Venus of Willendorf Statue

Venus of Willendorf

Meet the OG (original goddess). Around 30,000 years ago, someone with a lump of limestone and a lot of vision carved a woman with generous curves, a patterned headdress, and zero interest in your opinion of her body. She's one of the oldest known works of art in the world, and she's still a good deal more confident than most of us.

A Little History
The original was found in August 1908 during an excavation near the village of Willendorf in Lower Austria. She's just 4.4 inches tall, carved from oolitic limestone that doesn't occur locally, so someone carried her stone a long way. Recent scans suggest it came from northern Italy, or possibly as far as Ukraine. She was once painted with red ochre. Her face is missing entirely, and her arms rest lightly over her breasts. She lives at the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

As for what she was for, nobody actually knows. Her body emphasizes fertility and childbearing, so many scholars have read her as a fertility charm or mother goddess. Others see a good luck talisman, a self-portrait, or something else we've lost the key to. She's also not really a "Venus." The nickname was slapped on by early archaeologists, and many scholars now prefer "Woman of Willendorf." She predates the Roman goddess by tens of thousands of years, so she was Venus before Venus was cool.

Details
Polyresin. 2 3/8" x 2 1/4" x 4 3/4"