Female Worshiper (c. 1600–1500 BCE): Art, History and Details

Female Worshiper (c. 1600–1500 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This extremely rare Minoan bronze statuette represents a girl worshiping a deity. It was probably left as a dedication to a divinity. She wears a flounced skirt over a sleeved robe open at the front. The figure shows a remarkable degree of detail, including looped earrings, bracelets, and a necklace. Her shaved hairstyle, not found on any other Minoan bronze statuette, matches that of painted figures in roughly contemporary frescoes uncovered on the island of Thera, north of Crete. Its excellent condition, rarity, fine detail, and balanced proportions set it apart from other statuettes of its type to have survived.

Object facts

• Title: Female Worshiper
• Date: c. 1600–1500 BCE
• Culture: Crete, Minoan, middle Minoan III–late Minoan I
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 14 cm (5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Sardinian and Cretan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 2002.89

A detail from the museum

The shaved head with prominent locks of hair indicates that this female votive figure is an adolescent.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd. Important Sales of Antiquities and Islamic and Indian Art, 2000-2010. New York: Oliver Forge, Brendan Lynch, 2010.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• Bennett, Michael. "A Walking Tour: The entire new museum wing by wing, with curators calling out a few favorite works in the collection.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 1 (January/February 2014): 8-33.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.