"[Kore 678] is attired in a travesty of the Ionic costume betraying faulty imitation ... The garments fit so closely to the body behind as to suggest absolute nudity. Here again we have unintelligent imitation."—Guy Dickins, Catalogue Of The Acropolis Museum, 1912

This is my 3D scan of the Skulpturhalle Basel's late 19th-century plaster cast of the Athens Acropolis Museum's Kore 678. The 6th-century BC marble figure was found west of the Erechtheion in 1886.

The thin raised lines that trace the figure's contours are remnants from the 19th-century piece-mold technique used to make the plaster cast. These parting lines were not considered defects, and expert mold-makers would leave them intact, thereby leaving a record of their work.

Kore 678 has been described as "Pseudo-Ionic" because its clothing appears to be an odd and imperfect rendering of the Ionic style. A 1912 catalog of the Acropolis Museum speculates that Kore 678 could have been made by "an early Attic sculptor, who wanted to make a figure in imitation of the new fashion just coming in."

Unlike the bulkier dress of most korai, Kore 678's clothing is impossibly close-fitting, revealing an idealized female form beneath.

—Cosmo Wenman
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