Face Fragment (600–1000): Art, History and Details

Face Fragment (600–1000) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This thick, heavy ceramic face fragment may come from an incensario (incense burner). Several features, including the tau- or T-shaped front teeth, suggest it represents a deity known today only as G1 due to difficulties in translating its Maya name, which is recorded in hieroglyphs. The deity’s meanings are equally elusive, though it seems to be associated with both the sun and water.

Object facts

• Title: Face Fragment
• Date: 600–1000
• Culture: Mexico, Palenque region(?), Maya
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: molded pottery
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.5 x 13 x 9 cm (6 1/8 x 5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.179

A detail from the museum

G1’s distinctive tooth was perhaps inspired by a 63 million-year-old fossilized shark tooth.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.