Kneeling Figure (c. 1200–600 BCE): Art, History and Details

Kneeling Figure (c. 1200–600 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Outside of the Maya, Olmec sculptures of humans have a naturalism unknown in other Mesoamerican artistic traditions. On this finely carved figure, the musculature of the arms, torso, and legs is carefully depicted, and even the fingernails and toenails and are shown.

Object facts

• Title: Kneeling Figure
• Date: c. 1200–600 BCE
• Culture: Mexico, Guerrero, Olmec
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: stone
• Dimensions: Overall: 26.3 x 20 x 21.3 cm (10 3/8 x 7 7/8 x 8 3/8 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1951.179

A detail from the museum

An observant traveler discovered the left knee and hand fragment, orginally missing and now reunited.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Art of the Americas: Picture Book No. 2. 1946.
• "Art and Archeology at The Cleveland Museum of Art." Archeology (Winter 1953).
• Milliken, William M. "A Missing Fragment Recovered." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 44, no. 3 (1957)

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.