Two Textile Fragment with Fanged Heads (500–200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Two Textile Fragment with Fanged Heads (500–200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

These two rare fragments of equal size and mounted side by side feature fanged heads connected by a fanged mouth band. Each band ascends as a column above a rectangular, disembodied eye that implies the original presence of large figures or heads beneath the bands. Fanged heads are common markers of the supernatural in Chavín art, an early style that developed in the highlands of Peru. The original textile may have served as a ceremonial wall hanging.

Object facts

• Title: Two Textile Fragment with Fanged Heads
• Date: 500–200 BCE
• Culture: Peru, South Coast, Ica Valley, Chavín style
• Type: Textile
• Technique: cotton: plain weave patterned by fiber-wrapped warps and supplementary wefts
• Dimensions: Overall: 112 x 61.2 cm (44 1/8 x 24 1/8 in.); Mounted: 123.8 x 72.4 cm (48 3/4 x 28 1/2 in.)
• Collection: T - Pre-Columbian
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1985.139

A detail from the museum

Fanged heads are common markers of the supernatural in Chavín art.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (February 1986): 26–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.
• Fux, Peter, and Walter Alva. Chavín: Peru's Enigmatic Temple in the Andes. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess: Museum Rietberg, 2013.

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.