Lady of Elche
The Lady of Elche is an Iberian sculpture made of limestone between the V and IV a. C.. It is a bust that represents a lady, richly dressed, whose face shows very perfect features. On her head she wears a headdress made up of a tiara covered by a veil, a diadem on her forehead and, on the sides, two buns that frame her face and in which her hairstyle would be collected.
The back and shoulders are covered with a cloak that, on the front part, reveals three necklaces with amforillas and amulet holders, plate earrings and imitations on the sides of the face, and a fibula that closes the tunic. On the back it has a hole that suggests its possible use as a funerary urn. Originally it was polychrome and with the eyes filled with glass paste.
The piece was found by chance in 1897 at the La Alcudia site (Elche, Alicante) and, after the interest shown by the French Hispanist Pierre Paris, it was purchased by the Louvre Museum. In 1941, as a result of an exchange of works of art between Spain and France, it returned together with other works and was deposited in the Museo del Prado, and in 1971 it became part of the collections of the National Archaeological Museum of Spain, in Madrid.
Historical context
Iberian culture, developed between the VI century B.C. C. and the change of era throughout the eastern slope of the Iberian Peninsula, reached a very high degree of perfection in its material manifestations at a time when, due to the development of large Mediterranean states, trade relations were established from the Near East. to the Atlantic coasts.
Since the end of the Bronze Age, hierarchical structures had developed whose elites managed the production and transport of local merchandise, mining resources and products derived from agriculture and livestock, with a view to their commercialization. This exploitation of the territory implied an organized network of settlements that had a main nucleus and a set of villages and farms that supplied the city and generated the necessary surpluses for trade. Places of worship, such as temples, were located in Outstanding cities and centers that, therefore, combined economic and religious importance.
In this context, La Alcudia de Elche played an important role as a reference center around the course of the Vinalopó and Segura rivers, and its occupation spanned from prehistoric times to the Visigothic period. At first, the choice of its location was due to the quality of its soils, which would allow outstanding agricultural profitability. From the 8th century B.C. C., the incidence of Phoenician trade was felt in the area; there was a change in habitat structure and objects from the Eastern Mediterranean were introduced.
Since the late 19th century VI a. C., and in relation to Greek trade, coastal settlements multiplied and La Alcudia acquired a central role, with an area close to ten hectares. A complex urbanism developed, which lasted until Roman times (Colonia Iulia Ilici Augusta), and became an outstanding sculptural center thanks to the local stone quarries.
The wars between Carthage and Rome affected the area; the urban core suffered destruction in the second half of the III century BC. C., after which the influence of the Punic world intensified not only in the commercial field but also in beliefs. Symbols associated with the female figure, carnivores and birds of prey, and floral motifs predominate in iconography, as opposed to images of the aristocracy of the Edetana area. Women's representations were especially concentrated around Ilici.
History
Find and sell
On August 4, 1897, on the hill of La Alcudia, Elche, a series of agricultural tasks were being carried out. During a break from the day laborers, the young Manuel Campello Esclápez, who was helping his family with the chores, picked up a pick and began to work. Shortly after he came across a stone that, when he removed it, turned out to be the face of a figure; he notified the rest of his colleagues and one of them, Antonio Maciá, finished extracting it. The sculpture was based on a base of stone slabs, the front was covered with earth while the back and sides were protected by slabs. This version, unknown until 1940, differs from the official report written by Pere Ibarra a few days later. of discovery; in the official version, it was Antonio Maciá, a hired laborer, who found the Lady.
After notifying the foreman, Antonio Galiana Sánchez, they waited for the owner of the land, Dr. Manuel Campello, who ordered the bust to be transferred to his home in Elche. The news of the discovery of the Moorish Queen spread quickly and, to make it easier for the neighbors to see her, the doctor installed her on a piece of furniture on one of the balconies facing the street. Pedro Ibarra Ruiz, archaeologist and chronicler of Elche, wrote a document on August 14, 1897, spread the finding in the local press and took the first photographs. He sent some of them to the academic José Ramón Mélida, to the director of the Archaeological Museum Nacional, Juan de Dios de la Rada, and the German archaeologist Emil Hübner.
Days after the discovery, the archaeologist and professor Pierre Paris, from the University of Bordeaux, came to Elche invited by Pedro Ibarra to enjoy the Assumption festivities. Together they went to Dr. Campello's house to look at the piece, and then Pierre Paris sent a photograph to the Louvre Museum in Paris. Heading his Department of Oriental Antiquities was Léon Heuzey, who had Edmond Potier as a collaborator; they both saw the photograph and began the paperwork for the museum to purchase the sculpture. The curator Léon Paris advanced the money that would later be given to him by the banker Noel Bardac, owner from that moment on of the bust that he later donated to the museum.
Pierre Paris received a telegram telling him to offer between one thousand and four thousand francs; together with Pedro Ibarra they went to doctor Campello's house and he, at first, was reluctant to get rid of the work but finally decided to sell it for 4,000 francs. The sales contract was signed on August 18 and the sculpture left Elche on August 30 to Alicante, where he embarked for Marseille.
Repercussion of the finding
Pedro Ibarra had attested to the discovery to the local press, official organizations and scientific personalities. One of those organizations was the National Archaeological Museum which, according to Ramos Folqués, received the news on August 11, 1897 and whose reply, in which it did not seem to show special interest in the bust, took place on August 17. However, said correspondence does not appear in the archive of the Museum, therefore, either it never existed or it has not been preserved.
One of the first personalities to appreciate the piece was José Ramón Mélida, who published an article in the Magazine of Archives, Libraries and Museums (1897) and in the Boletín de la Real Academy of History (1897); In it, he reproduced two photographs of the bust and interpreted the piece as the upper half of a complete sculpture of a woman and related her jewelry to the sculptures on Cerro de los Santos.
In the press the repercussion was not great because events of great importance were taking place at that time, such as the assassination of Cánovas del Castillo on August 7, 1897 or the war in Cuba. The first newspaper that published the news was La Correspondencia de Alicante, in which an article by Pedro Ibarra was published on August 8, 1897, although it was dated August 7. Other newspapers that published the news were La Ilustración Española y Americana, La Ilustración Ibérica and La Ilustración Artística.
Pedro Ibarra expressed his discomfort at the sale of the piece through various writings, known as Efemérides Ilicitanas; in them he made it clear that he had nothing to do with the sale and that Dr. Campello acted as soon as he received the first offer. Several newspapers also echoed the sale; On October 27, 1897, the Heraldo de Madrid published a letter from Félix de Montemar to Juan Facundo Riaño in which he asked him to do everything possible to establish laws in Spain that would protect heritage and prevent your departure from the country. On November 8, 1897, El País published a letter from Pedro Ibarra to the director of the Heraldo de Madrid in which he justified Dr. Campello's decision as he had not received any offer Purchased by the National Archaeological Museum.
The Lady in Paris
Before the Lady's arrival in Paris, the magazine Hebdomadaire published a story about the discovery of the work and its upcoming arrival in the city. Once in Paris, it was presented by M. Léon Heuzey, curator of the Louvre Museum, at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres on September 24, 1897. This presentation was reviewed in the magazine L'illustration on October 2 of the same year and in it the sculpture was described as Spanish with oriental influences. From that moment she was known as Dama de Elche, alluding to her place of origin.
In the Louvre Museum it was exhibited in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in December 1897. At first it was installed in the Sarzec Room, next to the Palmyra sculptures, but it was moved to Room XVI, where it was placed in a showcase Since September 1908, a reproduction, the work of Ignacio Pinazo, was also exhibited in Room VI or Ibérica, along with the rest of the Iberian sculpture collection.
Since then, various researchers have studied the piece. One of them was Emil Hübner, to whom Pedro Ibarra communicated the news of the discovery. His first impressions were recorded in a letter to Pedro Ibarra himself, dated August 14, 1897, but a more detailed study was collected in the Chronicle of the German Archaeological Institute, with an article entitled Die buste von Ilici (1898). In it, he described the work as "genuinely Iberian" and related it to the rest of the sculptures on Cerro de los Santos.
At the end of the twenties the first proposals were made, by Pierre Paris, for the Lady to return to Spain, specifically to the House of Velázquez, as reported by El Imparcial in November 28, 1928. However, the French responsible for such a decision denied it. Subsequently, on May 9, 1935, the Spanish ambassador in France, Juan de Cárdenas, wrote to Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, deputy director of the Prado Museum, who had spoken with the French Minister of Education about the possibility of exchanging the Lady of Elche for some French work of art available in the Museo del Prado.
After the civil war, during which these first contacts would be interrupted, in 1940 negotiations were resumed. On July 3 of that year, Francisco Íñiguez Almech, General Commissioner of the National Artistic Heritage Defense Service, Joaquín María de Navascués, Luis Pérez Bueno and Marcelino Macarrón were appointed to investigate the deposits of stolen artistic objects existing in France. On September 19, Macarrón and Pérez Bueno wrote a letter about their stay in Paris, in which they also alluded to a report by José María de Navascués regarding the works that had to be brought from the Louvre and Cluny museums, and indicated the pieces that Spain could deliver in exchange.
On September 24 of the same year, Ambassador José Félix de Lequerica wrote to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ramón Serrano Suñer announcing that contacts had already been made with the directors of French museums to recover works of art of special interest to Spain, among which were the Lady of Elche, the Concepción de Murillo, the treasure of Guarrazar, the capitals of Montealegre, the stelon of Tajo Montero, the collection of Hispanic sculptures in the Louvre Museum and some documents from the General Archive of Simancas.
On November 25, the Council of Ministers authorized the General Director of Fine Arts to continue the negotiations officially (until then they were unofficial) and indicated the set of French and Spanish works that would be part of the exchange. Finally, on December 21, 1940, the exchange agreement was signed in Paris by Francisco Íñiguez, representing the Spanish government, and by Louis Hautecoeur, general director of Fine Arts, representing the French government.
Return to Spain
Despite the fact that the agreement of December 21 had not yet been signed, in view of Conception Day (December 8) the first of the works of the exchange arrived in Spain, the Immaculate Conception by Murillo. This fact was discussed by Pérez Bueno y Macarrón to the French Minister of Public Instruction in October 1940, although the opinion about it was that Petain decided to go ahead with the definitive agreement as a sign of goodwill and as thanks to Franco for his neutrality in the war..
The painting was picked up at the border by Luis Monreal Tejada, Commissioner of the National Artistic Heritage Defense Service, and arrived in Madrid on December 7. The Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum, dated December 9, included in its minutes the government's decision to accept the exchange and proposed that the Lady of Elche stay in the museum in compensation for the works that would leave its funds for France.
On February 8, 1941, more pieces of the exchange arrived through Irún, those coming from Paris, and Portbou, those coming from Montauban. The Lady passed through this last border, in a special carriage, accompanied by René Huyghe, curator of painting at the Louvre Museum. In total, 35 boxes were collected on behalf of the Spanish government. The wagon was escorted by the Armed Police to Barcelona and the following day the train arrived at Atocha, where it was received by the Marqués de Lozoya (general director of Fine Arts) and by Paul Guinard (director of the French Institute), among others.
On February 11, the documents from the Simancas Archive arrived in Irún and the following day they were received in Madrid. The Museo del Prado, in the hands of its director Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, signed the receipt of all the works on February 26, and on June 27 the Delivery Act was signed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Serrano Súñez and the French ambassador, Pietri. Immediately afterwards, an exhibition was inaugurated at the Prado Museum with the most representative works of the exchange, among them the Immaculate Conception by Murillo, the Lady of Elche, part of the crowns from Guarrazar, the diadem from Ribadeo, the Timaterio from Calaceite and a selection of documents from the Simancas Archive. During the following weeks, the works that Spain would deliver to France were decided, among them the Portrait of Antonio de Covarrubias, by El Greco, a Portrait of Mariana of Austria, by Velázquez, or the tapestry The fight in the New Sale, by Goya. The complete list of works was published on July 20 by the Journal Officiel de l'État Frangais (no. 3039 Law of July 19, 1941 regulating Franco-Spanish artistic exchange) and its reception was accompanied, as in the Spanish case, by an exhibition at the Vieux-Vichy Museum, whose inauguration took place on September 24 and which was attended by Marshal Petain.
The Lady remained in the Museo del Prado (catalogue number E433) for 30 years, from when she returned to Spain until 1971, the year in which by Ministerial Order of January 29, she was incorporated into the permanent collection of the Archaeological Museum Nacional, with inventory number 1971/10/1. Meanwhile, in 1965 the work returned to Elche on the occasion of the seventh centenary of the Mystery of Elche.
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On January 19, 2006, the Minister of Culture of Spain, Carmen Calvo, made public the decision to temporarily cede the Lady to her city of origin; from that moment a process began that culminated on May 18, 2006, in which the Lady presided over the inauguration of the Archaeological and History Museum of Elche, in the Altamira Palace, and the exhibition «From Ilici to Elx, 2500 years of history» that took place in different venues of the city.
Description and symbolism
Like any other exceptional archaeological find, the Lady of Elche presents some aspects related to identity, original form, function, influences, place and time of realization that are difficult to interpret. To them we should also add that it lacks context.
- Proceedings
Since the discovery of the piece in 1897, various scholars have expounded their theory on the origin of the Lady. The pre-Roman Iberian world was generally unknown, so the duality between the Greek and the Orientalizing was present in theories such as those of León Heuzey (1897) or Pierre Paris (1910), who considered the piece to be Greco-Asian in style but of peninsular manufacture. Others, such as P. Ibarra (1897), considered it Greco-Phoenician or Hispanic as a Greek artist, and others came to study it by comparing its measurements with those of a classical-era Apollo.
The features of his face are reminiscent of Greek sculpture, but since these canons were automatically repeated, there could not have been such a direct Greek influence. Some details, such as the buns or side bows, resemble Greek models, but they are common in almost the entire Mediterranean and their dissemination was led by the Punics and Carthaginians. hanging amforillas, which were common in orientalizing environments of the Mediterranean in the IV-III a. C., and in the necklaces that, like the third, have tongue-shaped pendants. Both types of pendants appear in Iberian sculpture around the IV century BC. C..
Other details, such as the fibula, of the Hispanic annular type, place the piece in a Hispanic environment and date it to around the centuries V-IV a. C.. Likewise, the miter, the interior decoration of the rims based on a palmette and the pendants are frequent in the Celtiberian sphere of the Meseta at the same time.
- Technical
As well as the stylistic influences of the piece, its execution is also diverse. The perfection of the face, comparable to classical Greek sculpture, contrasts with deficiencies in the modeling of the volume and anatomical forms, in the vein of other Iberian ladies; Thus, for example, her angular clothing and rigid, geometric folds make her resemble the offering lady of Cerro de los Santos.
The carving marks on the piece, carved in limestone, are few and limited to inconspicuous areas, making it difficult to tell how it was sculpted. There are razor or adze marks on the base and chisel cuts in the dorsal cavity and chin, in the folds of the mantle, face and rims. Another finer chisel was used in the pretenses and another, struck with a flower pot, in the details of the rims. In the eyes and mouth, as well as in the folds of the mantle, the half round was used. The entire surface was polished and reviewed. In addition, the piece presents some blows of alcotana fruit of the moment of its discovery.
- Original form
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The original aspect of the sculpture has been debated. Regarding the theory that it was originally a bust, the arguments to reject it were based on the absence of a basal finial and the non-existence of busts in Iberian art. However, there are Iberian bust sculptures and the absence of a base is frequent, for example, in the works of the Cerro de los Santos. In addition, in the Mediterranean there is a tradition of sculptures of busts or protomes, in terracotta or stone, so it would not be strange that the Lady had always been a bust.
On the contrary, another theory proposes a full-body figure, which would have been sectioned at chest height and would originally be seated or standing, frequent sculptural types in Iberian art. This theory goes back to the moment of discovery when, for example, Pierre Paris indicated the possibility that it was fragmented. Despite the fact that its original form will never be known, both positions are not exclusive and thus some authors propose that at a certain moment, and perhaps linked to a change in function and meaning, the sculpture was sectioned.
Regarding its physical appearance, the remains of polychromy, the description of the colors made by its discoverer and the polychromy in other Iberian sculptures allow us to ensure that the Lady of Elche was polychrome. Likewise, the holes for the eyes would have vitreous paste or stone inlays.
- Function
Already at the time of its discovery, Ibarra suggested the use of the dorsal cavity in relation to a supposed oracle. From 1971, after the discovery of the Lady of Baza and other sculptures, whose cavities contained remains of the cremation of a corpse, it was suggested that the Lady's cavity would have the same function and, therefore, the sculpture would have a specific use. funeral.
In 2011, María Pilar Luxán analyzed microparticles from the posterior cavity of the piece with electron microscopy and dispersive X-ray spectrometry techniques, among others. She deduced that they belong to ashes from human bones, she compared them with those from the Iberian period and concluded that the piece was used as a funerary urn in the Iberian period.
Another hypothesis, raised at the time by Hubner, is that the cavity was used to insert a butt and thus be possible to attach it to the wall of a temple, but the weight of the piece makes this function unfeasible. The third hypothesis raised was that it would serve as a container for relics.
The stone slabs that surrounded it indicate that there was a desire to preserve the sculpture, which could be interpreted as an intentional concealment, although for unknown reasons.
- Identity
From the moment of its discovery there were controversies regarding the sex of the figure represented; thus Ibarra identified her with a man while Paris, Hubner or Heuzey identified her with a woman, a generally accepted position today. The features of her face, in addition to being idealized, are stereotyped, as occurs in Etruscan or archaic Greek sculpture. However, some authors, such as García Bellido, believe that it is a portrait, specifically that of a deceased woman.
Regarding their character, it is possible that they wanted to represent a divinity but were based on a real person, on a human model. If, therefore, the sculpture had a divine character, it can be identified with a fertility goddess, represented as an enthroned mother goddess in the style of Cybele, Isis or Ceres, or as Juno. Ibarra identified her with Apollo or with some local god of a salutary nature.
On the contrary, if it had a human character, the abundance of jewels and ornaments could indicate that it is the representation of some royal character or of the local nobility, or that it is a priestess or an offerer, at the same time Just like other Iberian ladies. Another theory, by M. Fernández, points out that she could be the representation of a bride due to her gesture and the richness of the jewels.
- Data
The dating of the piece has been disputed since the time of its discovery and different theories have proposed dates from the V span> a. C. up to I a. C. but from the formal, typological and stylistic analysis, the piece is located in a period between the centuries V and IV a. C..
Likewise, different opinions have been given speculating about the possibility that it was not ancient but a modern fraud. In 1995 Karen D. Vitelli and John F. Moffitt published Art Forgery: The Case of the Lady of Elche, where they argued that the piece was fake and had been made in 1896-97. However, the analysis of its polychromy carried out in 2005 by the team led by María Pilar Luxán, from the CSIC, revealed the age of the pigment and the structure of the primer and pigmentation layers, as well as the process of its loss by dissolution and recrystallization of the mortar plaster that was prepared to receive the color.