The Venus of Savignano is a

Venus figurine A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", ''The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740–741 Mos ...

made from soft greenstone ( serpentine) dating back to the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

, which was discovered in 1925 near

Savignano sul Panaro Savignano sul Panaro ( Modenese: ; Western Bolognese: ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Modena in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about west of Bologna and about southeast of Modena. Savignano sul Panaro borders t ...

in the

Province of Modena The Province of Modena ( it, Provincia di Modena) is a province in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Modena. It has an area of and a total population of about 701,000 (2015). There are 48 ''comuni'' (singular: ''co ...

, Italy. With in height, in width and in depth, and with a weight of , it is one of the largest known VenusesMargherita Mussi, ''Earliest Italy. An Overview of the Italian Paleolithic and Mesolithic'', Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York 2001, p. 262. among the about 190 dated to the Upper Paleolithic in Europe and Siberia. With a proposed dating of 25,000–20,000 years ago, it is considered one of the earliest expressions of

art in Italy Since ancient times, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Italian peninsula respectively. The very numerous rock drawings in Valcamonica are as old as 8,000 BC, and there are rich remains of Etruscan art ...

.''La Dea di Savignano sul Panaro'', Museo della Venere e dell'Elefante, Savignano 2014 (brochure)

History

The statuette was unearthed in 1925 by a farmer, Olindo Zambelli, who was digging outside his stable in the locality of ''Prà Martino'', under the ''

frazione A ''frazione'' (plural: ) is a type of subdivision of a ''comune'' (municipality) in Italy, often a small village or hamlet outside the main town. Most ''frazioni'' were created during the Fascist era (1922–1943) as a way to consolidate territ ...

'' of ''Mulino'', itself within the ''

comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...

'' of Savignano sul Panaro. He found the statuette under c. of

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ...

fluvial In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluviog ...

deposits. Zambelli cleaned and kept the “old stone” despite his wife's advice to throw it away; eventually, he showed it to a local painter and sculptor, Giuseppe Graziosi, who realized the importance of the find and managed to obtain it from the farmer in exchange for two hundred kilograms of grapes. The new owner then showed the figurine to his son Paolo Graziosi, at the time a young student of

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

, who published a paper on it. In 1926, Giuseppe Graziosi donated the figurine to the

Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography The "Luigi Pigorini" National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography is a public and research museum located in Rome, Italy. Established in 1875 and opened in 1876 by Luigi Pigorini, from 2016 it is one of the four museums inside the Museum of Civi ...

in Rome, which stills holds the figurine today. A replica is housed in the ''Museo della Venere e dell'Elefante'' at Savignano sul Panaro. The ''elephant'' of the museum's title refers to the other major find near Savignano that is also housed there, a fossil female specimen of ''

Mammuthus meridionalis ''Mammuthus meridionalis'', or the southern mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth native to Europe and Central Asia from the Gelasian stage of the Early Pleistocene, living from 2.5–0.8 mya. Taxonomy The taxonomy of extinct elephant ...

'' dating to 1.5 Ma. The original figurine was temporarily loaned to Savignano from 5 April to 4 May 2014 for exhibition within the project "Savignano, Città dell'Archeologia". The exhibition recorded 3,215 visitors, although the museum was only open in the mornings during the weekdays.Associazione culturale ''Ponte Alto – Giuseppe Graziosi''

Style

The figurine is roughly biconical. Typical of other venus figures, the feminine features are overemphasized: the thighs and hips are large while the belly, breasts and buttocks are protruding. The head is a cone, the arms are barely sketched, and there are no hands, feet, or shoulders at all. The back is concave. In some points a few traces of

red ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

paint are still visible.

Dating

The figurine was cleaned after the discovery, thus all organic traces which could have been dated with conventional methods were destroyed. For this reason, any dating was controversial since the beginning and can only be done by comparisons with other figurines. Thanks to these comparisons, it is now generally assumed that the Venus of Savignano belongs to the

Gravettian The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by 2 ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Tyl ...

and that it can be roughly dated back to 25,000–20,000 BP, although some sources tend to lean toward an earlier dating, up to c. 28,000 BP, and some sources favor a much later dating. In his first study in 1925, Paolo Graziosi attributed the figurine to the Upper Paleolithic. His conclusion was in contrast with the mainstream opinion at the time, when most Italian academics did not recognize an Italian Upper Paleolithic, rather opting for a direct transition between the late

Mousterian The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an archaeological industry of stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and to the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and West Asia. The Mousterian largely defines the latt ...

and the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

periods. Indeed, a group of archaeologists led by Ugo Antonielli, the Director of the Pigorini Museum, compared the figurine with others Venuses dated to the Neolithic, concluding that the Venus of Savignano must have been dated to the Neolithic too. However, a subsequent analysis by other scholars in 1935 concluded that the figurine was "surely paleolithic". Later, Paolo Graziosi made a stylistic comparison between the Venus of Savignano and other figurines such as the ''Venus of

Trasimeno Lake Trasimeno ( , also ; it, Lago Trasimeno ; la, Trasumennus; ett, Tarśmina), also referred to as Trasimene ( ) or Thrasimene in English, is a lake in the province of Perugia, in the Umbria region of Italy on the border with Tuscany. Th ...

'', the figurines from Balzi Rossi in

Ventimiglia Ventimiglia (; lij, label=Intemelio, Ventemiglia , lij, label= Genoese, Vintimiggia; french: Vintimille ; oc, label= Provençal, Ventemilha ) is a resort town in the province of Imperia, Liguria, northern Italy. It is located southwest of ...

and the recently discovered (1940) ''Venus of Chiozza di Scandiano'' in

Reggio Emilia Reggio nell'Emilia ( egl, Rèz; la, Regium Lepidi), usually referred to as Reggio Emilia, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, and known until 1861 as Reggio di Lombardia, is a city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has abou ...

; due to that, he again confirmed the Upper Paleolithic age of the figurine in his cross-presentation to

Paleolithic art The art of the Upper Paleolithic represents the oldest form of prehistoric art. Figurative art is present in Europe and Southeast Asia, beginning between about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago. Non-figurative cave paintings, consisting of hand s ...

in 1956.Paolo Graziosi, ''L'arte dell'antica età della pietra'', Sansoni, 1956, p. 58.

References

Literature

*''La Venere a Savignano. Esposizione dal 5 Aprile al 4 Maggio 2014'', Museo della Venere e dell'Elefante, Savignano 2014 (exhibition catalog). *Margherita Mussi, "Problèmes récentes et découvertes anciennes: la statuette de Savignano (Modène, Italie)", ''Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique de l'Ariège'' 51 (1996), 55–79. *Margherita Mussi, "Les statuettes italiennes de pierre tendre de Savignano et Grimaldi", in: Henri Delporte (ed.), ''«La Dame de Brassempouy», Actes du colloque de Brassempouy (juillet 1994)'', Lüttich 1995, pp. 165–185. *Raymond Vaufrey, "La statuette féminine de Savignano sur le Panaro (Province de Modène)", ''L'Anthropologie'' 36 (1926), 429–435.

External links