On view
Mask,
1400–1520
More Context
Didactics
A mask of this kind must have been attached to life-sized statue, idol, or mummy bundle as no effort was made to carve holes for the eyes of a ritual impersonator to see through. Many carved wooden masks are known to come from the dry caves of southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca but these are more commonly covered in turquoise mosaic. This is an unusual example in that it was carved with the slightly more elongated features typical of late Aztec style rather than the more expressionistic Mixteca-Puebla and may even have been intended as a portrait. Covered in gold leaf with eyes and teeth formed from shell or some other precious medium it must have been riveting to gaze upon. The Aztecs preferred to cremate their royal dead after dressing them in the manner of a kingdom’s patron god, while the Mixtecs preserved the bodies by mummifying them and placing them in remote caves. The Zapotecs also preferred to mummify the dead but placed them in tombs located below palace courts. In all its varied uses, the mask became the holy countenance of gods and ancestors through which priests and ritual practitioners believed they could communicate with the afterworld.
Information
1400–1520
North America, Mexico, reportedly found in southern Oaxaca, Central Mexico
June 17, 1970, Alphonse Jax, New York, sold to Gillett G. Griffin (1928-2016), Princeton, NJ [1]. 1970, gift of Mrs. Gerard B. Lambert to the Princeton University Art Museum
Notes:
[1] According to a Jax invoice in the curatorial file.
- "Acquisitions 1970", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 30, no. 1 (1971): p. 22-30., p. 27
- Esther Pasztory, Aztec Art (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983)., pl. 292 (illus.)
- Gerald Berjonneau, Emile Deletaille, and Jean-Louis Sonnery, Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras (Boulogne: Editions Arts, 1985)., cat. no. 112 (illus.)
- Cecelia F. Klein, "Masking Empire: The Material Effects of Masks in Aztec Mexico", Art History 9, no. 2 (June 1986): p. 135-67., fig. 6 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 100 (illus.)
- Felipe Solís, The Aztec Empire: Catalogue of the Exhibition (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004)., cat. no. 293 (illus.)
- Felipe Solís, The Aztec Empire (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004)., fig. 153 (illus.)
- Elizabeth P. Benson et al., Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits (San Antonio, Tex.: San Antonio Museum of Art, 2004)., fig. 2, p. 48 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum, "'Gillett and Me': How a Eurocentric Museum Director Learned to Love Pre-Columbian Art," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 64 (2005): 8-19., fig. 11, p. 16
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 279
