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Statuette of a Boy-God

Statuette of a Boy-God

either 16th century BC or early 20th century

Minoan , Crete

Carved ivory
6 1/2 x 2 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (16.5 x 6.3 x 3.8 cm)
Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund
57.56
Provenance: [Feuardent, Paris, late 1910s, in group of objects said to have been discovered by "a Cretan miller," many of which known not to be genuine at the time]; purchased from Feuardent by Sir Arthur Evans (1851-1941), probably late 1910s or early 1920s - 1941 (his death); to Jacob Hirsch, executor of the Evans estate; purchased from Mr. Hirsch by Seattle Art Museum (Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund), accessioned January 4, 1957
location
Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistoryWorcester, Massachusetts, Worcester Art Museum, 1938

Unversity Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, Echoes from Olympus: Reflections of Divinity in Small-Scale Classical Art, Oct. 1 - Nov. 17, 1974
Published ReferencesEvans, Sir Arthur J., The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustrated by the discoveries at Knossos, Volume III: The great transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of the Palace, London: 1930, pp. 443 ff.

Bosanquet, Ellen S., ed., Robert Carr Bosanquet: Letters and Light Verse, Gloucester, England: John Bellows Ltd., 1938, pp. 218-219 (November 22, 1928)

Ancient Gems from the Collection of Sir Arthur Evans, in Worcester Art Museum News Bulletin and Calendar. Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, no. 7, April 1938, unnumbered p. 2.

The Art Quarterly, Autumn 1957, p. 317, illus. p. 319

Rumpf, Barbara, The Museum's Boy God, in Puget Soundings. Seattle: Junior League of Seattle, Inc., Janaury 1965, p. 25.

Robkin, A. L. H., The Eye of the Beholder, in AIA/SAM Symposium publication, Art and Archaeology in the Mediterranean World, Seattle: AIA/SAM, 1984, pp. 55-95, illus no. 4.

Joice, Gail, Michael Knight, and Pamela McClusky, Ivories in the Collection of the Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1987, no. 11, p. 15

Butcher, Kevin and David W. J. Gill, The Director, the Dealer, the Goddess, and Her Champions: The Acquistion of the Fitzwilliam Goddess, in the American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 97 No. 3, July 1993, p. 396, esp. footnote 36.

Lapatin, Kenneth, Mysteries of the 'Snake Goddess' and Other Unprovenienced 'Minoan' Statuettes, Unpublished paper, 1996, pp. 48ff.

Hemingway, Sean, The place of the Palaikastro Kouros in Minoan bone and ivory sculpture, in MacGillivray, J.A. and J. M. Driessen, L.H. Sackett. The Palaikastro Kouros: A Minoan Chryselephantine Statuette and its Aegean Bronze Age Context, Athens: British School at Athens, Studies 6, 2000, p. 120, illus. pl. 30a, illus. listing p. 13

Lapatin, Kenneth D.S., Boy Gods, Bull Leapers, and Mother Goddesses, in Source: Notes in the History of Art, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Special Issue on Forgeries of Ancient Art), Fall 2000, pp. 18-28, illus. fig. 1

Lapatin, Kenneth D.S., Snake Goddesses, Fake Goddesses, in Archaeology, Vol. 54, Issue 1, January/February 2001, p. 35, illus..

Lapatin, Kenneth, Mysteries of the 'Snake Goddess' and Other Unprovenienced 'Minoan' Statuettes, 2004, pp.1-57, illus no. 25.

Weingarten, Judith, Review of Mysteries of the Snake Goddess: Art, Desire, and the Forging of History, by Kenneth Lapatin, in the American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 108 No. 3, July 2004, pp. 459-460.

Cooper, Kate, The ROM 'Minoan' Goddess: the Suspect Sisters (and brothers), http://www.rom.on.ca/en/blog/the-rom-minoan-goddess-the-suspect-sisters-and-brothers. 2014.

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