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Grave Statue of a Girl ("Dreaming Girl")

Grave Statue of a Girl ("Dreaming Girl")

Details

Artist
Unknown Greek sculptor (Classical)
Museum
Glyptothek
Year
-360
Medium
marble
Type
sculpture

The story

Around 360 BC some families in Attica, the countryside of Athens, were no longer content with a carved slab on a grave and set up statues in the round on their burial plots. This girl comes from such a tomb. She stands just under a metre tall, her cheek resting on her hand, a gesture that Greek grave art often gives to grief.

In English she is usually called the Dreaming Girl. German descriptions call her a mourning girl. The statue itself does not tell us whether she stood for the dead child or for someone grieving at the grave, and no inscription survives to settle it.

She shares Room IV with the grave stele of Mnesarete, which was carved some 20 years earlier.

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More works by Unknown Greek sculptor (Classical)

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