This is a small female statuette in dark olive gray steatite, with even darker streaks evident in the lower part. Obtained from an oblong pebble which probably originally had a shape not very dissimilar from the current one, it was then worked to highlight the various parts of the body, head, breasts and belly.

In particular, the head is pear-shaped, decisively bent backwards, while the belly and breasts are protuberant, thus creating an arched profile, also in relation to the probable original shape of the pebble. The head is separated from the rest of the body through an incision at the neck while a further incision divides the belly from the breast just below the latter; subsequent smoothing modeled the roundness of the breast and belly, which are particularly prominent. In the upper part of the belly a small elongated depression would seem to represent the navel. The legs are not present, in fact the base is flat, while the arms would seem just hinted at with small incisions at their position, particularly evident on the left. The back of the statuette, with the exception of the head, has not been worked on but looks as it was originally. Almost the entire surface of the statuette has microscopic cup-shaped hollows, probably due to the action of the grains of sand moved by the wind on the smooth surface, such as to cause these depressions, testifying to a prolonged presence in a sandy area. The figurine is very stylized, sometimes even not very detailed from an aesthetic point of view; has some affinities with the Trasimeno statue both for the stylized rendering and for the dimensions and for the lack of buttocks, with that of Parabita and Savignano for the conical shape of the head, with the parietal figuration of Romanelli cave for the stylized profile, it differs from the other Italian Paleolithic figurines for the representation of the breasts with a compact roundness.

Historical notes

The statuette was found by Mr. Gianfranco Buonaccorsi of the Provincial Museum of Natural History of Livorno, in a canal where waste materials (pebbles, fossils, peat, etc.) were conveyed, sucked up together with the sand by the pumps of the Torre sand quarry of Lake Puccini, on Lake Massaciuccoli. Following the discovery, the workers assigned to the draft were interviewed who asserted that at the time of the discovery of the statuette the fished material was rather homogeneous, consisting of numerous lithic artefacts (points, blades, scrapers, etc.) and therefore, also in consideration of the stylistic and technical characteristics of the statuette, it was ascertained that the material belonged to industries of the Upper Paleolithic type, probably Epigravettian.