Marlene Albert-Llorca first came to Elx with the intention of studying the Misteri, the same reason that attracted Pierre Paris more than a century ago, who by chance learned of the discovery of an ancient bust and had the ability to value and buy for the Louvre the one we know today as the Lady of Elche. The French museum paid 4,000 francs, which was then worth a small apartment in the center of Paris.
Marlene is an anthropologist, and came to see the medieval representation, because she has dedicated years of research to the cult, legends and rituals around the “miraculous” images of the Virgin. Already in Elx, she learned of the existence of the Lady and of the story of her “appearance” that Alejandro Ramos wrote in 1944. When she read it, she thought “it can’t be true”; It was too similar to the legends of discoveries of the miraculous virgins that she had studied: “the child who digs, the buried image, and the natural posture of the bust, protected by slabs… as if it had been deposited.”
To resolve his doubts, he needed the opinion of an expert archaeologist, and he located his compatriot Pierre Rouillard, whom he met for the first time at a remote site in Aspe. He, who came to Spain for the first time to write his thesis on Greek trade in the Peninsula, knew La Dama well and together they have completed an investigation that they have collected in the book La Dama de Elche, un día singular, published by Casa de Velázquez, which they presented on Friday at a conference organized by the Gil-Albert Institute in Alicante.
The first thing that Rouillard confirmed is that, in fact, as demonstrated by the marks of the pick with which it was unearthed, the bust was not found in the position that Ramos described, but that was by no means the only mystery to be resolved. Both have combined their knowledge and in a well-documented essay they expose what is known, what is still unknown and what we will never know about the most famous work of Iberian art.
But what makes the Lady unique? The archaeologist offers three reasons: “she does not fit into classical norms, she cannot be placed in a room of Greek or Roman sculpture.” In 1897 “the word Iberian was not used”, there were known sculptures found in the area of ??Albacete – on the hill of Los Santos – that were simply considered pre-Roman, “but this one was of much higher quality, exceptional.”
And it is exceptional because at that time archaeologists knew well the eastern world (Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia) and the Greek world; but the Louvre classifies the Lady as “Phoenician Greco”, because they did not know how to classify her. “In the decades that followed, there were many controversies among specialists on the subject,” explains Rouillard.
The third reason is that it was bought by France, something that was normal at that time, when there were no laws protecting cultural heritage. And installed in the Louvre, little by little it becomes “a political object.”
Marlene Albert-Llorca has studied in depth what she calls the “second life” of this lady whom the people of Elche initially called the “Moorish queen”, in whom some later saw the god Apollo, or a goddess worshiped by the inhabitants of the Atlántida, which for others represents only a luxuriously dressed noblewoman, and who returns to Spain in 1941, after a negotiation involving Petain and Franco – old acquaintances – when the French general is very interested in strengthening ties with the new neighboring regime. .
The anthropologist is interested in the conversion of the bust found in La Alcudia into an icon, first of Valencian regionalism, then of Franco’s nationalism, which identifies her with eternal Hispanicity and with a certain idea of ??the Spanish woman. Until today, in a historical context conducive to its conversion into a local demand, in a city, Elx, that has converted its cultural and natural heritage (the Palmeral, the Misteri, the Lady) into its main value.
The Lady has been used, sometimes on the left and sometimes on the right, as a symbol of women, “but not with the same image,” explains Marlene Albert, “in the Valencia engravings she is a very sensual woman.”
Although it is known that the bust was sculpted with stone from a nearby quarry, neither its identity nor its author, nor even its function – perhaps funerary – have been determined. “Was she a bourgeoisie from La Alcudia? Was she the princess of the city? Was she a divinity? It is not known,” says Rouillard, although he leans because she represents a secular figure.
Like everything that has been written on the subject, the work will generate debate. It resolves the reader’s doubts and raises others. After all, mystery is the source of art, and the most certain thing we know about life.
