As early as the stone age, artists in the Greek islands were already striving to represent the human form in marble. In this figure, the abundant flesh and swelling lines suggest nourishment, expansiveness, and fertility. This is a creature of structure as well as flesh. She is perfectly symmetrical from the front view and from the back. Incised lines articulate the parts of her body, including joints at the hip and the knee.
The material is white marble, a metamorphosed limestone native to many parts of the Greek world. The Cycladic Islands, where this figure was made, are particularly rich in first-rate marble. Greek sculptors worked in this material for millennia, and the Greek Galleries contain many examples of later marble sculpture. In this piece, you can see how beautifully marble takes shadow into its recesses and reflects light with the crystals on its surface. Nature supplied the stone-age carver who made this figure with both marble and the tools to work it. He shaped the stone with pumice, sand, and obsidian tools. Obsidian is a hard volcanic glass also native to the Cyclades. After the figure was carved, she was painted with bright colored details. So little is known about the culture of the Cyclades in prehistoric times that it is impossible to say with any certainty who this woman is or what the stone-age people who first saw her thought of her.
From the back view, you can how the forms of her legs line up in a flat plane from her buttocks to her feet. Though she is displayed standing, it's possible that she was conceived as a seated figure.
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