The Venus of Savignano is a Venus figurine made from soft greenstone (

serpentine Serpentine may refer to: Shapes * Serpentine shape, a shape resembling a serpent * Serpentine curve, a mathematical curve * Serpentine, a type of riding figure Science and nature * Serpentine subgroup, a group of minerals * Serpentinite, a ...

) dating back to the Upper Paleolithic, 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, 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.''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'' of ''Mulino'', itself within the '' comune'' 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, 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 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 culture 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 and the Neolithic 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 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