**Originally Listed At $800**

Pre-Columbian, South Coast Peru, Nazca culture, ca. 100 to 300 CE. A large textile mantle created from tightly-woven camelid (alpaca or llama wool) fibers dyed in hues of brown, cream, crimson, and wheat. The rectangular mantle is decorated with rows of large diamonds in polychrome colors atop a dark ground, and areas of the periphery are lined with segmented chromatic panels. What do these shapes represent? Some Nazca textiles have fantastical imagery of humans and animals, while others are more abstract, like this example. Mounted atop museum-quality display fabric. Size (textile): 42.5" W x 60" H (108 cm x 152.4 cm); size (display fabric): 58" W x 74.5" H (147.3 cm x 189.2 cm).

In Nazca cemeteries, the dead were wrapped in layers of cloth. Elite people were given brightly embroidered textiles like this one, along with jewelry decorated with feathers and precious metals. Many hours of labor would have gone into making this mantle, and the imagery and colors were intended to convey the veneration of the deceased ancestor, as well as to form a bridge between the living and the dead. Analyses of similar textiles in museum collections have shown that the color and motif choices were complex and systematic, with some meaning that we can only guess at today, nearly two thousand years removed from this culture that left no written records.

Provenance: private Tucson, Arizona, USA collection, acquired between 1950 and 1985

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#147575

Losses and areas of repair to areas of the body and periphery. Light loosening and fraying to some interior and peripheral areas, with light fading to original coloration, and minor creasing. Nice traces of original coloration throughout, and iconography is still visible and clear.