Girls Will Be Girls: Art Talk With Frances Gallart Marqués

Hi, I am Frances Gallard Marquez, the Frederick Randolph Grace Curatorial Fellow in Ancient Art at the Harvard Art Museums. We are not currently at the museums, but we would like to acknowledge that Harvard University is situated in the ancestral and traditional lands of the Massachusett people, and that we are striving to honor and recognize this relationship. Although I am currently working at the museums as a curatorial fellow, I am also a field archaeologist, and most of my training has happened at a site in western Anatolia called Sardis. Sardis has a very long history of occupation, and is famous for many things, including being the place where the King Midas myth rid himself of the golden curse, and for being the place where coins were first minted. Such has been an integral part of every job that I have done. As field archaeologists, we are mostly concerned with detecting minute differences in the soil that we are excavating. I am often asked how it is that I know how to dig. How can you tell when the soil changes? What exactly are you looking for? And the answer is that you are not necessarily looking for something. As in the bright sun, all colors look alike, but that you're feeling your way through something. It is the hardness of the earth that we first learn to identify, its texture, its humidity, and that's done with our hands, and also with our tools, which are extensions of our hands. So there's a lot of touching that happens in the field. There is not so much touching in museums, and especially not now when we are so concerned with keeping our communities healthy, but as I discuss the objects that I'm about to show you, I would like you to keep in mind how it is that you learn best, and if that ever includes the use of your hands and of your body. I specialize in the study of small-scale clay sculpture, so the object I want to show you today is a Greek terracotta figurine. Labeled as a doll, she is displayed on the third floor of our museums, not for her own sake, but as a pendant to the marble stele of the young girl Malisto. It is the larger marble that usually catches our visitor's attention, and rightly so. The tender monument to a child gone too soon is compelling both in its restraint and in its palpable emotion, and that's something that perhaps most people don't expect from the Greeks. Let's take a moment to look at it closely. I invite you to see how many characters you are able to identify, to notice in what actions they are engaged, what the setting of the scene is. I also encourage you to go beyond what you see, and perhaps imagine the things that are now missing. I'll give you a few seconds to pause the video if you wish. Maybe you notice the setting, a sort of short and shallow temple front with a faint inscription, where your attention was captured by the main character, a young girl with a serene smile. And if you followed her gaze, then you may have seen that she holds a doll in her left hand and something else in her right, and that she is likely smiling at the little dog that's jumping up on her knee. Maybe you are trying to figure out what this object is and what is missing. And I already gave you some clues, but this is a grave marker, and as such it is missing the entire context of the cemetery, the grave and its body of course, but also all the other graves that would have surrounded it, the smells and sounds of ritual, the bodies and the movements of mourners and visitors. This monument too would have been originally painted, so it is missing color, color that would have made it all the more understandable within the chaos of the setting. Now, we have what we have, so let's consider that more carefully. We can start with the inscription, since it's not often that ancient artifacts can talk to us. We are told that this is the monument of a girl named Melisto, and that she was the daughter of Tessicrates from the Demos of Potamus. Very well, say that we can't read this inscription. What other ideas may we form about this child from the things that we can indeed read? Well, first that she was probably wealthy. We can deduce this by the existence of the monument itself. Marble wasn't cheap, much less carefully carved and inscribed marble. But then also, if you look carefully, you will notice these two holes around her head. We think that these are the traces left behind by a bronze wreath or crown, now missing. But even if she had not been crowned, we can tell that she was cared for, as her hair is brushed carefully and she is dressed elegantly, almost as if she were a young woman rather than a girl at play. But a girl at play she is. Not only is she holding a doll, but she is teasing her little dog with a bird. The bird is sweet and interesting on its own right, as birds often appear in the company of young girls. But I have always been slightly more intrigued by the dog. Mr. Shem Singh is so disarming, so human about this little girl having a pet. And not just any pet. This is a recognizable breed of ancient dog, the Melitan. The Melitan was a small fluffy dog with a pointed muscle, like a fox. We know about its personality thanks to literary sources that tell us that these dogs did not do real work except to bring comfort to their owners. They were affectionate and sweet, but misbehaved often, and were rarely corrected. So a pampered, beloved, useless dog. Very much like a pampered, beloved child. I confess that when I first started looking at the stele, I thought that the dog and child function as mirrors for each other, and that the choice of breed, Melitan, might even be a pun on the girl's name, Melisto. But in fact, this type of dog is fairly commonly depicted, often in the company of children. Here he is in the form of a terracotta figurine, proudly a rattle, so a toy for a child. And here again in a small drinking vessel, in which he appears to play the child. And most poignantly here, in this grave stele, perhaps dedicated to a Melitan dog. I say perhaps because this might have been dedicated instead to a slave girl named Helena. Do notice the similarities with our own stele. The niche, the inscription, and of course the love. So while our Melisto stele may appear endearing in its specificity, its components and their arrangement are in fact quite standard. Here the same arrangement is used instead to commemorate a young man. This is one of two such examples currently on display at the Louvre. They have them all lined up together, perhaps in a closer recreation of the original graveyard setting. I'll give you a few seconds to look at him next to Melisto. What similarities do you notice? What differences? Again, you may take a second to pause the video. Well, their poses and expressions are mirror images of each other. The one thing that changes, that might actually be meaningful, is the object held in their left hands. In the case of Melisto, it is a doll. In the case of the young man, a strigil and an oil flask. If you have never seen a strigil and an oil flask combo, basically all you need to know is that these objects were used to clean the body after exercise. A person would cover their body in oil and then scrape it off and anything else that came along with the aid of the strigil. In the stele, then, they function symbolically to mark the man as an athlete, that is, an ideal Greek male citizen. In the case of Melisto, the doll might have functioned similarly as an archetypal attribute of her age, class, and gender. Hence, this doll depicts a sexually mature woman as a reminder of the unfulfilled potential of the child that was taken away too soon. So, is this the type of doll held by Melisto? And is it even a doll? The functions and meanings of figurines with truncated limbs have been widely debated with no clear answers. That some, but not all, may have functioned as dolls or toys seems clear to me, though I would argue the same for all figurines. Most interpretations of these objects depends on their archaeological context when they have them, with those that are found in domestic spaces called dolls and those discovered in sanctuaries or graves understood as gifts for the gods or the dead. In all likelihood, these could have been used for different purposes at different stages in their lives. If we think of this figurine as a doll, however, we must imagine that it not only worked as entertainment for the child, but as a model of proper gender and class behavior. So, imagine my surprise the first time I looked carefully through the vitrine and noticed that her torso looked very manly. Does it look manly to you? I thought that it was just my imagination, but then I found some parallels. Like this example from the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a very muscular torso. These figurines were partly made in molds. The reuse and manipulation of these molds is a well-attested phenomenon, as seen here in this female bust from Pella that with the addition of a beard and ivory got turned into Dionysus. This is usually explained away as a matter of convenience, that is, you use the molds that you have at hand. But I am convinced that at least in some cases, the molds were chosen purposely. If a female doll that was supposed to function as an ideal representation of gender was made using a male model, then that choice must have been significant. So, I asked the museum if I could inspect the figurine more closely. And this is where touch comes in, because there are aspects about a figurine's manufacture that are next to impossible to determine by sight alone, but that one can tease out by feeling. So, after touching this carefully and sitting with it for a while, it seemed to me that the breasts were handmade additions and that the pubic area was purposely smoothed down. So, this might have been made using a mold for a male figure. Thus, however, I noticed something that I really wasn't looking for. Check out the interesting bottom. The fact that it's open is not unexpected, but the fact that the interior is reinforced and finished perfectly holds two fingers is, at least to me. Trust me on this, you can actually balance the figure on two fingers. If you then dress the figurine, your arm would become part of her body, giving a sense of proportion to the gendered and class realities embodied within it. That got me thinking that I should really be paying attention to the way that I hold these objects. I figured that if we consider the way that people in antiquity handled figurines, that is, if we consider the consequences of touch, we could go beyond traditional interpretations that prioritize visual concerns. For example, I took this picture with the intention of recording the interesting profile of her hair. So, this is how my hand fell naturally, with my thumb comfortably placed in the nook between her abdomen and her breasts, and living visible and prominently show the markers of her sex. With the rest of my fingers running down her back and supporting her remarkable expanse of hair, I am making obvious the markers of her clasp. So, the things being represented matter, but how one touches them matters as well. Now, some scholars argue that most figurines were not made to be handled, and that children especially would not want to or be allowed to play with the objects. Allow me to dispel this myth. Here I am displaying an array of figurines, both ancient and modern, to a very young guest at the Sardis dig house. Not satisfied with the influence of art, she made a graph for them not two seconds later, proving at once that terracottas are compelling objects and that children will play with them, despite their material or potentially solemn function. And if you need it more convincing, here is Melisto, once more. So, yes, not only do I think that people were touching these, but I think that some were made expressly to be touched. And because of that, figurines can tell us a lot of interesting things about people, especially people who are often absent from the dominant material and historical record. What do you play with? How do you learn? Thank you for listening to me. If you would like to learn more about Sardis, that is the place where I excavate, please visit this website here. If you have any questions about the ancient objects and the collections of the Harvard Art Museums, it would be best for you to write to this address here. And any fan mail or complaints, probably best sent directly to me at this address down here. And please remember to wash your hands thoroughly if you are going around touching a lot of things. Thank you. Bye.