Miniature Tlatilco Two-Headed Female Figure, Rare Type

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco, ca. 1150–550 BCE. A miniature solid ceramic figure of a standing woman with two heads sharing a single body, each face modeled with slit coffee-bean eyes, an open mouth, applied ear ornaments, and a swept coiffure. Both hands rise to cup the breasts, and a short fringed skirt with incised pleats flares over the hips above tapering legs. Traces of red pigment survive across the dark chocolate-brown burnished surface, pooling in the incisions. Such two-headed and two-faced figures are among the rarest products of the Tlatilco workshops, and likely served as votive or household images tied to fertility and to the duality that runs through Formative Mesoamerican thought. Size: 2.75" H (7.0 cm H).

Tlatilco, a Formative-period village and cemetery on the western edge of the Basin of Mexico, is known almost entirely through its burials, where hand-modeled female figurines were deposited in quantity. The corpus is dominated by slender women with elaborate hairdressing, body paint, and minimal dress, but a small subset departs sharply from the norm: figures with two heads, two faces on one head, or a single head split into contrasting halves, one fleshed and one skeletal. Scholars generally read these as expressions of duality rather than as records of physical anomaly, a concept that would remain central to Mesoamerican cosmology for the next two and a half millennia. Their scarcity within an otherwise highly standardized production has long made them the most sought-after Tlatilco type.

Provenance: Private New England Collection, acquired from Arte Primitivo. Ex. Collection of Albert J. and Monique Grant, NYC., acquired 1950’s - 1960’s.

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Item #

73020

Condition
Missing left arm, lower right leg and has some loss to front hemline of her skirt.

Buyer's Premium
30%