Plate with Supernatural Being (900–600 BCE): Art, History and Details

Plate with Supernatural Being (900–600 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This plate is carved with a feline supernatural sacrificer who holds a severed human head in its clawed paws. The diagonal clusters of plant foliage at the figure’s shoulders and hips imply that death is tied to the earth’s fertility, one being a precondition for the other. The figure, therefore, may be an apotheosis of the life-death cycle.

Object facts

• Title: Plate with Supernatural Being
• Date: 900–600 BCE
• Culture: Central Andes, north coast, probably Jequetepeque Valley, Cupisnique people
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: stone (probably steatite [soapstone])
• Dimensions: Overall: 4 x 16.4 cm (1 9/16 x 6 7/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Andes
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 2021.131

A detail from the museum

The supernatural figure on this small plate may be an apotheosis of the life-death cycle.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bergh, Susan E. "'The Art of Those Who Lived Here Before the White Man Came': Collecting the Ancient Americas at the Cleveland Museum of Art." In Collecting the “Other Americas”: Ancient Americas Collections in American Art Museums, edited by Victoria I. Lyall, and Ellen Hoobler, 67- 82. Denver, Colorado: Mayer Center for Ancient and Latin American Art at the Denver Art Museum, 2025.

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.