Female figure; Tanagra, Beocia, 3rd century.

Female figure; Tanagra, Beocia, 3rd century.
Terracotta.
Measurements: 13 x 7 x 6 cm.
Terracotta sculpture representing a kneeling lady, a posture that is unusual in this type of figures, thus confirming the exceptionality of this work. At the end of the 4th century B.C. a style of clay modeling, known as "Tanagra style", was developed in the city of the same name. In these figures the classical composition of the body disappears, so that sometimes a leg is placed slightly to one side, either backwards or forwards. The arms no longer hang rigidly next to the body, as in the archaic or classical period, but rest on the belly, chest or back, or rest on the hip. They rarely carry other attributes.
Tanagra, also called Tanagraois, was a city of Boeotia, near the border with Attica, in a territory called Pemandride, which produced the best wine of Boeotia. Perched high up, with its temples separated from the houses, it had an important necropolis. Of particular note are some human figures made in terracotta and called "tanagrines", fashionable in the ancient Greek world from the late fourth century BC to the late third century BC, found mainly in Hellenistic tombs, but also in the temples, and found in large quantities from the last third of the nineteenth century approximately. They were part of the trousseaus, and generally belonged to the Attic school of sculpture, with a strong influence of the school of Praxiteles (as seen in the present case by the curve that forms the figure at the hips, "invention" of this sculptor and therefore known as "Praxitelian curve"), with faces of sweet expression and a certain languid air, and probably made in Athenian workshops in many cases. Similar discoveries have been made in Myrina (present-day Turkey), Cyrene (Italy) and Alexandria (Egypt).