Statuette of a deer nursing her fawn

This group sculpture of a deer nursing a fawn while a bird perches on her rump is unusually ambitious among the small bronzes that survive from the Geometric period, which are typically single-figure compositions. This one was found by 1898 in a sanctuary near Thebes, where it must have been left as a votive offering. While celebrating the fecundity and beneficence of nature, it projects the mother-child bonding that is central to human life into the animal world.The artist has combined spontaneous naturalism with a fondness for geometric forms. Standing on a rectangular base plate, the adult deer's long slender legs and powerful haunches support a cylindrical body and an elongated egg-shaped head. Although female, the deer has conspicuous antlers, whose placement far back on the head has pushed the projecting ears halfway down the neck. Sets of concentric circles form her large eyes, and additional circles are neatly punched over her shoulders and haunches as if to suggest a spotted coat; still more adorn her antlers as pure decoration. The fawn, standing on wide-set legs at a diagonal below its mother, raises its flaring muzzle to suckle vigorously.