Plate (c. 800): Art, History and Details

Plate (c. 800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Its pose and jewelry suggest this flamboyantly painted figure may represent a human clad in the skin of a jaguar. Because the jaguar is the largest, most powerful predator in Mesoamerica, it was a natural metaphor for earthly and supernatural power alike.

Object facts

• Title: Plate
• Date: c. 800
• Culture: Mexico, Campeche, Maya
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with colored slips
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.5 x 41.5 cm (2 9/16 x 16 5/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1990.182

A detail from the museum

Apex predators like jaguars are natural power metaphors.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.