Dolls in History. Humans like us

Singing stone giants; an automaton that defeated Napoleon at chess; a misbehaving wooden doll; and a toy doll so sinister it inspired a horror film. Over the centuries, man has always been tempted to attribute his qualities and defects to the dolls he has created, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

Dolls that laugh when you tickle them, that move their arms and legs, that even have to have their diapers changed like a real baby? Technology is changing, but the desire to create simulacrums of people goes back a long way. Just as God molded Adam from clay, over the centuries man has also sought to imitate life from the material world around him. In other words, to make 'dolls' that walk, talk and breathe like us.

Or that they sing. One of the oldest examples we know of is the famous Colossi of Memnon, which stand on a vast plain near Luxor, Egypt. These stone giants, over three thousand years old and around 20 metres high, represented Amenhotep III and once guarded the funerary temple of this pharaoh. In addition to their impressive size, they had another peculiarity. “If you were lucky enough to arrive early in the morning,” wrote historian Mary Beard, “you could experience a moment of pure enchantment, as Memnon shouted to greet his mother at dawn.” How was it possible for a statue to sing? The most widely accepted explanation is that “after an earthquake damaged it, the stone figure began to naturally produce a hissing sound through the fissures as it heated and dried in the morning sun,” the historian explains in the book Civilizações (ed. Gradiva).

For the ancient Egyptians, the boundary between the world of biology and that of inanimate things was not as clear as it is for modern man. A mummy, for example, was not ready to enter a new life until the ritual of opening its mouth had been performed, in which the priest pronounced the formulas that awakened its senses. Another example of Egyptian design is the shabti, small ceramic, stone or wooden figures in the shape of a mummy, which were placed in tombs to perform manual tasks that ensured the deceased would be comfortable in the afterlife.

From Pygmalion to Frankenstein

As expected, Greek antiquity also produced its own myth of a statue endowed with human qualities. But this statue did more than just talk; it actually had life. In love with Aphrodite, the sculptor Pygmalion, son of Belus, made himself an ivory statue of the goddess and placed it on his bed. The statue was so convincing that Pygmalion's passion for Aphrodite extended to the image he himself had created. And the goddess, taking pity on him, entered the statue and brought it to life – not as Aphrodite, but as Galatea.

This idea of ​​a figure made by a human hand that comes to life as if by magic would be taken up again in 19th century Europe by the Italian Carlo Collodi. A piece of wood that cries and laughs like a child will end up being transformed by the master carpenter Geppetto into a doll with a long nose that soon begins to disrespect him and cause problems.

The 19th century is full of stories that blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, which not only fill pages and pages of books but also make their way onto theater stages. Such are the cases of Coppélia and The Nutcracker, two classics by ETA Hoffman that were transformed into ballets by Léo Delibes and Piotr Tchaikovsky, in which toys come to life and dance like people.

On a darker note, Mary Shelley wrote of a misshapen 'mummy' of flesh and blood that haunts and persecutes its well-meaning creator. Frankenstein is full of memorable pages that have inspired artists and entered the popular imagination. "A mummy that came back to life would not be so hideous. I had seen him unfinished and he was already ugly, but when I animated him he became something that Dante himself could not have imagined."

The tone was set for a whole series of future horror films.

The automaton that defeated Napoleon Before the widespread use of the steam engine, clockwork mechanisms with movement were already being produced in Europe. It was a mechanism of this kind that was behind an enigmatic chess player who faced – and defeated – Napoleon Bonaparte in Vienna and Benjamin Franklin in Paris. “For some time, the famous mechanical chess player known as El Turco circulated throughout the world, challenging anyone who wanted to face him”, writes Gregorio Doval in História Insólita do Mundo (ed. Marcador). “The device had been invented and built by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769. It was in the form of a wooden cabin measuring 1.20 m long by 60 cm deep and 90 cm high, with a mannequin dressed in a tunic and turban sitting in it. […] Kempelen first exhibited El Turco in 1770 at the court of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, and subsequently began a tour of almost two decades throughout Europe. The secret would only be revealed more than a century later: inside, there was a real man – in reality a chess master – moving the automaton. Artificial intelligence would take some time longer.

From Louis XIV to killer dolls

Now let’s talk about toy dolls. In the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, there is a doll’s house made in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1673, and a wooden doll, this one of British manufacture, coated with plaster and painted, from 1680. Known as The Old Pretender, “she is associated with the court of King James VII (of Scotland)”, describes the museum, and, in addition to being elegantly dressed, she wears a small wig made of real hair on her head.

In the 18th century, rag dolls or dolls stuffed with straw were very common. The wealthiest could aspire to have these dolls carved from wood with painted plaster faces and, in some cases, even embedded glass eyes. They were often used as models to try out dresses that would later be produced in full size.

Queen Anne Stuart of England was one of the main people responsible for promoting these dolls, given her habit of giving them as gifts. And Marie Antoinette also liked to play with them when she was little. When she was promised in marriage to the heir to the French throne (the future Louis XVI, who would die, like her, on the scaffold), she received a set of dolls as a gift to help her choose her trousseau. This custom was started by Louis XIV in the 17th century, who had these mannequins sent to all the courts of Europe with models of dresses designed in Paris, in order to expand the French fashion industry.

In the 19th century, around 1840, the first porcelain dolls began to be made in Germany, enamelled, which perfectly imitated the touch of human skin (at least with a good dose of make-up). Initially expensive, with the arrival of other materials on the scene they gradually became cheaper and more widespread.

In the second half of the 20th century, the realism of toy dolls gave rise to modern versions of Frankenstein, such as the horror films Chucky (1988) and Annabelle (2014), which is based on a real doll said to be cursed, belonging to the Warrens' Occult Museum in Monroe, Connecticut (USA).

Hyperrealism in art But when it comes to realistic dolls, there are no more faithful examples than those at Madame Tussauds, founded in 1835 by sculptor Marie Tussaud in Baker Street, London, just a stone's throw from Sherlock Holmes's house. It was so successful that it had to expand to a new building, and eventually had branches in several cities around the world.

In art, hyperrealism also has ancient roots – starting with the Boxer made around 2100 or 2200 years ago, which even displays small wounds on the face.

But it is still a bronze statue. Back in the 20th century, in 1969, Duane Hanson created a life-size sculpture of a woman shopping in a supermarket, completely convincing, with a trolley and everything. Then came the Chapman brothers, with their shocking sculptures, which address contemporary themes, sex, violence and religion. And, before the Reborn babies, Ron Mueck, the Australian artist whose parents owned a toy store, made his figures with an amazing level of detail and the fur added one by one. You could even say that they have feelings and some of them seem as human as us.