Offering Group: Plaque with Frontal and Profile Faces (800–1200(?)): Art, History and Details

Offering Group: Plaque with Frontal and Profile Faces (800–1200(?)) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This greenstone plaque is said to have been found inside a translucent stone vessel, together with two shells (1990.252.1–3). A similar offering was found in a pyramid ornamented with feathered serpents at Xochicalco, a site south of the Valley of Mexico.

Object facts

• Title: Offering Group: Plaque with Frontal and Profile Faces
• Date: 800–1200(?)
• Culture: Mexico, Guerrero(?), San Jerónimo de Juárez, Xochicalco style
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: jadeite with albitite
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.9 x 6.3 x 0.7 cm (3 1/8 x 2 1/2 x 1/4 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.213

A detail from the museum

The red pigment may be cinnabar, the same mineral used to color Chinese lacquerware.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• Von Winning, Hasso, and Alfred Stendahl. Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America: Text and Notes by Hasso Von Winning. Selection of Plates by Alfred Stendahl. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1968.
• Young-Sánchez, Margaret. "The Gruener Collection of Pre-Columbian Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 79, no. 7 (1992): 234-75.

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.