Panel with Royal Woman

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-)

Panel with Royal Woman

K’in Lakam Chahk

c. 795

Accession Number

1962.32

Medium

limestone

Dimensions

Overall: 60.4 x 69.8 cm (23 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.)

Classification

Sculpture

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund