Chucu Painted Stone Offering Plaque | Bullseye and Stripes

Pre-Columbian, Peru, Chucu, Inca period, ca. 1300–1500 CE. A broad slab of tabular stone painted in earth pigments, its irregular leaf-shaped outline left as the quarry gave it. The lower half carries a concentric bullseye, ring within ring in white, ochre, umber and green closing on a small red-and-olive eye; above it, a register of vertical stripes alternates red, cream, gold and slate. Pigments were ground from natural minerals and laid directly onto the unprepared surface. Plaques of this type were carried into dry-coast caves and set out as offerings, likely petitions to Pacha Mama and Pacha Papa for water, herd fertility and the health of the community, in a landscape watered only by Andean snowmelt reaching the rivers each spring. Size: 28" W x 13" H (71.1 cm W x 33.0 cm H).

The chronology of these painted plaques rests on a single well-documented cache: a group of slabs found stacked inside a cave, each separated from the next by a wooden branch. Radiocarbon analysis of one of those sticks returned a date of approximately 1400 CE, placing the tradition squarely within the ascendancy of the Inca state. Their deposition in caves, in the arid coastal margins where no rain falls and the only water is snowmelt descending from the Andes, ties them to a rainmaking and fertility observance directed at the paired earth deities.

Nothing in the painting is representational. The bullseye and the striped register are graphic devices whose meaning was carried by convention rather than by picture, a visual language shared across the coast's textiles and painted media.

Provenance: American collection. Ex. Splendors of the World Gallery, HI. Ex. Judith Hilburg Collection, CA., 1970’s.

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Item #

73238

Condition
Choice, un-retouched condition, the fugitive paint was consolidated for protection.

Buyer's Premium
30%