DECORATED TRIPODE PLATE OF A DANCER PERSONIFYING THE DIVINIT - Lot 74

Lot n° 74
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Estimation :
20000 - 25000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 20 310EUR
DECORATED TRIPODE PLATE OF A DANCER PERSONIFYING THE DIVINIT - Lot 74
DECORATED TRIPODE PLATE OF A DANCER PERSONIFYING THE DIVINITY OF MAIZE Mayan Culture, Petén, Guatemala Recent Classical, 600-900 A.D.C. Polychrome ceramic H. 9 cm - D. 36,2 cm Maya polychrome tripod plate with dancer as the maize god, buffware with polychrome, Petén, Guatemala, H. 3 3/8 in - D. 14 1/4 in Provenance: Private American Collection Acquired by the current owner in 1989 Merrin Gallery, New York Andy and Von Long Gallery, Denver, active from the 1960s to the 1980s Ancient Art of the New World, New York This large tripod dish, each hollow leg of which contains terracotta marbles to act as bells, is inspired by an original model of dishes that was first produced in the northeast Petén in the early classical period of recent times. Examples of such dishes that have been discovered in an archaeological context have shown that the dancer personifying the reborn maize deity Hun Ixiim, painted on the bottom of the object, was frequently ritually neutralized (by means of a perforation, which is not the case here), on the occasion of the death of the person who had decided to take it to his grave. The examples found in excavations by archaeologists have also shown that the head of the deceased was covered with these dishes, with the decoration on the inner face placed against the face (and therefore with the feet of the object facing upwards from the grave). An unusual originality of the decoration of this piece is that the god is oriented to the right, instead of to the left according to the usual canons of Mayan imagery, and that he is framed by two dwarves, the one on the left of which - through his gestures and facial features - echoes the main character. Around it, this image is framed by an annular frieze of pseudo-cephalomorphic cephalomorphic glyphs of a type frequent on this kind of dish, itself surrounded on the edge of the dish by eight variations on the glyph of the "god K" K'awiil1. This decoration
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