Tanagra Figurines

The remnants of Greco-Roman society did not have an immediate, or obvious transformation from ruin to art. Their admittance into Renaissance collections, and later entry into Enlightenment museums was not a preordained evolution, brought upon by some innate aura of historic importance. Rather, throughout the Middle Ages, these artifacts were imbedded with political and cultural capital. Through symbolically representing the wealth and power of their owner, they were made into items of historical significance and aesthetic value.

Although classical texts had been appreciated by medieval scholars, and Roman art incorporated into the religious sphere through deliberate symbolically significant modes of reuse, antiquity had not yet been perceived as a time past. Rather, the present was seen as an immediate extension of classical times.

For the 14th century humanists, however, antiquity was definitively contrasted to the present. An ideal example of cultural, philosophical and artistic longing, the concept of “antiquity” was not so much a historical reality, but a utopic construction, lost and inaccessible by the passage of time. Along with this new conception of antiquity came a changing approach to history. Instead of existing as a lineal chronology to salvation, history became perceived as an ordering of different ages, fundamentally distinct from each other in terms of lifestyle and culture.

The antiquity of the Enlightenment did not represent - as was the case in later centuries - merely a universe to explore and reconstruct through the study of ancient texts, but an ethical and aesthetic exemplum, 'like a lost Eden in which everything yearns to return.'

The increase in available materials for collection brought about another change in the relationship with ancient objects -- the need to organize them into an epistemological system, a need that would be translated to the idea of museums we know today. These Enlightenment era museums, beyond simply conserving art, were also occupied with education, specifically, employing antiquity as an ethical example

This rise in collection and increasing demand from new national museums had another effect: an unprecedented increase in the production and dissemination of fakes. 

The accompanying increase in art journals and publications, with their images of originals and biographical details, provided potential forgers with the necessary information for making fakes, with the public culture of museums contributing further.

"The large group of Greek terracottas known informally as Tanagras can be imagined as a single theme on which craftsmen of the early Hellenistic period wrote countless variations" - Malcolm Bell, Tanagras and the Idea of Type

From 1872-1873, a cache of what would later become known as “Tanagra” figurines was discovered in the necropolis in the village of Schimatari, close to ancient Tanagra. Though the digs were not legally sanctioned, and many scholars were deterred from research by the private ownership of the land, the figurines were popular purchases for both museums and private collections. Shortly after, however, discoveries in Smyrna and Myrina in Asia Minor came onto the market, problem-free relations with the owners of these sites enabled French scholars to conduct systematic excavations.

The resulting finds of numerous figurines was initially received with enthusiasm by the antiquities market. But as sales began to increase, and figurines continued to flood the market, reports began to surface that not all were original. Dealers had begun to take advantage of gullibility of buyers and the ease through which fake figurines could be produced. Greek merchants in particular played an important role, as suppliers of figurines to dealers or even directly to collectors, a good portion of which were contemporary copies or restorations. As the great amount of Tanagras available in the art market made them increasingly accessible to amateurs and private collectors, the appreciation of the figurines continued to extend into the popular sphere.

Yet as the forgeries continued unchecked, and more cases began to emerge of fake figurines uncovered even in prestigious museum collections, by the beginning of the 20th century, few collectors were risking the expensive purchase. Even scholars began to avoid them, distrustful of the veracity of the artifacts behind their theories and reluctant to make claims on potentially forged items.

To fully understand how collectors and museum professionals engaged with the past through Tanagra figurines, it is necessary to return to the moment of initial collection, before museum exhibits or claims of forgery had come into play

For the majority of collectors, the precise moment that the artifacts now in their collections had been excavated from Greece was unknown. Rising from a background of illicit excavation and the exploitation of local trade networks, it was often better for the specifics to go unaccounted for. Instead, collectors and museums fell back on the standard answer, the singular truth that seemingly bound the varied figurines together: they were “From Tanagra,” as the Appleton Tanagra display at the Museum of Fine Arts proudly stated in 1900.

Two Tanagras existed simultaneously: the ancient Tanagra, rich with Greek myth and history, and the modern Tanagra set in ruins. Through the initial collection of the Tanagras, the figurines were rescued from decay. The collected artifacts, removed from the ruins, become a vessel for seeing the mythic, ancient past of Tanagra. Their exit from the earth thus becomes a catalyst for the reconfiguration of the landscape back to its authentic, mythic self. 

“young girls with a smiling modesty, mistresses, that one would take for Parisiennes of the nineteenth century.” - “l’Exposition Universelle de 1878 illustrée”

"It seems that the maker of the figures and their buyers in general had no other thought than that of pleasant miniature reproductions of the life of their own day." - Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 51 (Jun., 1911)

"Most of the Athenian archaeologists, who have had the best opportunity of studying the figures with all the circumstances connected with their discovery, have come to the conclusion that, viewing, the individuality observable in the expression and attitude of the statuettes, the ornamentation, costume, and the objects held in the hands, there is nothing to indicate that they have any mythological import, but represent merely the figures of persons who were familiar to the domestic life of Tanagra at that time." - Exhibition of Votive Statuettes Found at Tanagra

The Tanagras provided a human side to history, immediately appealing to collectors who sought to understand the past through them. While the “grand severity” and “lofty calm” of gods and goddesses too showed a vision of history, this human character of the Tanagras allowed it newfound accessibility through the lens of human daily life. The humanness of the figurines was something collectors and museums could relate to, particularly their depiction of femininity. While the Tanagras as figurines served as a vessel through which the mythic Greek past could be accessed, their human character allowed the past to be understood through the narratives of authentic daily life. 

Museums are the arenas in which this imaginary idea of the past is played out. In the case of classical art museums, this imaginary idea of the past is “antiquity” - a bounded, narrativized time past that can be experienced by interacting with the objects of an exhibit. This experience of antiquity is often ruled by authenticity, or the desire to make the imaginary idea of the past brought on by the exhibit feel as close to truth as possible.

"We may imagine a lady of Tanagra in the shop of a coroplast, engaged in selecting a figurine: 'it must be a maiden, standing erect, with flowing tunic.' She hesitates over the position of the arms, and the craftsman tactfully suggests that they support a basket above her head or hold a mirror before her face. 'The tunic must be colored blue, and the overdrappery rose,' are her final directions." - The American Magazine of Art, vol. 16, no. 4, (August 1925)

But if this authentic history intrinsically relied on the assumption that the artifacts were real, what happened when a great quantity of the Tanagras in collection were revealed as fakes?

Fakes violate the promise of objects, taking on stories that are not their own and fooling those seeking to interact with them as “witnesses” of the past. This idea of dethroning the fake from its pedestal of “authenticity” rests on the belief that things can change their essential nature from moment to moment. The revelation of an object as a fake not only strips it from praise, but degrades its essential nature, causing it to appear less and less beautiful.

The fundamental key to the narrative of antiquity they produced, the key to the Tanagras serving as the vessel through which museums, collectors and visitors could access the past was destroyed.

Born from new ways of conceptualizing art and history in the Renaissance, antiquity was, and continues to be a construction. In museums and collections, this construction takes the form of an experience, built up by the series of narratives crafted for each artifact, whether consciously or not, by those who engage with them. It was these narratives that allowed viewers to connect to the figurines and thus connect to what they perceived as an authentic classical past.

The humanized character of the Tanagras, and the daily life activities they represented only made such a narrative easier; late 19th century and 20th century scholars and collectors were quick to “imagine” and “recreate” these past daily life activities from the Tanagras, and quickly latched on the traditional, graceful femininity they represented as a model for their own times.

Since their initial removal from Greek soil, the figurines had served as a vessel through which the landscape could be reconstructed into that of a mythic antiquity. Through these daily life narratives they further acted as a vessel through which the modern viewer could be connected to the ancient past through the easily relatable ordinary human character they represented. 

However, this connection, and resulting “understanding” of the past that arose, was predicated on the assumption that the figurines truly had been crafted in 4th century BCE Greece. Otherwise, the narrative connection that resulted between viewer in modernity and the figure as a “witness” to the daily life of the past could not exist. Thus, when the forgeries, most notably of the Appleton collection, emerged, newspapers and museums immediately withdrew the figurines from display, citing feelings of deception and betrayal.