Deity-Head Vessel
900–400 BCE
- Medium
- ceramic with pigment applied after firing
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 27.6 x 14.9 x 19.2 cm (10 7/8 x 5 7/8 x 7 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- Peru, North Coast, Tembladera people, Early Horizon (900-400 BCE)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Art of the Americas
- Credit line
- Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase 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 Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This is a stirrup-spouted vessel shaped as the effigy of a deity head with bulging, circular eyes from which hang pendants. A fanged, bandlike mouth is arranged horizontally on top of a projecting chin that is tipped with a three-dimensional, zoomorphic head. A chin strap reaches between two modeled knobs that double as ear ornaments, and the underpart of the chin is ornamented with chevrons. The face is painted red, yellow, and white over the burnished gray-black surface of the ceramic.
