Pre-Columbian, southern Peru, Inca hinterlands (Chucu), ca. 1000 to 1500 CE. A beautiful ceramic plaque with irregular edges, painted with a vibrant and powerful visual ordering of space with rows of painted figures and animals, reduced to highly simplified, linear forms. Arranged alternating with bands of dot patterns, perhaps a representation of crops and agricultural land. Beautiful white, green, red, and sparkling silver/grey pigment (made from mica) colors the buff surface of the plaque, creating the iconography. Their minimalist form resembles rock art. Plaques like this were placed as offerings to Pacha Mama and Pacha Papa (Mother and Father Earth) to insure health among the livestock and among human inhabitants of the clan. Size: 11" L x 10.5" W (27.9 cm x 26.7 cm)

These plaques were made by smashing large vessels and painting the fragments, and the blank verso has a slightly outturned edge, perhaps the rim area. Painted plaques have been discovered in a number of different contexts: beneath wall foundations, in graves, with animal sacrifices, and cached in prominent places in the landscape, like in springs, rock hollows, and atop hills. They are often discovered in pairs, with the painted surfaces placed so that they are facing each other, sometimes wrapped in leaves or even gold sheet. Although the tablet tradition began centuries before, the time period that this one comes from represents the height of the artform, and corresponds to an intensification of agriculture, the rise of interregional trade networks, and the ascendancy of certain important confederations of clans. Into this potent mix, the Inca expanded into the region and the tablet tradition abruptly ended. It seems likely that the Inca, who colonized regions in part by sponsoring local ritual activities, outlawed the creation of religious tablets like this because they saw them as a threat to their trade in sacrificial alpacas, corn beer, and cloth.

Provenance: private New York, New York, USA collection; ex-B.G. Malone collection, Texas, USA, before 1970

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#172615

Overall good with some wear commensurate with age. Fading to pigments, but motifs are still visible and discernable.