I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while… or at least start collecting images of these Venus clay figurines.
I love Stone Age artwork, and these Venus figures are among the oldest, created between 33,000 and 9,000 BCE. There are examples of these figures found all over Europe and Asia, but especially in France, Russia, and Germany.
There are many many of these sculptures, but I wanted to at least start my image collection here on ArtDuh.
Probably the most famous Venus is the Venus of Willendorf (image above). At least that is the first figurine I remember seeing way way back when. Then there is the Venus of Dolní Věstonice (top right image), which is especially interesting because it has a child’s fingerprint embedded in the clay. There are so many beautiful examples I guess I won’t try to write about each individual one.
Most of these are sized to about 4″ tall. Its not really known why they were made, but they probably had some sort of religious/spiritual function.
That reminds me, although they were created much more recently, I was so surprised to see so many goddess figures at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit I went to about a year ago. Walls and walls of these little goddess, and all from Isreal. I was happy to see that the ancient Jewish faith incorporated the goddess into their faith, but also bummed that today she isn’t represented at all in Judeo/Christian religions. So very strange how that all changed…
