Plate
c. 800
Maker Unknown
Art of the Americas
Plate, c. 800. Mexico, Campeche, Maya. Earthenware with colored slips; overall: 6.5 x 41.5 cm (2 9/16 x 16 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener 1990.182 Its pose and jewelry suggest this flamboyantly painted figure may represent a human clad in the skin of a jaguar. Because the jaguar is the largest, most powerful predator in Mesoamerica, it was a natural metaphor for earthly and supernatural power alike. Apex predators like jaguars are natural power metaphors.
- Maker/Artist
- Maker Unknown
- Classification
- Ceramic
- Formatted Medium
- earthenware with colored slips
- Medium
- earthenware, colored, slips
- Dimensions
- Overall: 6.5 x 41.5 cm (2 9/16 x 16 5/16 in.)
- Departments
- Art of the Americas
- Accession Number
- 1990.182
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener
- Exhibitions
- The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art, Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 4 - November 29, 1992. "The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. 79 (September, 1992.) cat. no. 91, p. 272, repr. fig. 91, p. 256.
- Rights Statement
- CC0
- Museum Location
- 233 Mesoamerican and Intermediate Region
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