Lot 224A
Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz culture, ca. 6th to 8th century CE. A very large and impressive terracotta lid for an incensario in the form of a round-bodied, squatting human figure with elaborate headgear. The figure has huge round earrings, large bracelets, and anklets along with a matching necklace, and is otherwise not given detail on the body aside from a light texture that look like the wet clay had a textile applied gently to its surface. All of the figure's decoration has been sculpted to look very realistic, especially the shape of the hands, where each individual finger is placed just so and the thumb and forefinger meet in what might have been an auspicious gesture to its intended viewers. The face looks to modern eyes as if the figure is shocked or stunned, crying out with widened eyes, with excellent details on the eyelids and in the shape of the nose. The headdress includes two conical projections that look like horns, with clay shaped to look like a twisted rope hanging down from each. Between these cones is a crest topped by rounded cylinders that may represent feathers. Size: 11.25" L x 15.5" W x 21.75" H (28.6 cm x 39.4 cm x 55.2 cm)
Incense played a major role in religious practice in Mesoamerica, from the Olmec onward. Many tombs are outfitted with incensarios and the items also seem to have been used in ceremonies by the living. The incense was made from copal, tree resin from the torchwood tree. By burning copal, Mesoamerican priests made an offering to the gods - for example, during an Aztec ceremony for the god Huitzilopochtli, the hummingbird-formed god of war, priests hoped that their prayers would be carried upward along with the wafting smoke and scent.
This figure combines the amazing style of the Veracruz, who had the ability to combine hyper-realistic features (see here, for example, the depicted stretched skin around the edges of the earrings) with stylized items (the rounded body that is the lid). Excavations near the modern Mexican town of Remojadas have revealed two types of impressive, detailed pottery figures from the Veracruz period: the Sonrientes, the joyous "smiling faces", and figures like this one, more serious, mostly adult figures, with elaborate costumes, themes, and sometimes props that all seem to point towards religious or political ceremonies. These figures are often found with the bodies smashed into pieces and the heads largely intact, because they were ritually destroyed as burial offerings. Their clothing suggests that they depict people of import in society, maybe priests or nobility.
Provenance: private Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA collection
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#124803
- Condition: Repaired from multiple pieces, but all components are present aside from a small loss to the top of the headdress.
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