Paul Hurault, 8th Marquis de Vibraye

Paul Hurault, 8th Marquis de Vibraye (painting at Château de Cheverny)

Paul Hurault, 8th Marquis de Vibraye (1809–1878) was an amateur archaeologist from France.

He was born Guillaume-Paul Louis Maximilien Hurault, son of a notable politician and military officer Anne-Louis Victor Denis Hurault, 7th Marquis de Vibraye(fr).[1]

He discovered the very first Paleolithic sculptural representation of a woman discovered in modern times. It was found in about 1864 by at the famous archaeological site of Laugerie-Basse in the Vézère valley (one of the many important Stone Age sites in and around the commune of Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in Dordogne, southwestern France). The Magdalenian "Venus" from Laugerie-Basse is headless, footless, armless but with a strongly incised vaginal opening. De Vibraye named it La Vénus impudique or Venus Impudica ("immodest Venus"), contrasting it to the Venus Pudica, Hellenistic sculpture by Praxiteles showing Aphrodite covering her naked pubis with her right hand. It is from this name that we get the term "Venus figurines" commonly used for Stone Age sculptures of this kind.[2]

References

  1. ↑ Etienne Pattou. "Famille Hurault" (PDF). Racines et histoire. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
  2. ↑ Randall White (December 2008). "The Women of Brassempouy: A Century of Research and Interpretation" (PDF). Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 13 (4): 250–303. doi:10.1007/s10816-006-9023-z.
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