Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Nayarit, ca. 300 BCE to 300 CE. An incredible matched pair of seated ceramic figures, with complimentary clothing, facial markings, sculpture styles, and poses. One is a woman who cradles a small child at her bare breast. She wears a skirt, beautifully decorated with triangles and polka dots in red, black, and white. She also wears five earrings on each ear and a nose ring, with polka dots in white around her neck perhaps representing jewelry, tattooing, or scarification. Painted on her face are red and white stripes that radiate outwards from her eyes; around her mouth is black. The face paint may also be representative of a tattooing style, and the artist may have intended to show her as a member of a specific trade or kinship group. On her head is a round headdress. Size of largest (woman): 6.25" L x 8.5" W x 13.35" H (15.9 cm x 21.6 cm x 33.9 cm)

The male figure holds a musical instrument shaped like a saw with a human form in approximately the same position as the baby in the arms of the woman; he plays it with what looks like a bone and grips it with well-realized fingers. The man's body is painted with white and red triangles and the same white polka dot motif around his neck as the woman does. He also wears the same style of earrings and has a pointed tip on his nose that is probably meant to represent jewelry. Just like the woman, his face is painted with red and white lines that radiate outward from the eyes, down the cheeks. He wears a pointed hat with a banded brim. Both figures are depicted with their mouths open and teeth finely delineated; they both also have well-rendered eyes, much more detailed than the usual Nayarit figures, with their irises clearly painted in black.

Clay figures like these 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 these, placed alongside the walls facing inward, near the skulls. Large effigies like these 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: Southern California, USA private collection; acquired between 1969-1985

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#126901

Female is repaired and restored at neck/upper chest. The man's nose has been repaired, with repair well done and almost impossible to see. Excellent pigment remaining. Manganese deposits on surfaces of both.