Description
In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in 795.
Provenance
Stolper Galleries, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art (?-1962); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1962-)
Accession Number
1962.32
Medium
limestone
Dimensions
Overall: 60.4 x 69.8 cm (23 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.)
Classification
Sculpture
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund