Venus de Brassempouy

Venus de Brassempouy approx 25,000 years old 

Damian Hirst famously said “All an artist ever wants is to create an arresting image”.

Well here is, to my mind the most arresting image from a whopping 25,000 years ago!

This is my sketch study of this incredibly artefact.  

Discovered in a French cave in Brassempouy in 1892.  “It is one of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face.”

I think that is an understatement for sure, because it is so much more than just a rudimentary face.

The link I’ve placed at the top is where you can actually see it, at the SALLE PIETTE of the Musee d’Archeologie National at Saint-German-en-Laye, near Paris,  but only by prior appointment.

In the main archaeological museum they only display a replica due to the implications of thermal stress on the organic mammoth tusk.

To see the real thing you have to ring and book.  The image I worked from is of the actual artefact, linked to above.

So, on the lead page of the Wikipedia entry, they have included a photo of the replica.  This is OK, because the museum main building houses the replica. 

How can you tell the replica from the real thing?  Firstly notice there are no score lines made by the carving tool.  This is because the replica is made of ceramic.

When you’re really appreciating something from the Stone Age, you want to see little dents and scratches and pitted or worn areas.  You want to see how they made it, as much as what they made.

Now remember ppl, they did not have metal then, so just imagine how hard it must have been to carve into  mammoth tusk with only flint?

Now when you start studying the real object, you quickly realise how many misleading notes there are on the internet about the original archaeological artefact being made of “early ceramic”. That is totally wrong and quite annoying.  It’s the replica in the main building, that’s made of ceramic.

The actual Venus artefact is made of Mammoth Ivory, and was carved in the Upper Palaeolithic period called the Gravettian Culture.

Those people had large heads we have to remember that.  Once we cooked our food, our brain size increased and eventually plateaued, (must have been hell to give birth....save that thought) but once we settled down and started farming our brain size shrunk and by then giving birth was comparatively straight forward.

Now this where I break off and start my own interpretation of what my own eyes tell me...

I believe this head to be a portrait.  We are told it was part of a larger piece, but I’m not so sure.  I base this on the observation that larger pieces that have included a head, depict a face with no features.  Most of the time those heads are lowered and all you see is the top and the back.

Furthermore, I would argue she is not wearing a wig, but a hair net, that is often depicted in Venus artefacts of the period.  When men write about women, they are so quick to say ‘she’s wearing a wig’ what a negation of all the evidence!  We have to remember, these people caught their animals for food with big nets, in large groups.  They were mobile, in contrast to the earlier Neanderthals and used caves much like a Travelodge.  They were not decorating these caves by then, but were into ‘portable’ art, more than likely with talismanic connotations.  Live births of babies with big heads must have been a constant source of concern and hope. In my personal opinion that’s why they made so many little Venus figurines... but more about that another time.

Back to the hair net solution.  Can you imagine trying to comb out Palaeolithic hair, with no hair products and then have flapping hair strands near an open fire?  My own opinion is they probably greased down their hair with some kind of animal fat, then placed the hair net over it, to keep it from tangling and in style. What the hair net was made of is unknown but we can take a guess at what practical women, with children running everywhere probably used.  In all the Venus figurines made in this period, the women are wearing hair nets.  Why am I the only person that has twigged this?

Her brow bone is particularly prominent and her face is wide.  This has led people to believe she was sexless and probably male. 

Those precise features indicate to me that she had more Neanderthal genes in her, than we do now.  This is not an unfair assumption. 

Now her head shape is truly fascinating and that’s why I believe she was based on a living person at that time, because her head shape is much finer than was probably generally around at that time. 

Head shape, apart from any aesthetic preference that may have been desirable then, would be a serious consideration if you wanted to give birth more easily.  As radical as that sounds, I think the point should be considered.  We have to bear in mind, dogs were being bred for hunting 30,000 years ago... so for 5000 years people knew, two big headed dogs were going to produce big headed pups.  

I put this girl’s age at the time of the sculpture to be around 14, but she could have been slightly older, or younger. I would say possibly 12 if you really had to put money on it. 

What fascinated me was that I felt strongly that if I copied her upside down and cast aside assumptions of what she should look like, I could simply be absolutely true to the tonal values of each area of the image.

So I worked that way.  Then, when I turned her up the right way I saw her looking right at me and to be honest I gasped.  Then things got weird...

This is what happens if you really, really study exactly what you are seeing, instead of taking a photograph, or pen and wash and fudging it.  What you are trying to do is not allow preconceptions to get in the way.  They have to go out the window, so that you relate honestly and faithfully to what is before you and not what is in your head. 

More later...the day job is a heaving pile of loose ends and large tracts of dense spiteful script in red biro....ew!