Article Evaluation

The article I evaluated was the Arkesilas cup. I have noticed that the article does not have as much information over the cup I tried to see if the citations for the article were at least reliable, but the citations would just take me to other Wikipedia articles and not the actual sources where it would provide reliable information that would have the facts over the cup I would suggest that some reliable sources would be a book that would include Greek art or a museum article that would give more information of the location of where the cup was created and how it was used. Therefore if someone was to read this article they would not have reliable sources where they would be able to double check if the facts over the piece of art is true or not.

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Assigned Article: Tanagra Figurine

In the article Tanagra Figurine I plan to contribute more citations because the article so far only has two. I plan to include a description of the statues and why they were made that way. I would want to add about why the Tanagra figures were made and as to what point in history the figures take place.

Bibliography: ^[1] ^[2] ^[3]

Tanagra Figurine outline

Place of Origin

I. City of Athens II. City of Tanagra

Time

I. past : first created II. present: excavation

Feminine

I. everyday Greek women II. Dancers

Traditional Clothing
Body Posture

I. hand covering face II. veil covering face

Hellenistic Period

I. emotions II. event

Purpose of creation

I. Statues for graves II. religious

Purpose of creation: The creation of the Tanagra figurines were serving a purpose among Greeks in the city of Tanagra as a religious statue These figurines were discovered in an excavation during the 19th century. The city of Tanagra was not necessarily a famous city such as the most famous Greek cities such as Athens, Sparta or Crete. The city of Tanagra had slowly started rising into historians and archeologists attention during the early 19th century after a war was breaking out between the Turks and it's their allies the British and the French after a warning of a French invasion. Though an event that had grabbed the attention that would lead to an excavation of the city was the event of grave robberies. These grave robberies had led to historians to excavate the city for further information on the culture of the city and its history and also to find as to why the figurines are mainly found in a grave and what they may represent for the deceased. The excavations would be on and off because of the difficulty of excavating and damaging any kind of art that may be present in the location that had not been robbed. Most of the Tanagra figurines were discovered to be buried with the dead. The purpose of creation of the Tanagra figurines would lead to different and similar statues being buried in the grave of the dead with other contents. The Tanagra figurine that were buried in the graves led to a theory that the small statues were the person's possession. The Tanagra figurines also in their creation served as a purpose for comfort among the dead. The figurines would serve as a comfort possession for the dead and send them to the next world in peace because they would be taking something from their old life with them. It is speculated that though it was normal to place the figurines in the grave of the dead it was not something that was essential to be placed in the grave such as a vase. The figurines had been found in many graves among the city of Tanagra. The graves from which the figurines were found had been in mainly children's graves. Some of the Tanagra figurines that were found as grave markers would have different kind of styles on them. These styles would hold a woman in what it would seem mourning clothes that Greek women at the time would wear, therefore these figurines were made specifically for a grave rather than decoration or a toy. Some other figurines that would be made at the time would be made not only representing women but also men and children. These figurines would be representing an everyday life of a Greek person such as a woman taking care of her children, or a child playing, as well as men and young children sitting and women playing games with other women or by themselves. The Tanagra figurines would be made out of marble and seen as realistic to a person.

Article editing

Peer Review

Edith, I really like what you have so far! A few thoughts I have are mainly just on how you could organize the information you already have written. It looks like you're still in the process of converting everything into wiki headings/subheadings but an idea would be if you took:

"I. everyday Greek women II. Dancers

Traditional Clothing Body Posture I. hand covering face II. veil covering face

Hellenistic Period"

and created that as a heading of "iconography," then the clothing, body posture, and viel covering face could all be categorized as subheadings under iconography.

You also have: "I. emotions II. event

Purpose of creation" For this, I'm not quite sure what you mean? You might want to make the "purpose" a subheading under the broad history of your article.

Lastly, you go into a little too much detail about the city of Tangara. What you could do is link the wiki page of Tangara, to do that just do Tangara or, brack, brack, (insert word here) then bracket, bracket. That way you keep the page as specific to your work of art(s) as possible, and keep from going into too much detail that's already available on wikipedia.

Other than that, looks like you have a great draft! Good luck!

Elizabethcarrol (talk) 19:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)elizabethcarrol

Tanagra figurine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search "Lady in blue", molded and gilded terracotta figurine, Louvre, Paris Molded terracotta nude of a goddess, Alexandrian (Greco-Roman Museum, Alexandria)

The Tanagra figurines were a mold-cast type of Greek terracotta figurines produced from the later fourth century BC, primarily in the Boeotian town of Tanagra. They were coated with a liquid white slip before firing and were sometimes painted afterwards in naturalistic tints with watercolors, such as the famous "Dame en Bleu" ("Lady in Blue") at the Louvre. Scholars have wondered why a rural place like Tanagra produced such fine and rather "urban" style terracotta figures.^{[citation needed]}

Tanagra figures depict real women — and some men and boys — in everyday costume, with familiar accessories like hats, wreaths or fans. Some character pieces may have represented stock figures from the New Comedy of Menander and other writers. Others continued an earlier tradition of molded terracotta figures used as cult images or votive objects. Typically they are about 10 to 20 centimetres high.

The coraplasters, or sculptors of the models that provided the molds, delighted in revealing the body under the folds of a himation thrown round the shoulders like a cloak and covering the head, over a chiton, and the movements of such drapery in action.

Nineteenth century

1806 - Col. W.M visited the city of Tanagra and described the ruins in details.^[4]

1832 - Christopher Wordsworth a Cambridge scholar visited ^[4]

1837 - H.M. Ulrichs a German scholar visited the site^[4]

1852 - The French General Staff published the first map that revealed the location of six graves.^[4]

1870 - Tanagra's outbreak of grave robberies^[4]

1873 - Illegal permits to excavate had been confiscated from the people of the nearby villages.^[4]

1874-1879 - Panayotis Stamatakis begins the excavation of the graves^[4]

Grave Robberies

In the year of 1870 an outbreak of grave robberies had occurred in the ruins of the city of Tanagra. The outbreak had led to many of the graves the Tanagra figurines being stolen and the condition of the vases placed on the graves to being destroyed due to the robbers. Due to this outbreak it had led the Archeological Society of Athens to protect the site and begin excavation before anything else would be stolen or destroyed.^[4]

Excavation of 1874-1879

The Archeological Society of Athens had sent Panayotis Stamatakis a senior official to excavate the graves that had been left intact. Though before he had begun the excavation he had confiscated any antiquities that had been in the possession of the people from the nearby villages. These grave robberies had led to historians to excavate the city for further information on the culture of the city and its history and also to find as to why the figurines are mainly found in a grave and what they may represent for the deceased. The excavations would be on and off because of the difficulty of excavating and damaging any kind of art that may be present in the location that had not been robbed. Most of the Tanagra figurines were discovered to be buried with the dead from the excavations a large number of figurines had been found among the ruins though the figurines had been found it has been reported that no details of the figurines had ever been published for the public to know as well as that many of the figurines if not all had not been kept. During the years of excavating the ruins of the Tanagra there had been a problem concerning the people living near the area due to the people excavating for themselves as well while Stamatakis and the others sent from the Archeological Society of Athens would dig during the day the people nearby the ruins would dig during the night. ^[4]

Discovery[edit]

This terracotta figurine of a woman demonstrates some thematic elements that are common to these statuettes. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Tanagra figures had not been much noted before the end of the 1860s, when ploughmen of Vratsi in Boeotia, Greece, began to uncover tombs ranging in date over many centuries. The main finds especially from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC were secured in 1874. Inside and outside the tombs of the Hellenistic period — 3rd to 1st centuries BC — were many small terracotta figures. Great quantities that were found in excavation sites at Tanagra identified the city as the source of these figures, which were also exported to distant markets. In addition, such figures were made in many other Mediterranean sites, including Alexandria, Tarentum in Magna Graecia, Centuripe in Sicily and Myrina in Mysia.

The figures appealed to 19th century middle-class ideals of realism, and "Tanagra figures" entered the visual repertory of Europeans. Jean-Léon Gérôme created a polychromatic sculpture depicting the spirit of Tanagra, and one French critic described the fashionable women portrayed in the statuettes as "the parisienne of the ancient world". Oscar Wilde, in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), has Dorian liken his love, Sybil, to "the delicate grace of the Tanagra figurine that you have in your Studio, Basil." [1] Later, in his play An Ideal Husband (1895), Wilde introduces the character of Mabel Chiltern upon her entrance by stating (amongst further description), "she is really like a Tanagra statuette, and would be rather annoyed if she were told so." [2]

Under the pressure of collectors' demands in the late 1800s, Tanagra terracottas began to be faked.

Purpose

The creation of the Tanagra figurines were serving a purpose among Greeks in the city of Tanagra as a religious statue These figurines were discovered in an excavation during the 19th century. The city of Tanagra was not necessarily a famous city such as the most famous Greek cities such as Athens, Sparta or Crete. The city of Tanagra had slowly started rising into historians and archeologists attention during the early 19th century after a war was breaking out between the Turks and it's their allies the British and the French after a warning of a French invasion. The purpose of creation of the Tanagra figurines would lead to different and similar statues being buried in the grave of the dead with other contents. The Tanagra figurine that were buried in the graves led to a theory that the small statues were the person's possession. The Tanagra figurines also in their creation served as a purpose for comfort among the dead. The figurines would serve as a comfort possession for the dead and send them to the next world in peace because they would be taking something from their old life with them. It is speculated that though it was normal to place the figurines in the grave of the dead it was not something that was essential to be placed in the grave such as a vase.

Figurines Representation

These figurines would be representing an everyday life of a Greek person such as a woman taking care of her children, or a child playing, as well as men and young children sitting and women playing games with other women or by themselves some of these figurines include:

Seated Women and girls
Women leaning against a column
Crouching woman
Pickaback
Men and young men
Eros
Aphrodite
Grotesques

References[edit]

Besques-Mollard, Simone, 1950. Tanagra (Paris: Braun)
Tanagra - Myth and Archaeology Exhibition, Paris, 2003; Montreal, 2004.
Thompson, Dorothy (1966) " The origin of Tanagras". American Journal of Archeology.70 (1): 51-63
Bell, Malcolm III (2014) Morgatina Studies: The Terracotas. Princeton University Press.
Dillon, Sheila (2010). The Female Portrait Statue in the Greek World. Cambridge University Press.

Notes[edit]

Jump up ^ The head and torso of an actor in comedy wearing a grotesquely grinning satyr's mask is at the Musée du Louvre.
Jump up ^ Jean-Léon Gérôme, Working in Marble, or The Artist Sculpting Tanagra, 1890
Jump up ^ Dahesh Museum, Gérôme's Tanagra, 2001.
Jump up ^ Zink and Porto 2005 report that 20 percent of the Tanagra terracottas in the British Museum have been identified as fakes.

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