More unusual, perhaps, is an early 16th-century Spanish statue of St. Jerome, a translator of the Bible.

Yesterday, the school's problem was resolved when the statue was exchanged for a two-foot-high one without the anatomical detail of the earlier statue.

The earliest statues depicted young black men dressed in feathers, reflecting the European conception of American Indians.

"There will be all kinds of things from rare silver to unusual furniture, and even an early 16th-century statue," says Vervoordt.

After many scientific tests were done on an early Greek statue, the Getty Museum was about to buy it.

Only a dozen of the carver's early statues ever left his cabin, yet those statues had been his first fame.

In some early statues, Calungsod is sometimes shown with a spear and catana (cutlass), the instruments of his death.

He has one of the earliest statues of a known king from Mesopotamia.

The early statues were made of limestone, steatite and alabaster; later, when wide-ranging trade-connections had been established, the more costly exotic diorite was used.

Some of the very early statues of the god Apollo reveal that sweet smile.