Chavin Stone Tenon Head, Fanged Supernatural | Miniature

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chavin, 400 BCE. A snarling composite face carved in the round from a dense pale stone, small in scale yet monumental in conception. Bulging ball eyes with drilled pupils sit beneath heavy scrolled brows, above a wide mouth set with bared teeth and prominent fangs, the broad nose flanked by curling serpentine appendages. The crown carries a relief boss within a raised border. A projecting integral tang at the rear once socketed the head into a masonry wall, the standard mounting for Chavin tenon heads, which glowered outward from temple facades as guardians and as images of the fanged supernatural. Serpent and feline attributes are merged here into a single being, the visual language of a priesthood whose deities took shape as creatures of the jungle night. Size: 3" W x 3.75" H x 5" D (7.6 cm W x 9.5 cm H x 12.7 cm D).

Chavin de Huantar, high in Peru's Ancash highlands, was the ceremonial center of the first pan-Andean religious tradition, and its stone-faced temple walls bristled with tenon heads driven into the masonry like a ring of sentinels. The sequence of those heads is often read as a transformation cycle: human features dissolving stage by stage into feline muzzle, serpent hair, and mucus-streaming nostrils, a sculptural record of shamanic metamorphosis.

That transformation was chemically assisted. San Pedro cactus, depicted in Chavin relief carving and rich in mescaline, together with snuffs of Anadenanthera, drove the visions in which priest became jaguar. The merged serpent and feline morphology seen here is the artistic residue of that experience rather than a decorative conceit.

Provenance: Collection of Jimmy Belilty, Miami. Acquired from Galeria El Jaguar, Ex. collection Jose Dario Marquez, 1980’s.

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Item #

73165

Condition
Overall excellent ancient surface patina. Intact, excellent condition.

Buyer's Premium
30%