Mirror with Jaguar or Coyote Mosaic
Teotihuacan (Teotihuacan, Mexico)
500–600 CE
- Medium
- Iron pyrite, jade, shell, magnatite or ilmenite, and spondylus shell
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- Diam.: 19.1 cm (7 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- Mexico
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- S. DeWitt Clough and Ada Turnbull Hertle endowments
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
For over 2,000 years, polished stone mirrors were an important component of Mesoamerican attire, ritual, and symbolic imagery. This mirror is made of a single sheet of polished pyrite stone and includes a jade jaguar mosaic at its center. Mirrors often functioned as emblems of rank and office and were typically worn at the small of the back. The depiction of such mirrors in ancient murals, as worn by warriors, priests, and state officials, attests to their importance in the spectacular art of ritual performance in Teotihuacan.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
