This much-travelled female figure was found in two parts and at different times. The upper part was first recorded in France in 1719, where it must have taken at some time in the 17th century, presumably by an aristocrat on the Grand Tour. The lower half was excavated in the 1880s on the Acropolis, where the kore would have been originally set up.

It was not until 1935 that the archaeologist Humfry Payne put the two parts together. He could not do this literally, as the upper section is still in France, and the other in Athens — but here with our plaster cast we can make her whole once again.

She holds in her hand a bird as an offering to the gods