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48
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Pair of cylindrical vases with relief decoration
Beige terra…
See original version (French)
48
-
Pair of cylindrical vases with relief decoration
Beige terra…
See original version (French)
Estimate €15,000 - €25,000
Voluntary lot
Description
Pair of cylindrical vases
with relief decoration
Beige terracotta with moulded decoration in high relief, traces of pale blue and white pigments, marks of age
Maya, Xultún region, Early Classic, c. 250 - 450 AD
26 cm and 22.9 cm
Provenance :
Private American collection, before 1970
Sotheby's New York, May 1993, lot 276, and November 1996, lot 180
John Menser, 1993-1996
Private collection, Venezuela, 1996-2023
John Menser / Ron Normandeau, 2023
Bibliography:
Listed in the Kerr Maya Vase Database under numbers K6550 and K6551.
Die Maya - Schrift und Kunst, Nikolai Grube and Maria Gaida, p. 200, Abb. 33.2.
One of the vases also appears in the film Out of the Maya Tombs.
These large cylindrical vases belong to an extremely rare group attributed to a workshop in the Maya city of Xultún. The decoration, sculpted in fluid, deeply modelled relief, depicts a scene linked to the Mayan aquatic and subterranean worlds: a long-necked mythological bird, probably a sacred cormorant, stands on a monstrous head with large circular eyes and grasps a catfish in its beak.
The exceptional quality of the relief, produced using moulds and then reworked by hand, gives the piece a graphic power and refinement rarely seen in classical Maya ceramics. The upper register features a large glyphic band associated with the Primary Standard Sequence.
The iconography of the "Water Bird" and aquatic creatures evokes notions of supernatural transformation and passage between the different levels of the Maya cosmos. The rarity of these works is underlined by the existence of a single comparable example in the Humboldt Forum, a major museum and cultural centre in Berlin devoted to ethnological and archaeological collections.
See original version (French)
Auto-translation. Refer to original language for legal validity.
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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