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Rare Greek kore head found in Vulci
The marble head of a kore, a type of free-standing statue from the Greek Archaic period (800-480 B.C.) depicting a young female figure, has been discovered in the ancient Etruscan city of Vulci, central Italy. The head of the female statue is one of only a handful of known large-scale Greek Archaic statues ever discovered outside of Greece.
The kore head was found in an excavation of the area of a monumental temple discovered in 2021 as part of the ongoing Vulci Cityscape project. The sculpture depicts a young woman with almond-shaped eyes and a serene smile known as an “archaic smile” intended to convey a sense of ideal harmony and well-being rather than happiness. Her hair is elaborately curled and braided. It is attributed to an Attic workshop of the early 5th century B.C.
“The discovery of the late Archaic marble head of Kore at Vulci is an event of extraordinary significance both for its artistic value and for the implications it carries. It was not simply a prestigious votive gift that was found, but a concrete testimony to the spiritual and therefore politico-civil ties that united Etruria and the Greek world. This is an archaeological discovery that can change our perception of the world as would happen with a new scientific law. It reshapes our representation of reality cognitively, symbolically and also politically,” said Minister Alessandro Giuli. “It is no coincidence that this happens in Vulci, a city open to contact through its port, recently acquired by the Ministry of Culture, and through the hinterland where already from the Orientalizing period, from the end of the 8th century B.C., all the objects, but above all the rituals, now reconstructible thanks to new diagnostic tools for archaeology, confirm to us a dynamism, a cultural permeability that still today must represent and represent our models.”
The head is currently at the Central Institute for Restoration (ICR) in Rome, where it is being cleaned and conserved. It will be thoroughly analyzed to investigate the traces of original polychromy that survive on the marble surface, what materials and techniques were used to create the piece.
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