Seated Male Carrying Maize (1325–1521): Art, History and Details

Seated Male Carrying Maize (1325–1521) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This figure probably represents an Aztec deity-either Macuilxochitl or Xochipilli-whose domain was beauty, the arts, and such pleasures as gameplaying, dancing, and sex. Both names include the Aztec word for "flower," and in one hand the figure holds a cone of flowers, perhaps the blossoming crown of a cactus. For the Aztecs, flowers signified beauty, refinement, and fertility in general and sexuality in particular. The burden of maize cobs on his back also may allude to his creative energies.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Male Carrying Maize
• Date: 1325–1521
• Culture: Central Mexico, Aztec style, 13th-16th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: stone, pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 31.1 x 24.1 x 30.5 cm (12 1/4 x 9 1/2 x 12 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1949.555

A detail from the museum

Macuilxochitl is one of five gods of excess pleasure, and the punishment that follows.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, and Ralph T. Coe. The Imagination of Primitive Man: A Survey of the Arts of the Non-Literate Peoples of the World. Kansas City, Mo: The Museum, 1962.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.