Jaguar Head Kero
Inca (Viceroyalty of Peru (probably Peru or Bolivia))
1600–1800
- Medium
- Wood and mopa-mopa resin
- Classification
- Vessel
- Dimensions
- 21.2 × 15.3 × 18.5 cm (8 3/8 × 6 × 7 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Peru, Viceroyalty of
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Arts of the Americas Discretionary Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
During the Inca Empire, wooden kero drinking cups were only decorated with geometric designs. But after the Spanish invasion, the Inca royal court retreated to lower elevations in the Amazonian jungle, a place they called Vilcabamba. Likely in response to the introduction of European heraldry featuring lions and building on representations of felines by their Andean predecessors, Inca makers created new keros shaped like feline heads. Rather than depicting highland pumas, however, such keros are spotted like Amazonian jaguars.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
