Square Bowl with Pampas Cats (500–400 BCE): Art, History and Details

Square Bowl with Pampas Cats (500–400 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The Paracas often decorated their ceramics with geometricized representations of the native Pampas cat, a small, reclusive, wild feline that lives on the margins of agricultural fields, where it preys on the rodents and other pests that are a farmer’s bane. Thus, the ancients seem to have linked it to nature’s fertility and, by extension, human prosperity and continuity.

Object facts

• Title: Square Bowl with Pampas Cats
• Date: 500–400 BCE
• Culture: Central Andes, South Coast, Paracas
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Ceramic, post-fire paint
• Dimensions: Overall: 9 x 18 x 17.5 cm (3 9/16 x 7 1/16 x 6 7/8 in.)
• Collection: AA - Andes
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 2021.130

A detail from the museum

The animal shown on this bowl is the Pampas cat, a small, wild feline.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

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.