Chak Ak’ Paat Kuy ("Red Turkey") Playing the Ballgame
Maya (Probably La Corona (Saknikte’), Usumacinta River area, Guatemala)
650-700
- Medium
- Limestone
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 43.2 × 25.1 cm (17 × 9 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- Guatemala
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Ada Turnbull Hertle Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In Central America, the best-known sculptors are the Maya, who decorated their temples and sacred precincts with finely carved stone reliefs representing powerful dynastic rulers involved in various secular and religious activities. This fragmentary ball-court panel from the late eighth century shows two men, dressed in elaborate costumes, engaged in a ritual ball game. Surrounding the figures, and clearly set off from them, are fragments of hieroglyphs by which the Maya identified the players and the date on which the game occurred.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
