A Fine Chinesco Female Figure, Type E, Protoclassic, ca. 100 B.C.-A.D. 250

the youthful maiden with thick striated hair framing her face, the eyes closed gently and marked by blackened eye mask, lower lip sucked in, the "red hand" on her breast, and adorned solely with jewelry of tasseled armbands, a choker necklace with obsidian pendant, a longer cord necklace, and thin loincloth, with crisscross resist decoration on the arms. 

Stendahl Gallery, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above in the late 1960s

Los Angeles, UCLA Fowler Museum, Companions of the Dead, Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West Mexico, October 11-November 27, 1983, inside front cover, pl. 1
Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Ancient West Mexico, Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, September 5-November 22, 1998, continuing to
Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 20, 1998- March 29, 1999, cat. no. 214

Jacki Gallagher, Companions of the Dead, Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West  Mexico, UCLA, 1983, inside front cover, pl. 1
Richard Townsend, ed. Ancient West Mexico, Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, 1998, p. 25, fig. 15, cat. no. 214

The elegant Lagunillas Type E figures are some of the finest portrayals of women, and one of the most treasured examples of ancient West Mexican sculpture. The highly burnished cream slip surfaces, delicately painted with red and black jewelry and body tattoos, are luxurious overlays to the profound mediative quality of the figures. Various rites of passage are celebrated in the sculptures. Here we recognize a confident youthful woman in preparation for a future status in the community through courtship and marriage. See Townsend, ed. (1998: 25, fig. 16), for a closely related figure.