On view
Squatting contorted male figure,
1325–1521
In Mexica society, every local neighborhood maintained its own shrine; each featured small sculptures representing the gods, often accompanied by carvings of penitent humans. The angle of the head and contorted pose of this figure may represent a contortionist or someone with atypical spinal curvature. Colonial Spanish accounts note that individuals with such distinctive physiques were responsible for conveying the Mexica emperors’ bodies to the afterlife.
This sculpture was among the first from the ancient Americas to enter the Museum’s collections. It was purchased at Sotheby’s, New York, as part of the estate of Joseph Brummer (1883–1947), who was one of the first Western dealers to sell Latin American antiquities as fine art. Brummer purchased the sculpture in 1935 from Charles Ratton, a French dealer of non-Western art. However, the conditions of the arrival of this sculpture to Europe remain uncertain.
Information
1325–1521
North America, Mexico, Central Mexico
July 6, 1935, sold by Charles Ratton (1895-1986), Paris, to Brummer Gallery, Paris and New York [1]; May 11-14, 1949, Joseph Brummer Estate sale, Part II, Sotheby’s Parke-Bernet, New York, lot 465, sold to the Princeton University Art Museum.
Notes:
[1] See Brummer Gallery inventory card (P12011), held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
- An Exhibition of Pre-Columbian Art (Cambridge, the Peabody Museum and the William Hayes Fogg Art Museum, 1940)., no. 15, p. 18 (illus.)
- "Photographs: Exhibiton of Pre-Columbian Art, Bulletin of the Fogg Art Museum 9, no. 2 (1940): 38-39., pp. 38–39
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Parke-Bernet Galleries. 1949. Part II of the notable art collection belonging to the estate of the late Joseph Brummer, sale code 1069. 11-15 May 1949, New York.
, no. 465 - Ernest T. DeWald, "An Aztec Statue," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 9, no. 2 (1950): 13–15., p. 14 (illus.)
- "Recent acquisitions", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 9, no. 2 (1950): p. 15., p. 14
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 29 (illus.)
