100% of the Hammer price of all lots sold in this auction will be donated to Community Food Share by Artemis Gallery. $1.00 = 3 meals!

**Originally Listed At $1500**

Pre-Columbian, Colombia, Chimila, ca. 1000 to 1500 CE. A monumental effigy lidded burial urn, meticulously hand built via the coiling technique, created to hold the skeletal remains of a cherished ancestor, possibly a woman. Low relief features on one side of the lid and one side of the body give the urn an anthropomorphic look - a face with a nose ring, coffee-bean shaped eyes, and a small mouth in a thin line, perhaps representing that the figure has died. Relief arms decorated with bracelets meet at a gently raised belly button on the body, below two small dots that are suggestive of breasts. Interestingly, one hand appears open, the other clenched into a fist. Size: 16" W x 24" H (40.6 cm x 61 cm); 35" H (88.9 cm) on included custom stand.

Scholars argue that the custom of creating burial urns is related to the association of bones with the afterlife. According to Armand Labbe's "Colombia Before Columbus," "There is a widespread belief among many Indians of both Middle and South America that bones are a form of seed, from which new life will spring. Recall the Mexican allegory of the personification of the dual lifeforce, Quetzalcoatl, descending to the underworld to retrieve the bones of mankind to resurrect them to a new life." Labbe continues, "Within the Colombian context, the act of placing bones in cylindrical, phalliform urns, and placing these in the womb-like shaft-and-chamber tomb within the Earth Mother, seems to be an enactment of such beliefs." (Labbe, "Colombia Before Columbus: The People, Culture, and Ceramic Art of Prehispanic Colombia." (1986) New York: Rizzoli, p. 116)

For similar examples, see Armand Labbe, "Colombia Before Columbus: The People, Culture, and Ceramic Art of Prehispanic Colombia." (1986) New York: Rizzoli, p. 118, figures 104 and 105.

Provenance: ex-John Smith collection, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

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#136938

Repaired and restored from multiple pieces. Repairs are well done and generally difficult to see, with some small areas of overpaint along the repair lines. Nicely preserved details.



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