Crocodile Pendant (1000–1550): Art, History and Details

Crocodile Pendant (1000–1550) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Of great importance in ancient Panama were beings that combined crocodile features, especially the mouth, with lizard traits, such as the iguana’s head crest. This example also has a back-swept nose, perhaps that of the leaf-nosed bat. The greenstone is a modern replacement for a stone or shell that once completed the crocodile’s body.

Object facts

• Title: Crocodile Pendant
• Date: 1000–1550
• Culture: Panama, Azuero Peninsula, Parita style, 11th-16th century
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: cast gold, modern greenstone
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.5 x 5.5 x 4.4 cm (2 9/16 x 2 3/16 x 1 3/4 in.)
• Collection: AA - Intermediate Region
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.160

A detail from the museum

The greenstone replaced a piece of carved whale bone that was once improperly paired with the pendant.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• Von Winning, Hasso, and Alfred Stendahl. Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America: Text and Notes by Hasso Von Winning. Selection of Plates by Alfred Stendahl. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1968.
• Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 7 (1992): 234-75.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.