Mother-and-Child? Vessel (1–700 CE): Art, History and Details

Mother-and-Child? Vessel (1–700 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Well-dressed, important women like this one are depicted fairly often in Recuay art. These women hold a variety of things, ranging from cups that may refer to feasts held on important political occasions to small figures commonly interpreted as children, as here. These and other representations have led scholars to suggest that Recuay women held authority independent of their male partners; their authority may have stemmed in part from involvement in feasting celebrations.

Object facts

• Title: Mother-and-Child? Vessel
• Date: 1–700 CE
• Culture: Central Andes, North Highlands, Recuay people
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: ceramic, slip, pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 20.4 x 15.3 x 15.3 cm (8 1/16 x 6 x 6 in.)
• Collection: AA - Andes
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 2010.210

A detail from the museum

Recuay ceramics typically use only three colors: black, white, and red.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mann, C. Griffith. "Acquisitions 2010." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 51, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 10-27.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Motherhood Across Time. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.

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.