page_title: Tanagra figurine
section_title: Campaigns of excavation
hierarchical_section_title: Tanagra figurine / Campaigns of excavation
context_page_description: The Tanagra figurines were a mold-cast type of Greek terracotta figurines produced from the later fourth century BC, primarily in the Boeotian town of Tanagra, which has given its name to the whole class. They were coated with a liquid white slip before firing and were sometimes painted afterward in naturalistic tints with watercolors, such as the famous "Dame en Bleu" at the Louvre. They were widely exported around the ancient Greek world. Such figures were made in many other Mediterranean sites, including Alexandria, Tarentum in Magna Graecia, Centuripe in Sicily and Myrina in Mysia.
  Although not portraits, Tanagra figures depict real women—and some men and boys—in everyday costume, with familiar accessories like hats, wreaths or fans. Some character pieces may have represented stock figures from the New Comedy of Menander and other writers. Others continued an earlier tradition of molded terracotta figures used as cult images or votive objects. Typically they are about 10 to 20 centimetres high.
  Some Tanagra figurines were religious in purpose, but most seem to have been entirely decorative, much like their modern equivalents from the 18th century onward.
caption: This terracotta figurine of a woman demonstrates some thematic elements that are common to these statuettes, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
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