Head Fragment (c. 900–300 BCE): Art, History and Details

Head Fragment (c. 900–300 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This sensual head fragment may come from a seated or standing figure like those shown nearby, though much larger. The carving is exceptionally fine, from the slight under-eye puffiness to the delineation of the fleshy lips and the teeth. The profile face of supernatural being is incised just in front of each ear, perhaps indicating that the subject had special power.

Object facts

• Title: Head Fragment
• Date: c. 900–300 BCE
• Culture: Mesoamerica, Mexico, Olmec
• Type: Jade
• Technique: jadeite
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.4 x 6.2 x 5 cm (2 15/16 x 2 7/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1961.31

A detail from the museum

In ancient Mesoamerica, jade was more valuable than gold.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Society of the Four Arts (Palm Beach, Fla.), and Gordon F. Ekholm. Pre-Columbian Art, the Native Art of America Before the Conquest: Jan. 10-Feb. 1, 1953. Palm Beach: Society of the Four Arts, 1952.
• Hawley, Henry H. "An Olmec Jade Head." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 48, no. 8 (1961).
• Lee, Sherman E. "Year in Review 1961." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 48, no. 9 (1961).

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.