The Venus of Willendorf, now kenned in academia as the Woman of Willendorf, is a 11.1-centimetre (4.4 in) high statuette of a female figure estimated to have been made between about 28,000 and 25,000 BCE. It was found in 1908 by a workman designated Johann Veran or Josef Veram during excavations conducted by archaeologists Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier and Josef Bayer at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the town of Krems. It is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. The figurine is now in the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna,
Venus of Willendorf is denominated after the site in Austria where it was unearthed.
Art History 1
The purport of the carving is the subject of much notional theorization. It never had feet and does not stand on its own. Components of the body associated with fertility and childbearing have been accentuated, leading researchers to believe Venus of Willendorf may have been utilized as a fertility goddess.[7] The figure has no visible face, her head being covered with circular horizontal bands of what might be rows of plaited hair or a type of headdress.
The sobriquet, urging a comparison to the classical image of "Venus", is now controversial. According to Christopher Witcombe, "the ironic identification of these figurines as 'Venus' congenially slaked certain postulations at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste".[9] Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesise that the figurines may have been engendered as self-portraits
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