thumb|[[Casting|Cast of the sculpture, with putative colour reconstructed, at the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge]]

The relatively small (75 cm high) limestone Cretan sculpture called the Lady of Auxerre (or Kore of Auxerre), held at the Louvre Museum in Paris, depicts an archaic Greek goddess of 650 - 625 BCE. It is a Kore ("maiden"), perhaps a votary rather than the maiden Goddess Persephone herself, for her right hand touches her solar plexus and her left remains stiffly at her side (Basel 2001). It is also possible that the Kore is a depiction of a deceased individual, possibly in a position of prayer.

History

Maxime Collignon, a Louvre curator, found the sculpture in a storage vault in the Museum of Auxerre, a city east of Paris, in 1907. No provenance is known, and its mysterious arrival at a provincial French museum gave it a journalistic allure, according to the Louvre monograph. The sculpture has been the subject of scholarly debate over what regional school of early Greek art it belongs to, but is generally considered a Cretan work.

The Archaic sculpture, bearing traces of polychrome decoration, dates from the 7th century BCE, when Greece was emerging from its Dark Age. She still has the narrow waist of a Minoan-Mycenaean goddess, and her stiff hair suggests Egyptian influence. The Early Archaic style has been fancifully termed "Daedalic." Its secret, knowing, and serene hint of a smile is often characterized as the "archaic smile." Sculptures and painted vases exhibiting correlative styles have been found outside Crete as well as in Rhodes, Corinth, and Sparta (Basel 2000).

Excavations in the 1990s by Nikolaos Stampolidis at Eleutherna in Crete have helped establish more precisely a date and place of origin for the Dame d'Auxerre, in the region of Eleutherna and Gortyn, with the recovery from gravesites of very similar carved ivory faces and phallic symbols.

Description

The figure and its quadrangular base are carved from the same piece of limestone, making them one piece. Her hair and costume are both modeled and incised. with a broad belt and an epiblema, or possibly the material of the back part of the dress brought forward, covering her shoulders. The dress appears neither sewn nor buttoned along the upper arms but may convey a garment that it is pinned in the front by a pair of brooches concealed by her hair.

  • Martinez, Jean-Luc (2000). La Dame d'Auxerre Réunion des Musées Nationaux.
  • Near, Richard (2012) Greek Art and Archaeology New York, New York, USA: Thames & Hudson. p. 113. ISBN 9780500288771.
  • Richter, G. M. A. (1968). Korai: Archaic Greek Maidens New York, New York, USA:Phaidon Publishers INC. p. 32. SBN 71481328I.
  • Encyclopædia Britannica Daedalic sculpture
  • (Skulpturhalle, Basel) Ute W. Gottschall, "La Dame d'Auxerre" (German)
  • Statue of a woman, known as the "Lady of Auxerre", Louvre Museum official website
  • "Lady of Auxerre", copy in Antikensammlung Kiel as 3D model on Sketchfab