A stone statuette of a piriform female figure with narrow shoulders and ample teardrop-shaped breasts, hands carved in low-relief descending in arches over the massive rounded belly and large buttocks, short thighs bordering an elongated pubic triangle, lightly sketched knees, the head proportional to the body, no facial features but with an indefinite type of coiffure.

PROVENANCE:
From the family collection of a UK gentleman, by descent in the early 1970s; previously acquired before 1960; accompanied by an academic report by Prof. Neritan Ceka and a scholarly note TL05410 by Dr Ronald Bonewitz; this lot has been checked against the Interpol Database of stolen works of art and is accompanied by AIAD certificate number no.10935-181341.

LITERATURE:
Cf. The Venus of Willendorf, NHM Vienna, for similar; see also Grand, P.M., Prehistoric Art: Paleolithic Painting and Sculpture, London, 1967; Gvozdover, M., Art of the Mammoth Hunters: The Finds from Avdeevo, Oxbow Monographs, 1995; Lesure, R.G., Interpreting Ancient Figurines: Context, Comparison, and Prehistoric Art, Cambridge, 2011.

FOOTNOTES:
The importance of the Venus statuettes lies in the fact that they are the first three-dimensional artistic creations of man. Most scholars consider them symbols of the cult of fertility and evidence of the existence of a matriarchal society as a form of organization of the earliest human society.

The statue belongs to the Venus of Willendorf type of Palaeolithic idols, with obese female characteristics: huge breasts, exaggerated buttocks and genitalia, which have been found from France and Russia. Stylistically, for treatment with rounded shapes, the forward tilted head with non-detailed coiffure, our statue is closest to the Eastern European figures, like the Kostenski, Gagarino or Avdeevo Venuses, belonging to the period of Gravettian art.