Veined face

The municipality of Sultepec, in the south of the State of Mexico, is located in the northern sector of the extensive territory where the Mezcala cultural tradition has been recorded, mainly detected in Guerrero around the Balsas River basin.  Sultepec is also the denomination of one of the three types of the famous lapidary art of the Mezcala style identified by Miguel Covarrubias since the 1940s. This artist, art historian and anthropologist noticed it in anthropomorphic masks of marble, obsidian and hard stones that were made in flat volumes, very thin and slightly triangular in outline, with prominent aquiline noses and oval depressions like eyes and mouths. Compared to the other two types, called Mezcala, the most emblematic, and Chontal, Covarrubias highlights the extreme simplicity of the forms.  This mask fully shows such qualities.  

The great Mezcala sculptural style is distinguished by the intense abstraction of representative images, which includes the use of fine stones of homogeneous tones, but in the case of the face we are dealing with here, the masterful use of the dark veins of the marble stands out to emphasize the facial features, especially the enormous aquiline nose around which the lines are arranged concentrically, and the ocular recesses.  

It can be deduced that the artist, based on the repertoire of images typical of his creative tradition, selected the stone for its color stripes and skillfully used them to represent the face.  Marble is usually a light colored rock; in this case its ocher pigmentation with streaks is due to the fact that it contains iron oxides in the form of limonite.  Consequently, we highlight the materiality in the art as a fundamental component in which a wide range of elements is considered, such as their greater or lesser availability, their suitability for certain practical uses and of course their sensitive qualities, such as coloring, in affinity with the aesthetics of the various societies.  

On the other hand, the reduced dimensions of the object, being only 8 cm in height, lead us to scrutinize its function as a mask, since in effect it has two upper lateral perforations that allowed it to be tied. It could have been tied to a head or a textile bundle that wrapped around the corpse, its skeletal remains or even its ashes; although openings are also suitable for integrating a pendant into a necklace.  The options are broader and to explore them it is appropriate to mention what the archaeological excavations provide in sites of the Mezcala culture, such as Ahuinahuac, Guerrero.  

According to Louise Paradis, this settlement located on the south bank of the Balsas, municipality of Tepecoacuilco, is dated between 500 B.C. and the beginning of our era, and consists of a residential and burial architectural complex.  There she recorded seven Mezcala-type lapidary objects, among them 4 little masks with perforations in the foreheads, made of greenish-gray metamorphic stone streaked with white.  The sculptures were intentionally buried in a landfill that served as the basis for the construction of new structures.  The act has been interpreted as a ritual practice, perhaps to consecrate the building site.  

Within the framework of the same culture of origin or of successive cultures in the same territory or in other regions, it is necessary to consider the resignifications and reuse of works of art up to the present day.  Regarding this veined marble mask, it is possible to recognize in its shape an intrinsic beauty to its materiality and, from centuries away, share some aesthetic values with its creators.