Reviewing Stand, Copan,

1970

This photograph was published in Ranney’s Stonework of the Maya (1974), which records the state of pre-Columbian cities in Central America in 1970. The artist wanted to demonstrate the "interdependence of the cultural and natural landscapes of the ancient Maya" and convey the "spirit of the culture." Copan, Honduras, near the Guatemalan border, was once a powerful city ruling a vast kingdom within the southern Maya area. The American and British explorers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood traveled there in 1839, when Johann Frederick Waldeck, whose painting is also displayed on this wall, was working in southern Mexico. Reviewing Stand, Copan shows the south side of Temple 11 in the ceremonial core of the city. Renovated by Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat (reigned 763–after 810), the temple features decorations that symbolize the cosmos on the north side and descend into a watery realm on the south side. The artistic flowering of the period was the last before the kingdom collapsed, its resources exhausted, under the following ruler.