Leseprobe

18 Male ‘idol’ with dagger Cycladic, c. 2300/2200 BCE Marble, probably Naxian; height 23 cm Purchased from Alexander Margaritis, Athens, in 1914 Inv. no. ZV 2595 A Dutch nobleman by the name of Pasch van Krienen was one of the first to dis- cover the statuettes that a famous 19th-century archaeologist still referred to as ‘marble monsters’, although they are known today as ‘Cycladic idols’. While trav- elling around the Aegean in 1771, Van Krienen uncovered tombs on the island of Ios. According to the report he published shortly afterwards, among the objects he discovered was a ‘piccolo Idolo di pietra di paragone’ – a small touchstone (lydite) figure. If the identification of the object as a Cycladic idol is correct, it is surely one of the very few of the genre to have been sculpted in this dark rock, (marble being the customary material). A drawing of a Cycladic idol – so-called, despite on this occasion being discovered in Attica – was published in 1817. It prompted a slew of discoveries on the Cyclades by farmers who chanced upon the idols while working the land. The accession of four idols at the Skulpturensammlung was registered relatively early in 1859, where they are described in that year’s annual report as ‘marble figures of genuine Greek origins, highly unusual from an art-historical perspective’. They had been acquired in Naxos by the Königliche Berg-Comissar, the ‘royal commis- sioner of excavations’, Karl Gustav Fiedler, in 1837. The figure shown here was the last of a total eight Cycladic idols to join the Dresden collection. It is one of the few idols whose subject – possibly a warrior – is shown bearing arms.  |  sk