Cycladic face type 3 statue

The type 3 Cycladic face is the most refined of the canonical forms — the nose carved as a low ridge, the planes of the cheek delicate and precise. Held in the hand, these heads have an almost contemporary stillness; placed in the dark of a grave 4,500 years ago, they accompanied the dead with a silence that has lost none of its power. They are, with the figurines of Lascaux, our earliest evidence that the human face has always been art's deepest subject.