Covered Vessel with the Principal Bird and Peccary Heads

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

This beautifully modeled and incised blackware vessel was likely was once the personal possession of a Maya king, who may have used it to serve food at royal feasts or who may have presented it as a gift to a visiting lord as a sign of alliance. Its shape—a lidded dish supported by four legs—was a form frequently produced during the Early Classic period [A.D. 250/450]. These ceramics often display a consistent set of motifs, with birds on their domed lids and inverted peccary (wild pig) heads serving as supports. The artist who created this piece integrated the two-dimensional surface of the lid with its three-dimensional handle by connecting the bird’s spread wings, lightly incised into the surface, with its head, sculpted in the round. The vessel thus captures the essence of an aquatic bird floating on the surface of the water with its prey—a small fish—caught in its open beak. Water birds and peccaries inhabited the natural landscape of the ancient Maya who associated them with the structure of the universe and the time of creation. The crest of feathers atop the bird’s head, its outstretched wings, and the bulge at the tip of its beak mark it as a cormorant. The Maya regarded t

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