Maya Polychrome Bowl, Deities with Offering Bundles

Pre-Columbian, Guatemala, Maya, ca. 500–800 CE. A deep, round-sided ceramic bowl painted in orange, red, cream, and black slips over a burnished buff ground. Two standing deities face one another around the circumference, each robed in a beaded and paneled costume, and each trailed by an enormous knotted offering bundle whose tasseled cords and cross-hatched medallions fill the surrounding field. A pseudoglyphic band, stylized rather than legible, runs beneath the everted rim, and a red band frames the register below. Fine black outlining carries the drawing; broad slip washes carry the color. Vessels of this class served elite feasting and gift exchange, and frequently accompanied their owners into the tomb. Size: 5.5" Diam x 5.25" H (14.0 cm Diam x 13.3 cm H).

Late Classic Maya painters treated the cylinder and the deep bowl as a continuous field rather than a set of panels, so a scene read by turning the vessel in the hand. The knotted bundles behind each figure belong to a well-attested Maya visual vocabulary of presentation: cloth-wrapped offerings, tied with elaborate cords and often crowned with jade or spondylus, carried in court ceremony and tribute presentation.

The rim band here is pseudoglyphic, a sequence that imitates the cadence of a Primary Standard Sequence dedicatory text without spelling readable signs. Such bands are common on provincial and workshop wares whose painters commanded the courtly style but not the script itself, and they are diagnostic of the period rather than a defect of it.

Provenance: Private collection of a Chicago physician. Ex. Jerome Grunes, MD. Chicago. To family by inheritance.

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Item #

73077

Condition
Scattered mineral and surface deposits. Repaired from approximately fifteen original pieces with restoration over the break lines.

Buyer's Premium
30%