Maya Cylinder | Mosquito-Nose Speaking Lords, Glyph Bands

Pre-Columbian, Mesoamerica, Maya, ca. 500–800 CE. A cylinder vase painted in red and black on a cream-buff slip, its walls carrying two seated lords in mirrored composition. Each wears a feathered headdress and ear ornament, one hand extended in the conventional gesture of speech, the face drawn with an extraordinarily attenuated, mosquito-like nose and open mouth. Two red offering jars with flaring necks stand between them. A band of glyphs runs below the rim, framed above and below by broad red bands. Vessels of this shape held frothed cacao at courtly feasts, and the paired figures with their emphatic speech gestures likely record a scene of formal address or tribute presentation. Size: 6.125" Diam x 4.75" H (15.6 cm Diam x 12.1 cm H).

Painted cylinder vases were the prestige tableware of Late Classic Maya courts, made for the drinking of cacao and frequently inscribed with a dedicatory formula (the Primary Standard Sequence) naming the vessel's shape, contents, and owner. Many surviving examples carry pseudo-glyphs instead: decorative approximations of the script produced by painters working outside the scribal centers, a reminder that literacy and its imitation coexisted in the same workshops.

The elongated, proboscis-like nose given to both lords is a recognized convention rather than a portrait. It appears on supernatural courtiers, aged deities, and impersonators in Maya vase painting, where exaggerated facial profiles distinguish beings of the other world from human participants. The forward-thrust hand is the standard Maya sign for speech, so the two figures are shown mid-discourse across the offering jars set between them.

Provenance: Ex. Collection of Jerome Grunes, MD. Chicago, acquired 1970’s. To family by descent.

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Item #

73078

Condition
Scattered strong surface deposits. Some paint loss, mostly to one figure. Ancient interior rim flake, and four stable hair lines from the rim. No restoration to the decoration.

Buyer's Premium
30%