland, girl just past the point of puberty would be “removed from her family” to move to her husband’s household, where she would “take on a number of onerous duties”; this constituted “a much more violent and abrupt disruption in the life of a woman than it did in the life of a man” (75). While it was customary for a young bride to give up her childhood possessions as a dedication to Artemis (Garland 75), in this sort of emotional situation, it is not difficult to imagine an individual keeping an item of particular significance to her as a comfort object and reminder of her family while making this transition, even if such a practice would run contrary to religious tradition regarding both the treatment of votive objects and the disposal of childhood objects upon marriage. Therefore, in serving that purpose for Myrrhine, this figurine has lost its religious significance as a votive object for a household shrine, instead becoming an icon of personal remembrance. When Myrrhine passes the figure along to her own daughter, it becomes even further removed from its original meaning, serving simply as a decorative object. However, Myrrhine’s daughter would likely have been drawn to the figure for the same reasons Myrrhine originally was as a girl, creating a cycle of object inheritance and use.

Deposition

Myrrhine lived to be nearly seventy years old, a grandmother and respected matron at the time of her peaceful death at home. She outlived her husband, so the funeral was conducted in great style and estate by her children–primarily her elder daughter, Agathe, who had married well and whose husband was able to fund a fine burial. Upon Myrrhine’s death, Agathe lead her other female relatives in the preparation of her body for burial; her corpse was bathed, anointed, dressed in rich clothing and jewelry, wrapped in a winding sheet, and finally, laid out on the household’s best couch for viewing. Exhausted by the day of physical and emotional labor over her mother’s body, and freshly grieving the death, Agathe retired to the room she slept in as a child that evening rather than returning to her husband’s house. While preparing for bed and nostalgically sifting through old possessions she had left behind upon her marriage, she came across the little terracotta figurine of a woman that Myrrhine had given her when she was a young girl. Agathe felt a pang of guilt; she knew her mother had loved the little figurine, and Agathe had forgotten about it. The object really belonged with Myrrhine. Agathe instantly knew what to do.

On the third day after Myrrhine’s death, her body was moved to a cart for the funeral procession. As the procession departed the house just before dawn, Agathe carried the figure with her, tucked among her robes as she lamented. Once the mourners reached the burial ground on the outskirts of Tanagra, Myrrhine was buried in a wooden coffin beneath a grave marker which depicted Myrrhine with Agathe and her son-in-law. Before the inhumation was complete, Agathe added the little figurine to the grave with the other gifts, a final tribute to her mother’s life.

Ancient Greek funerals took place in three stages: the prothesis, during which the body of the deceased was viewed, the ekphora, or funeral procession, and the burial itself (“Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece”). The women of a family would be responsible for preparing the body of the deceased for viewing: this involved washing the body, anointing it with olive oil, and clothing it in garments and a winding sheet, after which the body would be laid out on a couch to be visited and mourned by other family members (Garland 177). After the fourth century B.C.E., corpses were more frequently outfitted in fine clothing and jewelry, while in earlier times foliage wreaths were customary (Garland 177-8). According to Athenian law, the burial had to take place no later than three days after the death before dawn (Garland 178), and it seems likely that similar customs and regulations regarding death-related pollution held throughout the Greek world. During the ekphora, the body would be brought from the home to the burial ground either by cart or by pallbearers, and may have been buried in a wooden coffin (or without a coffin, if the family were less well-off) or cremated; if this were the case, the ashes would have been placed in an urn for burial (Garland 178-9). Since cremations were considered heroic burials, after the Homeric tradition (Garland 179), I have conjectured that inhumation would be a likely burial method for a woman such as Myrrhine; however, cremation was certainly not reserved for male war heroes, so figures like this one could easily have been deposited with cremation burials.

Elaborate collections of objects were not often placed in the graves themselves (“Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece”), but objects–primarily small items such as lekythoi–deemed necessary for the comfort of the dead, who, as Robert Garland writes, “were believed either to dwell in the proximity of the grave or at least be capable of visiting it periodically,” would be deposited with the body of the deceased and replenished by female relatives who were expected to attend to the gravesite (183). An object that holds less practical value than emotional significance to the deceased, such as this figurine, could be included in this small deposit. Rather than fill the grave itself with expensive memorial items, the dead were more visibly commemorated with carved grave markers (“Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece”). A common motif for Athenian grave markers was a depiction of the deceased greeting their living relatives, either in farewell or reunion (Garland 184). This or a similar image commemorating the dead would likely have appeared to mark the grave of a Tanagran woman like Myrrhine; the Hellenistic cemetery of Tanagra, which was a largely affluent city, boasted large numbers of sculpted gravestones (Spyropoulos and Richardson). The majority of small terracottas like this one were excavated from this cemetery (Dillon 231), making grave deposition through the process outlined above a likely scenario.

Acquisition

Since 1870, when the first tombs in Tanagra were uncovered and the archaeological world learned about the charming little terracotta statues which were found by the thousands throughout the ancient city’s cemeteries, the demand for the so-called Tanagra figurines among collectors was high. The figurines were being unearthed in the plain to the northwest of the city, beyond the Lari stream, and along the sides of the ancient roads leading into the city, by looters and amateur archaeologists; more often than not, the distinctions between the two were blurred. Although Melpomeni knew that most people would consider her a looter–she did sell many of her finds, after all–she genuinely loved the objects she found and the sense of history they brought with them, and she considered herself something of an expert.

On this particular day, Melpomeni was combing through earth that had already been turned along the side of the road, since her eye for detail often allowed her to find objects others had overlooked. She grasped an object that felt like a stone, but pulled it free to find a terracotta head of a lady, detached from the rest of its body. Digging eagerly, she swiftly located the rest of the figurine. A quick fix with some glue later, and Melpomeni was able to sell the Tanagra figurine in a set to a group of American academics touring Boeotia. She was glad; it comforted her when the objects she sold went to those who would study and appreciate them, even though she always tried to be impartial for the sake of business.

Once purchased, the Tanagra figurine changed hands through various American study collections, within a few decades making its way to the Smith College Department of Classics.

The exact provenance of this particular Tanagra figurine is unknown, as is the path it took to join the Van Buren antiquities collection at Smith College. It was not part of Albert Van Buren’s original study collection, which was amassed between 1902 and 1906 and was sold to the Smith classics department in 1925 (Bradbury). While records on the college’s acquisition of this particular piece are not available, the Smith College Museum of Art houses several other Tanagra figures, once of which was acquired in 1918 from an unknown source (“Tanagra Figurines of a Woman Holding a Box”) and several others of which were donated in 2004 in memory of a member of the Smith Class of 1940 (“Tanagra Figurine of a Seated, Draped Youth”). While it is conceivable that the object in question was also acquired by the college through this alumna, or else as part of a set with the 1918 acquisition, the lack of record in comparison to these other pieces calls that possibility into question. The most likely scenario appears to be an early acquisition through a member of Smith’s classics faculty who sought to amass an archaeological study collection, which was later put on display with the Van Buren Collection.

This figurine most probably made its way to this professor through the proliferation of university study collections of classical antiquities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as archaeology emerged as an academic discipline in American schools, seeking to assert itself as a science through laboratory-style practical study of objects (Dyson 97). The acquisition of these objects in the Mediterranean was not always, by modern standards, ethical, and often involved looting, unauthorized or otherwise unwelcome excavation, and purchase of unprovenanced items from looters, as illustrated by David Hogarth’s account of Richard Norton’s collection expedition, which included Van Buren (Geffcken 32). Given the prevalence of such methods of acquisition, and the lack of provenance attached to the figurine in question, whichever American collectors first removed this piece from Boeotia may very well have purchased it from a looter, if they did not loot it themselves.

Assuming the piece was acquired during this period of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, it is especially likely to have been looted, or at least removed by an archaeologist in an undocumented excavation, since the ancient site of Tanagra has never been systematically excavated in its entirety, and the removal of such pieces from the site started in 1870 (Roesch). Jaimee P. Uhlenbrock writes that the cemeteries of Tanagra were “the focus of clandestine excavations carried out between 1870 and 1873, and intermittently for a number of years thereafter” (11-2). These terracotta figurines were found by the thousands in the cemeteries, P. Roesch writes, “notably on the other side of the Lari, in the plain to the NW, and along the side of roads leading out of the city.” Besides the small repair needed in the reattachment of its head, this particular figurine would have been prime looting material, especially given the widespread commercial popularity of the Tanagras (Uhlenbrock 12).

Bibliography

Bradbury, Scott. “Van Buren Antiquities Collection: History.” Department of Classical Languages and Literatures, Smith College, www.smith.edu/classics/vanburen/history.php. Accessed April 24, 2017.

“Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.” Department of Greek and Roman Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm. Accessed April 12, 2017.

Dillon, Sheila. “Hellenistic Tanagra Figures.” A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, Hoboken, Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2012, 231-234.

Dyson, Stephen. Ancient Marbles to American Shores. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.

Garland, Robert. Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks. Indianapolis/Cambridge, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2008.

Geffcken, Katherine. “The History of the Collection.” In The Collection of Antiquities of the American Academy in Rome, edited by L. Bonfante and H. Nagy, 29-54. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015.

Spyropoulos, Theodore G.and Jenny Richardson. “Tanagra.” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T083222. Accessed April 12, 2017.

“Tanagra Figurines.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tafg/hd_tafg.htm. Accessed February 15, 2017.

“Tanagra Figure of a Seated, Draped Youth.” Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium Collections Database, www.museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?museum=all&t=objects&type=all&f=&s=Tanagra&record=9. Accessed April 24, 2017.

“Tanagra Figurine of a Woman Holding a Box.” Five Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium Collections Database, www.museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?museum=all&t=objects&type=all&f=&s=Tanagra&record=6. Accessed April 24, 2017.

“Terracotta statuette of a standing woman.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/09.221.28/. Accessed February 15, 2017.

Uhlenbrock, Jaimee P. “The Study of Ancient Greek Terracottas: A Historiography of the Discipline.” Harvard University Art Museums Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 3, Spring 1993, pp. 7-27.