Maya Figure with Removable Headdress, Jaina, Late Classic, circa AD 550 - 950

Private Collection, active as a collector from the 1950s to the 1970s

Acquired from the above

Depicted in the prime of life, this exquisitely attired young lord is the embodiment of Maya ideals of beauty, with his extended forehead, fine brow, aquiline nose, slightly oblique, almond eyes, and high cheekbones. His coiffure is bound in a high turban, and he has a removable headdress that depicts the long-lipped saurian monster, which had the crocodile’s ability to travel to the watery underworld that was the realm of ancestral spirits.

The young lord wears a lavish costume that was appropriate to one of his elevated rank, its magnificence emphasized by the physical accumulation of layer upon layer of adornment; this mirrors, in a sense, the layers of meaning that were present in the materials depicted, from the beads and pendants of precious jade to the feathers that adorn his headdress, and the jangling shells that sound among the rustling folds of the richly decorated folds of his elaborate loincloth.

These accumulated riches interact with each other in this sculpture; an ear flares rests on one of the huge beads of a jade collar that is slung over the figure’s shoulders and weighed down in the front by an enormous, spiked pectoral ornament which retains the traces of polychrome decoration. The pectoral rests on the forehead of the impressive belt mask, below which there is a circular, concave form that probably depicts a shell. Below this, hanging in front of one of the layers of the elaborate loincloth, there appear three dangling ornaments that probably represent the three celt-like plaques that Maya rulers wore suspended from their waist and over their loins. Around his calves he wears beaded ornaments with effigy masks at their centre. The last layer of the loincloth, blue and adorned with olivella shells, falls to the figure’s ankles, where we see that he wears a pair of sandals which wrap around the heels and are tied in front, as if as a final flourish to his costume, with large and finely modeled bows. The back of the figure's heavy loincloth has a cylindrical aperture where a backrack would once have been inserted, adding to the drama and grandeur of his ceremonial attire.

As we look at this figure, the weight of all his tremendous regalia seems almost palpable. He is posed with legs slightly flexed and out turned, the cross-hatched textile sashes of his costume seeming to sway outwards as he engages in his ritual dance, his movements accompanied by the sound, colour, and texture of his accumulated finery, a sight intended to inspire awe and attention.

For related figures, see the important figure of a standing lord sold at Sotheby’s, New York, May 7, 2016, lot 126, and Hasso von Winning, Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America, New York, 1968, p. 318, pl. 449, for the figure holding a serpent sceptre and wearing a similar spiked pectoral.