Paint: A Fourth Dimension of Sculpture

In 1956 and 1957, the University of Pennsylvania excavated Al Jib, a site located about six miles northwest of Jerusalem and known in the Bible as Gibeon. The object of my study, in the Penn Museum’s Near East Section (62-30-1530) and now on display in the new Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, hails from Gibeon. It is a common artifact type known as the Judean Pillar Figurine (JPF), but with an uncommon amount of paint preserved.

JPFs were mass produced in the 8th to early 6th centuries BCE in the Biblical heartland of Judah, where the “second commandment” supposedly prohibited the manufacture of images (Exod 20:4). JPF iconography is notoriously ambiguous, making it unclear who or what these statuettes represent: is the female human? If divine, which goddess, and how does she intersect with (or challenge) the monotheistic worship of the god of the Hebrew Bible? Or does the JPF perhaps represent a low divinity, like an angel? The Bible does not mention JPFs, though some interpreters consider them examples of “household gods” (Gen 31:19). Whatever the JPFs signified, they are found as refuse across many archaeological contexts in Judah, but especially around homes. Contexts of use— for example in tombs and house shrines—are rare but do seem to convey religious significance.

When we look at this figurine, we see, in color, an item that biblical people viewed in their everyday lives. Paint on most JPFs has worn away, but this one, along with a handful of others, shows the JPF to be quite a bold figure. This figurine invites us, like the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery does, to indulge the senses: here, sight. Vibrant bands of red and yellow are painted against a white background on an otherwise simple body, enwrapping the neck, shoulders, arms, and breasts in color. The contrasting bands attract the viewer’s gaze, as do the oversized white eyes and prominent breasts made yet more prominent by arm placement around. This figurine has schematic features but paint brings further articulation to them. Brigitte Bourgeois suggests that paint acts as a “fourth dimension of sculpture.” Understanding paint this way helps us see this figurine more fully.

Traditionally, iconographic studies of the JPF focus on the breasts and interpret JPFs as fertility figures. Across the corpus of JPFs that have been unearthed, design is better preserved than decoration, and indeed design does privilege the breasts via arm placement. However, paint on this figurine groups the breasts with other body parts via the red-and-yellow band motif, giving reason to follow the painter’s brush, in a sense, and reconsider the presumed centrality of the breasts. Paint does not depict the breasts as a stand-alone feature, and so connotes a different value system than the figurine’s design.

I collaborated with Penn Museum Conservator Tessa de Alarcon to analyze the pigmentation on 62-30-1530 via microscopic magnification and focus stacking. The results concerning whitewash were surprising. Whitewash is usually understood as a surface primer for paint and is found on Judean objects in clay thought to have religious significance, like figurines and cult stands, but generally not on other objects that receive paint, like pottery.

Whitewash on this figurine was indeed applied as a base layer, but then applied again at later stages in the finish work, to deepen the white in the eyes and lower body, to indicate space between fingers (a rare feature, only a few other examples of JPF fingers are known) and to depict what I suggest are white neck bands, which have not previously been noticed (cf. Pritchard 1961:15; Kletter 1996: 50). These decorative elements are visible via chromatic data, i.e., color data, but are hardly perceptible on this figurine’s surface topography, even at 100x magnification. This pilot study of JPF pigmentation reveals that both paint and whitewash are too thin to be measured via focus stacking. Future studies of JPF pigmentation should consider privileging chromatic approaches instead of topographic ones.

In sum, whitewash was artfully applied on this figurine and was not limited to surface priming. Whitewash indicates both negative and positive space (for example, negative between the fingers and positive at the neck bands). This updated understanding of JPF decoration does not crack the code on JPF meaning, but it does broaden the primary data through which these enigmatic figurines can be studied. This work also shows that, with the help of technology, the discovery process can keep unfolding even 65 years out of the ground, providing ever-new ways of seeing.

Judean Pillar Figurine Color Revealed

Lauren McCormick is completing her doctoral dissertation in religion at Syracuse University, after completing M.A. degrees in religion at New York University and Duke University, learning Hebrew, Akkadian, Biblical Aramaic, Ugaritic, and Greek, and participating in the archaeological excavation of Iron Age Tel Dor in Israel. Her co-edited volume Ambiguity in the Ancient Near East is in press with Brepols.