The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal Volume 5 1977

Fig. 9: Tufa Kore
Fig. 10: Tufa Sphinx Copenhagen
2. "Kore" (Sphinx Figs. 7-9)
75.AA.27 Anonymous loan.
Preserved height, 56 cm.; max. width, 38 cm.;
max. depth, 23 cm.
Head and armless torso remains.
Considerably worn and damaged surface
particularly at the top of the head, the forehead,
and the left side of the face.
Bibliography: Catalogue, Etruscan Art.
Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County,
1963, p. 12; M. Del Chiaro, Etruscan Art
from West Coast Collections, Santa Barbara,
1967, no. 13.
That the torso represents a female rather than a male
is implicit from the tunic (the neckline is faintly visible)
and the character of the coiffure with its long tresses,
three to each side of the face, falling loosely across the
shoulder and down the front of the body. At the back of
the head, the hair, which is neatly arranged in nine long
parallel tresses with striations that create an overall
herringbone pattern, terminates in a horizontal undulating
edge near the shoulder blades. The hair is swept
back in a bold wave over the ears, and thereby imparts
a greater prominence to the ears. "Kore" may presently
serve to identify the type of the Malibu sculpture but, in
view of the incomplete nature of the sculpture, one
cannot altogether discount the possibility that it, too,
like the preceding Getty sculpture, may represent a
sphinx.
The general shape of the head, the full jaw, and the
high "undaedalic"' brow, strongly recall a stone sphinx
in Copenhagen (Fig. 10). 13 Like the Getty kore, it also
possesses a smallish tight-lipped mouth with upturned
corners, narrow, widely spaced almond-shaped eyes
rendered with a nearly horizontal lower edge, and a
13. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek: A. Boethius et al, Etruscan
Culture, Land and People (New York, 1962), figs. 350-352.
49