Lady of Elche
The famous but controversial "Lady of Elche" is a polychrome stone bust that was revealed as found by chance at "La Alcudia" an archaeological site that was a private estate about 2 km, south of Elche (Catalan "Elx") (Alicante, Autonomous Community of Valencia, Spain in 1897. The Lady of Elche is either Iberian art of the the 4th century B.C., or the Hellenistic or the Roman periods&mdash or she is an Art Nouveau forgery showing the influence of Alphonse Mucha's posters.The undeniably lovely bust of a woman wears a very complex headdress and big coils on each side of the face that remind some viewers of Ozma of Oz. Whether she is a goddess or a princess or a fake, she has appears on a 1948 Spanish one-peseta banknote, the apotheosis of a patriotic icon. illustration needed
The sculpture was found August 4, 1897 by a young worker, Manuel Campello Esclapez. Pierre Paris, a French archaeological connoisseur, purchased the sculpture within a few weeks and shipped it to France, where it was shown at the Louvre Museum and hidden for safe-keeping during World War II. The Vichy government negotiated its return to Franco's Spain in 1940 - 41, and June 27, 1941 the sculpture was placed in Museo del Prado (Madrid), then moved to Madrid's National Archeological Museum, where it remains, in spite of appeals to return it to its home town, where it is represented by a reproduction.
Real or not, the Lady of Elche initiated a popular interest in pre-Roman Iberian culture. She even gets a notice in William Gaddis's The Recognitions (1955).
. Manuel Martinez Macia, the enthusiastic promoter of the Lady of Elche, has founded the Orden de la Dama de Elche to bring her home again.