Cycladic Marble Spedos Idol with Lyre Shaped Head

The corpus of the Cycladic marble idols includes numerous body fragments and complete figures, most of them composed as a reclining folded-arm female figure. To classify this material within the chronological periods and the geographical areas of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, scholars have divided the Early Bronze Age into the Early Cycladic I and the Early Cycladic II. Five varieties are recognized for the phase II (also called as classical period of Cycladic art); their names are given after the sites where representative examples have been found: the Kapsala, Early Spedos and Late Spedos on the island of Naxos, Dokathismata, and Chalandriani.

Typologically, this is a remarkable example of a canonical folded-arm figure. It belongs to the Late Spedos variety, which represents the highest level of prehistoric Cycladic sculpture, towards the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. The Spedos variety is the most numerous and most complicated for further attribution as it continues with a wide diversity in size and style. In general, the incision work became a very important feature of the body modeling, especially for the making of anatomical transitions. In some cases, red and blue pigments were employed to indicate the details such as eyes and the hairline; when survived, the almon-shaped eyes have dotted pupils.

The statuette has protruding breasts that emphasize her femininity. The composition is designed as a reclining figure and not standing upright; the legs are slightly bent, arms folded over the belly. The head is tilted backwards, its flared oval profile recalling the shape of a lyre. Only the straight nose is sculpted on the face. The proportions of the figure are elegant and subtle. The shapes are also highlighted by fine linear incisions, which depict other anatomical details: the base of the neck, the buttocks, the toes. The deep notch divides the legs. This piece, although the stone is weathered, is especially attractive thanks to its artistic qualities. It demonstrates a very delicate manner of carving and a fine sense of stone.

Nowadays, prehistoric Cycladic art is famous mostly for these statuettes, whose design is both simple and attractive. Despite the strong beauty and seductive power, they convey to the modern artistic taste.

These figurines still keep many secrets, since their real purpose remains unknown. They come almost exclusively from necropolises, when the location of their discovery is known, but also found in the living areas and sanctuaries. The sculptures have been successively seen as concubines for the deceased, mourners, substitutes for human sacrifices, nurses for the deceased, representations of revered ancestors, toys to be taken to the afterlife, or figures enabling or helping the transition to the afterlife, etc.; other scholars connect them with the Great Mother, a goddess of procreation and fertility, worshiped from the Neolithic in the Near East, in Anatolia and in Central Europe.

Behind their remarkable unity of style, these statuettes probably hide various purposes that cannot be clearly understood today. According to P. Getz-Gentle, recent studies on their polychrome decoration allow us to attribute to them a more active role than previously thought: these figures would probably have embodied a protective being, definitely feminine and maternal (related to a sort of a patron saint), who commanded natural phenomena and events that were most often inexplicable to the ancients: the cycle of life, the astronomical phenomena, the seasonal cycle and the fertility of the land, the sea, etc. Other scholars think, on comparing the role played by some divine representations in other civilizations that these Cycladic statuettes would have played an intermediary role between the believer/owner of the “idol” and the deity, like a kind of medium allowing, at certain stages of life, humans to enter into contact with a superior being.

Surface corroded exposing remains of heavy encrustation; broken at the middle of neck, knees, and right ankle and reassembled

Ex- New York private collection, 1980’s.

The Salon Art + Design Show, Park Avenue Armory, NY, November 2022, no. 18

CAUBET A., ed., Idols: The Power of Images, Venice, 2018, 22-23, 99-100, 112-115, nos. 17-20.
DOUMAS C. G., Silent Witnesses: Early Cycladic Art of the Third Millennium B.C., New York, 2002.
GETZ-PREZIOSI P., ed., Early Cycladic Art in North American Collections, Richmond, Virginia, 1987, pp. 160-209, 234-259, nos. 26-58, 73-87.
MARTHARI M., RENFREW C., BOYD M., eds., Early Cycladic Sculpture in Context, Oxford, 2017.
THIMME J., ed., Art and Culture of the Cyclades in the Third Millennium B.C., Chicago, London, 1977, pp. 65, 253-283, 459-480, nos. 130-213.