Art and Architecture MARY ELLEN MILLER **m - www.ebook3000.com ,- Boston Public Library .' lei earned from Ya
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Art and Architecture MARY ELLEN MILLER
**m
-
www.ebook3000.com
,-
Boston Public Library
.'
lei
earned
from Yale University, and
I
ih.it
numerous awards and honors, she Mesoa?-
th Karl
World
(also in the
reconstruct the
1998 she was named
In
History of Art at Yale.
World
She
is
Maya
wall paintings
Vincent Scully
Jr.
books on
art in all
complete
list
.it
its
aspects.
If
you would
In
the United States please write
500
Fifth
New
York,
Printed
in
to:
INC.
Avenue
New
like
of titles in print please write to:
WC1V7QX
THAMES & HUDSON
I
inda
Bonampak,
also Master of Saybrook College.
THAMES & HUDSON 181AHighHolbom London
with
Professor ot the
This famous series provides the widest available range of illustrated
ipienl ol
Miller is currently din
of Art
to receive a
re
to
is
York 101 10
Singapore
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A
Late Classic trumpeter from
Jaina Island
lifts
and prepares
to
a horn to his lips
sound
a blast.
Mary
Maya
Ellen Miller
Art and
Architecture 207
illustrations,
57
in
color
THAMES & HUDSON
(T&H
v^3 www.ebook3000.com
To the
memory
1942-1998
of Linda Scheie,
BR BR
F1435.3 -A7
M55 1999x
Any copy
of this
book issued by the publisher as
subject to the condition that
be
it
is
consent
in
shall not by
way
a
paperback
sold
is
of trade or otherwise
out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
lent, resold, hired
prior
it
any form
of binding or cover other than that in
which
published and without a similar condition including these words
being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
©
1999 Thames & Hudson
First
published
in
paperback
Thames & Hudson
Inc.,
500
Ltd,
in
London
the United States of America
Fifth
Library of Congress Catalog Card
Avenue,
New
York,
New
in
1999 by 10110
York
Number 99-70938
ISBN0-500-20327-X All
Rights Reserved.
transmitted
in
No
any form
part of this publication or by
may be reproduced
any means, electronic
or
or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval
Printed
system, without prior permission
and bound
in
Singapore
in
writing from the publisher.
Contents
6
Preface
Chapter 8
1
Introduction
Chapter 2
22
Maya
72
The Materials
Architecture
Chapter 3 of
Maya
Art
Chapter 4
88
Early Classic Sculpture
Chapter 5
wir
Late Classic Sculpture
Chapter 6
136
Sculpture of the North: the Art of Yucatan and Chichen Itza
150
The Human Form
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
168
Maya Murals and Books
Chapter 9
wo
Maya Ceramics
216
A World
Chapter 10 of
Hand-held Objects
232
Chronological Table
233
Select Bibliography
235
List of Illustrations
238
Index
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—
Preface
I
Cambridge, Massachusetts over
visited Tatiana Proskouriakoffin
twenty years ago. tion topic, the
I
had wanted to talk with her about
Bonampak
their initial study back in 1955.
that
But what she wanted to
November day was not Bonampak.
ing a cigarette off to her
What this
my disserta-
murals, since she had been an author of talk about
"Oh," she said to me, wav-
side, "that subject
has already been writ-
art. What is Maya art? Why is it a great art style? And what is its range?" Coming from the woman who had written the only comprehensive book on Maya art Classic Maya Sculpture (1950) her words made a great impression on me. But I thought at the time that she
ten about.
field
needs
is
a
book about Maya
—
1
.
A
loving couple from Jaina
Island (Late Classic) form an
was not talking about what
elaborate whistle. A similar figurine
(ill.
139) may have had
body made from the same mold
and then finished with heads.
different
a
should do, for
I
I
was
a
complete
me that she was describing what she wished she were working on, rather than the project on Maya history that stranger:
it
seemed
was laid out on
A
to
a table that
day and that became her last book.
decade later Linda Scheie and
together on The Blood of Kings.
such questions as
"What
is
I
spent months working
We were keen to pose and answer
Maya
art?" but
we were limited by
constraints of the exhibition at the Kimbell Art
Museum in
the
terms
And we found ourselves thinking and we sought was to take the fruits of twenty-five years of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment and use them to decode the fundamental meaning of Maya art. Our book refocused Maya studies and brought Maya art to public attention
of the range of
Maya
art.
writing thematically: what
in a
way that it had not previously been known. But
I
art, to
look at so
had not been answered
Maya
my way through the larger many fundamental questions that any overview. What is the nature of
had long wanted to write
corpus of Maya
in
sculptural development?
How
do the regional schools of
sculpture and painting emerge, and what can be
made
of them?
How
hand?
How
Maya
art
So to
Maya
did the
me
artist exploit the materials at
come to focus on
at last little
I
the
human
found myself writing
more than
charted territory.
The
a
figure? a
book that has often seemed
preliminary road
result
is
did
map through
not Tatiana's book, for
barely
it is
less
2.
From the Temple
at
Palenque, the observer gains
an expansive view
of Inscriptions
may have been construction.
Its
Maya
art
and more about the whats than any
book she would have written. Nor is
it
Linda's book: Linda went on
of the Palace,
where buildings were added over a century.
about the whys of
for
signature tower
to co-author three project.
the final
in a
This book seeks to organize
way that will
in the
books on Maya history and ideology
Maya
art afresh
after
our
and to do so
benefit students and those with a general interest
Maya everywhere.
Over the years
Simon
I
my
have learned constantly from
colleagues.
Martin has been an excellent sounding board during the
writing of this book, and I'm grateful for his thoughtful comments
throughout the'process. Steve Houston, Karl Taube, David Stuart, Michael Coe, Justin Kerr,
Magaloni have
all
Adam
Herring, Regan Huff, and Diana
shared their ideas generously. Dorie Reents-
Budet's exhibition, Painting the
to see and think about
Maya
Universe,
in
spring 1995, making
also grateful for the intelligence and insight of
with
came
to the Yale
me Maya vases every day for three months. am
University Art Gallery
it
possible for I
my
Yale students,
whom am always seeing works of art for the first time. I
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Chapter
1:
Introduction
Maya gave names
In their texts, the ancient
to the things they
made. They identified the ceramic vessels they painted, distinguishing a low bowl, or
named
lak,
from
a cylinder vessel, nch'ib.
their buildings, calling, for example, the
They
most sacred royal
palace at Palenque the sak nuk nah, the "white big house," or the
most important funerary pyramid or "burial
They honored
hill."
monument,
stone
Piedras Negras the muknal
at
the day
when they would
set a
new
or banner stone, at Copan, and they
a lakamtun,
called attention to the wealthy royal
woman who commissioned a
series of carved stone lintels at Yaxchilan.
A
painter at Naranjo
signed his pots, adding for emphasis the names of his parents and revealing that he was indeed a painter of high status: his father was the king of the
one
son,
city,
who would
and the painter was apparently the younger not normally take the throne.
The Maya had
names for these ancient artforms, and they knew who had commissioned a
work of art and who
in
turn had
made
it.
The Maya speak
of writing and carving in the surviving texts, but like most ancient civilizations,
they had no single encompassing word for art
their lexicon.
And perhaps
every surface
—whether
they had no need for such
a textile or a thatched
a
in
word, for
—could
roof
be
transformed by paint and stucco and turned into a remarkable thing, cally
ornamented with designs or figures
Maya. These works were
cities,
and many were made to
world of Maya
all
that
were characteristi-
at dozens of Maya The ancient Maya world was a
around them,
last.
art.
For most of the
first
millennium AD, the Maya
built cities
and
sanctuaries in the tropical and subtropical rainforests of southern
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras,
all
regions where the
Maya had settled centuries before. The art of that era, generally from the Maya lowlands, is the main subject of this book, although both Preclassic and Postclassic materials will
from time even
in
to time, as will
come
works from mountainous
regard to the period from
AD 250
to 900, or
to the fore
terrain.
what
is
Nor
called
the "Classic" period, can this study be comprehensive, for at
dozens of
cities,
large and small,
Maya
art
and architecture
thrived, with local styles and traditions evolving ovei time
book can be little more than aroadmaptothecomplexitj
oi
rhis
Maya
art.
Maya
art and civilization
The Maya of the
millennium were not the
firs!
Mesoamerica, the ancient cultural region
that
firsi
'
Hr
k^w 59. Using string saws, the
Maya
cut thin slabs of jade to form
plaques, onto which they then
range from white to black. The Maya preferred things green and
may have
blue-green over other colors, and
—
green tropical bird
things
representations of lords, the Maize
maize sprouting from the stalk
a
seen them as like
feather, a jade bead, a
carved two-dimensional
—-and they used
young
a single
ear of
word
to
God, dwarfs, or a combination thereof, as
on
this
plaque from
express the colors Europeans distinguish as blue and green.
may
connoted antiquity,
Nebaj. Archaeologists recovered
Sacred to earlier cultures, jade
numerous
and the Maya certainly collected ancient treasures. Devoted atten-
ceramics
fine jades
at this
Guatemala
site,
and painted
also have
highland
which may well
have been a center
for fine
dants placed a jade bead in the
mouth of a dead loved
one, either to
serve as a receptacle for the soul, or perhaps to function as an end-
craftsmen.
lessly replenished kernel of maize.
To the Maya, ajade bead was
the symbol of preciousness
itself,
but objects in jade could range from the thinnest tessera to a 4.4 2C
kg
(9.75 lb) head.
the
Maya
And, contrary
to
what we might expect
to find,
primarily identified the sun with jade, with the god they
called K'inich
Ahaw, or Ahaw K'in
—Lord Sun
in
any lexicon.
Squint-eyed, the sun apparently took on the squinty features that a
human looking
at
the sun
would have, within
squared eve frame. For reasons
had
a
a
front tooth in the shape of a capital T,
and
very non-human
K'inich
Ahaw also
a fashion
took hold.
we do not know,
59,
USUvl
God
.
or the
Sun G
To
indicate both wealth and prestige,
teeth filed into the T-form; others had a concept of
human beauty
The
small
lords had their
inlaid with bitsofjade,
that surprises us today.
Hanab Pakal of Palenque died, his face.
some Maya them
his heirs
assembled
When King
a jade
jade pieces for the nose and mouth; shell and obsidian
With
eyes.
mask on
jade tesserae yielded to large, specialized
flat
the T-shaped tooth, the dead, masked
formed
his
Hanab Pakal
must have taken on both the guise of the Sun God and the Maize God, two divine images of renewal, forever young and firm of face, even though he was
a
man
During the Classic
of eighty years of age.
period, the
Maya
used other greenstones,
including fuchsite and serpentine, along with jade. Then, during the ninth century and into the Postclassic era, Toltec traders a
new
material, turquoise, available to the Maya. Turquoise
made
comes
from modern-day New Mexico, and the Toltecs, Mixtecs, and Aztecs
found
all
in
treasured
the
Maya
it
for their mosaics.
then imported to the Maya, but the the material
when
Most turquoise mosaics
area were probably assembled elsewhere, and
it
was
a\ ailable to
Maya
certainly incorporated
them.
7.7
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Gold
Gold made only
a late
entry into Mesoamerica from South
America, where metallurgy had begun
broken a
legs, hollow,
Lower Central American
H
Stela
731,
at
Peru by 3000
in
figure,
were found
it
Two
cache under
in a
Copan, which could not have been sealed
making
BC.
and therefore cast by the lost-wax method, of
later than
AD
the earliest securely dated gold of Mesoamerica.
Well into the early Postclassic
era, Central
America remained the
main source of finished and partly-finished metals. By no
later
than AD 900, the ability to manipulate raw lumps of gold had arrived in Mesoamerica, and gold began to be identified with the sun.
the time of the Spanish Conquest of
Still, at
Mexico and
Central America, most indigenous peoples favored greenstones
over gold, a preference quickly exploited by greedy Spaniards, but
more than
little
a
among the Maya gold went
few gold beads and bells turned up
Maya of that period. Spanish conquerors
seeking
away empty-handed.
By
the apogee of Chichen Itza, and surely no later than
Maya
the tenth century,
lords
there imported quantities of
metal from Lower Central America, particularly sheet gold. Little
Maya goldwork
has survived other than what divers have
dredged from the Sacred Cenote. Some sheet gold may have been
Maya then worked using a The hammered imagery reveals sophisticated
delivered in disk form, which the
repousse technique.
compositions, usually featuring the actions of Chichen
Itza
lords in the middle zone, framed by sky gods above and under-
world
gods
below.
Slightly
convex,
the
gold
were
disks
probably affixed to wooden backing and worn by victorious warriors. In the last few
know and work
Precolumbian centuries, the Maya came to
other metals, including
Mexico. The
wax
Maya
at
and copper,
tin, silver,
although most of these were imported,
many from
Central
Santa Rita made ornaments using the lost-
process, like the sophisticated craftsmen of Central Mexico.
The Chichen bowls,
all
Itza cenote yielded a
covered with gold
table setting
fit
foil,
matching
set of six
copper
or what truly would have been a
for a king. In the sixteenth century,
would write of the cenote that "they also threw into
Bishop Landa
it
a
great
many
other things, like precious stones and things which they prized.
And
so
if this
country had possessed gold,
would have the greater part of inspired divers and dredgers to
muck of the cenote
floor,
it..."
it
would be this well
Needless to
say,
dream of what might
and by 1904, Edward
that
such lines lie in
the
Thompson had
— managed
to find the first indications
retrieve from the
of the rich offerings he would
murk} sinkhole, including
the pret ious metals
Landa had predicted.
Fruits ofthe sea
Elsewhere,
Maya
across the
all
onward, the Maya collected matt
realm, and rials
from early nines
from the n\^-
the sea,
oi
seeking shells and pearls, as well as the host of animals
who
depended ow the sea
The
for their survival, particularly turtles.
Maya
prized two shells over
oliva.
Found
at
all
others: the spondylus and the
depths which tax the him is of the unaided diver,
the spondylus. or thorny oyster, yields a delicious high-protein
food as
lirst
its
prize,
and the occasional pearl as
Although only occasionally found
in
second.
its
archaeological contexts
(King Hanah Pakal of Palenque's tomb contained jade jewelry studded with pearls), the Maya prized
On
themselves with them.
and adorned
pearls,
Yaxchilan Lintel 24, Lady Xok's
dress billows and drapes, revealing tiny sewn pearls on selvage. Furthermore, the shell itself,
Maya valued
scraping off exterior spines and interior white nacre,
reducing the weight by up to two-thirds, and revealing
orange
the
the heavy and bulky
interior.
So worked, the spondylus
shell
a brilliant
trimmed the
mantles of lords, formed a headdress ornament, or girded the loins of
women. Workers
become
cut other spondylus shells to
mosaic tesserae.
By comparison, other costume
Chan
for
On
dance or war.
K'ciwil has
donned
Tikal Stela
olivas,
that
may
the
symbol of the Shell
5,
at
Mexico introduced
Tikal's
noisy
a
King Yik'in
rendered with cross-hatching
company
oil
when
turned
— held
into
to
trumpets,
We
their
greatest
foreigners from Central
their fashionability
conchs
then carved and adorned them.
the Maya. Simple
although
Maya
the
can well imagine that the
iridescent fishes of the Caribbean fascinated the a
the hip,
indicate a shiny surface or black paint. Pecten shells
value during the Early Classic,
surgery
Maya
shells received simple treatment.
wore multiple strands of single-valve oliva
lords
Maya, but only
few traces confirm their exploration of the coral reefs
example, the widespread easiest to spot in reefs.
presence of stingray spines,
—
a
for
fish
At the time of the Conquest, the Aztecs
had collected vast quantities of brain and other corals and interred
them
in
their principal temple; the
sea material and added
it
Maya,
too,
valued unusual
to cache deposits, and occasionally to
tombs.
77
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— Bone Artists carved and
At Tikal,
in
worked bones of all
the early eighth century,
departed the mortal world with a
with brilliant vermilion.
human and
animal.
K'awil (Ruler A)
bag of some ninety carved bones,
a
number of them worked with
sorts,
Hasaw Chan
delicate incision
and then rubbed
Some human bones may have been
relics,
or trophies. Just a glance at the pattern of burial at Early Classic
Tikal reveals opportunities for both: the primary skeleton of the
king
in Burial
48 lacked femurs,
companions, presumably
a
hand, and a skull, whereas his
sacrificial victims,
were interred with
may have happened to this king's secondary burial, made after the flesh had
skeletons intact. Several things
they formed a
bones:
if
rotted
away or been boiled
off,
may have claimed
the heirs
Or, if the lord had been captured and killed by hostile
some
parts of the body or bones
Excavators
an
retrieved
Kaminaljuyu grave;
a
may have been carved
elaborately
relics.
forces, only
returned home. skull
from
a
Chichen Itza skull had been converted to
a
might well have been
a
cup, reliquary, or incense burner. Either
trophy or prize. In distant Peru, shortly before the Conquest,
enemies gloated that they would drink from the skulls of their
The Maya may well have done the same thing.
enemies.
100
61. Mourners buried nearly
human and animal bones tomb of Hasaw Chan
carved in
the
K'awil, at the Tikal.
A
base
of a tiny spatula:
surface
in
hand
an
of
of
Temple
artist,
this exquisite
or "stone tree," for the nearly universal upright prismatic
is
shafts, or stelae,
its
cept, for
it
found
seemed
at
Maya
sites.
to incorporate in
it
This was an appealing conthe idea that stone sculpture
the
had evolved from woodcarving. Other such evolutionary relation-
painting
perhaps the very hand of the
who made
tun,
I,
rendered on
the finest of lines
few years ago, the epigrapher David Stuart proposed a reading
of te
bone took the form
single
Stone stelae and otherforms
A
man
drawing.
ships between the perishable and the
Maya
permanent can be seen
material evidence: the stone roof of
trimmed with stone
that has been cut to resemble
other parts of the world such evolution
example,
in
House E
is
at
Palenque
palm
in is
thatch. In
also specific, as, for
ancient Greece, where the great Doric columns
evolved from tree-trunk predecessors, the very entasis (swelling) of their form related to the oak tree. Furthermore,
Maya
stone
sculpture emerges as a well-developed tradition, without a lot of hesitant early efforts extant. 62. With the cranium cut open
and
a
wooden
opening, this
lid fitted
human
even a cup,
of the skull
sealed with fittings.
for the
only imagine that the grand
began with the sculpture
into the
skull
may
of wood.
The Maya
have formed an incense burner or
One can
tradition of Maya freestanding sculpture
apertures
seem to have been wood and stucco
cal
woods
fortunately had a
to carve,
many
number of extremely hard
of them more
stone but unfortunately biodegradable
body of Maya ~-
art largely lost to us.
tropi-
resistant to carving than
— and
thus constitute a
Undoubtedly mahogany and
B
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— rosewood
(the latter with
its
pungent, sweet smell) played a role in
Maya wooden sculpture. Although only the tiniest sample remains, three-dimensional sculptures in wood were probably common throughout the history of Maya
come from
Surviving examples
civilization.
caves and cenotes; in one case, complete imprints of
wooden sculpture survived
where a tomb had been flood-
at Tikal,
ed hundreds of years ago, encasing works that subsequently rotted away. Additionally,
Maya sculptors carved hewn boards of some of
the hardest tropical
and hieroglyphic
woods
lintels.
(particularly sapodilla) to
ing temples, as at Tikal, these lintels have survived
David Stuart subsequently came stela
form
figural
Where these span the doorways of towerto
in situ.
argue that the
Maya word
was not "stone tree" but rather lakamtun, or "banner stone"
which nevertheless does not exclude wood
Maya
banners
set these stone
in
of a well-planted orchard at the
like trees
as the model.
The
striking configurations, arrayed
Main Plaza of Copan
or
like a
receiving line of ancestors along the North Acropolis of
Tikal.
At Piedras Negras, each
king initiated
installation of a
a
new lineup of stelae, but never exceeding eight, and not in chronological
sequence from the
occasions, bases, as
Some
sites
whose
inscriptions, as
do
The
altars at
some
resultant imagery
suggests tree rings.
On
favored stela-altar pairings, generally efforts at
in
other stone
Classic, as at Tikal or Caracol. Scholars
to replace the
term
altar in the
these round, low stones set
in
sacrifice; at Tikal, for
Maya
was
have occasionally sought
lexicon, but in fact
most of
front of stelae feature imagery of
example, altar after altar illustrates
the sacrificial victim. altar
among
stonecarving went back to the Early
Yaxchilan bear concentric
other cities.
or vice versa.
would appear to have been the case at Tonina.
dynasties 63. The surfaces of altars at
left to right,
wooden banners or posts may have been placed
likely the
The wooden model stump or the
sliced
for the
drum of a
tree trunk. Particularly in the Early Classic,
stumps of felled rainforest giants must have been ever-present, their concentric circles the model for concentric inscriptions
mon
to altars,
shed
human blood.
com-
weeping sap the analogue to
Despite the general prevalence of the stela, the
Maya adopted
other sculptural
forms. Palenque artisans assembled thin individual panels of limestone for large interi-
or
installations
- and
Palenque
sculptors
•hewed the stela form nearly altogether. At Yaxchilan and the Petexbatun
sites,
carved steps formed
.
galleries for public intimidation. Piedras
Negras builders incorpo and although we
rated carved panels into building facades well think ol
them
iml.i\
.is
m.i\
"outdoor" sculptures, awnings and
canopies ma) well have made their positioning far more like thai
oi
"indoor" sculptures.
Limestone and other stone At most
sites,
the
Maya quarried limestone
chisels,
men ken
freed blocks of stone on off, lea\
some
Institute of
ingonly
stelae butts.
to site: 64. A small panel at the Art
some of which have been found
;ii
seashells,
monumental
stones, ranging
of the ballcourt
playing figures.
The
behind the
victor
prism could be bro-
\
aried drastically from site full
is
of fossilized
fairly quickly, lea\ ing a nearly unintelligi-
his legs tangled, the ball
fallen,
a
ide variety oflime-
\\
Early Classic stelae to the porous rock of Stela -
1
1
In general, limestone yields easily to the chisel
quarried, hardening over time, and
in
the
Maya
when
freshly
west, sculptors
heading
head, rather than his
padded body.
record. Tikal had access to
from the fine-grained stone of Stela 31 and most
stands
identified by his skull
adornments: the loser has
for his
sides until the
Chicago features a
ble
left,
Using stone
small "quarry stump" of the sort visible on
The quality of stone
which erode
cut to suggest the architectural
at
all
in si in.
ancient quarries, work-
Coba, the grey-white limestone
fine-grained buttery limestone,
space
a
in
monuments,
For their
and at Calakmul, partly quarried shafts remain
carved fine-grained limestone as fluently as
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it
if
Particularly at Palenque (where the stone has
a
were
butter.
lovely golden
worked almost
tone), the chisel
relief or incision.
one and the same,
like a
paintbrush, whether in bas-
Palenque painters and carvers may have been in fact, as the sort
of whiplash and pushed paint-
brush lines were transformed to the chiseled surface.
On
Maya realm,
the southern margins of the
The
limestone dominated sculpture.
Copan ranges from brown
to pink to
stone other than
volcanic tuff quarried at
green
and was
in tonality
particularly malleable before hardening after exposure to the
Not only
ality characteristic of
Copanec sculpture, but
material for massive mosaic facades. least a thin ful
air.
did the stone lend itself to the greater three-dimensionit
also provided
Most were covered with
at
wash of stucco, unifying tonalities, but today the color-
and varied underlying stone once again
harder chert naturally occur
in
the
tuff,
prevails. Balls of much
occasionally deforming
sculpture, but on other occasions providing opportunity for innovation,
and perhaps humor:
Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil chert," perhaps nize.
Copan
Quirigua
and builders
worked with
tuff,
a volcanic rock
in
one circumstance, the name
transformed to Waxaklahun
a particularly
"ball of
pun we can no longer recog-
sort of visual
At both Tonina and Quirigua the
65. A detail of Stela D, Copan. sculptors
some
is
local stone
is
sandstone, at
hard and resistant red rock that defied
attempts to transpose the three-dimensionality of Copan, try
that often has balls of chert
embedded
in
it.
On
the rear face
of Stela D, sculptors
worked the
as
Quirigua sculptors might to achieve
has great strength, however, with
it.
little
This red sandstone
predilection to shear
full-figure hieroglyphic inscription
so that a
ball of
part of King K'awil's
chert appeared as
Waxaklahun Ubah
name.
and the Quirigua lords used
off or fracture,
advantage, erecting the tallest freestanding
this
to
great
monuments of
the
New World. Local stone was the rule, but exceptions occurred. Eighth-
century Calakmul saw the erection of an anomalous stela of a black slate probably
imported from the Maya Mountains,
(200 miles) away
—and perhaps evidence of
at least
political fealty
320 km
conced-
ed to the distant powerhouse. In the early sixth century, a problematic carved staircase began a series of long and improbable
movements. believe that
In the first place, Nikolai
Grube and Simon Martin
Calakmul forced Caracol lords to construct a staircase
acknowedging fealty; later, defeated Naranjo rulers were forced accept these
same heavy blocks
Two centuries later,
as evidence of their
own
to
demise.
the lords of Naranjo shipped a block- or per-
haps more accurately, ordered the imposition - of the hated
stair-
case to Ucanal, then their underling. Such
movements of rock may
become more apparent
to understand quarries
and their sources
as scholars
come
better, but long-distance
movement
of heavy
rock occurs elsewhere in Mesoamerica both from desire to import a
material unavailable locally, as
was the case
for the
Gulf Coast
Olmecs of
the
millennium
first
BC, or to
burden, as was the case with the Aztecs
at
impose
brutal tribute
a
the time oi the Spanish
im\ asion.
Flint and chert Flint
and chert, the main materials
Maya
occur throughout the
Maya ning. 66. An eccentric techniques today,
flint.
Maya
flint
humans. Such placed
in
saw use as
flints
aim-.
and
tools.
Maya made thousands of flints
Tin-
that never
Artisans knapped Hint into unusual shapes, rang-
ing from actual weapon forms to simple dogs and turtles, and
to release the
delicate forms of gods
\
Using
specialists
knapped the stone
where the
in hills,
rock that sparks w hen struck, Hint held both practical and
ceremonial
difficult to replicate
stone tools and weapons,
was deposited during strikes of light-
believed the material
A
for
lowlands, usuall}
their
most prized, human forms. Archaeologists
at
these odd
(all
Hints "eccentrics."
were usually
dedicatory caches.
The knapping
of stones was
a
specialized
some artists who made eccentrics were able subtlest detail of a pouty
Eccentric Hints
in
may
mouth or pronounced
il,
signal that he
K'aw
whose
il
characteristic
may have been
car-
scepters or tucked into a head-
some may have been
dress;
wooden
chin.
was the patron god of
the material. Such Hints ried as
and
anthropomorphic form usually
personify the god K'aw torch
skill,
to achieve the
hafted
into
handles. Other eccentric Hints could
worn nor
neither have been
may have been made
carried,
and they
explicitly for architectural
dedication caches, where they are often found, perhaps to channel the
power of lightning
sprout multiple
into architecture. Eccentric flint figures
human
heads,
some personifying body
parts,
particularly the penis.
Obsidian, cinnabar,
and hematite
Other valuable materials came from farther away, from the
Guatemala highlands, or the Maya Mountains of southern Belize. Volcanic flows
provided obsidian,
sidered the "steel" of the
New World,
variety of blades and projectile points, but art forms,
a
material often con-
used as it
it
was
was
also
for a
wide
worked into
and sometimes incised. The Maya found cinnabar, or
vermilion, a brilliant red ore, as well. vert the soft ore to quicksilver
—
tered from time to time
The Maya knew how
— which they may
first
also have
to con-
encoun-
heating the ore to yield the volatile
and poisonous gas mercuric oxide, and then cooling the gas to yield
liquid
mercury,
dangerous enough
but
stable,
which
83
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archaeologists
come
caches and burials.
across today in intact vessels, interred
More
preferred the red ore, and they applied
prepared
bodies
with
interment
for
it.
and
to sculptures
it
in
Maya
characteristically, however, the
Mountains yielded
hematite, a red iron ore, which found similar uses, particularly
specular hematite flecked with mica, and which played an important role as a
pigment in
paint.
Stucco
Sculptors also shaped reliefs from stucco: the largest of
Maya
all
sculptures are architectural facades, like those at El Mirador that
represent massive heads of deities. Merle Greene Robertson's years of study
at
Palenque provide the best guide to the materials
used: sculptors sketched imagery directly on plainly finished plas-
Over
tered walls, before building up an armature of small stones.
these stones they built up layers of stucco, completely modeling
human body forms sculpture
before layering on their costumes.
may have been
A
single
repeatedly painted to preserve fresh
imagery. Stucco, of course,
is
made from cement, and cement
as essential to the builder as to the sculptor
depended on stucco
—or the
for clean surfaces to paint on.
itself was
who To make a good painter,
quality cement that will in turn form a supple plaster or stucco,
limestone must be burned, and
it
usually takes at least
two days of
steady burning to reduce limestone to powdered cement.
process of production 67. A stucco glyph from Tonina. Particularly at
Tonina,
Maya
Palenque and artisans
shaped
skilled scribes
The very
than the forest could
and the widespread conversion from modeled
itself,
have been driven by the disappearance of local supplies of wood for fuel.
Stucco ornament flourished longer
in
areas of richer forest,
some cases
worked the stucco text.
may
soft
armatures, usually forming
forms into an elegant
fuel faster
stucco ornament to cut stone, particularly as seen at Copan,
pliable stucco over stone
sculptural facades; in
replenish
demanded
notably at Tonina and Palenque. In the Late Preclassic, the
had millions of hectares of virgin forest end of the Classic period, they
may
at their disposal.
Maya
By
the
well have suffered desperate
scarcity of both fuel and construction materials, yet they probably
kept right on burning wood to
make cement.
The materials ofpainting
Smooth, plastered walls made do not know the
full
ideal surfaces for painting, but
Buildings of perishable materials
may have had
painted facades, as well as roofs and roofcombs,
depicted
in
Maya
we
extent of the monumental painting tradition.
art.
clues to a lost tradition.
stuccoed and
some of which
are
At Rio Azul, Tikal,
and Caracol, archaeologists have found Early Classic painted
34
tombs, man} worked
rhe extent the
ol lull
in
.1
limited palette
cream, ml. and black,
o\
polychrome paintings ma} never
anomalous preservation
ol
full
murals
scale
!>r\
The
the period.
in
could plan' another figure, such as the dwarf,
fronl
in
of the woman, hut could also choose not to do so with the man.
hand and lowered
the outer one, with a subtle alternation of ritual paraphernalia. tiny inscriptions
the sculptors
on
ill.
83
who worked
on both monuments; notably, only the female
thai the}
the
in
captives or othei
oi
their equal size
Classic nionimirnt.il efforts, the
here, so that
inscribed
to
•^Cleveland
name
were usually
ondarv figures So despite
mosa
The
ol
some have argued
signatures (although
artist
indicate patronage
iiki\
was so
inscribed.
Around both
background opens up
figures the
as
clear expanse,
,i
with ritual paraphernalia rendered snug to the body.
The
lessons
ofTikal Stela S 1 would seem to still be in the air: like its paired side figures, these paired figures
and
hands yet alternate
left
wrist and hand straps
hand
—
a
their position.
So the
ith its
evidence, as well as the palm of the
—
is
held
down by
woman, and up by
the
in
the man,
likewise invert the cloth banners or "flapstaffs" that they
carry.
And
wears
a
despite the obvious differences
longheaded dress belted
vanishing from view once tied
—
Drapery
is
attempted,
in
in attire
the waist,
at
their
from the feathers of the headdress chests.
its
musical instruments are
in
the
to the
woman age
sel\
shrunken heads on their
the revealing squeeze the in
the
dw
woman
art
\\
front of the prominent figure.
may
leaps across the picture plane and
now-lost carved
—
patterned
costumes are also paired,
gives her flapstatT, and depth suggested as well,
hose
Text
well have begun on the
sides.
Many monuments
similar
Calakmul, Naranjo, Coba, and
to
these
at sites in
Quintana Roo that feature scanty
texts.
two were made
and Aguateca,
as well as
The man's masked
some of
mask was
at
the cities of
their satellites,
Piedras Xegras. Simplified and reduced to front of the nose, the
at
southern Campeche and
tume occurs across the Petexbatun region, Pilas
right
in
w
shield,
self-conscious display of sculptural accomplishment
the Late Classic
who
m
grasp nearly identical objects
a
cutaway
cos-
Dos
and
at
feature- in
also a part of formal portraiture
at
Tikal. Such successful conventions could be repeated time and again, across a century or more, part of the
conservative tradition of Maya
most
stable-
and
art.
Palenque In everv respect, Palenque sculptors traditional and conservative solutions.
As
a result, at
Maya
Palenque
in
examined the
art
qualities of
and sought alternative
the seventh and early eighth
109
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84. The Oval Palace Tablet only Classic stone
eschew lines,
shape
a
is
monument
the to
form created by straight
probably
in
order to take the
of the jaguar throne
cushion, an attribute of both kings
and the Maize God. King Hanab Pakal
is
also depicted seated on a
double-headed jaguar throne,
to
underscore his supernatural powers.
centuries,
Maya sculpture achieved some of its greatest complexi-
ty as well as technical finesse, almost as
planned to trump the sort of work made
the sculptors there
if
in the Peten.
They even
discarded the conventional format of Maya sculpture, the stela, in favor of new types of wall panels.
Imaginative sculptors worked the the
site,
the Oval Palace Tablet, into
first
its
surviving wall panel
form the back of an elaborate throne, no doubt a jaguar-covered cushion.
When
at
characteristic oval shape to to be in the shape of
sculptors of subsequent genera-
tions carved an oval behind the king, they
were invoking both
real
jaguar pelt cushions of this shape and the by-now-ancient Oval Palace Tablet, which was always on view. Probably carved
in
the
mid-seventh century, the Oval Palace Tablet celebrates the young
king Hanab Pakal's accession to the throne twelve.
Although
a
in 615,
few Early Classic monuments feature women,
the representation on the Oval Palace Tablet
may be the first Late
Classic one, and the first "group" composition with a
Sak K'uk',
when he was
in profile at left,
woman. Lady
hands her son the Jester God-studded
headdress of rulership; with his torso turned to the front while the rest of his
body
is
in profile,
Hanab Pakal
sits
on
jaguar throne. Remarkably, this representation carving (and granted,
view
in
10
a
in
double-headed the
first
public
throne back, and so was not on public
the plaza) of a ruler so simply attired, as
embedded
1
it is
a
is
the man, not the trappings of office.
if
to
show power
YA
85. 86.
In
a reclining posture
normally reserved victims.
above)
From
Hanab
falls into
his belly
for sacrificial
Pakal (detail,
the
maw of death.
emerges a new
World Tree, indicating the fresh centering of the earth that takes
place through death.
Hanab
Pakal's
The king himself wears the
costume
of both K'awil
and the
Maize God.
^
mwmmsWMMm Made
shortly before
on the sarcophagus
Hanab
Pakal's death
We
in
683, the carving
of his tomb reveals both elaborate composi-
and hasty execution, with rough
tional skill
evidence.
lid
might wish
chisel
marks
still in
to see this as a sign of the speed with
which the tomb was prepared, or
as recognition
on the part of the
sculptors that the funerary sculpture was not going to be studied
by casual viewers
— but
in fact,
other Palenque sculptures show
similar workmanship, including the newly excavated large-scale
wall panel on display at the Palenque Museum and the
Oaks
Panel,
tom, ending up with roughed-out
toes.
mark remained,
as
a single chisel
was often the case. Palenque sculptors put
greatest energy into finishing representations of at
to bot-
Dense and fine-grained,
Palenque limestone could be polished so that not
sometimes
Dumbarton
where the quality of finish diminishes from top
human
their faces,
the cost of other areas.
///
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85.
In his eighties at the time of his death,
Hanab Pakal may have
indeed seemed immortal to his subjects, and the complex burial
program he probably helped design conspired notion.
known
On
of a glorified king on his back (for otherwise this
ture of the fallen and defeated),
God
—
promote the
to
the surface of the sarcophagus, in the only rendering
presumably
the open
maws
Hanab
moment
at the
of death or rebirth
of death, whose image
glyph for "black hole."
From
his
body
is
On
sprout from earth that
the pos-
—
Maize
falls into
conflated with the very
arises the
central axis of the earth that every king
taining in position.
is
Pakal, dressed as the
World Tree, the
was responsible
for sus-
the sides of the sarcophagus, ancestors lias
cracked to
let
them grow,
vivid evi-
dence that Hanab Pakal's death has brought forth renewal
for the
entire earth.
Hanab
Pakal's
tomb was
a sort
of sculptural assemblage, or
what one might consider today an
many
different
"installation,"
components. Key to the assemblage
including
is its
story-
87. Each of the Cross Group
temples
an
at
Palenque features
interior shrine that
takes the
form of a perishable dwelling.
telling ability, for
Hanab
it
constantly narrates the death and rebirth of
Pakal. Inside the uterus-shaped sarcophagus, the dead
body was dressed
Stucco ornament above the
Maize God, jade jewelry by the pound
as the
— an unusual twist — without any elaborate painted or carved ceramics.
cornice frames limestone panels
adorning the remains but
below; the large limestone
of this sort
panels
(e.g. Tablet of
the Cross,
Tablet of the Sun) are set within
the shrine
itself.
Hanab
for a state burial
in
Pakal's food for the journey
jade bead in his mouth,
like
seems only
many
a
to have been the
more common
burial of
the time. Yet his death and rebirth as a maize plant renews the entire range of
human
agricultural endeavor, for each of the
ancestors emerges with a specific plant
and so
forth.
The
constant guides. Hanab Pakal's
from
a sculpture
and
wedged
"killing" life
— the nance, the avocado,
stucco figures along the wall serve as ever-
own
stucco portrait was wrenched
AD
in the Palace)
itself,
ceremonially
elsewhere (probably House
under
Hanab Pakal
the
sarcophagus
of his transformation to
in life as part
immemorial. In 692,
magnum
Hanab Pakal's oldest son K'an Balam dedicated his own
opus, the
Group of
carved panels of the Cross
have been
at
the Cross. At the time
Group were
the height of its
when
dedicated, Palenque
the
must
economic powers, plowing economic
wherewithal into capital construction. Each massive Cross panel is
composed of three huge
slabs built into a small shrine at the rear
of the temple, forming what Stephen Houston has identified as
symbolic sw eatbaths, with
a sculptural
program that extends onto
the front panels of the building and right up onto the roofcomb of
each structure.
112
88. An adult K'an Balam,
self
as a child,
left,
Designed
right,
faces a representation of his
own
as a group, the
iconography and
text.
unified
a
supernatural history
in
at left
across a large
King K'an Balam' s
World Tree, on the Tablet of the
pair with events in
Cross (ad 692). The adult K'an
tures both the pouty-faced K'an
Balam holds out
Cross tablets feature
Dates deep
K'awil; the child
bears the rear head of the Bicephalic Monster,
who
supports the World Tree.
also
dled figure of what
may
be his
life at
right; each panel tea-
be
Balam and the diminutive, bun-
own
self as a child.
On
each panel,
K'an Balam displays the images of the gods: held out on cloth, and
roughly the size of the actual god images discovered figures probably offer a clue to the handling and deities received.
The imagery
iconographic subject lid;
Tikal, these
of the Tablet of the Cross takes
— the World Tree—from
191
its
the sarcophagus
the Foliated Cross features the renewal of maize, and even the
sacred mountain from which maize
enigmatic Tablet of the Sun that the
at
wrapping such
may have come;
may provide an
but
it
is
insight into
the
how
program may have come about. Unlike works of art from other places that celebrate conquests,
making
possible to imagine resultant wealth, the sculpture of
it
Palenque
resists action,
emphasizing
stasis
and calm.
as the
and
no records of destruction and
sacrifice,
Cross
effort includes
heart of the Tablet of the Sun
lies
An elaborate
no imagery of capture
program such
pillage.
the Jaguar
But
God
at
the
of the
113
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89
89. The Tablet of the Sun,
Underworld,
Palenque. An adult K'an Balam, holding K'awil at
left.
frontal face of the
The
large
Jaguar God
of war and
night,
god, the
fire,
during
and also the deity who
Underworld journey.
its
modern nickname of the building undermines
of
characteristics: the Jaguar
God
supported by gods of trade and
rulers
his other
of the Underworld's visage char-
acterizes shield iconography. This
dominates the representation,
The two
at
Nevertheless, in emphasizing the solar aspect of this powerful
the Underworld, a war god,
tribute.
Maya god
paired
right, is
with his representation as a child, with a war god,
a
embodies the sun
would cover their faces with
is
the god, then, that
as they
charged into
Maya
battle.
But
floating
hieroglyphs with coefficients of
furthermore, two crouching, aged gods support the great shield
seven and nine probably
itself.
refer to
sacred, supernatural toponyms.
91. (opposite) K'an Hok' Chitam initiated
720. Although probably
in a
in
ad
and
is
L, an
aged deity
who presides over the
the patron of merchants and traders; the to the right
may be another view of him,
that recalls the similar but different sides of Stela 31
metaphor
We
Pakal,
left),
that
can see this as
metaphor, and
a visual
underpinned Aztec trade and warfare as
supports war, and war crowns and leads commerce.
a
it
is
a
text
monument was completed names the successor who was called to the
enth century
at
Palenque,
at the
time the
they paid for
throne
in his
stead.
picture plane as does the Jaguar
In
//
/
marvel
in
at
the sev-
we need only look to this panel to see how
added
it,
well: trade
If we
wondrous architecture and sculpture that flourished
the
his parents
Hanab
manner
from Tikal.
representation of K'an Hok' II
God
its
completion and dedication
(including
clearly
unknown but similar god
but had probably been sacrificed
Chitam
left is
II
work on the Palace Tablet
atTonina long before
At
Underworld and who
with both war and trade, presented emblematically.
no other work does the image of
God
a
god so dominate the
of the Underworld on the
Tablel of the Sun For
Maya works
the compositions of the
ol art,
Cross panels are outrageously novel, without .i\
ant-garde that
failed to attract a
One other sculpture on that the question
rendering. In the sort o\
materia]
is
the Cross
ol
features K'an
it
fact, in its
Group ma)
in
three-dimensional
.1
sculpture seen generally
.it
it
is
very
much
like
Toning, although the
not the sandstone used there. But
to
indirectly insist
An anomalous and
the Cross
Balam
style and proportions,
may well have been
it
payment by Tonina\ one
sent to Palenque as a gift or
comeback
an
of warfare be asked: Palenque's onl) stela came
from the side of the Temple unusual work,
successors,
response other than rejection.
that
would
haunt Palenque.
Palenque low-relief sculpture seems
follow
to
a
seamless
stream: the two-figured Oval Palace Tablet leads to the Cross
Group monuments, where exhausted, followed
h\'
the two-figured repertory
Tablet of the Slaves and the Palace Tablet. panels, the Palace Tablet
is
Kan
successor to K'an Balam. Carved roughly
the
H, with the figural portion set
workmanship
is
perhaps,
Of
the three-figured
more important, having formed
back of the new, monumental throne of
letter
is,
the three-figured panels, particularly the
in
in
I
[ok'
Chitam
the shape of
a
II,
the
the
capital
the upper, central, portion,
of high and even quality: elaborate full-figure
hieroglyphs initiate the text, and finely wrought details right
down
90. (above) An anomalous
monument
at
Palenque, Stela
1 is
the only freestanding stela at the site.
It
once stood on the steps
the Temple of the Cross.
of
to eyelashes
and toenails only
a
few millimeters long. Yet
what we know about the monument gives us pause, subject,
King K'an Hok' Chitam
II,
for its chief
was taken captive when the city
of Ton in a, to the south, claimed to have
come and made Palenque
US
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— "fall
down"
in 711,
an event not acknowledged at Palenque
For nine years, work ceased on the monument (and
down"
after
all),
and only
text in the final columns at the
in
720 did
naming a new
time of the disastrous battle
artists
were
efforts
—and
at
work on
the
sculpture draped in cloth, as
Chitam
II?
Whatever the
if
"fall
successor. In other words,
are a Palenque partisan!),
monument, and then abandoned
—
itself.
didn't
pick up again, with an odd
(if you
the in situ carving
no trace of this
it
it
for nearly a decade.
their
Was
the
the very shroud of K'an Hok'
case, the
subsequent workmanship
left
hiatus.
The recent discovery of a small panel fragment in the rubble to Temple of Inscriptions may shed some light on
the west of the
sculptural practices at this time. Against a backdrop of steps
92. From the rubble of Group 16
has
come
this
stunning fragment,
possibly depicting the tribute
literal
burden placed upon
Palenque's lords by Tonina early in
the eighth century. Staircase
representations usually indicate explicit hierarchies.
7/6'
often
.1
clue to
vy
arfare, ballgame,
and
sa< rifit e
\\
aPalenque lord carries a huge sack on a tumpline small wall panel, with steps is
might well represent oppressors
and
smashed and
buried.
\\
a
seems to be
The
tribute
Maya
cities,
subject
payment
is
b)
perhaps Piedras
not obvious, but
Palenque
to
it
outside
hich might also explain w hy years later
The final chapter ofPalenque sculpture is, quite literally, ten, for the last
.1
as well as its fine carving, the panel
characteristic 6f other western
Negras, or possibly Tonina*
hat
Initsformat
it
vt
as
writ
works not only emphasize text but derive from the
Two monuments from the reign ofK'uk' Balam II at mid-eighth century characterize the late sculpture. Small in scale, each was probably executed by a single mast,.,sculptor, and Quite scribal arts.
93. Using a flowing, calligraphic line,
the Palenque sculptor
Chaak
flexing his
his axe, as
if
arm and
shows lifting
ready to hurl a
thunderbolt, on the Creation Tablet.
The panel was once
probably part of a throne
assemblage.
//
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94.
On
96
the Tablet of the
possibly the
Glyphs, Palenque sculptors fluidly
many
inscribed text, adopting
of
the characteristics of the painted
word
to the
carved limestone.
same
one: the large-scale projects of earlier regimes
had vanished, yet the energy concentrated into small works yielded
new
results.
calligraphy at
The Tablet its
of the 96 Glyphs demonstrates
most remarkable,
Maya
for the sorts of lines
one
95. (opposite, above) Tonina
achieves with a brush have been transposed to stone, where they
sculptors developed a three-
flow like a silken thread, denying the inherent stoniness of the
dimensional
art to
complement
matrix.
the two-dimensional low-relief
sculpture at the
site,
perhaps
taking advantage of the softer
sandstone used
for
many
today, this Tonina stela
still
commands
presence
with
its
stately
in its
96. (opposite, below) at
Chitam
in
attire.
Monument
Tonina depicts K'an Hok' II,
the unfortunate
Palenque king foes
calmly
featured inlay
and perhaps perishable
22
711.
the Creation Tablet,
Chaak the
god
rain
The
flexes his
static,
action typical of earlier Palenque sculpture yielded to a
arm
completed
and pregnant action just before sculpture
at
more fluid
Palenque vanished
altogether.
demeanor. The
monument once
1
On
anticipation of the blow he will strike.
of the
carvings. Although headless
those
in
felled
Tonina After
Toninas abandonment, many of
clown
its
steep
its
finest sculptures fell
embankment, whether pushed or moved through
the forces of nature. In recent years archaeologists have rediscov-
ered
a
wealth of monuments, from the Giant
Ahaw
altars, large
by his Tonina
short cylinders marked by a
a
huge Ahaw glyph marking the end of
twenty-year period, that lay alongside the ballcourt, to finely
118
carved three-dimensional renderings, to pained representations ol captives.
Most
stelae stood in three dimensions, text frequently run-
down
ning
the figure's spine.
Although
probably represents an eighth-century
ill.
95 bears no
ruler,
text,
it
one hand gently
folded across the other; precious inlay once studded neck and chest. tives
Three-dimensional rulers dominated two-dimensional capon the Fifth Terrace, where
K'an Hok'Chitam
II
in
a
depiction of Palenque King
bondage was once set. Strikingly, although
the panel consists of local sandstone, the fluid Style belongs to
Palenque, suggesting that Tonina lords captured Palenque artists
along w
ith their king.
Piedras Negras
At the end of the Early
Classic, Piedras
Negras had seen the most
complex multi-figural compositions of the period, but apparently had confined such configurations to small, exterior or interior wall panels. Set like pages of a hook across the fronts of monumental,
freestanding pyramids, such wall panels remained the locus of
figural IS,
complexity during the Late Classic. Across the front of CD-
the largest pyramid ever constructed at Piedras Negras, three
such wall panels were set
in
about AD 800,
at
the end of the city's
119
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them
by analogy
97. (above) Wall Panel 2, Piedras
florescence. (Early explorers called
Negras (ad 667), depicts
with Yaxchilan practice, but not a single carved stone was placed
a
"lintels,"
victorious Ruler 2, right, flanked
by an
heir. In front of
the king
kneel five subjugated lords from
Bonampak
over a doorway
at
Piedras Negras, to
modern knowledge.
the small-scale carved panels at Piedras
Negras were
Rather,
set into the
with a sixth, the
smallest (second from
exteriors of pyramidal platforms.) left),
from Yaxchilan. For most of the seventh century, Piedras Negras
Wall Panel 2, tury
later, recalls
with
its
at the center, a
seventh-century panel reset a cen-
both the program and subject of Wall Panel
12,
dominated the Usumacinta River
and
and the
its
cities
tributaries.
along
it
portrayal of the king as victorious warrior.
The two panels
framing it offer scenes of courtly life, executed to enhance the sense of visual space and to accommodate large numbers of individuals.
rhe great Mayanist Sylvanus Morley considered Wall Pane]
98. (oppose
Maya
to be the finest
when Balam
Maya
of 100
list
sculpture
Superlatives
might agree with him even
Made
disco\ ery.
us 99. (below) Stela 14 at Piedras
1946, and the
in
9
his
modern viewer more
recent
the very end of the eighth century, the sculp-
.it
was
it
an earlier generation,
in
individuals rarely seen
damage wrought upon
monumental
in
the stone,
one can
art.
still
I
>u
t
among
the rendering of ongoing interactions
a liveliness in
many
when he made up
after considering every
ture portrays the royal court as
with
existence
in
Despite the
see
the
that
Negras features the young Ruler 4,
who has taken
his place inside
enthroned king reaches out
and
the niche of rulership
monuments
ment of carving ceased altogether.
son's high
relief
relief; at
against her
lower right a
down
in yet
lower
relief.
Piedras Negras follow
stelae at
particular formulae, as Herbert Spinden pointed out early
twentieth century, featuring
few years later by city,
a
posi-
Piedras Negras, which shortly thereafter
at
Monumental freestanding
sacrificed captive lies upside-
in
cap the develop-
to
at the site. At hrs feet
low
in
at his feet
themselves, and even fidget
Such rendering of action would appear
tion.
stands his mother, strikingly rendered
among
they chat
side, as
characteristic of accession
igorously to address those
\
the
in
an enthroned king, followed
first,
w arrior monument. Set
in
a
clusters around the
the stelae celebrate rulership reign by reign, with almost no
evidence of hostile destruction or systematic relocation of Late Classic works.
A
"niche"
monument
ing the king seated within ladder, at the
moment
standing
front
in
a
initiates
every
deep rectangular space,
series, featurat
the top of a
of his inauguration, often with his mother
Mesoamerican peoples generally
of him.
believed that the soul dwelt in the head, and at Piedras Negras, the
head receives three-dimensional emphasis
mary
individual.
On
Stela 14,
front of him, her role
is
two dimensions, on what
and hands
On
in
high
is in
armed and
new
own
frontal representation, his
wear simple courtly dress and
rulers
fertility,
in the additional
stelae,
and growth,
concept
on the contrary, offer up an image of a heavily
much
of the imagery of the
The imagery
of
Serpent dominates victory monuments
at
Early Classic warriors expanded and elaborated.
War
Piedras Negras, particularly
god represented
a
representation of the mother.
outfitted aggressor, with
the Teotihuacan
in
relief.
the niche stelae,
The warrior
the pri-
mother stands
another plane of sculpture, as
fact
bear the iconography of maize,
even embedded
4's
reduced visually by her compression into
well as by the very strength of his face
— but only of
where Ruler
at a scale
in
the seventh century, with that
larger than humans.
ary ritual featured on Stela 40,
in
which
garb scatters offerings down into
a
a
The unusual
kneeling lord
war
funer-
in priestly
tomb, depicts the head and
shoulders of a dead king wearing the last
known
representation of
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— the plated headdress of the
War Serpent at the site.
Captive repre-
100
sentations have a grisly realism, especially in the emaciated soul
kneeling at the feet of Ruler 3 on Stela
own
8,
birth and death dates (indicating a
may well be his
with what
man
in his eighties) at his
side.
The imagery of rulership and warfare undergoes some expansion in Late Classic Piedras Negras.
of a nearby lineage,
is
Lady K'atun Ahaw,
featured on Stelae
1
and
her
3,
representation analogous to the representation of
parable only to the prominence of Lady
same
era and of the
woman on
Xok
a princess
men and com-
Yaxchilan
at
—and
—
in
public
life
that
the
in
the Cleveland stela. Such featured
female protagonists offer some clues to the role
power
101
full frontal
women
possibly
most such
achieved. Strikingly,
representations cluster between 680 and 720, at a time of great political consolidation,
when marriage may have played
as great a
role as warfare. In the era of Wall Panel 3, ry,
and
ing
just at a
time
when
from 780
end of the centu-
until the
the sculptural traditions were languish-
across the southern lowlands, the sculpture of Piedras
all
Negras reached
its
greatest heights, with
new
formats, sophisti-
cated views of past events, as in the wall panel, and even the creation of extraordinary royal furnishings such as
monument
that
was ripped from
its
housing and
Throne
left
1,
a
smashed on
the steps of the principal palace at the time of Piedras Negras's
demise
c.
800. In the last king's reign, the old "niche" and warrior
standards were replaced by a ure gave 100. On Piedras Negras Stela 8, a larger-than-life Ruler
Maya
kings, he adopts
standing figure, Stela 12 featured a seated warrior, presiding over the heap of captives offered below. Stela 12
including Tlaloc, a Teotihuacan
—when depicted
costume.
15); in
place of the conventional warrior stela, previously always with a
Central Mexican motifs
god
seated niche fig-
3 stands
flanked by diminutive captives. Like other
new program. The
way to a standing representation of the ruler (Stela
in
warrior
may have been
Piedras Negras: the victory
must have been
a
the last major it
monument made
celebrates over
its
demise.
With
position at the
its
top of Structure 0-13, only the upper portion of the could have been seen from the ground
—and
extremely complicated
monument had he or she monument as a whole was an
affair,
compressing into
the message of the entire north wall of so, the sculptors devised
new
Room
its
narrow format
2,
122
sits in a
Bonampak.
In
solutions to visual problems,
including the incorporation of architectural space. top
monument
so the viewer could
missed the lower half of the
not climbed the temple. But the
doing
102
hollow celebration, for one can only presume that
Piedras Negras itself soon met
easily have
at
Pomona, however,
The
victor at
three-quarters position, his body dramatically fore-
153
— 1 to
mm
v
1
Rule
portrait
m
on tho
nument.
In
relief
on Stela
l
.
she
is
i to
ted as
if
she
ruling male.
102. One of the most complex monuments ever carved by the ancient Maya. Piedras Negras Stela
12 depicts thirteen
different
individuals: the city's last king, at top:
two
loyal lords,
captive at center; captives the stela.
in
a
who flank the
and
heap
eight
at the
more
bottom
of
The nine captives may
have been symbolic, as several
Maya tombs
also held nine
sacrificial victims.
shortened; his two war captains stand to either side, registers that
—on
shown
is
—
a staircase for captive sacrifice,
to drape.
Between them
sits
down
several
covered with cloth
an elegantly attired cap-
tive
texts often note that captives are "dressed for sacrifice"
who,
like
the captive atop the steps at
rendered with face
him
sit
in profile
Bonampak, has been
but his back to the viewer. Beneath
eight other captives, naked, bound, and tied together.
These eight captives are among the most striking
Maya
sculpture, for they reveal emotions.
collapses in resignation; the figure beside
The
figures of
figure at far right
him scowls up
at
of the warrior atop him. Despite their bonds, they engage
the feet in
ener-
among themselves, and their faces present the degree of Maya beauty. From top to bottom of the monu-
getic conversation
highest
ment, the depth of carving diminishes, until the captives seem only slightly
more than drawings on
stone, almost as
transcending the limitations of sculpture. Over
a
if
they were
dozen small
123
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inscriptions run across or near their bodies, presumably sculptors'
signatures
—and
identifying these very captives as the
in fact,
sculptors themselves.
When
the lords of Piedras Negras conquered Pomona, they
must have demanded artists would
die
on the
in tribute, artists
sacrificial staircase.
who knew
they
When those artists arrived at
Piedras Negras, they worked on Stela
whose hybrid forms
12,
include both the higher relief of the ruler on top and the extremely
low relief of the elegant figures
bottom that is more characteris-
at
Pomona style itself. Yet in its own way, despite the demise they predicted for themselves, the monument allows for the surtic
of the
vival of
Pomona: the viewer today glances only casually
at the
seated victor, choosing instead to focus on the tangled bodies
capture attention
at the
who
bottom of the stone.
Yaxchilan
Most
scholars agree that the end of the eighth and beginning of
the ninth centuries were troubled times, as the collapse eventually
caught up with every Classic city of the southern lowlands. But the artistic response to the situation
After
all,
was by no means uniform.
Piedras Negras sculpture ceased
achievement, and unlike Palenque, that
exuberant one, with abundant and large-scale predictable path might be the one
we can
moment of peak moment was an works. The more
at its
final
identify for Yaxchilan,
where the sheer number of stone sculptures made between 723 and 770 outstrips any other
city,
and where
a
Spenglerian curve
that notes rise, flourish, and decline can easily be charted.
From lintel
the establishment of the city in the Early Classic the
was the dominant format of Yaxchilan
sculpture, and
architectural positioning spanning a door frame saved
long-term exposure to damaging elements. With private location, the lintel
may have been
its
it
its
from
slightly
seen as a locus for
more
varied subject matter. Originally purely textual, the lintels in
general
Maya
may have adapted
ance of
25
103. Yaxchilan
Lintel
as she witnesses
right,
her ancestor vision
in
depicts
she has conjured following
bloodletting. Drapery piles at her feet
and drapes over her
attire.
II
lintels, as
(also
known
later, at
sudden appear-
was the case
first in
the
as Shield Jaguar), early in
when Lady Xok claimed
and
from the now-lost
also explain the
to be the patron of a
mid-century, during the reign of
Itzamnah Balam IPs son Yaxun Balam (the famous Bird Jaguar),
who introduced a wide retinue to royal representation.
belt,
drawing the viewer's attention her elegant
Balam
the eighth century, series of lintels,
the serpentine
may
new and imaginative
reign of Itzamnah Lady Xok,
texts and images
books. Such an origin
Dumbfounded by
to
the extraordinary quality of Lintels 24, 25,
and 26, Sylvanus Morley could not believe that they had arrived
124
103.9
125
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104. A generation after
on Yaxchilan
Lintel
15
ill.
103,
a wife of
Yaxun Balam repeats the serpent ritual
depicted on Lintel 25,
where the complexity
of the
composition has been simplified,
making the woman's visually clear.
the vision
in
role
more
She leans toward
the serpent's
maw
while the vision and serpent
seem unaware
of her gaze.
105. Yaxun Balam dominates Lintel 16, his staff visually
piercing the very face of his captive,
who admits
pressing his hand to
and
in
fealty in
mouth
touching the broken
parasol on the ground.
Cut cloth drapes across the captive's
left
arm, additional
evidence of captive status.
126
on the scene without precedent, and so misdated Lintels and
it
to
make them
the visual forebears
We
15,
16,
now know how
wrong Morley was in constructing a curve along which sculpture might
and
rise
fall,
propel innovation
astounding
quality,
and
for in fact, invention
erratic beats.
in 1
>u
with
gram i
i.
Ins success in a
that
encompassed both in a
lintels
26 of
subject
to the
in
Maya
and Itzamnah Balam
II
southwest.
equally innovative pro-
all
previous monumental
matter was shown
progress, rather than completed or anticipated, the
moments represented
i
and carved stepson Structure
departure from
representation, this new
vision,
2
tzamnahBalam II
I
war that had raged
Bonampak and other cities, with an
Furthermore,
genius can
they also raptured subject matter never
t
before executed on stone. And, simultaneously,
memorialized
artistic
Not only were Lintels
sculpture:
to
in
Lady Kok conjures her
grasps his captives by the
hack leg showing the effort of throwing
be
more standard
his entire
hair, his
body into the
action. In the
subsequent generation, Yaxun Balam took these same
subjects, as well as others,
sculptures to
and ordered more buildings and more
commemorate
his reign.
Where one
or two
ments might have been carved under Itzamnah Balam
Balam commissioned up the process,
new
to a
dozen
II.
monuYaxun
to celebrate a single event. In
representations of human form were introduced,
but the actual quality of carving dropped off so significantly that
106. Yaxchilan carved
in
perhaps
Lintel
8 was
exceptionally low
in
relief,
a style introduced
through the war represented on the
monument
composition at the
itself.
—two
The
victorious lords
margins, the captives at
center— also presented
a
composition not previously used.
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107. The
last
dated
Yaxchilan, Lintel
monument
at
10 enumerates
the endless battles and claimed victories at the
beginning of the
ninth century, including
what may
be the demise of Piedras Negras. Increasingly at right
who
may
cramped
inscriptions
indicate a patron
insisted that the artist
incorporate
new
information,
without regard to the planned format of the monument.
—
many key monuments from the era especially the famous Lintel 8 are known almost exclusively in line drawing, the actual stone
—
surface so poorly graven that photography barely captures sense.
One might want
tion," in
to consider this a
form of
its
artistic "infla-
which the increased coinage has actually reduced the
value of any single image.
By
final result: Lintel
purely textual monument, where the
10, a
the year 810, such practice yielded a
clumsy framing of the text suggests that the carver must have had to cope with
new information
he reached the simply
final
jammed
in
as
it
was presented
to him, so that as
area to carve, the lower right-hand corner, he
more words, without regard
to the sort of
thought-out configuration of a century before. So, if one
wanted to see
a visual record that "reflects" in
some
way what archaeologists think Maya life of the eighth century may have been
like,
one would probably propose Yaxchilan. Here, con-
centrated wealth and power at century's beginning did not hold for long. tive
Yaxun Balam turned
to new,
forms of government, resulting
somewhat more collabora-
in a visual
explosion
in
he shared the public record with his lieutenants. Ironically, latter-day Gorbachev, even as he his efforts
undermined
his
own
increasing power and began to
128
amended
which like a
the political structure,
polity, for the
regional lords took
make works of art that outstripped
his own i
leading, ultimately, to the demise of Yaxchil&n, a sad
hat can be read in the
testimony of a Lintel
end
10.
Tikal
Although pre-eminent 108. Diminul
kal
monument
:
to
be erected
—
—
or to survive
the city's long struggle with
neighbors
in
the its
its
in
were able
to erect (Stela SO)
firsl
worked
is
the style and with the iconography of their oppressors
Caracol. Ultimately, the Tikal kings developed in
the eighth century, characterized
Chan
K'awil's Stela 16 (711); Yik'in
l>v
Chan
a
at
strong local style
the sequence of K'awil's Stelae 2
Hasaw i
(736)
With Tikal and.") (7 M-);
Stela 16. the Late Classic
sculptural template at the site
established. Both text
were confined
the Tikal lords
draws on
it
monuments of Caracol. one of
right)
to recover
from external attack. At the end of the seventh century, the
monument
principal enemies.
109. (below,
the Early Classic, Tikal lagged desper-
after
the sixth and seventh
centuries. In format,
in
during the Late Classic, apparently struggling
ately
and
was
figure
set
withm
and Nun Yax Ayin
II's
Stelae 22 (771) and 19(790). AH
the specialized architectural
Pyramid Complexes, the
precincts called
stelae carefully follow the
Twin
model estab-
to the front surface
monument, and both were concise. Hasaw Chan K'awil of the
lished by Stela L6: a laconic text, limited to the front of the
monu-
ment, names the protagonist and one or two events. Presented
celebrates the completion of
fourteen katuns (noted
over his head)
in
711.
in
the text
with frontal body and profile head on Stela tation
became one completely
1
in profile after
(>',
the royal represen-
Hasaw Chan
K'awil's
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109
— 110. The surface of Altar 8 depicts a prone, tied ballplayer, his lower legs
and
feet in the
The rope runs from the tied
arms
stone, to
to the
make
air.
captive's
perimeter of the
the observer read
the entire surface as
if it
were
a
great ball.
death.
As depicted from
7
1
uniform
to 790, the king's royal
1
including cutaway mask, feather backrack, hipcloth with crossed
bones and death-eye trim served to be ation,
—must have been meticulously
worn by one generation after another.
one can see that the hipcloth has been folded
handkerchief
— and
like
pre-
In the final iterlike
a
those of Toltec lords in Central Mexico
but the costume's consistency only emphasizes the similarity in size, scale,
and style of rendering, such that any attempt to develop
style dates results in a chart of remarkable stasis.
At the same time
other
Maya
most public monuments
that the
change, Tikal experienced
city-state of the era,
resisted
much political ferment as any
at least as
if
not more, for
dynasty
its
suffered an apparent schism in the seventh century, resulting in a rival capital at
Dos
Pilas, in the
Petexbatun.
x\t
two sculp-
Tikal,
tural formats thrived in the eighth century, infused
success:
political
altars
and
lintels.
On
altars,
by fresh
round stones
consistently placed in front of stelae, Tikal lords rendered their
hapless captives in humiliating postures, taking liberties with the captives' representations that rulers.
On
Altar
8,
were not taken with those of the
the unfortunate
probably to indicate his death captive
is
bound
to a
is
in a
trussed up like a
Maya
ballgame; on Altar
heavy scaffold and rendered over
ball,
10, the
a quatrefoil
cartouche, indicating an opening to the Underworld.
Although many Maya tropical
130
hardwood
sites
trees, the
used wooden
lintels
most elaborate ones
hewn from
to survive
come
111. Most great
as
if
litter
lintels at Tikal
their very
lintels
from Tikal, where beams of sapodilla spanned the inner doorways
feature
or palanquin scenes,
required
them
to
effigies
be read
as images that would be carried
on high. Depicted
in
K'awil,
military victory in ad
Temple
condition
and the novelty of these
Yik'in
it
nineteenth century.
at their
Tikal
imagery would have been stelae.
Lintel
3
We may
graffiti,
a rare privilege, offers a
The
themselves
effigies
were among the most precious invocations of divinity
IV was in nearly perfect when was taken to
Basel, Switzerland, in the
peek
in
high places where even a
lintels, set in
counterpoint to the repetitious
a
743.
Carved of sapodilla wood, of
is
who celebrates
featured giant god
and their litters, of the sort also scratched
an unusual
frontal sitting presentation
Chan
Many
of temples sacred to ancestor worship.
placement as
in
Maya life.
suppose them to have been made entirely of perishable
materials, perhaps papier-mache or
wood
or cloth. Inscriptions
intimate that these images were warfare's most treasured booty,
and their isolated naming
at
Calakmul and representation
Piedras Negras (Stela 10)
may
gained them from rivals
some point.
Tikal and
its
at
"suburbs"
alive into the ninth century, last
monuments of
Seibal.
at
indicate that Tikal lost them to or
managed and Stela
to keep the stela tradition 1
1,
from AD 869,
typifies the
the Peten, with the exception of those from
Ninth-century monuments
flare at the top,
motifs frame the edge of the pictorial
field,
and decorative
abruptly truncating
131
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112. The
stela tradition survived
well into the ninth century at Tikal; Stela 1 1
dedicated
in
,
shown
here,
was
879. Floating figures
and articulated frames became
common
on ninth-century
monuments.
feathers and scrolls. Spindly legs support
human
figures in the
ninth century leaving them weightless and ungrounded; torsos
frequently do not quite align with legs below, as 11. In scrolls
above that
may
is
the case on Stela
signify clouds, the gods
known
as
God
to
"Paddlers" hover. But even the gods that canoe the Maize the
Underworld
although that
for his
annual renewal cannot renew Tikal,
may have been
the message.
To
a
degree unknown
elsewhere, Tikal remained a place that the occasional
encountered through the centuries, but by 900, a place for
(
'opan
it
Maya visitor
had ceased to be
new Maya sculpture.
and Quirzgud
At both Copan and Quirigua, Maya sculptors worked with idiosyncratic rock, which
may have
led
them
to
local,
experiment with
the two-dimensional format established in the Peten. Ultimately
although perhaps
132
hit
upon originally bv experimentation with the
113. Powerful
in
the s
un Ubah
Miown
my Maya "e
monuments K
of
,iwil
emphasize and enhance the face
itself,
with overall stocky
proportions.
presentation on incensarios, a format of low-relief representation
enhanced by an isolated three-dimensional face became the
dominant one
at
Quirigua. Slightly more yielding than
the
limestone of the Peten, the red sandstone of Quirigua provided
a
medium that allowed this enhancement of the human face. At nearby Copan, workers discovered that the volcanic they quarried from the
hills
when
yielded easily to the chisel
taken from the ground but then hardened
in
the
air.
tuff first
With such
easily shaped rock, they carved elaborate programs of architectural
ornament while nevertheless preserving the
stela tradition.
By
the sixth century they were carving massive, disproportionately
leggy sculptures, with three-dimensional yet
still
relief of
head and arms,
held fast by the prismatic shaft of the stone
itself.
By the
eighth century the prism melted away as the sculptors instead freed profoundly lifelike sculptures.
kings had just been frozen
in
Many
time on the
appeal- as pla/.a,
if
oversized
formally posed.
133
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114.
When Cauac Sky captured
Waxaklahun Ubah Copan, he sought
K'awil of
to replicate his
enemy's great plaza. The Quirigua
was
result at
a powerful plaza,
occupied by towering stelae (here Stela D, erected in ad
depict the king
in
766)
that
the guise of
various gods.
with fully-formed feet obliquely planted to support the full regalia.
Copan achieved sculptural glory with the production of the stelae that celebrate
Waxaklahun Ubah
eighth century, and that
still
738, the king of Quirigua took
and then, back
at
K'awil's reign in the early
dot the principal plaza today. But
Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil
Quirigua, beheaded him. At mid-century, fueled
by their prowess, Quirigua erected a potent in
place the tallest
Maya
—and
that
stela
woven mat,
for
program, setting
group of sculptures ever made by the Classic
still
form
a
Quirigua "skyline" today. So
Quirigua stelae mimic the subjects of Copan a
in
captive,
—
example
that
—
many
a text presented as
one wonders whether the Copan
sculptors themselves weren't captured along with the king and
i:n
forced to create the program.
Only
later in the eighth
century
1
would Quirigua sculptors bring an original format form
in
the
ars have
can
ing of several-ton river boulders into
what schol-
dubbed "zoomorphs," characterized by Zoomorph
example, w here one of the last kings a
to its fullest
sits within the open
for
I*.
mouth of
great turtle-like creature.
The
usual artistic response to defeal on the field
is
Palenque or Tikal, foreign wars brought production still.
So, too, at Copan.
Kami's demise, all
silence: at
to a stand-
But within a feu years ol Waxaklahun Ubah had commissioned the grandest of
lus successor
sculptural programs, the
lieroglyphic Stairway, featuring over
1
2000 carved glyph blocks and
six seated lords, all in celebration
the very stability and order of Copan.
The
effort
was an
Maya
visual erasure of the Quirigua attack. Across the
of
effective
realm.
hieroglyphic stairways celebrate defeat and subjugation, often
executed by freshly captured slaves and
Copan Stairway so unusual
is
artists.
What makes
that the architectural
the
metaphor of
115. Quirigua sculptors must
have ordered great boulders
to
be moved from the Motagua River to Quirigua,
carved
where they were
in situ.
Zoomorph P
the staircase for
is
turned on
its
head,
becoming
a
statement instead
freedom and continuity. The recent decipherment of the
Stairway and
its
excavation
let
us see that the
Maya
could take old
depicts one of the city's last kings,
sculptural forms and formats, and particularly during the eighth
emerging from the mouth
century, manipulate
great turtle, perhaps
of a
reenactment of the rebirth of the Maize God.
them for new meaning.
In this re-invention
we
in
can also see some clues to the innovation that takes place north, particularly at Chichen Itza. beginning
in
in
the
the eighth century.
135
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—
Chapter 6:
Sculpture of the North: the Art of
Yucatan and Chichen
Maya
Yucatan
art of
— and
Itza
Chichen
that of
Itza in particular
developed along a somewhat different trajectory from the art of the southern lowlands and with a distinctly different timeline.
Although Maya
art ceased to be
made
altogether, the end of the millennium
the north, and the
making of Maya
to the south after
was
a rich
and
AD 900 time in
art continued unabated until
the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. in
fruitful
It
was, after
all,
Yucatan that Bishop Lancia met with local elders to record their
writing system.
The
sculptural media of the south
standing stela especially north,
—adapted
—and the
free-
to local conditions in
the
where the raw materials were of a different order and where
the very environment of scrub tropical rainforest differs from the
high-canopy deep rainforest of the south. Time and ethnicity also played a role, so that continuities with the south can be seen
widespread carving of stone stelae Yucatec Maya), the discontinuity
in far
The study
hilly
of,
Puuc
in
the
(literally "hills" in
region to the west, with innovation and
greater evidence
at
Chichen
Itza.
of the art of Yucatan has also differed from that of
the southern lowlands.
sculpture
in the
say,
Whereas recent
investigations of the
Palenque have been driven by hieroglyphic
decipherment, the northern monuments bear laconic texts,
if
any.
This makes the sort of personal and local historical interpretation that has fueled the study of southern lowland art difficult, if not
impossible.
And Yucatan
sculptors
century to the years
—from the
fifth
had
a different quality of limestone available to
just before the
rock they worked on both resisted fine detail then gave
it
up
to the
elements
in
earliest efforts in
Spanish invasion
the
in
them. the
The porous
first
place and
the second. Best preserved are
those sculptures that were three-dimensional
in
their format.
conceived as architectural ornament, or planned for an interior location
—
a description that in fact describes
many of the works at
Chic-hen Itza. Additionally, whereas the high-canopy rainforest long shield-
— and thus — the
ed the southern lowland architecture from scrutiny focused attention on the freestanding sculptures
136
architec-
ture of the north has always stood out against the scrub forest. The
a
role in the
Exposition sored
a
of the north early on began toplaj
but not the art
architecture
modern imagination: for the 1893 Worlds Columbian in
Chicago, the meat-packing magnate
Armour
spon-
campaign of great cast-making of architectural facades of
Yucatan and they played
a
prominent role at the
fair.
So while architectural studies of the north flourished, studies of its sculpture have often foundered. Northern sculpture operates
on different terms from Classic sculpture of the south.
Some of its
characteristics include flamboyant and exaggerated poses thai
enhance
when viewed from
legibility, particularly
a
distance. Its
impulse to three-dimensionality infused new energy into sculp-
programs. Processional
tural
m\
ite
the viewer to
scribed paths. sculpture,
jambs,
become
More
a
friezes,
and
at
Chichen
Itza,
move along
specifically architectural than other
Campeche and Yucatecan
lintels,
common
participant and to
pre-
Maya
sculptures occur as door
built-in wall panels, both making- the buildings
permanently populated and emphasizing particular ideologies.
The dating of northern sculpture has long been problematic, Kow alski on Puuc architecture and sculp-
but recent work by Jeff
ture makes a convincing case for dating most of it to the eighth and
ninth centuries.
Chichen
Itza,
More
controversial are renewed efforts to redate
and to interpret
one, rather than extending for first
the
its
entire time frame as a shallow
many
centuries. Charles Lincoln
posited Chichen Itza's overlap with the Late Classic period
in
Puuc and among the southern lowlands, rather than seeing the
Chichen florescence as
a unique, early Postclassic
phenomenon,
and recent Maya hieroglyphic decipherment bolsters the case
for
the earlier dating. For the purposes of this chapter, the apogee of
Chichen
will
be assigned to the ninth and tenth centuries.
Although sometimes
called the
Terminal
Classic, that
term
is
too
redolent of both the forgotten train station and a certain deca-
dence for use here. Simple century assignments
Wars of conquest during the eighth and
will be preferred.
ninth centuries fueled
the economic success of the north at the expense of the south.
Populations flowed toward the north, perhaps as the result of direct enslavement, but also possibly for economic opportunity, for
surely the construction of such remarkable centers required vast
amounts of skilled
labor.
Uxmal's ceremonial precinct draws on
city like Palenque's for its plan, but its galleries
elaborate mosaic
ornament would appear
precedents of distant Copan.
a
and palaces with
to have
drawn on the
They may have developed
their low-
slung architectural styles simultaneously, but even the wide-
1H7
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— Maya —personified mountain —masks would appear
spread use of curly-nosed Chaak
Wits
prototype
new
in early
the
god
rain
—and
to have its
eighth-century Copan architecture. Because of
patterns of migration, the greatest influences on the north
come from
seem
to have
south
—Copan —or
cities.
The impulse
west
the
—
Maya
peripheries,
to three-dimensionality seen at
other sites to a lesser degree achieves
Chichen
Itza.
whether
to the
from the Usumacinta
particularly
Copan and
richest florescence at
its
The leggy proportions that take hold at Chichen and
elsewhere last appeared
in the
south on monumental sculpture
in
seventh-century Copan, and the frontality that the north so fluidly
experiments with also characterizes much Copanec sculpture.
Sculpture ofthe Puuc region
At Uxraal,
a
well-developed sculptural tradition dovetails with
that of the late eighth century in the
Usumacinta lowlands.
Standing figures hold copal bags, engage
in scattering
A
kling rituals, or stand atop hapless captives.
demarcates the scenes of most monuments, a
in
or sprin-
border clearly
many cases forming
roof over the protagonists. About 900, the lords of Stela
14 both adopt huge feather adornments,
more
hat-like than
headdresses, and on Stela 14, the hat includes a cutaway
Maya rain
Chaak, the
Although
little
1 1
and
most
mask of
god, which hangs in front of the king's face.
remains today, such be-hatted figures worked
in
three dimensions were once featured on the front facades of some principal palace buildings, the
West Building of the Nunnery and
on the House of the Governor among them. But whereas the
Nunnery
The
figures once sat, the stela figures are generally active.
ruler on Stela 14
bringing it In
in front
some
his
respects Stela 14
dizes the ruler, setting in
lifts
weapon high with
his left hand,
of his headdress, in a daring pose. is
a
conventional
effort:
it
aggran-
him atop a two-headed jaguar throne which
turn rests above two mirror-like captives (with yet a third
tucked behind), their genitalia explicitly exposed
But with a complexity of composition rare
in
in humiliation.
monumental
art,
it
also reveals the ideology that this powerful local lord sought to
promote.
Up
above him, an ancestor's deified head gazes down,
framed by two diminutive, floating Paddlers, the gods
of
life
to another,
figures.
These
floaters are the
who ferry the Maya Maize God from one stage and who occur on Maya ceramics and in the
upper margins of very
late Classic stelae at
Tikal and elsewhere.
Here the Paddlers may well carry the ancestor as harvested maize. But what renews the Maize
138
God
is
human
sacrifice: at the
base of
ii6
116
SI
Uvmal. decked out of
Chj.
adouL-
The Paddler
guar throne. c
.• .
ttv
humiliated car'
the
monument, the humiliated
captives provide that sacrifice to
the Underworld, rendered here as the "black hole," and inscribed like a giant
glyph around their naked bodies.
So embedded tional stela
is
in
course be the case
Maya much
what seems
to be a florid version of a conven-
— which
actually a suppressed narrative in
other instances as well.
A
may
of
knowledgeable
audience needed only a few cues to see the entire narrative, as a crucifix can initiate the story of Jesus in a Christian
viewer's mind. For the Maya, the story of the Maize
God was
the
heart of their religion, and his growth, flourishing, and decapitation followed the agricultural cycle. His sons, the
Hero Twins,
139
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bring him back to
life
from the Underworld, whereupon the
Paddlers convey him to the 117, 118. Maya sculptures,
such as Tzum Stela
1 (left) of
Yucatan, emphasize the ideology of the
—
constant renewal
117
and recreation, from which the cycle begins once again. The base
118
site
from nearby Tzum,
of Stela
1
features
young Maize Gods,
of creation
like that
this
a
of Stela
1,
Bonampak,
also
time springing out of the Wits
Maize God and frequently
depict the king as
young maize
reborn from the stony earth, a subject
more elaborately
portrayed at
Bonampak,
southern lowlands
monster, indicating personified rock. At Xkulok, three lintels featuring Maize
in
Sculptured Columns, frontal
Maize Gods that face downwards invisible until
re-creation of their apotheosis.
warrior dress:
prowess that releases the Maize Gods and
Northern sculpture often bears only do figures
in
it
may be
sets
them
21;
Edzna
registers.
140
a vivid sense of narrative.
general take active postures
one steps
in a vivid
in
overhead.
warriors support carved lintels of
doorway,
Columns
doorway are two sculptured
columns, each featuring a frontal lord their
119. At Xkulok's Building of the
into the
the doorways of the Sculptured
the
(right).
and are
Gods span
Building. Supporting the principal
Stela 6), but
many
(e.g.
Not
Oxkintok Stela
stelae are laid out with three specific
Compositions featuring registers also occur
in
the
119
southern lowlands, but generally onl} tury and into the ninth,
The
just
register, ol course,
gram
like that
is
at
the end oi the eighth cen-
when they also take hold
an essentia] feature
ol
of the Bonampak murals (Chapter
in
the north.
complex pro-
.1
s
With
three
separate frames, often separated by text, such compositions on
northern stelae are keenly similar hooks,
like,
for
registers on most, although not
may
all,
present a king at top, with his individual
that
because
lie
is
10 the
pages of surviving Maya
example, the Dresden Codex which features three
is
the
most
of its pages. Oxkintok Stela 2
war captain at
prominent
the local lord represented.
Piedras Negras Stela
12,
]
(enter, although
perhaps
individual
The composition of
probably from the same period, includes
some of the same elements,
102
hut successfully integrates them, uni-
fying the war captains helow their lord
in a
single scene, w ithout
the presentation of three separate registers. \V\ ertheless, one can easily
imagine the wholeofthe Piedras Negras
such
compartmentalized framework.
a
One of the most Masks of Kabah, interior room.
stela
den\ ingfrom
elaborate buildings of the north, the
also features elaborate
Each jamb presents two
I
louse of
47
door jambs that frame an
scenes: above, apparently a
121
dance between victorious warriors, and below, their domination of an abject captive.
One
protagonist wears an elaborate woven
(Chapter
7)
and distinctive face markings, indicating
mosaic mask or perhaps the sort of tattooing found on
120. Stela 21
at
Oxkintok
a
gold or
at least
two
is
divided into three separate registers but
bound together by
a
twisted cord frame that unites the
scenes. top
may
An
ancestral figure on
sprinkle offerings onto
the central register figure, a striding warrior, while
perform a dynastic
two
ritual
lords
on a
throne, at bottom.
121. Door jambs from Kabah present a sequence of warfare
and dance. Following success in
taking captives, rendered on
the lower half of the
monument,
the victors dance on the upper half. Distinctive scarification,
face paint, and jewelry
mark
the protagonists, indicating that the in
same
victors
appear
each scene.
141
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138
w arriors
sleeveless jerkin, often characteristic of Jaina figurine
206
122. One of two nearly identical stone heads, about
50 cm
high,
features the tattooed or scarified lord of
ill.
121. The eyes once
held shell or obsidian inlay.
great heads from Kabah, probably portraits of this same man.
Unlike any other Puuc sculptures, the figures overlie elaborate
background scrollwork and heads, similar to the device used Great Ballcourt sculpture
The widespread
at
Chichen
use of the column in the north lent itself to
processions and continuous compositions, and
from the formats
in the
Itza.
common
to ceramic vessels.
some
With
surely derive its
bejeweled
dwarf, elegant musicians, and attendant lord, the column of
Champoton,
for
example, suggests the luxury of courtly
life.
Like
many painted vessels, the column's composition is closed, with figures
142
who all
face
toward the dancing dwarf, and not continuous.
.
Champoton. Cam| reminis.
painted Sitting
i.
anenthv •pets.
«?
/
v-..
-rirrisu
~
••••
x -.
".
,
^-
•..
;
feJ
tasi
IgfX &J
W%m*
Chicken Itza
While ed
their neighbors to the west
monuments
lowlands, the Itza sacred
city.
and south
built cities
and erect-
that emulated the sacred practices of the southern
The
Maya at Chichen
Itza
probably not the dominant Unfortunately, most
Itza constructed a
came from the
Maya
new kind of
south, although they were
of the older southern
cities.
modern knowledge of this period depends on
Colonial sources from Yucatan, rather than epigraphy or archaeology, and so
it
has been hard to sort out just what the Itza were
doing prior to arriving
at
Chichen. In Yucatan, the Itza married
into local lineages; after the
fall
of Chichen, the Itza were to go
back to the Peten, where they remained free of Spanish domination into the seventeenth century.
Chichen Itza was perceived
to be a capital without rival, a
Tollan, or a "place of cattail reeds."
The concept was
widely held
in
Mesoamerica, and may also have been of great antiquity: the Aztecs considered their capital the Toltecs before
Until
AD TOO or
Teotihuacan,
in
city,
them believed
so,
Tenochtitlan to be Tollan, and
their capital, Tula, to be Tollan.
the reigning Tollan of Mesoamerica was
at
Central Mexico. In their day, both Tikal and
143
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Copan may have been known
as Tollans, but their
by AD 800. With the demise of Teotihuacan the weakening of southern
Chichen, and
Maya
in
cities,
day was setting
Central Mexico and
new
came
lords
one of the most elaborate programs of
in
art
to
and
architecture ever devised in Mesoamerica, described the divine
charter that gave them right to rule. Simultaneously, the Toltecs built their capital at Tula, Hidalgo,
to share art
and architectural
and the two powerhouses came
Whether Tula was
styles.
the domi-
nant partner remains unknown.
Although the Chichen lords may have manipulated the jade and gold trades, providing themselves with an unprecedented eco-
nomic
base, the story of public art
speaks only of divine charter.
The
and architecture
to seamlessly incorporate the ideology of Central
Maya, making their city one of the greatest
tural narratives
Chichen
in all
Mexico and the
Mesoamerica.
Lower and Upper Temple of
In detailed registers in the
Jaguars, as well as the
at
lords of Chichen were the first
the
North Temple of the Great Ballcourt, sculp-
engaging vast numbers of individuals would seem
to tell the tale of the city's divine charter, with the
complex and
dense paintings of the Upper Temple spelling out the sacred wars that put
lords in power.
its
The
story told would seem to be a cos-
mic one, the vast numbers of the defeated recalling both the mass interment
at the
mass slaughter
Temple of Quetzalcoatl would take place
that
at
Teotihuacan and the
late in the fifteenth-century
dedicationof the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan.
Very low
Temple of
relief
carvings line the interior walls of the Lower
the Jaguars and the
North Temple. Individual
were assembled and then probably carved light coat of paint. In the
in situ,
slabs
before receiving a
Lower Temple of the Jaguars, the
sculp-
tors relate the creation story once again, with the role of the Itza
Maya
evident.
At the North Temple, elaborate
rituals
accompany
the seating of the Itza rulers, including auto-sacrifice, ballgame,
and hunting.
The
six
massive sculptural panels lining the Great Ballcourt
recount the aftermath of victories of Chichen lords:
it is
this suc-
cess in warfare that leads to the reenactment of the narrative and that
would seem
to resurrect the
time and again, right at the
site
door jambs from Kabah, scrolls ing
at
Maize Gods from the crevice
of the ballcourt. Like the warrior fill
the background, but suggest-
Chichen swirls of blood and smoke, or moisture-laden
clouds, like those ofYaxchilan Lintel 25.
Contrary
World Wars
/
//
modern myth
to the I
and
II
that
was established between
and promulgated by generations of on-site
guides and guidebooks, losers," the e> idence
who
\\
the "w inners" were sacrificed
greal ball,
a
may
the center
o\'
give
is
that
is
it
is
l>\
the losers
no progression here, only
a
inventor} of six greal sacrifices. Each sacrifice takes place
skull halls
it
gaping skull described on the surface. These
a
us that the
tell
Maya
some bounce. Other
such racks
in
recycled the
human
skull to
the rubber ball, thus forming a hollow that
Tzompantli, or Skull rack,
skulls
would
m
were deposited
just outside the court,
the
one of the earliest
Mesoamcrica.
Although scholars have construction phases that
huh
these grisly panels
suffer decapitation. l>ut there
statu-
over
in
in
any time depth
at is
tried to develop credible
Chichen
Itza, the best
more than two
limited to no
sequences for
answer currently
that differences in artistic style can be explained by the
subjects, or by multi-ethnic populations at
Linnea
Wrenn and
rificial
stone, imaginatively
the
Peter Schmidt rediscovered
formed
a
is
centuries, and
city.
varying
Recently,
huge carved sac-
as a ball lodged in a ballcourt
ring. Its indisputable date records 864,
and the imagery has con-
firmed the stylistic coincidence of the lanky lords inside S-shaped rattlesnakes during the ninth century. This sculpture anchors the
imagery that has long seemed very "late" (some scholars have even
wanted
to read
Chichen
Itza as an
immediate prelude
to the
Aztecs) to specific first-millennium dates.
Yet
if
we think of Chichen
Itza as the effort of less than ten gen-
erations, then the concentrated
energy of the
quite astonishing, for eyerywhere the city 124.
On each
of the Great
Ballcourt panels of Chichen
program
is
or both. All Chichen Itza sculptures were carved
in situ,
and the
Itza,
victorious players face their
defeated foes. At center, a single loser
artistic
was carved or painted,
very process of production must have skilled laborers.
filled
the city every day with
Across the main plaza from the ballcourt, dozens
has been decapitated;
the oversized
human
skull.
ball
features a
of columns and piers were caryed, forming the colonnade of the
Temple of the Warriors and
in front
the so-called Mercado. Carved
145
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benches establish the format that would be replicated time and again, right
up
Spanish Conquest of the Aztec capital.
until the
Three-dimensional sculptures
An
impulse to three dimensions thrived
in the north. In the
Puuc
region, figures in flayed skins wield star-shaped maces (Oxkintok)
or
may have supported thrones (Xkulok); enormous erect phallus-
es projected
from walls or were set up in courtyards. But the great-
est success in this regard
categories of sculpture
simultaneously
at
was
seem
at
Chichen
Itza,
where
to have been invented.
entirely
new
Many appear
Tula, Hidalgo.
Chief among the new sculptural forms
at
Chichen are the chac-
mools, serpent columns, mini-atlanteans, and standard bearers,
of which become omnipresent
chacmool
—
literally "great
in
the buildings of rulership.
or red jaguar"
—was
all
The
so dubbed in the
workmen of adventurer Augustus Le Plongeon, and the term has come to mean all sculptures of reclining figures with the head at 90 degrees, who hold a vessel for offering on the belly. The local workers who coined the term may have
nineteenth century by the
retained
some ancient
lore of a buried red jaguar, although surely
one could not have mistaken the reclining chacmool figure jaguar. Nevertheless, at least
Chichen Peniche's
Itza,
men
and
it
came
for a
one red jaguar throne was buried to light in
1936,
stepped into the chamber
at
when
at
Jose Erosa
the top of the "fossil"
temple buried so pristinely within the Castillo, where the visible temple of today encases a hidden one. In
had been sealed 125.
(right)
With their consistent
reclining postures faces, the
Chichen
and
frontal
chacmool sculptures
Itza recall
some
of
captive
Maya stelae, and they may symbolize fallen warriors. panels of
126. (opposite) Archaeologists found a completely preserved earlier building,
chacmool Castillo.
its
throne and
intact, buried within the
The chacmool holds
a
disk for offerings; a ruler would
have presided from the red jaguar throne
on
its
in
the background, sitting
turquoise-studded
tezcatcuitlapilli, a Toltec mirror
back known from Central Mexico.
/
W
in place
with
its
fact,
the red jaguar throne
accompanying chacmool, and the
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two sculptural forms usually function together, the throne the seat of rulership and the chacmool the place of offerings to rulership. Eventually, chacmools would be found in
many places, not sur-
prisingly at Tula and even farther to the north; and in recherche
versions created for the Aztec sacred precinct, where Tlaloc (Central Mexican rain god) imagery
is
layered onto the forms.
Consistently, through time and across cultures, the chacmool
seems to function as a locus for offering, the receptacle on the belly for
human
offerings, in all likelihood.
At the same
time, these
chacmools bear the iconography of the Mesoamerican warrior, and the disk they hold up on their
Maize Gods, where
bellies
is
akin to the disk held by
the point of renewal and self-replication.
it is
Jade plaques hurled into the Sacred Cenote depict Maize
who
hold just such disks.
Maize Gods
is
The out
spelled
Gods
relationship between warriors and at
Xkulok:
the
chacmool may
concentrate such ideology into the body of a single figure,
furthermore making of
it
indicates ritual function to
After the decline of Chicken
Chichen
the sort of liturgical furniture that
all
comers.
Itzii
world of so many high-status individuals suffered
Itza's
such cataclysm around the end of the millennium that, after that
nothing was
point, almost
scarce ceramics fired.
grimage
built,
few sculptures made, and only
With Chichen
Itza only surviving as a pil-
point, if new theories are correct, both the southern
the northern lowlands supported
developments
in the
200 years before the
little elite activity,
Guatemala highlands lagged arrival of the Spaniards.
and
and even the
until the final
When
works made
after such cultural collapse are called "decadent," the observer
bound
to deprecate the efforts. In fact,
archaeologists
century
is
if
the pause
is
as
is
long as
now think it was, then the renewal in the thirteenth
remarkable, a revival of ancient traditions that survived
some very grim times
indeed. In the thirteenth century cities like
Mayapan, Tulum, and even Santa Rita sprang
to
life,
supporting
the lively culture that Bishop Landa witnessed and described in the mid-sixteenth century.
An
exploratory mission under the leadership of Juan de
Grijalva spotted coastal
Tulum
in
1517 and identified
it
as a trad-
ing hub. Prevented by the massive coral reef from venturing close to shore,
he nevertheless waxed eloquent over what he saw.
comparing
it
to far-off Seville.
Tulum
is
best
known today
for its
diminutive architecture and elaborate paintings, both described
in
other chapters; two seventh-century stelae probably came there as
/
is
.
•\irking
128. Stela
1
at
260
\
Mayapan
depicts
a pair of figures inside a thatched shrine. This concept of stela as
"house"
may have been
present
—Copan's
generations before J
Stela
also had a stone thatch "roof."
tribute or perhaps as booty
Tulum
lords
may have
from
insisted on
sought to stop and drink from In their
Mayapan
a Classic site
its
—
exactly what the
from the passing traders who
freshwater springs.
prominent town west of Chichen
Itza, the lords
of
systematically sought to draw on the past. At their
order, laborers hauled pieces of sculptural facades from the
Puuc
region; radial pyramids replicated Chichen's Castillo. In forging their
own
tradition,
dimensional forms, tradition.
sculptors turned to both three-
and stone, as well as
a
renewed
stela
Large and small ceramic sculptures present single
many
deities,
Mayapan
in clay
associated
with agricultural
and
fertility,
the
widespread "diving" gods from the period offer tamales or corn
Mayapan
masa. Stone turtles at
register the count of katuns, the
twenty-year periods celebrated on
UJ^l
J-J~-[_JL
southern lowlands, particularly
human
sacrifice
may have been
at
the
round
altars
of the
Tonina and Caracol: poles
fitted into their backs.
The
for
stelae
configure the carved face as a house or shrine, the text forming the roof,
and with gods within.
presented a standing
ruler,
A
single standing stela
may have
but the sculpture has taken such a
battering over the years that no other detail can be determined. Little
Spanish
Maya
sculpture can be attributed to the time of the
invasion,
some
but
Chichen's Sacred Cenote -
/—
fiber,
mm m
cloth and resins
all
may
perishable
materials
well belong to the era.
offer
offered
to
Wood and
testimony of both practices and
*
i-^—
J----J.*-
art-making that may have lingered into the Colonial period.
Under Spanish
rule, particularly in
wrought remarkable wooden textiles.
Throughout
the
Guatemala, Maya carvers
saints and
Maya
region,
adorned them with native
wood carving remains an
important tradition today.
149
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—
Chapter
7:
The Human Form
Maya art, the human form is omnipresent, whether in represenhumans. What makes that human form so appealing to the modern eye is the seeming naturalism of Maya In
tations of gods or of
representation. Figures
another
in
on people,
sit,
kneel, hold objects, or touch one
ways that are astonishingly
lifelike.
as well as the things people do, has
And
the emphasis
made Maya art seem
approachable.
The main
subject of monumental
most featured representation
is
Maya art is the king, and the person so much so that
—
his royal
many Maya stelae depict only the king and narrate only his deeds. Even when the featured representation on a monument is not the king himself, either the nature of the depiction or the text relates that individual to the king. sibilities
to
it,
When one goes beyond the limited pos-
of stone sculpture and the sort of weight that was given
however,
many
other
elite individuals
—
surely
the royal family but also merchants, priests, and
were able
129. Often rendered as
Monkey Scribes shown hard at work,
grotesques, the are usually
writing, painting, or carving.
an
artist
may
Here
with a quick and free line
indicate that the
writing could have
like a great spatula,
exaggerated
left
hand
for
been bound; an
hand supports
a jaguar-covered book.
150
to
commission
their
own
depiction in
many from
war captains art.
One might
130.
0'-
cups withe*' body;
pelav;
id
Hunj
vnjng
and handson
the with
Maize God.
think this
is
logical, if
economic wherewithal
only because they were the ones with the to
do
so.
I
lowever,
among
the Aztecs
many
representations of rulers survive, but essentially no representations of Other nobles, so the
same
situation did not
emerge among
that later civilization.
Additionally,
had human of the
form.
some of the most powerful Maya supernaturals
Human
perfection was
Maya Maize God, whose
summed up
in
the shape
representation as full-grown male
youth included a strong, taut body, smooth
skin,
and luxuriant
The Hero Twins, demigods who could exert their powers a plane with mortals and among the gods, also took idealized young male form. Their half-brothers, the Monkey Scribes, took grotesque but recognizable human form in most cases. Many tresses.
130
both on
/.;/
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129
—
the Maya pantheon Itzamnah, Chaak, and K'inich among them were anthropomorphic, but with specialized nonhuman facial features: Itzamnah and K'inich always feature square
members of
—
eyes,
and the latter's are always crossed; even K'awil, whose face
based on a serpent and one of whose legs ends features a
in a
is
serpent head,
human torso and arms.
Over the period of a few hundred years, the Maya mastered the skills to
poses. ural
render these divine and
The Maya came
poses
human forms for a number of pur-
to represent both
—overlapping
gods and humans
in nat-
one another, reaching out to one
another's bodies, and in a variety of positions, from sitting and
standing to playing the drums or playing the rubber ballgame.
Mastering such representation was no small matter: no other civi-
131.
On
artist
wrapped the two-
Stela 1, the fifth-century
dimensional carving of a Tikal king around three sides of the
monument. While the posture remains figures
static,
king's
small
on the sides are animated.
152
lization in
Maya
Mesoamerica came close
modern world were art to be seen
and only
respect,
this
in
achievement
to the
few
.1
the
oi
civilizations of the pre-
works
their equals. In fact, the firsl
Maya
oi
by Europeans so astonished them thai they quickly
Maya
led to the appellation of the ancient
the
.is
"(
.inks of the
New World." Representing the body
Many
i>\'
perfected
the in
Maya
skills
representation seem to have been
in
the seventh and eighth centuries
development began centuries
their
During
Classic.
that
Maya
period, the
highly conventionalized rendering, as
it
is
known by the mind
in
\\
but the story of
\i>,
during the Early
earlier,
artist
to be, resulting in
completely shown. For example. Stela
(fifth
I
Chan
features the standing king Siyah
made
typically
hich the body a
a
was carved
human form
century) from Tikal
K'awil: in order to include
131
the entire body, the artist renders both legs, parallel but separated
with the slightest of overlap the
the feet; the torso faces front, and
at
arms adopt an almost impossible
upper and lower arms, as well
The head
mittens.
one other than the point
is
as
if
show
they were
in
side, in profile.
Of course no
can actually stand
like this, but
then faces to the
a contortionist
position, in order to
hands drawn as
that the features of the
human body
are complete,
at
least in profile.
But
if
one looks closely
at
the
monument,
the seeds of repre-
sentational change have already been sown. The small figures scale the ritual staves at the
rendered far more
fluidly.
A
seams of the front and jaguar
at
lower
left
who
sides are
Chan
of Siyah
K'awil flexes a lower limb and reveals the inside of a paw, providing
an early signal of foreshortening.
The
paired figure at right rests
languidly on a shiny disk; above, coming out of serpent mouths, small god figures on both
left
and right sides feature legs and arms
almost completely overlapping and torsos resentation.
century,
By
the time this
three-quarters rep-
The presence in
1
for
most conservative style for the
of less conventional representations
minor figures on Stela
the
in
new modes of representation had been adopted
figures, while retaining the
ments
in
monument was made
may have been
fifth
minor
ruler.
among
the
stimulated by develop-
other media that had fewer technical limitations than
stone sculpture. At Rio Azul, during the Early Classic, the art of
making
clay figurines flourished. Their bodies
modeled entirely
by hand, the figures sometimes featured mold-made heads. Delicate hands applied clothing layer by layer and hair
in
strands,
153
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133
yielding life-like figures that adopted natural poses. Even with their standardized faces, the figurines are
engaging
little
humans,
lively in their aspect.
Maya painters may have adopted new modes of representation for pots
On Bonampak
132. (below)
Sculptured Stone
two
(yet with only
1,
three lords
visible feet!)
and walls before
mental sculpture. Few
artists considered
Maya wall paintings
using them on monusurvive at
one major example of Early Classic painting
all
and only
known, but the
is
present their king with a royal
headband. The
king's
arm across
his chest helps retain his center
of gravity
mural from Structure B- 1 3
even as he leans toward
tion that
his nobles.
was
possible.
representation of the 133. (opposite) Shapers of figurines
may have found
for
registers: they are in
more body length
accoutrements and
to
balance
what can be towering figurines
one flourished
such as
at Rio Azul,
costume elements were one
Most
in the
interesting for the purposes of the
human form
shown
are the
many
figures on
two
shifting their weight, one foot off the
energetic exchange with one another, and bodies over-
ground,
in
lapping.
The Maya
human
artist
demonstrates the
figure in motion in the
ability to
this
show
the
Uaxactun mural.
Ultimately, by the height of the Late Classic the
headdresses. Elegant hand-
modeled
Uaxactun, probably made late
lankier
proportions more desirable, order to have
at
Early Classic period, provides a window on the sort of representa-
created representations that featured the
human
Maya
figure the
artist
way
it
where
built
layer at a time.
up
is
seen
by the eye, foreshortened and with overlapping parts, rather
than as the body
Mm H
v
164
is
known. For example, on
Bonampak Sculptured
I hi.
'
,.
.
+*&':&;
•'S'4
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Stone
1,
probably dedicated
in 692, the
enthroned king's legs are
rendered with dramatic and confident foreshortening. is
The
effect
so convincing that the eye does not question the rendering.
seated lords at
left
The
are rendered effectively in profile, the limited
views of their crossed arms suggesting the posture of ease. Additionally, the first of these lords reaches up with a proffered
The frame cuts off part of
headdress, revealing his bulging paunch.
the final figure, but the eye sees each body, head to toe, to be complete:
two
only upon careful scrutiny does one realize that there are just
feet
rendered for three men.
It is as if
visual puzzle that the viewer, the brain
A
late
eighth-century panel
the sculpture were
some
and eye conspire to complete.
at the
Kimbell Art
Museum
fur-
ther refines the possibilities of foreshortening, such that the
human
figures
seem
to
occupy space.
A
victorious warrior pre-
sents three captives to a provincial Usumacinta-region lord, sits
cross-legged upon a throne
titles
—or
moves
his
it
named with
may be the king himself who presides. This lord easily
weight
off-center, to
approach
hand presses into his thigh and the left
134. Just as the war captain right
this
at
reaches up and across on
Kimbell Art
Museum
panel,
so does the line of captives slant
downward from
left
to right, as
reading their demise
in
if
the very
layout of the panel.
156
who
the Yaxchilan king's
is
his underling.
deftly turned.
His right
The center
line of the lord
senting
\\
hose body
The
lord Mis under
swag
curtains, inside
lifted fronl
palace space; the
a
warrior approaches fromjusl outside the palace, one loot .in
approaching
status.
The carving
the panel
o\'
ened emotions w
ith their
kiss or lick dirt
raises his
hand
flesh,
dramatic gestures.
from
his
hand
to his forehead in
panel's frame, yet there
artist
frontal faces in
two-dimensional,
linear formats,
he usually reserved
such or
trials for
secondary
the faces of captives figures,
such as the
humble servant smoking what looks like a cigarette here at a painted cylinder vase.
Maya calendar; may seal a tribute
date of the
negotiation,
presumably
Such
other
at night.
skills in
isual
\
metaphor
hat
The captive at far left
submission, the middle one
seems is
no mistaking the
human
to he a
gesture of woe
severely truncated by the artist's
confidence that
figure.
rendering the human figure became convention-
and thus the range of solutions to both the organization
limited.
initial
and Kneel two
of
the composition and the rendering of an individual figure are
on
He stands
flanking a text that notes the
figures
left
is
w
in
far left
the viewer will see the complete
alized,
sil
these three' captives express height-
and resignation. The captive at 135. Although the Maya
on
very shallow, but the
cut and shredded cloth, a
lav ishly in
and shredded
tor cut
occasionally attempted to render
is
still
grading of social
careful
figures occupy the space effectively, conveying depth.
Draped
may
some very
in
it
Outside the palace chamber, the captives
steps below.
human
step, as
pre-
also poised in motion, his rear foot
is
upon the step and then balanced by the gently
flexed toot.
moves in an arc that leaps across the text to the
arrior,
\\
Some attempts never
reached successful solutions: rear
views of bodies rarely convince the eye, although the
do
this
Bonampak murals; frontal faces (as
Maya tried
with the uppermost captive of the north wall of the
opposed to the high
in strictly
relief of a
Copan
to
Room 2,
two-dimensional media stela)
were
tried
on the
mmwmsm.
157
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l;
Maya pots and on some carvings of
occasional secondary figure on
135
captives at Naranjo and elsewhere. In a
few cases an exceptional
view of the body
quarters
Background Vase. More
managed
to suggest the
artist
developed
a fluid
example, on
for
as,
three-
Black
the
typically, the painters of cylinder vessels
body in
of specific techniques. In a
a
three-quarters view by a handful
number of examples,
the painter leads
the viewer's eye from the frontal, foreshortened crossed-legs to the torso.
To
arrive at a convincing portrayal of a face in profile,
one shoulder drops down, and the other rides it
Although the
seems to be
face
is
up, revealing
here that the turned body
expanse of neck:
in profile, its
an
achieved.
is
three-dimensionality
can be suggested by a single stroke projecting the eyelashes or
brow from the hidden
Turning one hand
side of the face.
to reveal
the palm or the wrist to reveal the ties of its bracelet also enhances
the effect that the figure itself is turning. Despite
handling of the 136. On the Black Background Vase, the
body
in
Maya
artist
captures the
three-quarters view, the
human
figure on
Maya
vases,
what is often
Maya
deft
artists could
also exhibit seemingly reckless disregard for right and left hands,
sometimes reversing them and sometimes painting two of the
same on
a single figure.
subtle torsion evident at the belly.
Despite these
skills,
he has
on the
painted a
left
and a
hand on the
left
foot
meaning no longer
right leg
right
although these features a
Throughout the arm,
may have
retrievable.
human body along
a
Classic period,
Maya
artists
portrayed the
narrow proportional range, with the
the head to that of the body from 1:5 to
1:8,
scale of
the lankier proportions
occurring even during the Earlv Classic when the figures seem shorter because of the heavy adornment with ritual costume.
Proportions of
1:7
and
1:8 are
used nearly universally on painted
ceramics of the Late Classic; squatter proportions on carved tels
may
lin-
derive from the compact and compressed format of that
sculptural form. Reflecting their shorter stature,
women
rarely
stand more than seven headlengths to the body
Maya ceramic
sculptors also
came
to use a slightly shorter
proportional system, with most figures standing about six or
seven headlengths. Faces often receive the greatest emphasis,
along with headdress, and some bodies are simply rendered. Proportionally very large feet provided a standing figure with the
means of staying
upright.
Some
figures
were modeled entirely by
hand, with a separate mold-made face often added and then detailed by hand;
Maya
some figures were made entirely in molds.
figurines
made during the Late Classic reveal
a far
more
extensive range of activities and emotions than monumental sculpture.
Most of
the figurines
known come from
the island of
Jaina, a burial island off the coast of Campeche, but fine quality fig-
urines were
158
made
at
Palenque and
at
Rio Azul during the Late
isfi
Classic as well. as
Some portray the nobles of the court, often dressed
warriors or ballplayers; others explicitly depict
Moit' female figures are rendered as figurines than
medium, suggesting
iIi.h
.1
Maya in
gods.
any other
broader clientele m.i\ have commis
sioned or purchased the figures.
137. The Maya considered Chaak Chel to be a old midwife
infants
and brought on destructive
floods at the latter
to the
woman warrior, the who both delivered end
world— the
of the
perhaps thought
of as akin
unstoppable flow
amniotic
fluid.
of
As with many other
Jaina figurines, she retains brilliant
that
tenacious blue pigment
was
applied after
firing.
159
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Arms in motion, this armed for war or the hunt. The deer headdress also characterizes some 138.
(right)
Jaina figure
is
ballplayers, as
he wears on
does the padding
his left
thick feet helped
stand
upon
arm. Large,
such
a figure
a dirt floor.
139. (opposite) Although the joined bodies of this
were formed their faces
in
amorous
pair
a single mold,
and headdresses were
finished with exquisite care by
hand, as was the woman's outstretched arm, her willing
embrace belying her coy
lack of
interest. Substantial feet
helped
keep Jaina figurines upright;
many have their
whistles worked into
backs and shoulders
(ill.
1).
Working
in pliable clay, the artist successfully
mastered the
stooped posture of age in a figurine of Chaak Chel, the old midwife
goddess of the Maya.
A woman warrior, she A male warrior
also prepares to
attack, her shield at her side.
stands poised
movement,
a
Dressed
his
in a
grasping hands once having held
hunter of men. His serene expression
—
is
frozen for
all
time
—perhaps due
to the
molded
A
pair of
belies his aggressive stance.
ballplayers at the National
City
now-lost spear.
deer headdress, this figure may be a hunter as well as a
construction of the face
in
Museum
137
in
138
of Anthropology in Mexico
dramatic postures, an imaginary
ball
between them. But some figurines reveal expressions
—and
actions
—
rarely
Maya art. Probably about a dozen examples feature a young woman and old man embracing or a woman and a rabbit, or other beast! An example at the Detroit Institute of Arts was seen
in
—
160
139
made with three molds, one for each head and one for the
probably
conjoined bodies and then finished with added detail and brilliant
woman si. ins impassively into the distance, man leers directly at her, as if in hope of some reaction as his hand slides along her leg, lifting her skirt above the knee. The very pigments. While the the old
same mold may have been used pair at
Dumbarton Oaks,
t
fashion the bodies of a similar
but this tunc the artist used different
heads and oriented them toward one another, so thai the viewer reads a loving sexual intensity in the couple.
Throughout dered
in
ways
seem
But the rendering of the direction
at
and other
human
the Late Classic the
that
to the
modern eye
human form
figure could be ren-
to be truly naturalistic.
takes a sharp turn in another
the end of the period. In the ninth century,
satellites
of Chichen
rendered neither as
it
is
human form
It/a, the
known nor
as
it
the
is scc/i,
at
I
lalakal
started to he
two modes of
representation that had previously informed representation of the body. Artists rendered the three figures on
panel from
a
with legs that do not line up with their upper bodies, as
I
lalakal
if one
team
of artists started carving from the bottom, another team from the
and then
top,
failed to
meet
in
the middle.
Ninth- and tenth-century Chichen Itza sculpture developed highly conventionalized forms of representation for
monumental
sculpture.
—
particularly
These conventions required
that the
legs be in profile, parallel, and overlapping above the knees. All faces are in profile,
and torsos may be represented
frontally. Artists rarely
in profile
ing of arms and legs. Figures often seem weightless and
may
float off their
ings. Postures
groundlines, as they do
vary
or
used foreshortening and show no model-
little
in
Chichen
to figure on
from figure
in fact
Itza paint-
most monu-
ments, creating the sense of corporate identity rather than
human forms.
individual
Physiognomy andportraiture Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the
Maya
idealized youthful
male beauty and particularly the handsome, unblemished face of the
Maize God. For the Maya, Maize God theology was complex:
the Maize
God was
the father of the
Hero Twins and Monkey
Scribes; he also personified the yearly agricultural cycle, the
renewal and death of plants. But
ground maize dough bility
to fashion
of ideal beauty attainable for
Most
in addition,
human all
beings,
other gods took
making
the possi-
noble humans.
human face in Maya art focus on The face of the Maize God was understood to be
representations of the
this ideal beauty.
161
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140. The Maya Maize God
embodied human his tapering
prominent nose tresses,
perfection, from
forehead and
where
to his luxuriant
a thick
also guaranteed an
head
of hair
abundant
maize crop. His hands gently the foliage of the maize
wave,
like
plant.
Once tenoned
into the
cornice of Structure 22, Copan, the Maize
God would have
seemed
grow organically from
to
the building
itself.
growing ear of maize,
the
still
on the
stalk.
The Maize God
has
flawless facial features, but he also has abundant straight hair that
Maya understood
the 141. A staircase
27
at
riser,
Monument
Tonina positions the aged
profile of
the captive to be trod on
time and again.
Few humans
ever
to be like luxuriant corn silk.
On
silk
—or luxuriant
Structure 22,
at
hair
— signaled bounty and
plenty.
At the top of
Copan, Maize Gods were tenoned into the cornice,
feature the telltale signs of aging; that this captive
does may be part
of his visual humiliation.
the maize
plant, every kernel sends out a single strand, so luxuriant corn
vivid symbols of the abundance guaranteed by the king
stand
162
in
the
doorway below.
who would
An ear ofmaize grows long and narrow, tapering to a point. In Maya sought tins same line, a continuous line
their profiles, the
from the nose
forehead and then tapering nearly to
to the
Most noble Maya underwent head deformation infants: strapped to their cradleboards, their
shaped
to
as
still sofl
.1
point
newborn
crania were
give them long, tapering foreheads. Sculptures
Palenque indicate
some Maya
that
bridge of the nose so that the line from forehead would be
heads of both King Itzamnah Balam Yaxchilan Lintel 2
1-,
head through which
tip
of the nose to top of the
continuous and nearly straight
a
and
II
his wife,
The
line.
Lady Xok, on
aspire to tins ideal, as does their hair it
is
.11
lords affixed something to the
threaded
the
the center of the forehead
at
9
God
emulates the Maize God's usual hairstyle. lake the Maize
himself, such portrayals of Maya nobility never indicate aging, hut
only vibrant youth.
At the same time that the Maya idealized the Maize God, they also sought to emulate some aspects of the sun god, K'inich. Unlike
the
Maize God, K'inich never features
a
human
face:
large, squared eyes with the pupils crossed. Additionally, his 142. Maya
artists
pleasure
drawing God L
broadly,
in
took great
emphasizing
his toothless
mouth, sagging face, pointy chin,
and hunched shoulders.
In
the
60
he always has
front teeth are filed into the shape of a capital letter T.
upper
The Maya
incorporated these two aspects of his physiognomy into the noble persona. First of
all, at
the
same time
were
that babies' foreheads
reshaped, mothers often dangled a bead over babies' faces so that
north, artists frequently adapted his
image
to
door jambs and
entryway columns, where he
their eyes
many
would become permanently crossed. And secondly,
adult males filed their four upper front teeth into the shape
wearily supports the building.
This example
is
probably from
Santa Rosa, Xtampak.
of the T. Additionally,
some
lords added jade inlay: an ideal smile
may have featured both cut teeth and dark green spots. In contrast to these ideals, the Maya may well have viewed protruding forehead as one of humanity's most disfiguring tures,
a
fea-
along with the wrinkled lower face that comes from both
aging and tooth loss (we cannot speculate as to whether the Maya tooth filing and inlay led to increased tooth
onto a step riser
at
loss).
A captive carved
Tonina features both, and the profile of his
forms the edge of the step itself;
a
youthful warrior
may have taken
particular pleasure in stepping on his less-than-perfect visage.
A
Bonampak murals has
a
servant in the dressing scene of the
141
face
sharply protruding forehead, perhaps even marking him as
150
a for-
eigner or of low birth. Interestingly enough,
many gods
have
less
than ideal faces,
and some are particularly wizened and wrinkled. While noble lords rarely age (although they do gain weight!),
some gods
just
have old age as an attribute, and so they are aged, wrinkled, and craggy.
The old cigar-smoking God
L, for
example,
is-specifically
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142
1
toothless, his nose bulbous,
and his chin pointy. The Jaina figurines
men who make
of old toothless
love to
young women may
portraying the exploits of gods, perhaps even he, too,
to
well be
God L himself, since
surrounds himself with young female courtiers.
Of all the Maya supernaturals, only the Monkey Scribes aspire the human grotesque. Their half-brothers, the Hero Twins,
take after their shared
the
sire,
Maize God,
scribal
in
many
instances.
entourage includes other members of the court
do not conform to the Maya
known
dwarfs,
ideal,
130
in their beautiful faces
and physiques and so do the Monkey Scribes
The
129
143
who
among them hunchbacks and
to have been the confidants of kings
throughout
Mesoamerica. But some Monkey Scribes are hideous, their faces barely
human
mythology.
monkeys
or turned to
A
Copan evinces pathos from the
Monkey
Maya
altogether, their fate in
sculpture excavated from the Scribal Palace at viewer, for although homely, the
Scribe seems altogether human, but with the sort of face
never seen on a Maya king.
Although
rendered
as
a
divinity
—and
unnamed
—
this
Monkey Scribe from Copan more surely portrays the face of a specific
commemorative
individual than any
from that
stela
city.
Artists frequently include images of themselves and their circle on
Maya vases, but few suggest portraiture. In fact, when portraiture is as idealized as it typically is on Maya vases or monumental sculpture, it barely seems portraiture. Few two-dimensional renderings without shading a description of most Maya formal portraiture can capture a particular physiognomy. Most of the
—
—
world's traditions of portrait-making were, in exploiters of three dimensions, whether in Jaina figurines
would seem
these are mainly captives.
Us monuments but this
is
Rome
fact,
or
to have been specific portraits
One can
distinguish Itzamnah
from Yaxun Balam's monuments
at
A
few
—and Balam
Yaxchilan,
largely because of both identifying texts and the work-
manship, not because the faces of these kings are readily able.
effective
Ife.
Furthermore,
the
principal
figures
on
identifi-
many Maya
monuments have suffered such damage to the face that a particular physiognomy would be hard to recognize in any case. Despite such obstacles to recognizing portraiture art
—
its
linear two-dimensional quality, the pattern of
and what may have been renderings
Palenque
— there
is
a preference for ideal,
one
striking
exception:
a tradition of stucco sculpture
specific
/
6
provenience
at
A
Maya
damage,
Maize-God-like Palenque.
evolved and with
dition of life-like, evocative portraiture.
in
it,
At
a tra-
stucco head without
the site bespeaks a particular individual
144
Copan
Alert
and pensive, homely
but no:
\lasa
scribe, o
then buried
deifiev in
a
compound
gained
its
that
may have
prestige through the
scnba
beyond the
made by an life
artist directly
life,
the head seems to have been
studying his subject, or perhaps from
a
or death mask.
A
head from the rubble of Temple 14
trays K'an Balam,
who
Even conventional carvings
strongly protruding lower lip. as well as a lower face so
chest,
permanently
at
the site clearly por-
ruled at the end of the seventh century. identify K'an Balam's unusual fea-
tures, specifically the six digits or toes
lip,
brooding expression
limits of youth with his deeply
and focused intensity. Larger than
on
all
his extremities,
and
a
The stucco head vividly conveys his
long that
it
would seem
to rest
on the
in a sulk.
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144. (below
left)
Hanab
Pakal, probably once reigned over Palenque
exemplifies the skills local artists
mastered
shaping pliable
in
stucco into
lifelike
forms.
right)
As we have
kings,
from various
when
the great
stucco facades at the
site.
patriarch died, his heirs
wrenched one of these portrait heads from
a wall 145. (below
most famous of Palenque
Finally, the portrait of the
Pensive and
calm, this portrait at Palenque
and jammed
it
seen,
under the sarcophagus. Hanab Pakal wears
This stucco
identical hair
head from Palenque clearly depicts K'an Balam,
whose two-
dimensional renderings also
ornaments on the Oval Palace Tablet,
monument, and optimism,
may
this head,
with
its
his accession
youthful aspect and seeming
date from the earlier years of his long reign.
featured the characteristic
protruding lower
Another portrait was constructed ofjade tesserae directly onto his
lip.
face once he 146. (opposite) Wrenched from a
now-unknown
architectural
setting at Palenque, the stucco portrait
head
of
found interred
Hanab
in his
Pakal
died.
Although each jade rectangle was
the
Maize God
himself, the jade
the old man, with
its
like a
mask converted Hanab Pakal mask was
a
into
powerful portrait of
piercing eyes and narrow jaw.
Even
in the
tomb,
probably completing the "killing" of his
was
had
kernel of maize, and the entire
essence.
ritual
most
recalcitrant of media, jade, the Palenque artist could express
the individual.
166
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Chapter 8:
Maya Murals and Books
From
the end of the first millennium BC
the Spanish invasion, the
painted walls.
Most
until the time of
Maya frequently took brush
in
hand and
paintings are found in tombs, but these were
often hastily painted to
More
onward
accommodate the needs of speedy
rare are the extensive
programs
burial.
in buildings for the living,
and temples, but enough of these survive to
in palaces, caves,
provide evidence of a vibrant tradition. Often called frescoes,
Maya
paintings are never true frescoes in which wet stucco
is
impregnated with pigments, but rather paintings of various sorts
on dry stucco.
Maya
painters also worked in other media. Because of the
remarkable survival of painted ceramics, they form the subject of a separate chapter (Chapter 9) of this volume. But
Maya artists
also
painted books, only four of which survive today, and which will receive brief treatment here with
monumental painting.
Early Classic paintings
The
early paintings are bi- or
monochromatic and rarely feature
mere mortals. Only fragments of the
earliest
works survive:
at
both Uaxactun and Tikal, the heads of figures were effaced, probably in ritual killing. For the walls of Burial 48 at Tikal in
the artist quickly sketched out his
program
in charcoal
AD
445,
on dry
white stucco; then painted over the lines with a black carbon paint, leaving drips and blobs in his haste.
Framing
a
Maya
date that
probably records the date of death, the stylized symbols create the ambiance of sacred essence for the
Maya
the watery world through which the deceased
—
here, apparently,
must travel.
Far more carefully executed are the nearly contemporaneous
tomb paintings
at
Rio Azul, painted
highlights. Richard
1980s, and
some
in
reddish brown with black
Adams excavated several of these tombs in the
feature paintings that
stalactite-like formations; others
cut into the limestone bedrock.
wrap around protruding
limn stucco surfaces carefully
The paintings
of Tomb 12 consist
of eight simple and very large glyphs, two to a wall
—but what
astounded Maya scholars about their discovery was that they
168
'
147.
On
the walls of
Buru
numeral
float to
recorded the cardinal points of the east, south,
then 148. An Early Classic painting at
Uaxactiin features scenes
registers. Here,
members
in
of the
court take sharp spines or bones
and prepare their
own
to
draw blood from
bodies.
at
and west,
like points
Maya
world, indicating north,
of a compass.
The
interred
was
the center of the cosmos, a symbolic pillar of the uni\ erse,
and destined
for resurrection in
Maya cosmology.
Early Classic palace paintings are rare: a single extensive one
was found
at
Uaxactun
in
19:37 flanking
one side of an interior
doorway and was presumably part of a larger program fallen
from the matching
wall.
that had
Stepping through the doorway,
a
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noble would then have stood
in the
throne room of one of the most
important Early Classic palaces of Uaxactun,
program Tikal.
is
Chak Tok
similar to
a building
whose
Ich'ak's Early Classic Palace of
Underneath the paintings was a running 260-day count, the
ritual calendar of divination characteristic of many
books known from the time of the Conquest,
a
Mesoamerican
thousand years
Events are punctuated along the linear day count, and per-
later.
haps to be correlated with the elaborate figural scene above.
Framed by
a
broad red outline, as are
Maya books, Maya book
painting gives us the sense of what a
would have looked
The
figural
of the period
like.
program above
about one-quarter life
have taken
the Uaxactun
place
within
the
Teotihuacan dress receives the stoop of a palace
features vignettes of the court at
and they reenact the rituals that would
size,
A
palace.
a cordial
whose roof
visiting
welcome;
is
in
gather on
decorated with woven mat
signs; lords prepare for bloodletting. Like the
the Uaxactun murals include
warrior
women
Bonampak
murals,
numerous musicians. These musi-
cians demonstrate the great skill of the painters, for the figures
overlap one another, and a single musician turns to the man behind
him, that
in
part of a formula for the representation of musical retinues
would be repeated 300 years
later, at
Bonampak.
Late Classic paintings: Bonampak
made paintings
In the Early Classic, artists
tions.
However, during the Late
became more focused
tion
in spaces for the living
Maya made monumental
and the dead wherever the
Classic, the
to the
construc-
mural painting tradi-
west and north, and a masterful
cave painting tradition took hold at Naj Tunich, in the Peten.
Some
simple tomb paintings of a date or short text were
tomb
Caracol, in Belize, but in general,
ornament,
or, as in
the case of the
made
at
walls remained without
Temple of
Inscriptions at
Palenque, received stucco sculpture. Artists painted
both
in
Classic period. tures;
monumental murals
in dynastic structures
the Yaxchilan region and in Yucatan during the Late
Few murals
survive
in
conventional temple struc-
most were painted on the walls of small palace chambers.
Across the river from Yaxchilan, explorers found fragments of wall paintings at La Pasadita; fragments of stucco paintings also
remain
at
Yaxchilan
itself,
mostly
in
buildings before 750.
finest Classic wall paintings to survive,
Structure
1
at
Bonampak,
a site
translates as "painted walls."
170
however, are
The
in situ within
whose modern name roughly
26km(
Just
16 miles
i
from Yaxchilan, the Bonampak
lore Is
had
themselves with both Yaxchil&n and another smaller
affiliated
nearby town, LacanhA, b} the end of the eighth century, when the paintings
great
relationship
belonged
Structure o\
1
paintings
to the
Room
the
expli< itly states that the building
i
king of Bonampak, Yahavt Chan Muwan.
was painted
inside and out, although
the exterior ornament. Just below
text,
celebrate
these centers and the victory they shared,
although the text of itself
The
made.
were
among
remains
little
the cornice runs
a
long
probably once consisting of nearly a hundred glyphs, framing
the outside of the building the the vessel.
The unusual
way
a
Maya
vase rim text frames
architectural design of the building also
provided for the viewing of the paintings
around
built-in
chambers
— and
benches within
each
including wrap-
!>v
three
of the
separate
also protecting the colorful walls from casual
damage.
The Bonampak murals stand number of reasons.
art for a ly
out from
all
other
Maya works
hundreds of members of the Maya
representations that survive of
nobility, in the
many
rituals
only from texts and laconic representations. As
Maya —from — without regard life
realistic
otherwise-
a result,
the paint-
many aspects
social stratification to
warfare to
for the nature of the paintings
palace
life
selves.
Second, the paintings are scaled
life size,
most
known
ings are frequently the illustration called upon for so
of ancient
at
them-
one-half to two-thirds
so they create a life-like environment for the viewer
ting on the benches.
Few
so experiential for the
of
First of all, the paintings depict literal-
sit-
other ancient Mesoamerican works are
modern viewer as
well. Third, the paintings
reveal emotion, particularly in the rendering of the captives in
Room
2.
Emotion and humor feature
vessels, but
in the
painting of ceramic
no other monumental work so captures the
agony and victory from ancient America. And there are several artists
who worked on
the paintings,
2,
were extraordinary
in their ability to
of
some of the
painters, particularly the masters of the north walls of
and
spirit
although
finally,
Rooms
1
render the contours
and movements of the human body
The
three rooms can be read in sequence, although
the largest and
its
bench the highest, so
it
Room
2
is
would surely have
served as the throne room from which the most important lord
would
preside.
In
sandwiching the room celebrating
battle
between rooms celebrating additional dynastic events, the paintings also provide a united, harmonious narration of
seems simultaneously fractured by war and
a
world that
sacrifice.
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149.
In
Room
1
at
Bonampak
tribute-paying lords speak energetically
among themselves
while a servant presents a child to
upper
right.
Frames
for
captions over their heads were
never
filled in.
Room a
Maya
order.
features the introductory notation ("initial series") for
1
text, indicating this
Above the
explicitly
room's
text, lords in
titled
"ahaw,"
or
likely
primacy
— —approach
white mantles lord
by
a servant.
a
payment
royal
family
who is held up
A bundle to the right of the throne bears a
few glyphs that identify the contents as cacao, in
reading
some of whom are
assembled on a large throne, including a small child to the lords
in the
what would have been
five
8,000-bean counts of
a substantial tribute or tax
world where the cacao bean was one of the few
in a
standard means of exchange.
The
lords, then, are
presumably
paying their taxes and cementing their loyalty to the royal family at the
same
time.
The
text below notes an installation in office,
possibly of the child presented above and under the supervision of
the Yaxchilan royal family, and also notes the dedication of the
building
in 7.9
1
.
Whether a Bonampak or Yaxchilan king is
sitting
on the throne remains unknown: the caption frames overhead
were never
Only
a
filled in.
viewer seated on the built-in bench could have
studied the north wall over the
doorway This wall shows three
principal lords preparing for celebration and dance, which they
172
150. Thep Bonampak
i
stuffev
wall of
Room
1
.
W^
attenda^ positic
subsequently perform on the south wall, once their matching cos-
tumes of jaguar completely
daubs
his
pelt,
in place.
quetzal feathers, and boa constrictors are
A
servant to the right of the lord at center
master with red paint;
servant strains to secure
a
er backrack in the frame of the lord at
raphy unmasks the long-invisible
of the painter,
skill
a feath-
Recent infrared photog-
left.
who
a lively final black outline over the blocked-out colors.
applied
Body con-
tours and the rendering of torsion reveal a deep understanding of
human form and sees
the foreshortened, rounded
rather than what the brain knows.
way
Not only
is
in
which the eye
the rendering of
hands particularly meticulous, but the detail of the
line
on
this wall
also indicates close kinship to the sculptural tradition ofYaxchilan
rather than to the small-scale paintings of Maya vases.
The principal
lords of the dressing scene north wall arc repre-
sented a second time, dancing, on the w into the room.
mance. But
in
The sequence
is
clear:
making such sequences
emphasize the narrative that threads
all
one sees upon stepping
dressing precedes perforspecific, the
its
Maya
way through
Protagonists reappear from scene to scene, providing the story
moves both backward and forward
in
painters
the rooms. a
sense that
time. In this
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150
more
regard, the paintings are
we might
terms,
events
— and
any other
to describe this in linguistic
they differ from the more typically nomina-
Precolumbian works of the only
were
say that the paintings are like a series of verbal
in this,
—
representations of
tive
visually narrative than
If we
Precolumbian work of art.
Maya stelae or The paintings
art.
works of Maya
of almost of
other
all
Bonampak may be
art that visually surpass the narrative
complexity of Maya writing.
On
the lowest register of Room
Maya musicians and regionHere the Maya artist attempts to represent aspects of movement and sound otherwise unknown in Maya art. The maracas players move as if in stop al
governors flank the dancers
1
,
at center.
motion, their arms changing frame by frame; the drummer's
hands were painted with palms turned to viewer, motion.
lv in
The casual examination
his fingers clear-
reveals only the blur. In this,
the painted wall attempts to represent sound itself in the
mer's fluttering hands.
What is
knows here what the eye
remarkable
will see
and brain
is
that the
will believe, a step yet
beyond the problem of what one knows and what one
phenomena
sophisticated
Maya
sees.
are completely unexpected
artists represent aspects of
drum-
Maya artist Such
— but
the
motion that would not be cap-
tured by western artists until Eadweard Muybridge
by-frame photographic records of
made frame-
body movement
in the late
nineteenth century.
The very upon
sensibility of
encompasses
battle scene
his or her
Room
all
2 differs
from
Room
1:
a single
three walls surrounding the viewer
entrance into the space, seemingly drawing any
viewer into the fray. Dozens of combatants charge into battle from the east wall, banners and
weapons held
under a large elbow of text on the south warriors, including
Yahaw Chan Muwan,
where jaguar-attired
strike their
such energy that his body almost seems to ture plane.
high, and converging
wall,
fly right
enemy with
out of the pic-
The text itself offers only an enigmatic date, perhaps to Maya equivalent of AD 790
be located a few years before the inscribed in tect a
Room
wooden
the throne in
may
1
.
In the
upper west vault, defenders try to pro-
box, perhaps the
same one
that then appears under
Room 3. Damage along the join of the wall and bench
conceal concentrated captive-taking and dismemberment.
Unusual dark pigments used
in
the background indicate that the
violence takes place in the dark.
Encoded
into the battle painting
time and duration. ed,
On
is
a different
rendering of
the upper east wall, the battle has just start-
and while some warriors hold weapons high, others
174
let
loose
151. Two victorious lords converge wall of
at the center of the
Room
2,
the blare of trumpets, in prelude to the dominant scene of the south
Bonampak. and seems to fly
the captive they seize
right off the picture plane.
south wall, where Chan
Muwan
movement through time
for the duration of the battle continues
smites his enemy.
onto the west wall and the lower registers, victorious teams of
two or
is
shown
in
is
sense of
as captives are seized
three, with the final scene
the lower east wall, where capture
time
The
by
presumably
complete. In other words,
sequence, with preliminaries followed by the
climax of conflict, and ending with the mopping up of the defeated.
Some
individuals
evidence of the
are
Maya
seen at once but
more than
rendered
once,
ability to create a narrative that
embedded within
simultaneous narrative
in
a
providing
was
sequence— or what
P2uropean art and which
is
is
to be
called
usually
understood to be one of the breakthroughs of fifteenth-century painters in
On
Italy.
the north wall,
Yahaw Chan Muwan, accompanied by war-
riors and female dynasts, including his Yaxchilan wife, receives
presented captives on
a staircase
including the Turtle
seven tiers high, the preferred
Maya
constellations oversee the sacrifice,
at right
(Orion) and the Peccaries, probably
locus for such an event.
175
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153
indicating that the sacrifice begins at dawn. Elegantly drawn, with
sweeping, continuous lines defining body outline, eyes, hands, and hair,
the captives are
among the most beautiful figures of Maya art.
Captives at right reach out, as
hands of the warrior
Bending
crosstie holes. wrist,
if
to protest their treatment at the
at far left, his figure partly
over, this warrior
truncated by the
grabs a captive by the
and either pulls out the fingernails or trims off the
final fin-
ger joint. Blood arcs and spurts from the hands of captives sitting
most of whom
in a row,
howls
in agony.
appeals to feet, a
A
also
seem
to have lost their teeth,
and one
single captive presented on the upper tier
Yahaw Chan Muwan, who
stares over his head.
dead captive sprawls, cuts visible across
At
his
his body; his foot
leads to a decapitated head, gray brains dribbling from the open
cranium.
the
No figure in Maya art is painted with greater understanding of human anatomy nor with more attention to the inherent sen-
suality of naked flesh than this dead captive of Room ful
line of the diagonal
body both leads
wooden rendering of the king but
see. In
Bonampak pushed sacrifice 2,
making
The power-
also subverts his image: for
individual seated on the bench, the captive's
what one can
2.
to the comparatively
body is
in the
any
center of
this visual statement, the artists of
their skills to the limit,
making
sensuality of
and death: the eroticized body of the dead captive of Room
sprawled on the diagonal, dominates the scene altogether and
undermines the representation of victory. In
Room 3,
for a final
152. Dancers with great feather
wings attached
at the
centers of their bodies perform
on a vast stepped pyramid
Room
3,
in
Bonampak. Copy by
Antonio Tejeda.
176
the lords of Bonampak don great "dancers' wings"
orgy of autosacrifice and captive dismemberment,
all
•
&)!£)
•
• •
•^
tf I
w-ssic.
153. Under constellations arrayed across the highest register, victorious
Bonampak
the captives taken
by Antonio Tejeda.
arrayed against a large pyramid that reaches around east, south,
and west walls. Whirling lords have pierced their penises, and blood
lords survey
in battle.
Copy
collects in
on the white diaper-like cloth
from the side are slaughtered
at
at
the groin w hile captives led
the center of the south w
all.
±M »>*&! 177
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"Microtexts" about 2
many a pot inscription ticularly fine
Yaxchilan 54. A kneeling male servant
hands spines
to the royal
on the throne
in
Room
Bonampak. The babe
may
be the
same
Room 2
shown
high
at
on
a
—
that
is,
the size of
center of the south wall where III,
the end of the eighth century.
What is
it
would eas-
the coeval king of is
that
it
unusual about appears to be
banner that has been unfurled between two lords
in "wings." If
3, in
in
this
arms
child seen in
battle scene.
(0.8 in)
the positioning of this central "microtext"
women
149; the box under the throne probably booty
at the
cm
are painted in several locations, but a par-
be spotted names Itzamnah Balam
ily
1
one
—
the
ill.
is
indeed a large unfurled cloth, then this would be a unique
representation in
Maya
art of the sort of painting
on cloth known
is
as a lienzo in Central
Of course,
775
Mexico
at
the time of the Spanish invasion.
the very presence of large cloth paintings would have
pro\ ided
means
.1
transmission
for the
about which
oi art
modern
scholars have been completely unaware, In the
Maya
upper vault scenes
dance on the pyramid,
that flank the
have rendered other intimate views of palace
artists
bandoi deformed musicans perform on the west be read as mo\ ing
in a circle.
throne room depicted
tongues and instruct featured in
Room
sequence
presumably
child,
little
in the first
may have
heir
little
of events.
perhaps to
vault,
ladies of the court gather in the
1, who holds out a hand for pun
Rendered only
\
the upper east vault, to puree their
in
a
The
life
and
final
same one
the
mil;.
scenes of the program, the
the ostensible motivation
the entire
for
Hut the scale of warfare on this occasion
show an
elite
world out of control:
carried
out
by
if this
battle
Bonampak, and perhaps
is
just
indirectly
Yaxchilan as well, then the Bonampak murals reveal
may
one of many
a
serve
to
world con-
vulsed by war and ehaos, beyond the reach of order and control
human
that
sacrifice
sought
to reinstate.
Perhaps the single greatest achievement of Maya
Bonampak murals indigenous paintings
New World. Over
in
art,
the
are also undoubtedly the finest paintings of the the years since the discovery of the
1946, time has taken
its toll,
and today
the- in situ
paintings are a shadow of their former selves. Fortunately, new
technology, particularly
in digital
ing to the reconstruction of the
infrared imaging,
Bonampak
is
contribut-
murals.
Cacaxtla
At roughly
Maya
the
same time
that artists
were
painters also worked at Cacaxtla,
dreds of miles north of the
works came
Maya
to light starting in
work on Bonampak, acropolis hun-
where these surprising
region,
1.976'.
Cacaxtla cannot be considered
at
a hilltop
Although the paintings of the painters used
in detail here,
both a visual vocabulary and technical expertise similar to that of
Bonampak, and
it
would seem
that these extraordinary expres-
sions in paint took place at about the
same
time, late in the eighth
century.
Most order
in
scholars have considered the Cacaxtla paintings
which
the)'
deserves to be read ings.
on
a
Maya
were found, but probably the first,
that
is,
the Red
latest
Temple
deities
move upward along water
that
is
the
staircase paint-
gods, including the patron of merchants,
Cod
L,
painted stream of water that runs along the edge of the
As the
in
discovery
known
walk
stairs.
to run
downhill, the artist has conveyed one of the contradictions of
quickly
moving
water, in that
it
seems
to be
running
uphill,
an
J 7.9
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154
observation that has fascinated western poets and philosophers.
The presence of both God L and the Maya Maize God further suggests the tension between the
two poles of the Mesoamerican
economy, commerce and agriculture.
The bottom
step itself is painted on both tread and riser with
imagery that articulates the relationship between war and commerce: Central Mexican place names line the ly skeletal captives
riser,
stepped on. These place names must refer to the
by Cacaxtla or paying tribute to
At Cacaxtla, 1
55. The
Maya God
where he has
heavily laden
conquered
the wall representations of
so ironic
this
sites
the captives remind the observ-
quickly.
economic underpinning runs up
to a vast
L stands at
the base of Cacaxtla's Red Temple stairway,
it;
amidst — —awaiting those who do not comply
er of the living death
plenty
while hideous-
sprawl on the tread, where they would be
rested his
merchant pack.
scene of war and dismemberment that dominates the north plaza, a conflated rendering of both the action of battle
and
its sacrificial
aftermath. Like Bonampak's battle painting, the Cacaxtla painting is
sometimes mistaken
fully
for a
snapshot of war rather than the care-
constructed ideological image that
the Cacaxtla battle scene also includes
it is.
room
And
like
Bonampak,
for the aftermath of
warfare, the presentation on steps, with a massive staircase of
seven levels set
at the
center of the battle.
In the battle, Central
Maya
hilate their enemies,
156. Maya victims
overpowered by
fall,
their Central
Mexican enemies
in
the battle
painting that frames a staircase at Cacaxtla.
One
victim holds a
broken spear while he cradles his spilling entrails; a lies in
severed torso
front of him.
180
Mexican warriors with
profiles arrayed in jaguar pelts
distinctive
non-
and simple headbands anni-
reckoned to be Mayas by most scholars, based
physiognomy
largely on
Aggressors have cut oneoi their \ ictims
right in half; another crumples as he cradles his own entrails
they been butchered for a cannibalistic feast
Have
'
Both Maya and Central Mexican lords are rendered with dramatic foreshortening, and the sure mastery of overlapping hands
and
feet tells
of artistic practice that has no1 survived elsewhere.
Strangely enough, the painters have given right
I
many of the Maya two
symbolic of what, we can only
i.mds, surely symbolic, hut
wonder. In the
w
grim toughness of the
tares of the Central
Mexican
one reads the seriousness with which the painters
a rriors,
their hardness. Yet
some of the defeated Maya howl
in
nv.it
agony:
a
standing noble (or perhaps noble woman, based on costume) grasps the arrow stuck
m
his
down
cheek as blood streams
the
Did some eighth-century sensibility favor emotionality, mak-
face.
ing the viewer empathize w
ith
Did Maya painters render
defeated
a
the defeated and prefer their cause.'
Maya
in
such
a
way
as to sub-
vert authority and to transcend the victory celebrated
in
this
painting? Ironically, the
what
is
splendid tain
Maya rendered
probably the
Maya
whose
last
as defeated reign
triumphant
of the paintings. Framing
lords in bird and jaguar suits guard
a
in
157
doorway,
158
sacred
outline once continued above the doorway,
concept of Coatepec, or Snake Mountain,
a
moun-
.lust as
the
may have been as ancient
181
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.»
rn^m
XXZUl
157, 158. (above and opposite above)
Maya
Two
kings,
lords,
dressed as
if
frame a doorway
among
the
Maya
Mexico, so too the concept of
as in Central
Tonacatepetl. Sustenance Mountain, from
whom
The Maya
painters at Cacaxtla freely used Central
Cacaxtla. Water flows around
flowed.
them, perhaps suggesting the
Mexican motifs and even concepts, yet worked
Central Mexican concept of a
water mountain, a place of
abundance and
plenty.
bounty
all
at
that spelled
them out
in a
way unfamiliar
to
in a
Maya
fashion
most Central Mexican
audiences.
Paintings
in the
Puuc
In the eighth century
and probably throughout the ninth,
artists
also began to paint the walls and vaults of buildings throughout
Puuc region of Yucatan. As yet unspecified relationships may
the
Puuc
link 1
sites to
Bonampak and
its
painters:
Bonampak Structure
has an unusual vertical facade for a building
Mich facades are
Puuc survive vive,
common
in
the
Puuc region.
intact now. although
many celebrating
in its region,
Few
some painted capstones do
sur-
K'awil, the patron of lineage. Consistently.
for these vault stones, artists used a black or red paint
ground, the color scheme usually associated with ill.
but
paintings in the
159, K'awil empties the
on
Maya
a
cream
books. In
bag of seed corn normally seen
in
the
hands of the Maize God.
At Chacmultun and Mulchic, and used
182
a
artists
painted
in
registers
broad palette to render dozens of figures engaged
159
—
in
some aspect of warfare. On Chacmultun's lower are
litters
hoisted
fragments of red and orange parasols
who
survive, hut those 159. Painted capstones
in
Puuc
buildings usually feature K'awil or
frets at the
register, great
perhaps carrying images of gods;
aloft,
carried
—
like
them do
lower margin are also
like
ofBonampak The running step
those
not.
those lining
bench
a
at
Bonampak.
the Maize God; here a K'awil spills the Maize God's sack of seeds.
More above the
survives at Mulchic, where fray, his
a
knife-wielding lord
sits
posture and headdress similar to the king's on
Stela 12, Piedras Negras. Vietims pile up at his feet,
by stones and others garrotted.
The
some crushed
victorious warriors
all
don
the costume of Chaak, the rain god.
Naj Tunich Drawings, incised petroglyphs, and handprints are all found
Tunich
their seale
using
a
most important works, even
cave, but the
in
a
black paint that
the paintings,
later than 77
1.
The
pose no particular whole;
like a thick ink.
made
in
Naj
artists
Based on
Andrea Stone has determined
nearly one hundred paintings were
and no
was
in
judged only by
and completeness, are the paintings made by
brush and
the texts
if
that the
eighty years or
less,
paintings read as vignettes that com-
many
are purely textual.
Some
include
surprising iconography, including one of the few erotic images of
1h:s
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Maya
art.
One
of the most striking
is
Drawing
21, part of an
important group of paintings. In the painting, Hunahpu, one of the
7
Hero Twins, prepares
down
a flight of stairs.
The
to strike a rubber ball that artist
bounces
demonstrates particular
rendering the line of the shoulder: both
its
skill in
strong contour and the
quick squib drawn as the interior ankle bone provide evidence of
Maya mastery of human form.
am
Chicken Itza
A new style of painting appeared
at
Chichen
probably
Itza,
at the
beginning of the ninth century, when Itza lords tightened their grip on Yucatan.
\
Aware of new
Mexico and
styles of art in Central
along the Gulf Coast, artists gave up their attention to the individual
human form and
the situation of that form in scaled architec-
tural settings. Conventionalized renderings depict
who dwarf
human
their diminutive architectural settings,
beings
and back-
grounds no longer provide convincing definitions of deep
space.
Furthermore, although the paintings of the southern lowlands
and the Puuc had presented
historical scenes that could be inter-
preted in terms of larger religious themes, the paintings at those of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars,
160. Skilled hands rendered the
Chichen
monochrome .,-.,, „
., ,, Drawing 21, Hunahpu,
specifically out a religious matrix, against r J lay J & &
Hero Twins, prepares
interpreted. Artists overlap figures to a limited degree, but essen-
Tunich.
one
In
of the
strike a ball
paintings at Nai
-
to
bearing the coefficient
Itza, especially
n
c
v
i
•
i
they have given up the foreshortening that suggested depth
tially
and have elected, instead, to layer figures there are often no specific
The have
iiu which history J can be
result
little
is
that the
in registers,
even though
ground lines.
Upper Temple of the Jaguars paintings
visual focus, and the even disposition of figures in six of
seven panels has
made
it
difficult to isolate central action
sort that focuses the related battle painting of
of the
Bonampak,
for
example. Nor are there are any inscriptions, which can also
enhance the reading of
a
Maya work
paintings were disposed across
of the
Upper Temple,
temples,
its
Ballcourt. at
of
art.
of the most ornate of Chichen Itza
massive serpent columns poised atop the Great
a city
the
where the mural
most important paintings
tradition thrived in
many
So what did they mean?
Reading order
is
guided by the central panel of the East Wall,
the wall one sees upon entering the chamber. the only one to feature just
one another. At ure's body: he
184
Nevertheless, these
four walls of the inner chamber
They may well have been
Chichen,
locations.
itself one
all
two
figures,
who
The central sit in
right, resplendent yellow rays flare
is
some kind of
solar deity,
panel
is
dialogue with
from the
shown within
fig-
a great
160
161 On the .
central panel of the
East Wall of the
Upper Temple
the Jaguars. Chichen
viewer would
Itza,
figures in dialogue with
left
is
one
mastered green and yellow
at
just the
too, has taken is
Itza
pigments, rather than the blues
used
God,
left, in
is
the
Maize
behind him, yet
he,
dead Maize God, the source of endless
a panel depicting the
renewal, his jade-bead costume the kernels of maize. This wall
would have been illuminated during the mid-August zenith passage of the sun, the anniversary of the day when the
Maya
believed
Bonampak.
In a detail of
set in late Itza
and feathers,
visible
on aspects of the radiant sun. Prostrate beneath both
Creation had taken place 162.
brilliant jade
edge of his jaguar cushion
a solar deity; at
the Maize God. Chichen
artists
feathered serpent; at
a
face two large
first
another. At right
of
the final scene
day or evening, Chichen
warriors scale scaffolding to
overcome an enemy
city.
Here
Chichen painters may document the brutal wars that swept their competition
in
the fourth millennium BC. August
is
the season of green corn celebrations, the time of determination of the viability of the year's crop of maize. All other action flows
around the cycle of these gods of maize and sun, with the repeated motif of the dead Maize God, starting with the panel to the right of
away
from the south.
their portrayals
The
and reading
paintings offer
a
in a
counter-clockwise fashion.
temporal progression, beginning with
move on
scenes of simple preparation and
On one level, the paintings seem day,
from dawn
to dusk; they
to
may
to warfare
also
show the shifting seasons.
Throughout the program, the Maize/Sun God disk; the
and havoc.
show the changes through the
rules from a solar
Feathered Serpent reigns from within the undulating
green snake. Battles take place
in locations
landscapes, including strikingly red victorious warriors
the population,
in a
mount
scaffolds
hills.
defined by specific
In the last painting, the
and climb steps
to slaughter
very different kind of warfare from the one
185
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162
163. Armed with
sacrificial axes,
Chaak impersonators close a seated
in
on
engaged
Bonampak, where the painting depicts capture, not
in at
With
death, on the battlefield.
Maize God. His
decapitation
was understood
be analogous
to the
to
harvesting
the representation of water nearby,
the scene could be the ninth-century demise of one of the
Usumacinta
cities,
would
end up
even Piedras Xegras, whose sacked jades
of the ears of maize.
later
the Sacred Cenote as offerings to the
in
Maize God.
Tulum, Tancah, and Santa Rita
During the
final
florescence of Precolumbian
painters adorned the walls of temples at
Maya
culture,
Maya
Tulum, Tancah, and
other towns along the Caribbean coast of Yucatan, as well as some
The
farther south, such as Santa Rita, Belize.
palette emphasized
dark and intense colors, rather than the lighter values of the color
schemes of Chichen
and Bonampak, with conventionalized
Itza
figures that were nevertheless rendered in a naturalistic proportional scheme.
made
Whereas the Bonampak
visual adjustments, the
Tancah
artist
artist
knew where
the eve
made no such accom-
modation, and thus showed complete renderings of both arms and
both
legs, for
example, of the Chaak impersonators. These Chaak
impersonators converge on the Maize sonator as well
—
in
At nearby Tulum,
scheme was devised
God
—probablv
his
imper-
preparation for his sacrifice. a
dark-background negative painting
for Structures 5
the figural representation
and
1
6.
Such
a
program made
jump out and the ground recede,
heightening legibility and visibility Across multiple registers, highly
conventionalized
approach seated
from the aquatic world top.
at
The Maya adopted
gods
and/or
god
impersonators
some examples the cosmos is configured,
lords. In
the base of the painting to the stars at the
the symbols for the starry heavens from
their contemporaries in Central
Mexico, and they shared with
them many aspects of conventionalized representation. 186
i
v
Oaxaca.
in
shaped dazzling assemblages of tiny tesserae,
artists
forming compelling portrait masks to place over the faces of dead kings.
Over the course of the Classic period, tesserae grew smaller
and thinner.
Yucatan after 900,
In
fine
grained turquoise mosaic
masks were made. At Palenque,
at
the end of the seventh century,
mask transformed the
permanent image of youth, segmented
into a
of green maize. Unlike other masks,
wood or stone A
a trial
to decay.
mask must have
The
like so
mosaic
fallen apart as
a
stucco head of the place on the king's
in
soon as
larger pieces that are specific to
trait cluster at
many kernels
one had no armature of
assembly over
light coat of Stucco kept the
face, hut the
this
hut was formed instead directly onto the face of the
dead king, perhaps after king.
jade mosaic
a
aged King Hanab Pakal
tare of the dead,
I
the center of the face; small tesserae
Mesh began
his
lanah till
l'akal's in at
por-
the ears
and chin.
Around
the year 900, Toltec traders began to
turquoise from what
of Chichen
Itza.
Some
other finished works
— round
is
available
to the lords
turquoise was probably worked
may have been
locally,
hut
imported. Several tezcacuit-
mirrored hack ornaments
lapilli
make
now New Mexico and Arizona
— depicted
as
having
been worn ceremonially on the backs of Toltec lords were found the
site.
Archaeologists found one example intact and
seat of the
Red Jaguar Throne of the
;it
set into the
interior Castillo. Before that
building was sealed and abandoned, Chichen lords placed three large
Maya jade beads on top of the mosaic of Central Mexican
fire
serpents. Each fire serpent head points to a cardinal direction,
radiating from the center, itself the direction of "up and
along a central mosaic, the
axis. In
Maya
down"
placing the three jade heads atop the
lords set out the three stones of their creation
hearth, perhaps initiating a
new era.
Although the Maya used most of the
and obsidian
flint
they quarried for tools and weapons, they also came to cut these stones into precious objects called "eccentrics." Their sharp edges give
them
the
aspect
of
tools,
but
Hints
these
and
obsidians were purely ceremonial, and most were never used as
tools,
although some of them may have been
worn
as
ornaments.
The
best flint sources
apparently worked nearby. gists recovered
lie
in
From
Belize,
and much of
the site of Altun
1
la,
it
was
archaeolo-
dozens of caches and burial offerings- — frequently
227
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204. Late Classic masters
and obsidian worked
obdurate materials with
Here the
of flint
their
human heads
fluidity.
pull
back
as the monster plunges forward,
as
if
traveling at extraordinary
speed.
placed under the
tomb
floor
—consisting of great numbers
eccentric flints in the shapes of
former had brought the
latter
weapons and animals,
as
if
of the
down. Some of them also resemble
agricultural tools. But truly extraordinary eccentric flints have
been found elsewhere, although never several very fine ones
in quantity,
were revealed
Hieroglyphic Stairs of Copan and also
where they were still wrapped in In artist
making an reduces the
same way
calligraphy, filling in
that
what
is
it
the
flint.
flint
204, the
Maya
emphasizing
Maya head and flint. The eye
the pouty
reads the
reads the quick brushstrokes of
not rendered and accommodating
the strange working-out of the
every
ill.
face to its simplest outline,
just the slightest bit of
result in the
in the Rosalila structure,
eccentric flint like the one of
human
and recently
caches set into the
cloth.
the long, sloping forehead of the elite
mouth with
in
human form
that characterizes
Yet of course where the calligraphic line
outline can only have been
is
speedy,
made under the most
intensive concentration and at great investment of time, the artist
having carefully struck the stone to chip flakes so the artist
who rendered
precisely.
So
the earth monster bearing his earthly
charges into the Underworld has such control of his material
228
even today, we can sec that the monster's
that
maw plunges
dow nw ard Gold was never common of Chichen It/a, by 900 or
finished
so,
the
:.
Maya gold
from the mi.
the disks,
probabl}
at
mam
chilling scene: a
:-idraws his knife from the chest of a hapless
in
1
It/a
Ml
itseli
survive the Spanish invasion served as one sort
types ofgoldworking
500 were
the lords
Local craftsmen
Chichen
costume element or another and pro\ ides
Sacred C i
to
area, bul
imported semi-finished round
205. the bottom of Chicher
Maya
from lower Central America
disks, probably
then
in
i
idence that the four
e\
known among the Mixtecs and Aztecs
familiar to the Maya as well. Artisans cast bells, using
the lost-wax method; they also
hammered repousse
designs, cut
captive while the next victim
watches on. The workers gold disks
of
may have been
Maya
familiar
thin sheets of gold, and
t\\
isted gold filigree into rings
and other
ornaments.
with the compositional solutions
The imagery
achieved by painters of plates
of the gold disks has no obvious source that
and bowls, the only other round
survives, although general parallels tan be
forms known today. Despite
imagery of sacrifice
common
to the disks
the painting
Chichen
It/.a.
and
drawn between to particular
the
images
iconographic details that relate to Central
Mexico, the
composition
is
purely Maya.
in
at
the deft handling of the
But what
human forms and
is
extraordinary
is
the compositional
229
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strength of the scenes rendered on the gold disks. Each one of multifigural
the
compositions provides a separate dramatic
moment; each one focuses on the climax the "pregnant Peten.
moment"
so typical of
205 shows
111.
a
Maya
itself,
rather than
art in Chiapas or the
victorious warrior
who
thrusts his
right hand into the open chest cavity of the slain captive to rip out
The kneeling
the heart. to
attendant in front of him looks up, as
engage him; the two
clasp the legs of the captive as
them
in right
to help, and the artist has
worked
surrounds the void over the captive's chest.
of these two rear attendants turns, his face rendered
and he makes eye contact directly with the viewer,
frontally, if
if
behind the sacrificing warrior's calves, so that
a press of bodies
One
if
tezcacmtlapilli-clad attendants behind
both to acknowledge the
as
of the rendering and to
artificiality
bring the viewer into the scene, to make him complicit
in the
sacrifice.
Other scenes are also dramatic: sea captured a
battles,
armed combat
all
dashed off with
in a sort of breathless narrative, as if
brush, despite the meticulous and slow craft necessary in
goldworking. Although Chichen Itza
is
a painted
and carved
city,
the passion and excitement of the imagery worked on these disks is
anomalous, and more typical of Classic vase painting than
Maya sculpture. The costumes
on the gold disks feature what
depicted
have long been considered evidence of foreigners trampling local
Maya, particularly the long
tresses, facial hair,
and trimmed
feathers of the victorious warriors, but these characteristics
can
all
be identified as normal
Maya
representations of warfare
of the seventh and eighth centuries, with
Mexican
influence. In fact,
executed on
a
a
dose of Central
new luxury
material,
the imported sheet gold, much of the imagery might well have
been conservative, and even old-fashioned, much as luxury ivories
late
in
occasional
Rome
preserved a Hellenistic tradition.
The
work of gold
that converges explicitly with Chichen
more
surprising: remarkably, early twentieth-
Itza painting
is
far
century divers retrieved
three pieces
all
of a cut-out gold
mask, perhaps once affixed to some sort of armature, nearly identical to
imagery worn by
a figure in
of the Jaguar paintings and the 206. Three pieces of a single
mask were Itza's
retrieved from
Chichen
These rare
pieces of
foil
and hammering
details.
Maya
production of the tenth century,
Sacred Cenote, remarkably,
each formed by both cutting the gold
carving.
leader
in
introducing
Mesoamerica.
230
new
both the Upper Temple
Lower Temple of
the Jaguar
gold link the works to the
when Chichen
materials
Itza
was
a
and techniques across
SrrsaS *
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81 2
Chronological Table
Middle Preclassic
Village
(900/800-250
El Mirador,
BC]
Tikal
life at
Nakbe begin growth and
development Tikal Burial 85
Late Preclassic ('2.00
BC-AD 250)
AD 150 250
EVII 292
Early Classic
(AD 250-550)
North Acropolis
in
Main pyramids at Teotihuacan El Mirador, Nakbe collapse in
use
at
Uaxactun
on
Earliest date
built
a
Maya
stela
found
in
archaeological context
320
Date of Leiden Plaque
.'378
Arrival of Teotihuacanos at Tikal,
45
Siyah Chan K'aw
Uaxactun, and elsewhere dedicates Stela
il
.'3
1
a
Tikal
562 615
Late Classic
(ad 550-900)
650 onward 680-720 6 8.'3
692
Caracol defeats Tikal
in
war
Hanab Pakal becomes king at Palenque Teotihuacan enters decline Greatest number of female representations on Maya monuments Death of Hanab Pakal at Palenque Completion of thirteen katuns (9. 1.-3.0.0.0
celebrated)
Tonina defeats Palenque Gold object interred at Copan under Stela
Dos
H
Pilas celebrates victory over Seibal;
Seibal king sacrificed
Quirigua takes Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil of Copan captive
Ah Maxam
paints at Naranjo in
multiple styles
Paintings at Bonampak, Cacaxtla,
800 869 900
Mulchic Chichen Itza dominates Yucatan Tikal Stela
erected
1 1
Toltec trading routes extend from
Yucatan to LIS. Southwest; centered at
Tula, Hidalgo
Gold disks
Chichen Itza
Early Postclassic
Chichen Itza
at
falls
into decline; founding
of Mayapan
(AD 900-1200)
Mayapan
2th!
Aztecs found their capital
Late Postclassic
(ad 1200-1530
city,
Tenochtitlan
14001400-
Surviving Maya books painted
Quiche and Cakchiquel Maya thrive highland Guatemala
in
Tulum 1
5
Juan de Grijalva explores coast of
1
Yucatan; sights
1519
Cortes arrives,
Tulum
first in
Yucatan and then
Mexico Cortes defeats Aztecs with aid of
1
52
1
524
Pedro Alvarado defeats the Maya of
l
.)
Francisco Montejo founds Merida on
1
Tlaxcaltecan
allies
Guatemala 1
site
232
of T'ho
Select Bibliography
G
General Ilk- l>rsi .in
Maya (6th .mil
haeologu
veya
sui
al
ol
the
are surd) Mi< hael Coi
i
rhames and ludson, 1999 Robei Shan Maya ill
ludson.
Linda
Others worth reading are indent Maya Civilization Rutgers, 1982 .along with i
largei
drawn ol the Maya within Mesoamerican surveys, including
tuii-
Muriel Porter Weaver, lh,
and their Predea Press,
>»">
,
\i
.
ademii
!99S)andR E.W Adams, Mesoamerica (Universit)
Oklahoma
Ties-,,
consulted
is (
199]
rene and
ol
AN., to be
|
(
to «
i
three
ite
I
and
rOW,
I
I
I
id.
I.
S< hele,
|,
Maya OSmOS Moi rOW, 199 i);andS< hele and Petei Mathews, lo\
Pal
k«
i.
(
lh, (,,d, oj Kings iS. I
mi
readei
\
i
|
ibnei
1998)
s,
an benefit b) reading
i
the tour volumes ol John Lloyd
Stephens
Prehistorit
weni on
s> hele
MOI
Aztecs, Maya,
3rd ed
majoi exhibition
.1
ioi us on Maya hist,»i \ ind religion Scheleand David reidel, t Forest oj
Norm. in Hammond, the pu
.on. Ion, 1992), the
I
lot
othei majoi intei pretive woi Ks thai
i
(5th ed .Si. mt. M.l Universit) Press,
i""
I
atalogue
I
.
i.\.u Vbrk, 1986; rhamea
r.i.i.-.ll.
and
In,
idents oj Travelin
(
'entral
and Yucatan (I larper Brothers, 839) and lm idents oj Travelin Yucatan (Harper Brothers, 18 Claude Baudez and Sydney Pu ass.i have tmerica,
'hiapas,
(
1
reorge Stuart.
1
)
1
Lost Kingdoms of the
Geographic Kubler,
lit
.
Society, 1993).
1
)
(
/«< lent
,
1962; 3rd ed., Pelican,
ed.,
pro\ ided
written a delightful history
reorge
andArchitet ture ofthe
Americas (1st ims
Maya (National
pioneering art
a
Mesoamerica and the Andes. limit discussion of the Maya to two chapters in The Art ofMesoamerica (2nded., Thames and Hudson, 1997). I
Maya
religion
is
considered
Karl
in
Taube, The Ma/or Hods of. im ient Yucatan (Dumbarton Oaks, 1992), Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols ofAncient Mexico and the Maya (Thames and Hudson, 1992), and in David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica (Harper, 990). The reader 1
should also consult Bishop Diego de
Landa's account of sixteenth-century Yucatan; the least
cumbersome
ucatan Before and After the
)
Conquest {Do- er reprint, 1980). principal
Maya
w in
mo
is
best told by
Breaking the
Maya
(
(2nd
A major conference in
1!)')
I
treated
resulting
m
at
Maya
1999)
Dumbarton Oaks architecture,
the most important study of
the built em ironment to date, with major contributions from and edited by Stephen Houston, Function and Meaning
inClassu
Maya Architecture (Dumbarton
Oaks, 1998). A recent volume on
Mesoamerican architecture also gives some Maya cities: Jeff
consideration to
Elizabeth Benson,
The
ed., City-States
Maya: hi and In hi lecture, .
.
)env
( I
ofthe
er,
1986), provides a look at the
religious narrative to
Dennis Tedlock, The I'ofol Vufc The Mayan Book ofthe Dawn ofLife (Simon and Schuster, 1985). Several important museum and
cities.
exhibition catalogues have advanced the
programs of five Maya
Tatiana Proskouriakoffdrevt
reconstructions of Maya architecture that have been
more persuasiv e than
written descriptions: Album ofMaya Architecture (Carnegie Institution of
among them Clemency Coggins and Orrin Shane,
Washington,
The Cenote of Sacrifice: Maxa Treasures
the excavations there (A. L. Smith,
study of the Maya,
Sacred Well
at
(
Charles Gallenkamp,
im I'.j; her sequenced Uaxactun reconstructions are based on
Uaxactun, Guatemala: Excavations i:u-
'huhen Itzd
(University of Texas Press, 198 ed.,
in
ed.,
Architecture
architectural
the
Maya
ol
Michael Cue
'ode
Thamesand Hudson,
survive has been re-translated by
from
v.
Kowalski, ed., Mesoamerican Architecture (Oxford University Tress, 1999).
translation remains that of William Ciates,
ovei
Ww
The decipherment
York. 1992)
historical treatment of the arts ol both
ol disi
ofth Maya (Thamesand Hudson, London, 1992; A In an is, \j)st Cities
:i7,
!•);
Maya:
Carnegie Institution
1950).
Most
i
ities
of
Washington,
are best looked at in
Treasures of an Ancient Civilization,
focused studies that treat
(Abrams, 1985), Eva and ArmEggebrecht and Nikolai Grube,
an haeology of a given site. Anions; those to consider: William Fash, A; ribes, Warriors and Kings: the City of L 'of, in and the In, ient Maxa (Thames and Hudson. 1991 Peter Harrison, The
Welt der
Maxa
(von Zabern,
1
Peter Schmidt, Mercedes de
and Enrique Civilization
N'alda, eds.,
eds.,
Die
992), and la
Garza
Maya
Maya
art in recent years
Scheie and
Mary
Kings: Dynasty
and Ritual
in
Linda Blood of
is
Miller, 'The
Maxa
.
);
(Thames and Hudson,
London, 1998; Rizzoli, New York, 1.9.98), but the most important writing on
art, writing,
architecture, and
Art
Lords qfTikal Rulers ofan Ancient City
(Thamesand Hudson,
Maya
1999);
Stephen Houston, Hieroglyphs and History at Do- Pilas Dynastu Politii theClassii
%
Press, 1993);and Jefl Kowalski,
The
233
www.ebook3000.com
of
Maui (University of Texas
House oftke Governor: A Maya Palace at Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico (University of
Oklahoma
Press, 1987).
doctoral dissertation at Yale treats the sculpture of Palenque:
A Critical
of Maya Stone Sculpture,
Although
Claude Baudez looks
Study
AD 250-800.
each volume with articles
on the
art
a
clutch of essential
and writing of Maya
vases.
The Puuc: An Architectural Survey ofthe Hill Country of Yucatan and
meaning
Maya Sculpture of Copan: the Iconography (University of Oklahoma
For Jaina figurines, see Linda Scheie, Hidden Faces ofthe Maya (Mexico City, 997), Christopher Corson, Maya
northern Campeche, Mexico (Peabody
Press, 1994).
Anthropomorphic Figurines from Jaina
Maya
Mary
I
larry Pollock provided a masterful
review
in
Museum,
at religious
in
must return
1980), the reader
Ruppert for the architecture of Chichen Itza: TheCaracol (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1935); The to Karl
1
Campeche (Ballena 1976), and
Island,
Painting
Rio Azul has featured
in
Miller,
Jama Figurines (Princeton Museum, 1975).
University Art
National
Geographic Magazine (April 1986), as
A.V Kidder, J.D. Jennings, and E.M.
Mercado (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1943); and Chichen Itza (Carnegie Institution of Washington,
have Cacaxtla (September 1992 and
Shook,
March 1990) and Bonampak (February
Guatemala (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1946), provided
1952) and to Charles Lincoln's unpublished 1990 Harvard doctoral
excellent color photographs of their
dissertation, Ethnicity
Organization
at
Itza,
Yucatan,
where the reader
paintings.
Mural
and Social
Chichen
1995),
in
The Proyecto de
thoughtful analysis of jade, shell, and
other materials used by the
Pintura
Mexico has begun systematic
publication of all Precolumbian
paintings in Mexico.
Mexico.
will find
Excavations at Kaminaljuyu,
in
Maya
to
make works of art; Kidder studied jades again in Excavations at Nebaj, Guatemala
The two volumes
(Carnegie Institution
of
Washington,
on Bonampak, edited by Beatriz de
la
1951). See also Tatiana Proskouriakoff,
Sculpture
Fuente, came out in 1999; Cacaxtla
is
Jadesfrom the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen
Some ofthe most important sources for the study of Maya sculpture remain the
scheduled for the near future. For
early publications that simply
document
Among these: Alfred
the works.
Teobert Maler, Researches
in the
Central Portion ofthe Usumatsintla Valley
(Peabody Museum, 1901-03); Researches Upper Usumatsintla and Adjacent
in the
Region (Peabody
Museum,
also see J.E.S.
Thompson,
Karl Ruppert, and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Bonampak, Chiapas,
P.
Maudslay, Biologia Centrali- Americana: Archaeology (4 wis., London, 18891902);
Bonampak,
1908);
Mexico (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1955) and Mary Miller,
materials in Artifactsfrom the Cenote of
The Murals of Bonampak (Princeton, 1986). Uaxactun's paintings lasted less than a year after being uncovered; a color copy exists in Guatemala City For Tulum and Tancah, see Arthur Miller,
Museum,
Explorations in the Department ofPeten,
On
Guatemala, and Adjacent Region
Tancah-Tulum, Mexico (Dumbarton
(Peabody Museum, 1908); Explorations in the Department ofPeten, Guatemala (Peabody Museum, 1911); and A.M. A Preliminary Study ofthe
Tozzer,
the
Edge ofthe Sea: Mural Painting at
Oaks, 1982). For Naj Tunich, see
Andrea Stone, Images from the Underworld: Naj Tunich and the Tradition ofMaya Cave Painting (University of
Institution of Washington, 1920)
Texas Press, 1995). Both Clemency Coggins (above, 1984) and Linda Scheie and Peter Mathews (above, 1998) have provided fresh publication ofthe Upper Temple ofthe Jaguar Paintings at Chichen Itza; see also Earl Morris, Jean Chariot, and Ann Axtell Morris, The
Inscriptions ofPeten (5 vols.,
Temple ofthe Warriors
Prehistoric Ruins ofTikal,
Guatemala
(Peabody Museum, 1911). Focusing on text but usually presenting figural
sculpture as well are the major contributions of Sylvanus Morley, Inscriptions at
Copan (Carnegie
and Carnegie
Institution of Washington,
1
937-38). In
at Chichen Itza,
Yucatan (Carnegie Institution of
volumes now released (Peabody
Washington, 1931). Michael Coe and Justin Kerr have offered fresh insights into Maya books in The Art ofthe Maya Scribe (Thames and Hudson, London, 1997; Abrams,
Museum,
New
recent years, comprehensive publication
Maya sculpture has been led by Graham in the Corpus ofMaya of
Ian
Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, with seven
I
1975-).
[erbert
J.
Spinden,
among
197.';)
was
art,
followed
eventually by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Classic
Maya
Sculpture (Carnegie
The Maya
Institution of Washington, 1950).
sculptural styles of only a few
have received comprehensive
cities
study
in
recent years: Carolyn Tate,
I'a.rchilan:
Design of a
City (University
Adam
23
I
Maya
Ceramics and Small Sculpture
Dorie Reents-Budet's traveling
the first to chart the
development of Maya
York, 1998).
A Study of Maya
Art (1913; Dover reprint,
Ceremonial
of Texas Press, 1992).
Herring's unpublished 1999
Itza, Mexico (Peabody Museum, 1974), and Adrian Digby, Maya Jades (British Museum, 1972). Clemency Coggins analyzed wood, textiles, bone and other
exhibition, Painting the
Maya
Universe,
brought Maya ceramics to international attention (Duke University Press, 199 4). Coe and Kerr (above, 1998) have written an insightful book about how these works of art were made and the tell. No study of Maya ceramics can begin without Justin and Barbara Kerr, eds., The Maya Case Book,
stories they
now
in five
volumes (New York, 1988—),
Sacrifice,
Chichen Itza, Yucatan (Peabody 1992).
Samuel K. Lothrop
studied the gold disks of Chichen,
Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen Itza, Yucatan (Peabody Museum, 1952).
.
.
List of
Frontispiece Seated musician, \l> »50 tooerl and LisaSainsbui
Illustrations
Collection,
Photo lames Vustin lama couple, Late Classii
I.
Archh
Whitestar, ltd)
to
Museum, London
British
D Coe
Michael
2 View
..
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