Xipe Totec,

600–900

Some Mesoamerican visual culture fascinates and challenges the modern viewer with its sensitive rendition of gruesome, violent themes. This ceramic effigy of the deity Xipe Totec offers an excellent case in point. Xipe Totec, a Nahuatl name used by the Aztecs, means "Our Lord the Flayed One." As this pre-Aztec example from Veracruz viscerally presents, Xipe Totec--and his human impersonators--donned a flayed human skin as a full body suit. Originally, human hair was fixed to the slits on the top and sides of the undecorated scalp. The expressionless face, with empty slit-eyes and gaping mouth, almost completely conceals the wearer within, and only his hands and feet emerge from the costume. In contrast to the thoroughly lifeless, hanging costume hands, those of the deity consist of gracefully curving forms, with thumbs and index fingers softly pressed together, providing a subtle yet effective sense of life within the inert outer surface. The Xipe Totec cult seems to have originated among the Classic-period Zapotecs, who referred to the deity as Yopi. In the early Postclassic period, the cult flourished along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz, and it is probably from this region that the Aztecs incorporated the deity into their own pantheon. Among the Aztecs, Xipe Totec was the patron deity of gladiatorial combat. During his annual, twenty-day-long festival, called Tlacaxipehualiztli, Aztec warriors wore the flayed skins of sacrificed war captives until they rotted off. Occurring in the spring, the Tlacaxipehualiztli rites carried agricultural significance--the shedding of the dead, flayed skin was seen to parallel planted seeds whose sprouts sprung forth from their dry, dead hulls. Although Xipe Totec imagery focused on the highly charged moment prior to renewal and emergence, these two themes are nevertheless implied in the art. Several characteristics of this piece diverge from later Aztec representations of Xipe Totec: the black paint around the mouth differs from the stripe down the center of the face that is typical in Aztec depictions; there is no sign of preflaying heart extraction on the chest; and the genitalia are included in the costume, a feature consistently omitted in Aztec versions.