Incense-burner Cover (c. 500): Art, History and Details

Incense-burner Cover (c. 500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This elaborate clay construction served as the cover and chimney of a basin used to burn copal incense. Although probably manufactured in what is now Guatemala, the form and fabrication are based on examples from Teotihuacan in central Mexico, hundreds of miles away. Intensive trade between the two regions, or even a Teotihuacan colony in Guatemala seems likely. The masked, dressed, and ornamented moundlike form probably represents a mortuary bundle or a cult image.

Object facts

• Title: Incense-burner Cover
• Date: c. 500
• Culture: Guatemala, Escuintla Region, early 6th Century
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with slip and pigments
• Dimensions: Overall: 44.8 x 43 x 31.5 cm (17 5/8 x 16 15/16 x 12 3/8 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1969.25

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Young-Sanchez, Margaret. "Veneration of the Dead: Religious Ritual on a Pre-Columbian Mirror-Back". The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 77, no. 9 (November, 1990)

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.