Vessel with interior and exterior sides painted in ranges of orange, red and black; the figure of a young man lying face down is painted on the outer sides, occupying the middle section, and the same image is repeated in the other section. Both representations are separated by black vertical bands containing a painted red motif in circular shape and with decreasing lines, that are usually identified with aquatic spaces.
The young man is garbed in a simple black truss, perhaps because actually the whole body is "dressed" with decorations painted red. The face is tattooed or decorated with semicircles on the cheek, near the earring and other parts of the body such as the arms, shoulders, part of the back, thighs and calves are decorated with spirals, circles and semicircles. He raises his head as he leans on his elbows, and with his hands makes gestures that identify him as having a high rank or position.
The head being exaggeratedly shaped with an oblique tabular molding fits perfectly into the framework of the bowl. The ornament that is decorating his crown is circular and scrolled, a type of implement that is usually carried by supernatural beings and gods, so we may be viewing a character who would have been emulating a supernatural entity or perhaps that would have been in a state of altered consciousness.
It is likely that the artist chose this horizontal composition of the character and repeated it as a solution to the horizontal format of the cup. A vessel virtually identical to this, perhaps by the same workshop or teacher is in the catalog of J. Kerr with number K5210. Other vessels of this catalog have characters in similar compositions to this, as observed in bowls K5011 and K4645. In many of them you can see how these characters lying face down are in this position because they are having enemas applied. We may think that perhaps our protagonist is in such a state of altered consciousness and under the hallucinogenic effects of the enema.
References
Kerr, Justin.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 1. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 1989.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 2. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 1990.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 3. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 1992.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 4. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 1995.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 5. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 1997.
- The Maya Vase Book. A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 6. Nueva York: Kerr Associates, 2000.
- http://research.famsi.org/kerrportfolio.html
Vessel with interior and exterior sides painted in ranges of orange, red and black; the figure of a young man lying face down is painted on the outer sides, occupying the middle section, and the same image is repeated in the other section. Both representations are separated by black vertical bands containing a painted red motif in circular shape and with decreasing lines, that are usually identified with aquatic spaces.
