Vessel with Butterfly Headdress
1–550 CE
- Medium
- ceramic, stucco, pigment
- Classification
- Ceramic
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 15.6 x 15.8 cm (6 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.); Overall: 15.5 cm (6 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Central Mexico, Teotihuacán, Classic period
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Art of the Americas
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener
- 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 Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The headdress shown on this vessel combines a serpent's mouth with a butterfly's proboscis (feeding tube), which curls between the eyes. The butterfly often appears in the headdress of the Great Goddess, an extremely important Teotihuacán deity. Stucco (paper-thin, painted plaster) is fragile and usually does not survive well; the stucco of the basin in this case has been repaired.
