On view
Kneeling noblewoman holding a lidded jar,
600–800
More Context
This slip-painted figurine represents a young woman of great beauty in terms of ancient Maya aesthetics. Her elongated head naturalistically depicts the head shape of elite Maya, produced through intentional cranial alteration shortly after birth. Such modification gave the head a form akin to an ear of maize, the substance from which humans were believed to have been created and the primary staple of the ancient Maya diet. She wears a fashionable, courtly hairstyle with high-set bun, stepped bangs, and a narrow strip at the center of her forehead. Red paint on her brow and neck frame and highlight her face. The painted designs on her cheeks once provided two-dimensional embellishments to a jade nose-tube that passed through the hole in her nasal septum. Elaborate earrings, probably of jade, may have hung from her ears. In contrast to the removable jewelry items, her necklace is painted. The playful variety and mixing of two- and three-dimensional representational modes are typical of Early Classic (A.D. 250-550) Maya ceramic art. Scienfitic analysis of the clay, however, indicates this piece was probably made during the Late Classic period. The elegant black, red, and white sarong is associated with the Moon Goddess, who was the divine embodiment not only of the moon but of female beauty and fertility. She frequently appears with a rabbit, a lunar symbol; Mesoamerican peoples saw a rabbit, not a man, in the moon. A rabbit also appears on the Princeton Vase, serving as a scribe in the divine court of God L, the name given to this deity by scholar Paul Schellhas, who assigned letters of the alphabet to the images of supernaturals appearing in the Maya Dresden Codex. Scholars suspect that the Moon Goddess is either the aged God L's concubine or his daughter. Likely interred with a Maya lord, this eternally youthful, kneeling courtesan would have been constantly at the ready to serve him a drink from her lidded jar. One of the young women on the Princeton Vase similarly pours liquid from a vessel. Such mirroring of aristocratic service on a small scale is a conceit common in ancient Maya courtly art, as demonstrated also by the carved wood mirror-holder in the form of a dwarf.
Information
600–800
North America, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, or Mexico, Maya area
Earl L. Stendahl (1888-1966), Los Angeles, CA [1]; sold to Dr. George S. Heyer, Jr. (1930-2015), Class of 1952, Houston, TX; sold to Alphonse Jax, New York [2]. May 19, 2001, Sotheby’s, New York, lot 530. July 27, 2005, sold by the Merrin Gallery, New York, to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Notes:
[1] According to the 2001 Sotheby’s catalogue entry for lot 530. Merrin Gallery paperwork in the curatorial file also notes this is corroborated by Earl Stendahl’s son.
[2] According to Donald Hales, this object was subsequently sold to George Heyer and then Alphonse Jax.
- Gerald Berjonneau, Emile Deletaille, and Jean-Louis Sonnery, Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras (Boulogne: Editions Arts, 1985)., cat. no. 380 (illus.)
- Sotheby's New York, Arts of Africa, Oceania and The Americas (May 19, 2001): 252., p. 252
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2005," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 65 (2006): p. 49-81., p. 76, p. 80 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 265 (illus.)
- "Mysteries of the Maya: the rise, glory and collapse of an ancient civilization," National Geographic Collector's Edition (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2008)., p. 94 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 317
