- Title
- Vessel with Codex-Style Scene
- Culture
- Aztatlan
- Date Made
- 1350–1500
- Style
- Postclassic International
- Medium
- Engobe-painted earthenware
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 7 1/2 in. (19.05 cm)
Height: 13 1/4 in. (33.66 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2000.86
- Collecting Area
- Art of the Ancient Americas
- Curatorial Notes
This vessel, painted in the style of a Mixtec codex, plays with both form and design to represent cosmic space and time. A complex scene envelops the curved surface of the vase, including its base. The narrative begins with two creator deities conversing in a stylized mountain within a personified cave, whose fanged maw curls onto the base. Two birds descend into the cave, perhaps to deliver an important message, a common trope elsewhere in Mesoamerican art. The scene that unfolds on the rest of the main body of the vessel involves the parallel baptismal rites of two infants; one wears a red mask and the other has bright yellow hair. The yellow-haired figure, a local culture hero, also appears on the neck of the vase with other cultural leaders, directly above a band of skeletal women who represent celestial bodies. The form of the vessel undergirds the cosmic narrative painted on its surface. Its rounded, upwardly constricted body mimics a mountain, bounded above by the celestial imagery on the neck and below by the cave on its base. With sky, earth, and underworld (via the cave) represented, the vessel re-creates the whole of the cosmos.
Alyce de Carteret
2024
- Selected Bibliography
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
- Fields, Virginia M. Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico. London: Scala; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012.
- Magaloni, Diana, Davide Domenici, and Alyce de Carteret. We Live in Painting: the Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2024.
