Lady of Elx
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The enigmatic Lady of Elx (Dama de Elche in Spanish, Dama d'Elx in Valencian) is a polychrome stone bust that was discovered by chance in 1897 at L'Alcúdia, an archaeological site on a private estate about two kilometers south of Elx (Spanish Elche) (Alicante, Valencia, Spain). The Lady of Elx is generally believed to be an Iberian piece from the 4th century B.C., though the artisanship suggests strong Hellenistic influences. [1]
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[edit] Sculpture
The originally polychromed bust is usually thought to represent a woman wearing a very complex headdress and big coils on each side of the face. A minority interpretation sees it representing a man. The aperture in the rear of the sculpture indicates it may have been used as a funerary urn.
While it is a bust, there are proposals that it was part of a seated statue like the Lady of Baza or a standing one like the Great Offering Lady from Cerro de los Santos (Montealegre del Castillo, Albacete). The three figures and the Bicha de Balazote are exhibited in the same hall in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid.
[edit] History
The sculpture was found August 4, 1897, by a young worker, Manuel Campello i Esclapez. Pierre Paris, a French archaeological connoisseur, purchased the sculpture within a few weeks and shipped it to France, where it was shown at the Louvre Museum and hidden for safe-keeping during World War II.
The Vichy government negotiated its return to Spain in 1940 - 41, and June 27, 1941 the sculpture was placed in Museo del Prado (Madrid), then moved to the National Archaeological Museum, where it remains, in spite of appeals to return it to its home town permanently, where it is represented by a reproduction.
Lady of Elx initiated a popular interest in pre-Roman Iberian culture. She appeared on a 1948 Spanish one-peseta banknote and was mentioned in William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955). The sculpture was on display at the Museo Arqueológico y de Historia de Elche from May 18 to November 1 2006.
[edit] Forgery?
In 1995, John F. Moffitt published a book contending that the statue was a forgery with pronounced similarities to Symbolist art of the Belle Époque. He delved further into the circumstances of its discovery to put forth a speculation concerning the identity of the forger and commissioner, "a physician and resident surgeon in the town of Elche" who was "well informed about the current state of Iberian studies" and owned "the fertile archaeological site of La Alcúdia". Moffitt's study, published by the University Press of Florida under the title Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche (1995), was favorably reviewed by Karen D. Vitelli in American Journal of Archaeology 99.4 (October 1995), p. 755.
Most experts, however, believe that the Lady of Elx is a genuine ancient Iberian work. For example, Antonio Uriarte of the University of Madrid has stated, “Decade by decade, research has reinforced the coherence of the Dama within the corpus of Iberian sculpture. The Dama was found more than a century ago, and many of its features, not then understood, have been confirmed by subsequent finds. For example, the use of paint in Iberian sculpture was unknown when the Dama appeared.” [2] A CSIC study on the Lady of Elx's micropigmentation published in 2005 concluded that the trace pigments on the statue were consistent with ancient materials and that no modern pigments had been found. [3]
[edit] References
- ^ Francisco Vives Boix, La Dama de Elche en el año 2000 : Análisis tecnológico y artístico [1].
- ^ "Is the Dama de Elche, one of the masterpieces of ancient Iberian art, really a fake?" at [2] See also R. Olmos and T. Tortosa, in Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), Ancient Greeks West and East, Leiden: Brill, 1999, brief summary here [3]
- ^ M. P. Luxán, J. L. Prada, F. Dorrego, 2005, "Dama de Elche: pigments, surface coating and stone of the sculpture", Materials and structures, 38(277), pp. 419-424. [4] See also [5]
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