Pre-Columbian, South Coast Peru, Nazca culture, ca. 250 BCE to 125 CE. A wonderful and highly-burnished polychrome bottle with twin spouts connected by a bridged handle. Presenting a mesmerizing iconographic program around the circumference, this vessel features the so-called "Serpentine Creature" with wide-open eyes, a feline mouth and mask, wearing ornamental danglers and a head ornament, and tasting a trophy head whose hair is in his grip. Set perpendicularly to his visage is a striated body with trophy heads at the ends. On the verso is another visage with human limbs and a colorful zigzag-patterned ornament flanked by serpent-like creatures. The complex iconography and format of the design makes this vessel quite intriguing. All details are painted in a striking palette of rich red, orange, cream, gray, black, and white hues atop a citrine base. Size: 6" W x 7.5" H (15.2 cm x 19 cm).

This style of painting corresponds to later Nazca styles, when supernatural figures became the center of the artists' attention and their more fantastical elements are exaggerated over their human ones. Nazca pots were made using the coil and smoothing technique, never molded; their wide range of polychrome slips included pigments made with minerals like hematite, limonite, and magnetite, as well as white kaolin clay. Colored portions of the vessel were painted with brushes made from llama and alpaca fur, and then given black outlines. The Nazca replaced post-firing resin painting with pre-firing slip painting making for a great deal of experimentation to learn which slips produced certain colors. Note the painstaking technique required to adorn this vessel with its intricate figural imagery in such a wide range of hues!

In Nazca culture - and other ancient Peruvian cultures - the decapitation and ritual use of human heads was common; many mythical figures and kings known from Nazca pottery are shown holding trophy heads or in the presence of trophy heads. This vessel shows the unassociated trophy heads, with no one holding them, which is a style of depiction common only to Nazca art. Archaeological evidence from the 20th century shows that these stylized paintings are based on real rituals - over one hundred mummified trophy heads have been found from Nazca excavations, almost all with a puncture to the front of the skull for suspension. Archaeologists specializing this culture continue to argue over the significance of these heads in Nazca culture - warriors fallen in battle? Taking the power of enemies by assuming ownership of a crucial part of their bodies? Remembrance of deceased relatives? The mystery remains.

Provenance: private Denver, Colorado, USA collection

All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.

A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.

We ship worldwide to most countries and handle all shipping in-house for your convenience.

#131271

Repair to one spout and portion of bridge with light overpainting and adhesive residue along break lines. Expected age-commensurate surface wear and abrasions, small chips to spout area and body, with some fading and losses to pigmentation, otherwise excellent.