Paula Kuitenbrouwer

Venus, Mother, or Woman of Willendorf

The Venus of Willendorf was created circa 28.000-25.000 BCE, in Lower Austria. It is 11.1-centimetre-tall (4.4 inches).

What do you see? You see a faceless woman with large breasts, big hips, missing feet, and two tiny arms resting on her breasts. Unevenly distributed body fat is rare unless a disease is featured. But even if a diseased woman is shown, we can not function without a face and feet (both missing). Therefore this selective and exaggerated expression of features has lead to the speculation that this figurine is expressing an idea and not a person (selfies become fashionable much later).

Is Venus expressing fertility? It is hard to dismiss this assumption. Upon seeing this cute but impressive female figurine, my first reaction is ‘This woman can feed many babies’. Having said this, a big breast-size doesn’t guarantee breastfeeding. Nursing a baby sufficiently is about milk-glands, not about fat. Still, the Venus of Willendorf has two skinny arms resting on her large breasts. One could say proudly resting on her breasts, as if to show that her breasts are her biggest treasure.

This Venus is, in our eyes, related to fertility and not to sexiness, so many refer to this figurine as ‘The Woman of Willendorf’.

Christopher Witcombe criticizes: “The ironic identification of these figurines as ‘Venus’ pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste”. I agree despite the possibilities that how a good-looking woman looked like could have been differently defined 30.000 years ago (if such aesthetic feelings lingered in the mind of prehistoric people at all). Certainly, maximizing the survival of babies was hugely important and with that in mind, the Venus of Willendorf would indeed be better named as the Woman or even Mother of Willendorf.

Lionman

Lion-man is 40.000 years old and comes from Hohlenstein Stadel, Germany. ‘Man’ stands here for human, because the gender of this statutes is uncertain. This statute is 31 cm height, 3 times taller than Venus. Lion-man is half man- half animal. There are three lion-men, two are less known, probably belonging to the same ‘cult’.

Small Art Cards

I have decided to draw them both. Both Willendorf and Lionman are shown against a Lascaux themed background that shows the stick topped by a bird of the shamanistic scene of Lascaux ‘Prostrate man with bison’, hand stencils as found in many prehistoric caves, ‘Engraved deer’ and ‘Large black cow’, both Lascaux paintings.

A related post on prehistoric female figurines is here.

Small art cards from my drawing are available here. Size: 7.4 by 19.5 cm, that is about 3 by 4 inches. Very nice for to use as a bookmark, personal altar piece, a gift for a prehistoric enthusiast. Leave one at a prehistoric site as a gift for the next visitor? Should you need more than two, contact me please via the contact form and inform me where you live (postal code) and the amount of cards you like. I will send a link.

Paula Kuitenbrouwer

Paula Kuitenbrouwer lives with my husband and daughter in the Netherlands. Her art teachers were Charito Crahay, a Spanish-Dutch artist, and the Dutch artist Johan Kolman. Paula holds an MA degree in Philosophy (University of Utrecht & Amsterdam). Her pen and pencils are always fighting for her attention nevertheless they are best friends; she likes her art to be brainy and her essays to be artistic.

• Venus of Willendorf & Lionman
• Floral & Avian (Name) Commissions
• My Art-Making Kaizen
• A Visit to Holywell
• Baby Name Commission Drawing Painting