VENUS OF WILLENDORF
The Venus of Willendorf is a feminine anthropomorphic statuette from 20,000 and 22,000 B.C. Josef
Szombathy found the piece near Willendorf (Austria), by the shore of Danubio’s River, in 1908. It’s the
most famous Venus from the paleolithic. This figures are women with an imprecise face and with an exaggeration
of her parts of the body (a bulky belly, enormous breasts, obese legs). The image of a fat woman who is bare was
usual in Egyptian, Greek and Babylonians sculptures in Neolithic’s period too.
This figure of this bare woman measures about 10’5 cm high and 5’7 cm wide. It was carved in paleolithic limestone
and it was tinted with red ocher.
On the whole this statuette represents the fertility’s concept, the scholars deducted that from its abdomen, vulva,
buttocks and tits, they are really enormous. In contrast its arms are very thin and they almost are seen, they are folded
on the breasts. It hasn’t got a very visible face because its head it’s coated by something like braids. It has got a hole
in its belly, the scholars think that it is the belly button. Its bulky pubis is expanded on thick thighs. But its legs are
anatomically correct, its knees are together and the feet (which have not been represented or they have been lost)
are separated from the body, so the statuette ends at the ankles.
We don’t know a lot of its origin, its creation’s method or its cultural meaning. We know that the piece represents the
fertility’s symbol, but some scholars think that it represents the ideal beauty, but others think that this theory is
impossible because it’s a fat woman (in my opinion it can represents the ideal beauty because at that time, it could be
different,the purpose of life was breed, and if the statuette represents the fertility it can be the ideal beauty or the ideal
woman for that time’s men).
WEBGRAPHY:
ALBA OUBIÑA BÚA 3º ESO.
