Two Veracruz Miniature Ceramic Heads, Skull and Bat with Bitumen Eyes

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Veracruz culture. A pair of miniature hollow ceramic heads, perhaps small masks, one shaped as a human skull and the other as a bat. The skull is a rounded cranium with deep orbits filled with glossy black bitumen. It has a gaping nasal cavity and a lipless grin of incised teeth, and small holes pierce each side. The bat has a looser, more playful character. Its broad ears are edged with fine radiating incisions, a hatched ruff frames the jaw, and bitumen-painted eyes bulge above a wrinkled snout. Its open mouth bares small teeth and lets a long tongue loll over the chin. Both heads are open at the back and have lateral holes. This suggests they may once have been attached to or worn by larger articulated figures, possibly warriors or shamans. In Mesoamerica, skulls and bats were both closely linked with death, sacrifice, and the underworld. Along the Gulf Coast of Veracruz, natural asphalt seeps provided bitumen, known locally as chapopote. Potters used it as a glossy black paint applied after firing, often to pick out eyes, headdresses, and body markings on terracotta figures. Because it was added after firing, the black reads as raised and tarry, sitting on top of the clay rather than fused into it. The bat had a lasting place in Mesoamerican thought as a creature of night, caves, and blood. In the Maya Popol Vuh, the Hero Twins have to survive a night in the House of Bats, where the killer bat Camazotz takes the head of one of them. Skull imagery, for its part, runs throughout Gulf Coast ceramics and recalls trophy heads taken from captives and sacrificial victims. Item # 205584

Estimate:£681.07

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorEthnographical