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Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund · The Cleveland Museum of Art
Image: public domain (CC0) · Museum record & image source ↗

Guatemala or Mexico, Usumacinta River region, Maya style · c. 795

Panel with Royal Woman

Creator not recorded by the museum

Date
c. 795
Medium
limestone
Dimensions
Overall: 60.4 x 69.8 cm (23 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.)
Country / context
Guatemala or Mexico, Usumacinta River region, Maya style
Movement / tradition
Central and South American arts
Collection
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Pathway
Central and South American arts ↗
FROM THE MUSEUM

In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in 795.

Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0
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