From Palaeolithic “Venus” up to the anthropomorphic statue-menhir: The ideological evolution of the human body in prehistoric art

Abstract

The Human Body as an artistic topic nearly appears at the same time with the awakening of human being. Testimony are the Upper Palaeolithic paintings and graffiti engraved, scratched and coloured on every imaginable material support. To the end of the eighteenth century, the Malesian Archipelago tribes accused the western missionaries to have carried in their culture not the “notion of spirit” that they already possessed but that one of “body”. In fact, for the prehistoric man, the body was not anatomically separated and isolated from the rest of the objective and identified world like an individual. For them, the body and, in particular, the feminine body are the center of symbolic irradiation (cf., Cave of Cussac, France 25000 a.C.); that is, the “space” within the signs are thicker in the cosmic order. The prehistoric mentality, in fact, perceives the human body through the procedures of transformation and transmutation of the figures. Wanting to operate in an analytical way, the “body immaginery” is necessary to group the artistic production made in three layers: 1. Feminine bodies, a tutto tondo, appeared as the “Venus”, the “Neolithic Matrone” with great buttocks evidenced and breasts, often embellished with of the signs as V, W, zigzag, moon scythe, symbols of fecondation, fertility and regeneration; 2. Feminine male bodies o/e, Early Bronze Age Statue-Menhir (cf., III millennium, Lunigiana, Italy) hybrid expression of the Neolithic Atlantic megalitism and the Balkan-Danube one; 3. Male and/or feminine bodies as “praying man” type (cf., Nacquane, Valcamonica, Italy), appeared in the Neolithic and perduring until the maturity of the Greek world classic, full loads of movement, freedom and dynamicity.