Maya Terrakotta Tökéletes állványlap. Kr.u. 600-900. 33 cm D. TL TESZT. Spanyol behozatali engedély.

Tripod Bowl.

- Thermoluminiscense Test -

Mayan, 600-900 AD.

Terracotta.

33 cm diameter and 8.5 cm height.

PROVENANCE: Private collection, Mario Villa (1953 - 2021), New Orleans, USA Mario Villa is known as a furniture collector, artist, designer and manufacturer.

CONDITION: The plate maintains its original polychrome, it is composed of four large fragments, without added areas. It has root marks on the base and polychrome areas.

DESCRIPTION:

A wide, shallow bowl with a flat bottom, walls that open outwards, curving slightly, and a rounded, rounded, hollowed-out lip. It stands on three small cylindrical feet. It is made of light-coloured ceramic, visible on the base and feet, and decorated with red, black and ochre engobes, a polychrome that covers the entire surface of the bowl, including the outside of the walls. Inside the bowl, the decoration is organised in well-defined spaces, with black lines that differentiate the bottom from the walls and mark the subdivision of the walls into four equal spaces, following a cross-shaped pattern. This type of tripod dish was used during ritual banquets to serve corn tamales, a food of great symbolic importance in the Mayan religion, to which the iconography of the decoration of the piece itself usually refers (fig. 1).

The main motif, which occupies the bottom of the bowl, is a head in profile towards the left, a personage with stylised features and a marked cranial deformation, adorned with a complicated headdress, nose ring, earrings and necklace. This is the Maize God, one of the most important in the Mayan pantheon. He was a benevolent deity who represented life, prosperity and abundance. He may have been considered the creator of the world, and was also associated with the changing of the seasons. The story of his death and rebirth was also a central metaphor for the belief in the apotheosis of the Maya kings. Identified by the name Hun-Hunahpu in the Popol Vuh, a compendium of Maya tradition written in the 16th century, the corn god achieved the status of cultural hero during the Classic period.

The depiction is careful, with a fine black line that draws the different details with precision and elegance. The cranial deformation determines a descending line from the crown of the head that extends into a slightly backward sloping forehead and continues without interruption to form the nose, which is straight and gently curved downwards at its base. The lips are thick and expressive, open in a naturalistic gesture that enlivens the image. The general stylisation of the representation is also reflected in the almond-shaped, very elongated eyes, typical of Mayan plastic art, and in details such as the ears, which are narrow and also very long. The representation is completed with thicker strokes of red pigment, including facial paintings around the eyes and mouth of the personage. The headdress includes an upper feather crest and two large double tufts, one at the front and one at the back, which are particularly prominent in the profile representation. The necklace is made up of corn kernels, a motif that is repeated in front of the figure's mouth, as if emerging from it. On the walls of the piece the decoration is simpler, alternating two plain quadrants, with a red background, with two others with large corn kernels drawn in black on an ochre background, following the same chromatic scheme as the background of the bowl.

The Maya culture developed over a large area, from south-central Mexico to Guatemala and Honduras. This area was made up of three different regions: the mountains or Highlands, the tropical jungle or Lowlands, and the lowlands of the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, each with its own distinct resources. The activity of the Maya during the Classic period was centred in the Highlands and Lowlands, whose most important centres were Tikal and Kaminaljuyú, respectively.

This culture began to form from the first village and agricultural groups that inhabited the area and participated in the sphere of exchange and influence of groups from central Mexico, mainly the Olmecs. Around the 10th century A.D., possibly as a result of the lack of rainfall, the deterioration of the ecological system and social discontent, the main civic-ceremonial centres were abandoned. Later, populations of Mayan origin would have settled in the Yucatan peninsula and together with groups from central Mexico, mainly Toltecs, would form new centres, such as Chichen Itza and Mayapan, which would last until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1525. Even today, there are still peoples belonging to the Mayan tradition, from Yucatan to Honduras, who continue with the way of life, dress and language of this ancient culture.

The basis of their economy was slash-and-burn agriculture in cultivated fields or milpas, sowing, with the help of sharpened sticks, mainly maize, pumpkin, chilli peppers and beans. They worked four months of the year and, due to erosion, the land had to be constantly rotated. In addition, they gathered large quantities of wild vegetables and fruits, hunted wild animals, extracted honey from beehives and fished in the sea, lakes and rivers. As resources differed from region to region, trade played a key role. The Maya were able to measure time and the movements of the earth and the stars, based on calculations using a vigesimal mathematical system. They developed two calendars, a solar calendar or haab (of 365 days with 18 months of 20 days, plus an additional 5 days) and a lunar calendar or tzolkin (of 260 days), which regulated civil and religious activities respectively. Both acted simultaneously, in a calendrical wheel, which after 52 years closed a cycle and events repeated themselves again. In addition, based on the legacy left by the Olmec culture, the Maya developed a writing system of glyphs or signs that were distributed in two columns, read from left to right and from top to bottom. This is found on the walls and staircases of important buildings, on pottery and in books or codices made of amate paper or deer skin.

They developed a unique artistic style with a complexity that is often compared to the European Baroque. They depicted the human being in a very realistic manner and with correct anatomical proportions, in naturalistic poses and with an emphasis on movement. The main themes of their art were sacred, ritual and hierarchical, although there are also scenes of daily life and local fauna, such as the monkey, tapir, jaguar, bat, quetzal, fish and turtles. Stone was one of the most commonly used raw materials used to construct buildings and to carve stelae, sculptures and different bas-reliefs and super-reliefs that adorn the constructions. In architecture they introduced the stela-altar, the arch and the false vault. In addition to monumental art, personal aesthetics were also important, and so they made jade ornaments, such as earrings, pendants, necklaces and masks, deformed their skulls and noses and hung an ornament on their foreheads to make them look like turnips. Their pottery, decorated with paintings and engravings, offers many of the finest pieces of pre-Columbian art, the most common forms being vases, bowls and incense burners. The former usually contain texts written in the glyph system developed by this culture.

Worship was fundamental for the Maya, as they conceived of the earthly and supernatural, lower or dark and upper or celestial worlds as a unity in which human beings, deities, animals and plants were closely linked by destiny from birth. That is why they went to the great civic-religious centres in search of the horoscope and offered blood from their fingertips, earlobes or tongues, which was deposited on the altars erected in front of the stelae. The pantheon was broad, with the creator god Hunab Ku and the god of the Night who inhabited the underworld: the god Ah Puch, standing out. They also worshipped the sun, the moon, Venus and other celestial bodies and phenomena such as rain, represented by Chaac. On the other hand, there were tutelary gods of the different social groups and specialists, such as Kukulcan, the Feathered Serpent, associated with the ruling class, and Ek Chuah, linked to the merchants and cocoa producers. Upon death, the individual could, depending on his merits, go to rest eternally in one of the heavens, under the leafy shade of the ceiba tree, or suffer permanently the torments of hunger and cold in the dark underworld. If he was a peasant, he was buried in the vicinity of the hut where he had died; if he was a nobleman, he was cremated and his ashes were placed in urns in underground vaults. If he was a ruler, a pyramidal temple was built as a burial place.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:

- EVANS, S.T.; WEBSTER, D.L. Archaeology of Ancient Mexico and Central America: An Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. 2000.
- GRUBE, N. (ed). Los Mayas. Una Civilización Milenaria. Könemann. 2006.
- SHARER, R.J.; TRAXLER, L.P. The Ancient Maya. Stanford University Press. 2006.

PARALLELS:

Fig. 1 Tripod dish with the Maize God. Guatemala, Maya culture, 7th-8th century. Polychrome ceramic with engobes, 35.1 cm diameter. Princeton University Art Museum (USA), inv. 2016-1193.


Notes:
- The piece includes authenticity certificate.
- The piece includes Spanish Export License.
- The seller guarantees that he acquired this piece according to all national and international laws related to the ownership of cultural property. Provenance statement seen by Catawiki.