This figure is part of a group of which we have many more examples, which became part of different collections; in general, the figures of the birds are kept fairly complete, which would indicate that their fragmentation was not accidental but, at some point, they were deliberately detached from the building in ruins, with care in order to cut each of the figures to separate them.
Because of its style, and due to the reasons given and because of some formal evidence found in excavations at Teotihuacan, we know that this image and similar ones come from a housing complex (monastery or palace, surely) known by the name of Techinantitla; the surviving fragments indicate that several of the rooms of the complex were richly decorated; in one of them there was a mural in which a calendrical sequence was shown through the use of trees with certain glyphs at its base, surrounded by feathered serpents. In another room there were a group of birds of which this one was part of. All the birds in the group have a rich green plumage. The long tail feathers and those placed, as a plume, in the stylized crest, indicate that it is a male quetzal, sophisticated and combined with other symbolic elements.
The quetzal is one of the most represented in Teotihuacan and Mesoamerica. The bright green plumage was much appreciated, it was associated with the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl, and also the god of rain. A common element in the headdress of Tlaloc is the quetzal feather crest. Some of the quetzales of this mural set are carrying shields and spears or arrows. The one we are looking at now is not armed, and in the place where the others hold the shield this one shows a flower, or perhaps an open flower "shield" with four-petals, with a dark center, which appears very often in Teotihuacan images.
Throughout the wing feathers cross slightly curved horizontal bands; undulation sequences in blue and red are shown within them, which are usually associated with water and blood. The representation of flowing liquid in many Mesoamerican images is ambiguous, they seem to allude to water (and to that extent, perhaps, agriculture and fertility) but they are also linked with sacrificial images of blood; and in fact it would not be surprising that they had both meanings. A plant form emerges from the beak of the quetzal; It looks a lot like the trees that were painted in the same housing complex and, like them, it shows flowers at the ends of the branches. In several teotihuacanas images you can see phytomorphic sprouts emerging from the beak and also from conch trumpets, which makes it likely that such sprouts allude to sound, in this case the song of the quetzal.
The rich polychrome of this representation coincides with that found in other teotihuacanas images; Techinantitla murals generally stand out for having preserved greens and yellows that in other paintings have been worn and dilute.
This figure is part of a group of which we have many more examples, which became part of different collections; in general, the figures of the birds are kept fairly complete, which would indicate that their fragmentation was not accidental but, at some point, they were deliberately detached from the building in ruins, with care in order to cut each of the figures to separate them.
