According to the researchers, it is a portrait of a woman. The reconstruction of a skeleton of woman discovered in 1949 in a burial on this same site strongly resembles this portrait.
A 26,000 -year -old portrait
If there are several traces of an artistic expression of several thousand years old, such as rock paintings, engravings which date back to the Upper Paleolithic (45,000 and 12,000 BC), the works representing more details Specific of anatomy, like portraits, are significantly more recent.
And the oldest ever found would be a sculpted face in Mammoth ivory, found in the Southern Moravia region in the Czech Republic. Called “The head of Dolní Vestonce”, named after the small village where the excavations were carried out, and discovered in the 1920s, it would have been created around 24,000 BC. J.-C.
Today, the portrait model would therefore be 26,000 years old. According to an article in Live Science, the small engraving measures 4.8 cm high and 2.4 cm wide and was sculpted with stone tools.
The Pompeii of the Stone Age
By focusing on engraving, you can easily identify raised hair, eyes, chin, nose, mouth … which differentiates this face from others known and that it is very detailed and therefore individualized.
Dolní Vestonice is nicknamed “the Pompeii of the Stone Age”. The researchers have found many ceramic tools, bone objects and burials, as well as the oldest baked pottery in the world. It is therefore quite possible that this little engraving is the oldest personal portrait in the world … At least never discovered.
Portrait little story
According to a brief history of the portrait written by an educational file, the reason why this genre is also recent in the history of art is attributed to sacred values to the representation of the face, which was most of the Time reserved for the deceased in order to register them in posterity. The portrait also plays a political role. It is in the Middle Ages that the portrait experienced a more important decline, giving way to Christian iconography.
It was not until the 18th century that the portrait became a common practice, but again it is reserved for individuals and the wealthiest families. Finally in the 19th century, the diversification and the release of styles allowed a revival of the portrait which this time illustrates the least affluent strata of the population. Among them, Steinlein who is interested in the working -class world and specifically in the work of women.
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