Eclectic | New York

Eclectic | New York

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 223. MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC.

Property from a Private Collection, California

MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC

Lot Closed

May 1, 07:39 PM GMT

Estimate

3,500 - 4,500 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collection, California

MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC


Height: 5 ¼ in (13.4 cm)


Acquired by the grandfather of the current owner in the 1960s

Thence by descent to the present owner

Mezcala temple models were collected as early as the 19th c. by William Niven among other explorers in Guerrero. Their appeal blossomed in the 1960's after publications by Miguel Covarrubias, and Carlo Gay's "Mezcala Architecture in Miniature" ( in Jones, Houses for the Hereafter, Funerary Temples from Guerrero, Mexico, From the Collection of Arthur M. Bullowa, New York, 1987, pp. 9-10). 

This andesite temple is carved with stairs to the upper platform, here supporting two broad columns with a banded, tapering roof comb. See Gay and Pratt, Mezcala, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico, Geneva, 1992, p. 179, fig. 114, for the type.