Tanagra

The term "Tanagra" was coined in the nineteenth century to designate the statuettes that had just been found in 1870, by the hundreds, in the Mycenaean necropolis of Tanagra, an ancient Greek city of Boeotia. But we know today that the true home of creation of these tanagras was Athens from 340-330 BC. J.-C .. This artistic genre, carrier of Greek values, went far beyond the borders of these regions to spread throughout the Mediterranean basin in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, in Greece of course, but also from Anatolia to in Cyrenaica, passing through Egypt.

Young draped woman leaning against a pillar. Figurine in Greek terracotta, Tanagra production, late-thirteenth or early-twentieth century. Provenance: falls A from the necropolis of Tanagra. Louvre Museum.