Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima, ca. 300 BCE to 300 CE. A fascinating example of a west Mexican shaft tomb figure, a seated man with outsize hands and torso and relatively tiny head, phallus, and feet. His body is overall dark red slipped, aside from his face, which is tan. One hand is held up; the other is on the back of his neck. To the modern viewer, he looks bashful, perhaps holding up a hand to ask an interlocutor to stop; his face has a gentle appearance, with a large nose and ears. Some of the genius of these figures, which I see here, is that they take relatively simple and stylistically rigid human forms and shape them into lifelike poses that convey emotions. The emphasis on the hand may have meant something particularly meaningful in the Colima culture. Size: 5.4" L x 6" W x 4.75" H (13.7 cm x 15.2 cm x 12.1 cm)

Clay figures like this one are the only remains that we have today of a sophisticated and unique culture in West Mexico -- they made no above-ground monuments or sculptures, at least that we know of, which is in strong contrast to developments elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica. Instead, their tombs were their lasting works of art: skeletons arrayed radially with their feet positioned inward, and clay offerings, like this one, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. A large effigy like this one would most likely have flanked the entrance to a tomb in a way that archaeologists have interpreted as guarding. Some scholars have connected these dynamic sculptures of the living as a strong contrast to the skeletal remains whose space they shared, as if they mediated between the living and the dead.

Provenance: Ex-Alan Davis collection, Santa Fe, NM

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#116998

Intact, with remaining pigment.