Figural Pendant
1–800 CE
- Medium
- gold, cast and hammered
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- Overall: 29.4 x 16.2 x 1 cm (11 9/16 x 6 3/8 x 3/8 in.)
- Culture
- Isthmian Region (Colombia), Tolima
- 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
- 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
Colombia's Tolima region is justly famous for arrestingly abstracted figures like this one, among the largest of its kind. Such figures, worn as necklace pendants by chiefs and other elites, seem to be based on the human form. But they also incorporate animal features, often an upturned, bifurcated tail sometimes compared to that of a serpent and large, angled head appendages that may refer to animal ears or even insect antennae.
