Figural Pendant (1–800 CE): Art, History and Details

Figural Pendant (1–800 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Colombia's Tolima region is justly famous for arrestingly abstracted figures like this one, among the largest of its kind. Such figures, worn as necklace pendants by chiefs and other elites, seem to be based on the human form. But they also incorporate animal features, often an upturned, bifurcated tail sometimes compared to that of a serpent and large, angled head appendages that may refer to animal ears or even insect antennae.

Object facts

• Title: Figural Pendant
• Date: 1–800 CE
• Culture: Isthmian Region (Colombia), Tolima
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: gold, cast and hammered
• Dimensions: Overall: 29.4 x 16.2 x 1 cm (11 9/16 x 6 3/8 x 3/8 in.)
• Collection: AA - Intermediate Region
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 2015.1

A detail from the museum

Pendants in the form of figures with X-shaped bodies are an iconic Tolima type.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Masters: 2016-17 Companion Guide. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2016.
• Bergh, Susan E. “Acquisitions 2015: Pre-Columbian and Native North American Art.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 56, no. 2 (March/April 2016): 32-33.

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.