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One of the wonders and delights of working on my blog is the fascinating things I stumble across during my research for articles. Usually they have nothing to do with the article I'm working on but they give me inspiration to do something entirely different.
A case in point is when I was working on the Arthur Murry article (link below), I came across this image of this voluptuous quartet.
So, I decided to do an article on them one day. Well, the day's here and I've found links to wonderful videos while doing this blog on the oldest form of prehistoric art, Art of the Upper Paleolithic (links below). And I discovered the above image is actually different views of the same figure.
The Venus of Willendorf is an 11.1-centimetre-tall (4.4 in) Venus figurine estimated to have been made c. 30,000 years ago. It was recovered on 7 August 1908 from an archaeological dig conducted by Josef Szombathy, Hugo Obermaier, and Josef Bayer at a Paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria. The figurine was found by a workman and is carved from an oolitic limestone that is not local to the area, and tinted with red ochre. It is in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria as of 2003.
Similar sculptures, first discovered in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, are traditionally referred to in archaeology as
"Venus figurines", due to the widely held belief that depictions of nude
women with exaggerated sexual features represented an early fertility
deity, perhaps a mother goddess. The reference to Venus
is metaphorical, however, since the figurines predate the mythological figure of
Venus by many thousands of years. Some scholars reject this
terminology, instead referring to the statuette as the Woman of or from Willendorf (Prudes, I guess).
Catherine McCoid and LeRoy McDermott hypothesize that the figurines may have been created as self-portraits by women. This theory stems from the correlation of the proportions of the statues
to how the proportions of women's bodies would seem if they were
looking down at themselves, which would have been the only way to view
their bodies during this period. They speculate that the complete lack
of facial features could be accounted for by the fact that sculptors did
not own mirrors. This reasoning has been criticized by University of California
anthropologist Michael S. Bisson, who notes that water pools and puddles
would have been readily available natural mirrors for Paleolithic
humans
Very little is known about the Venus' origin, method of creation, or cultural significance; however, it is one of numerous "Venus figurines" surviving from Paleolithic Europe. Research published in 2022 indicates that the closest and most likely
source of the oolite used is on the other side of the Alps in northern
Italy, near Lake Garda. A lesser possibility is that it came from a site in eastern Ukraine
some 1,600 km (1,000 mi) away. While the former has the highest
statistical probability, the latter is closer to sites in southern
Russia where similarly styled figurines have been found. In either case,
this raises questions regarding the mobility of ancient populations.
The purpose of the carving is the subject of much speculation. (I'll bet! - check out the video links below but you have to be over 21!)
The end!
Viewfinder link:
Net links:
YouTube links:
Art Vault ~ Was the Venus Of Willendorf A Self Portrait?
Lost History ~ Venus of Willendorf
LZGD Filmsy ~ Venus of Willendorf (8 mins., 9 secs.)
PS Wallace ~ The 'Woman of Willendorf' (25 mins., 35 secs.)
Styrous® ~ Monday, June 22, 2026
