Mayan Jaina Ceramic Standing Lord with Headdress

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Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art

By Artemis Gallery

May 10, 2018

Set Reminder 2018-05-10 10:00:00 2018-05-10 10:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Fine Ethnographic / Asian / Ancient Art https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/artemis-gallery/fine-ethnographic-asian-ancient-art-3213
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• Lot Description
  Pre-Columbian, Jaina / Campeche Mexico, Maya, Late Classic Period, ca. 600 to 850 CE. A hand-modeled, fascinating standing human figure, its body hollow to make a rattle (the rattles are now lost). The figure appears to be a high status male, wearing a very wide belt, a long, hanging, triangular loincloth with three round discs hanging vertically down its front, a necklace with a huge pectoral whose form and ornament exactly matches that of the loincloth, large round earrings, and, most strikingly, an enormous headdress decorated with strips of clay meant to represent feathers and with the top formed into a huge front-facing spiral atop the head. The face is lifelike, with a large nose, small eyes, a partially-opened mouth, and what appears to be a light goatee and mustache. Size: 3.5" W x 10" H (8.9 cm x 25.4 cm); 11.45" H (29.1 cm) on included custom stand.
  
  Jaina figures, from an island off the Yucatan peninsula, are noted for their lifelike faces and their immense detail. The clothing that this figure wears almost certainly copies the real clothing of a person in the Late Classic Maya period. These figures probably represent actual people and seem likely to have been produced in Campeche and brought to Jaina Island to be buried with the dead. Fascinatingly, the people around Jaina are the only people in southeastern Mesoamerica who put human figures into graves - everywhere else in the region, figures have only been found in domestic contexts. The use of human figures immediately calls to mind the earlier West Mexican cultures that had extensive figures made solely to be placed in their shaft tombs. It is believed that the Jaina figures represented real individuals, especially these hand-modeled examples (some later ones are mold-made). The Spaniard Diego de Landa, who recorded details of Mayan life shortly after the Spanish Conquest, wrote that the artists who created pieces like this one lived lives of religious isolation and ritual, fasting and abstaining.
  
  Provenance: private Hawaii, USA collection; ex-Mark Poolos collection, Chicago, Illinois, USA; ex-Adeon Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, USA
  
  All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.
  
  A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.
  
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  #133764

  Condition

  Expertly repaired and restored at the lower legs, one shoulder, one lower arm, and neck. Overpainting along repair lines. Rattles are lost.
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