↗Peru, North Coast, Chongoyape(?), Chavín style (900-200 BCE) · c. 500–200 BCE
Plaque
Creator not recorded
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund · The Cleveland Museum of Art
Image: public domain (CC0) · Museum record & image source ↗
Isthmian Region (Colombia), Tolima · 1–800 CE
Figural Pendant
Creator not recorded by the museum
- Date
- 1–800 CE
- Medium
- gold, cast and hammered
- Dimensions
- Overall: 29.4 x 16.2 x 1 cm (11 9/16 x 6 3/8 x 3/8 in.)
- Country / context
- Colombia
- Movement / tradition
- Central and South American arts
- Collection
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Pathway
- Central and South American arts ↗
FROM THE MUSEUM
Colombia's Tolima region is justly famous for arrestingly abstracted figures like this one, among the largest of its kind. Such figures, worn as necklace pendants by chiefs and other elites, seem to be based on the human form. But they also incorporate animal features, often an upturned, bifurcated tail sometimes compared to that of a serpent and large, angled head appendages that may refer to animal ears or even insect antennae.
Collection text · The Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0A MOMENT TO LOOK
Start with what you can see: shapes, surface, colour and scale. How might the listed materials affect the way this object was made and experienced?
Looking prompt · an invitation to observe, not a historical interpretation.
