The Earliest Examples of Figurative Art Circa 38,000 BCE - 33,000 BC The Venus of Lespugue, an ivory Venus figurine discovered by René de Saint-Périer in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue (Haute-Garonne) in the foothills of the Pyrenees, is approximately 6 inches (150 mm) tall. It is preserved at the Musée de l'Homme. "According to textile expert Elizabeth Wayland Barber, the statue displays the earliest representation found of spun thread, as the carving shows a skirt hanging from below the hips, made of twisted fibers, frayed at the end" (Wikipedia article on Venus of Lespugue, accessed 05-14-2009). Barber, Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (1994) 44.