Volumetric cruciform statuette of strong iconic value in polished white marble from the recent Neolithic (between the XNUMXth and XNUMXth millennium BC) representing a female figure. The abstraction of the body is an evident trait: the only somatic trait is the nose. The bust is in the shape of an inverted trapezoid with conical breasts, it has a V-shaped sign under the neck.

Historical notes

The statuette was found by chance by a farmer, Mr. Stefano Cardia, in 1935 in the Municipality of Senorbì, between Ortacesus and Selegas. He kept it over his fireplace for years until it was noticed by the town doctor, Dr. Massimo Coraddu, and this is how it arrived at the Archaeological Museum of Cagliari. According to what Giovanni Lilliu reports, it seems that the statuette was inside a sort of sacred circle enclosure made of stones linked to a prehistoric village. In 1938 the archaeologist Piero Cao took care of the first scientific publication of the find with a brochure printed in Viterbo with which he announced the discovery of the statuette. The historical archive of the municipality of Cagliari conserves the archaeologist's private archive as a testamentary bequest, including various of his notes and drawings of prehistoric female idols found in the Mediterranean basin and in Sardinia. The statuette began to be known in the world of studies starting from 1949, when an exhibition of ancient and modern Sardinian art was organized in Venice, with the display of about 60 proto-Sardinian bronze statuettes, a model of nuraghe and the statuette of Turriga. The event had a huge echo in the European cultural world and from that moment the statuette was definitively known by an international public. With the research of Professor Enrico Atzeni, professor of Sardinian palethnology and antiquities at the University of Cagliari, more exact datings have been provided as well as identifying the stylistic and typological characteristics of most of the Sardinian statuettes, classified into three groups or types fundamentals: idols with a volumetric-naturalistic scheme (such as le figurines of Cuccuru Is Arrius – Cabras), the idols with a cruciform geometric scheme (such as the statuette of Turriga) and the idols with a fretwork geometric scheme (such as the Portoferro statue).