In this episode of Things We Threw Away, we’re talking about the Chios Kore in the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam.

The Chios Kore or Kore from Chios in the museum is a plaster cast. This means the original object is not in the museum.

But when talking about plaster casts of originals, it is important to look at the history of the cast and the history of the original statue.

Image 1: Map of Greece

The Chios Kore, the original, not the cast, is from Greece.

Kore (pl. Korai) means young girl, which is exactly what we see in the image below.

Image 2: original Kore from the Acropolis

The statue was found on the Acropolis in Athens and is currently in the Acropolis Museum under the inventory number 675. Her head was discovered in 1886, east of the Parthenon and her body in 1888, south of the temple. The statue was reassembled, but was in three parts.

The sculpture is made of marble from Paros. Sadly, it is not complete, and what is left measures about 55cm.

Her hair is long and wavy, falls in strands over her shoulders up to her breasts, three on each side. The hair on the forehead is wavy and crowned with a stephane.

The statue wears a chiton with long sleeves and on top a shot himation. The painted sculpture had blue and red palmettes and white blossoms and spirals on the clothing. The colours are now oxidised and are no longer visible to the naked eye.

The Kore can be dated to 510 BC, which makes her an Archaic sculpture. According to Whitley, the archaic period is difficult to define on historical grounds (Whitley 2013, p.60), but the current consensus seems to be 700 BC to 480 BC.

Image 3: Kore plaster cast in the Allard Pierson Museum

The plaster cast in the Allard Pierson museum shows a colourless, white statue. It appears rather yellowish, and some of the features that make the original so special are lost in the cast.

It is not clear when the cast came to the museum. The website gives the date 1870, which does not make sense because the Kore itself was only found in 1886 and 1888. Most casts in the collection date from the end of the 19th /beginning of the 20th century. They come from two different collections:

One from the “small collection of casts collected by professor Allard Pierson which was used in academic education” (van Beek & van den Bercken, p.154) and the other from the Museum of Reproduction in the Hague which opened in 1920, was bought by the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague in 1933 which in returned deaccessioned the casts in the 1970s and many of the sculptures came to Amsterdam in 1975 (van Beek & van den Bercken, p.154)

The Allard Pierson Museum is, according to van Beek and van den Bercken, the “only museum in the Netherlands where a collection of plaster casts after classical sculpture [...] is permanently on display for the museum visitor.” (p.153)

The cast is currently on display, but not in the plaster cast gallery, but in the Greek gallery.

Image 4: Kore in colour, and Kore plaster cast from the Ashmolean Museum

The image on the right shows the cast from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, UK. The Ashmolean also has, similar to the Allard Pierson, a big plaster cast sculpture section, for students to study (both museums are connected to a university). The object is on view in the Cast Gallery. The date the cast was made is given in a range: between 1901 and 1930, but further down the website, it says “purchased in 1929”. We can probably assume a similar date for the Allard Pierson.

The image on the left shows a coloured reconstruction of what the original Kore may have looked like. There are other versions in colour, for example, the one from the “Gods in Colour” (Painted Gods - the polychromy of ancient sculpture) exhibition, which first opened in 2003.

Short glossary

Chiton: a kind of “dress”, usually full body length, up to the feet. They can have long and short sleeves. They are buttoned on the upper arm (Hölscher, p.384)

Himation: a kind of cloak, triangular in shape (Hölscher, p. 384)

Kore: pl. Is Korai, standing and/or votive figures of young girls. Kore actually means girl in ancient Greek. They are representative of the youth in the cities (as they are set up by men and women, so not representing anyone in particular) (Hölscher, p. 184)

Further References

* The bookend kore in the Dutch Museum giftshop https://dutchmuseumgiftshop.nl/store/allardpierson/product/bookend-core/ [latest visited 12.12.2025, 12:24]

* T. Hölscher, Klassische Archäologie - Grundwissen. 2006.

* J. Whitley, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. 2013.

* R. van Beek & B. van den Bercken, Collect, Draw and Study. The use and benefit of large and small plaster replicas in the Allard Pierson Museum. 2021. Available at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/camar_0776-1317_2021_num_43_1_1752

* Acropolis Museum, Chios Kore, available at: https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/statue-kore-kore-chios

* Allard Pierson Museum, Chios Kore replica, available at: https://uvaerfgoed.nl/viewer/image/11245_3_28782/

* Gods in colour exhibition, Wikipedia page, available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_in_Color

* Kore 675, Wikipedia page, available at:

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kore_675

* Kore 675, Arachne Database entry for the original, available at: https://arachne.dainst.org/entity/1131071?fl=20&q=kore%20675&resultIndex=1

* Painted Gods exhibition in Frankfurt a. M. available at:

https://buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de/

Image references

* Image 1: Map of Greece, taken from Wikipedia, available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greece_location_map.svg

* Image 2: Chios Kore, original, taken from the Acropolis Museum website, available at: https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/statue-kore-kore-chios

* Image 3: full body Kore replica, taken from Allard Pierson Museum website, available at: https://uvaerfgoed.nl/viewer/image/11245_3_28782/ ; Side view: Stefanie’s picture from the museum

* Image 4: full body Kore replica, taken from the Ashmolean Museum website, available at: https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-779868

* Image 5: Chios Kore in colour, taken from the Acropolis Museum website, available at: https://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/statue-kore-kore-chios

Credits

* Intro and outro music: “Meeting for Two – Background Music for Video Vlog (Hip Hop version, 43s)” via Pixabay Music by White_Records

* Research behind the script: Stefanie Ulrich

* Editing and post-production: Jona Schlegel

* Cover art: Stefanie Ulrich

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Projects by the team members

Jona Schlegel

* Follow on Instagram (@archaeoink): Visual science communication through illustration, websites and archaeology

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Stefanie Ulrich

* Follow on Instagram (@thepublicarchaeologist): Photography of archaeological objects, and material encounters with a special focus on ancient Rome

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