Found across Europe and Asia, these female

figurines created during the Paleolithic period

may seem crude by comparison when gazing at

the brushstrokes of Madame X’s flawless skin

or Venus’s beautifully sculpted face. Roughly

rendered, the Stone Age figures’

feminine traits—breasts, bel-

lies, and hips—are large and

exaggerated. Their lines are

not streamlined and smooth,

but rounded and swelling.

Rather than sparkling eyes and

smiling lips, their faces often

lack distinctive features.

Collectively referred to as

the Venus figurines, these

statues are at the beginning

of a long tradition of depict-

ing the female form in art. They

help connect modern viewers

to the very distant past and the

worlds of their creators some

35,000 to 14,000 years ago.

Shapes and Sizes

Human beings became artists

about 80,000 years ago, but their first subjects

were not people. Some of the earliest examples

appear like abstract geometric patterns. As hu-

manity progressed to more realistic depictions

of the world around them, among their most

popular subjects were animals like the horses

and aurochs from the Chauvet Cave in south-

eastern France.

Human forms begin to appear somewhere

between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago

in the Paleolithic period. Few works

of art depicting people have sur-

vived from this time to the mod-

ern age; among the ones that

have, more of them are female

forms than male. Roughly 200

of the works of art now called

Venuses have been found dis-

tributed across western Europe

(concentrated in the Pyrenean

area and southwest France, as

well as in Italy); central Europe

(especially around the Rhine

and Danube basins); and east-

ern Europe and Asia (in south-

ern Russia and as far east as Si-

beria).

Whether carved from stone or

bone or fashioned from clay, the

most notable feature among these

works of art is their size. They are

all tiny, measuring between two

and 10 inches high, which made them portable

and easy for nomadic peoples to carry from place

to place.

Many of the Venuses’ faces lack well-

defined brows, eyes, noses, and mouths; some

are as smooth as an egg. When facial features

are present, they tend to be generalized, which

led scholars to believe they could be general

female representations rather than portraits of

specific women.

Another hallmark of these Stone Age figures

is that many of them are nude, a trait that may

F

or about as long as people have been making art, female

forms have been artists’ favorite subjects—from the

iconic Venus de Milo, sculpted in second-century b.c.

Greece, to John Singer Sargent’s 1884 elegant “Madame X.”

The anonymous artists of the Stone Age were no different; small

statues of women were among their most popular works of art.

HOHLE FELS VENUS, IVORY,

CA 35,000 YEARS OLD. MUSEUM OF

PREHISTORY, BLAUBEUREN, GERMANY

WHETHER CARVED FROM STONE

OR BONE OR FASHIONED FROM

CLAY, THE “VENUSES” ARE ALL TINY.

20 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2022

DUKAS PRESSEAGENTUR GMBH/ALAMY