This tray will be populated in January 2023. You will see the digital copies of the upcoming exhibits.
Head of a Cycladic deity
A flat, lyre-shaped head with a sculptural representation of a flat nose on the front and the two auricles on the back sits on a round neck at a slight angle to the back. Jürgen Thimme attributed the original of this Giops replica, which is in Karlsruhe, to the Cycladic island of Amorgos in 1975. In the absence of written records of the Bronze Age Cycladic culture, the interpretation of the simple figures remains a mystery to this day.
Amorgos (Greece) / Plaster replica / Original: ca. 3000 to 1100 BC.
Priestess possibly sleeping/dreaming
The so-called "slumberer" is resting on a couch, dressed only in a fringed skirt. The head is resting on a small pillow. Hips and thighs arch into an oversized ball. But the hulking arms spill out into dainty hands, and the straight hair that falls to the shoulders frames a delicate face. It is not the archaic, majestic figure of the Magna Mater, but rather of an earthly woman who seems to be still listening in a relaxed sleep.
Interpretation according to Thomas Regau:
a) Priestess in healing sleep (since large megalithic temple oracle sites) Dreams in the service of guiding people and healing, site found in the realm of the dead, the dead send dreams to the sleeping.
b) devotional, healing seekers
c) expansive forms like Magna Mater
This is a replica. Location of the original: National Museum, La Valetta, Malta. Material of the original: Terracotta.
This tray will be populated in January 2023. You will see the digital copies of the upcoming exhibits.
Female seated figure
Tanzania / wood / ca. 1980
Mother's milk jug (goddess Isis with the Horus boy)
The body of the jar depicts a well-formed woman crouching on her lower legs or feet with a small boy lying with open legs on the mother's lap and in her right arm with his head in the crook of her elbow. The boy is reaching for his mother's breast with his left hand, his head is turned away. A chest ornament is painted on him with black paint. The woman's upper body is obviously unclothed, decorative bands are painted on her arms. The black-painted hair is gathered into a long tail at the back. On top of the woman's head is a cylindrical spout with a ring handle bent to the back of the head.
For the vessel of a squatting woman with child it can be inferred from medical-magical prescription texts that it played a role as a milk container in the treatment of sick women in childbed and newborn children.
Replica / Details of the original: Thebes (Egypt) / 15th century BC / today: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden te Leiden
"Mère et Enfant" - Mother and Child
In this sculpture, the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) depicts Rose Beuret, his partner and mother of his son Auguste, leaning towards her child.
Re-cast from the model (original made in Brussels 1875, cast at Strassacker in lost wax a cire perdue). Signed Rodin in the cast, numbered, dated and stamped. Edition: 750).
Standing I
The artist Emil Cimiotti depicts a woman's body without head and arms, clearly visible only the legs, the belly and a stylised breast. The feet are fused into the base of the stand. Next to the figure, three bronze fingers rise up to the figure's hip to match the swing of the leg, possibly stylised plants. Professor Lichtenstern, Berlin, remarked on the figure: "The torso belongs to a work phase of the second half of the 1960s whose smooth body language Cimiotti considered thoroughly atypical for him."
Bronze, 1967 (edition of 100 copies as an annual gift for the Kunstverein Braunschweig)
This tray will be populated in January 2023. You will see the digital copies of the upcoming exhibits.
Large seated figure
Figure sitting with knees drawn up and bent to the left, its head. At the base of the neck, a large hole (Ø ca. 3 cm, depth: ca. 3.5 cm) leads vertically into the torso. Breasts are only indicated, while the "enormous hips (...) merge into a steatopygic mountain range of thighs and buttocks". (Hunger, Heinz (1984) Die heilige Hochzeit. Prehistoric sexual cults and myths. Wiesbaden, p. 126.)
The sculpture is hollow on the inside. The figure sits on a disc-shaped base.
Replica made of plaster / details of the original: limestone / ca. 2000 BC (Neolithic) / today in the National Museum, La Valetta, Malta
Heinz Kirchhoff Collection - "Symbols of the Feminine"
Die ursprüngliche Privatsammlung des Göttinger Professors für Gynäkologie und Geburtshilfe Prof. Dr. Heinz Kirchhoff (1905-1997), der neben seiner engagierten Tätigkeit als Gynäkologe ein leidenschaftlicher Sammler war, umfasst rund 650 weibliche Statuetten und Skulpturen von der Altsteinzeit bis zur Neuzeit. Während zu Beginn der Sammlung die Ästhetik und Schönheit der Figuren im Vordergrund stand, sammelte Kirchhoff ab den 1960er Jahren zunehmend Frauendarstellungen, die die weibliche Symbolik und ihre verschiedenen Bedeutungen veranschaulichen.
