Nayarit Kneeling Female Figure, San Sebastián Red style, Protoclassic, circa 100 BC-AD 250

This elegant, restrained female figure is covered in fine-painted jewelry ornamenting her naked body and painted in a deep red with a lustrous burnish. The highly ornamented body, kneeling posture on the stylized elongated feet and trance-like face may indicate a female's rite of passage; such events are believed to be the subjects of certain West Mexican terracotta figures.

She leans forward slightly, her long oval face and smooth cheeks marked by a sharp chin line, a tiny slit mouth and her slender nose incorporating a disc nose-ring. The finely striated coiffure is neatly divided into sections. The serrated edge of the ears indicates multiple ornaments. The broad torso is finely painted with a collar of nine rows of tiny beads and another row of slender pendants. This cascade of fine beadwork continues down the center of her body, down her arms and continues down her back. The arms have multiple armbands and are just slightly held away from the torso as her hands press into her ribs.

For a kneeling figure of similar style, see Robert B. Pickering and Cheryl Smallwood-Roberts, West Mexico, Ritual and Identity, 2016, p. 14 C, cat. no. 16, for a figure in the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa (inv. no. GM54.4051).