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Mask

y1970-111

This wooden mask presents a human face in classic Aztec style, with lidded almond-shaped eyes and parted lips. Colonial accounts record the Aztec use of gold masks, yet this is the only known example with traces of gold leaf still present. Such masks were gifted to Spaniards as “payment” for leaving Aztec territory, and, before the arrival of the Spanish, similar practices may have impelled other foreigners to leave—which could explain the discovery of this mask in Oaxaca, far from the Aztec capital. The lack of eyeholes suggests that the mask was designed to be worn by a sculptural representation of a deity or a sculpted model of a deceased person; the Aztecs produced surrogate images of high-ranking individuals to accompany their cremated remains.

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More Context

Didactics

A mask of this kind must have been attached to life-sized statue, idol, or mummy bundle as no effort was made to carve holes for the eyes of a ritual impersonator to see through. Many carved wooden masks are known to come from the dry caves of southern Puebla and northern Oaxaca but these are more commonly covered in turquoise mosaic. This is an unusual example in that it was carved with the slightly more elongated features typical of late Aztec style rather than the more expressionistic Mixteca-Puebla and may even have been intended as a portrait. Covered in gold leaf with eyes and teeth formed from shell or some other precious medium it must have been riveting to gaze upon. The Aztecs preferred to cremate their royal dead after dressing them in the manner of a kingdom’s patron god, while the Mixtecs preserved the bodies by mummifying them and placing them in remote caves. The Zapotecs also preferred to mummify the dead but placed them in tombs located below palace courts. In all its varied uses, the mask became the holy countenance of gods and ancestors through which priests and ritual practitioners believed they could communicate with the afterworld.

Information

Object Number

y1970-111

Medium

Wood with traces of gesso, gold leaf, and hematite

Dates

A.D. 1400–1520

Dimensions

h. 20.2 cm., w. 20.5 cm., d. 11.5 cm. (7 15/16 x 8 1/16 x 4 1/2 in.)

Culture

Aztec

Credit Line

Gift of Mrs. Gerard B. Lambert

Place Made

North America, Mexico, reportedly found in southern Oaxaca, Central Mexico

Type

masks (costume), sculpture

Subject

portraits, faces, ceremonial objects, mummy cases

Materials

hematite, wood, gold leaf, gesso

June 17, 1970, Alphonse Jax, New York, sold to Gillett G. Griffin (1928-2016), Princeton, NJ [1]. 1970, gift of Mrs. Gerard B. Lambert to the Princeton University Art Museum Notes: [1] According to a Jax invoice in the curatorial file.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774539

"Acquisitions 1970", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 30, no. 1 (1971): p. 22-30., p. 26

3440 1971

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8627850

Esther Pasztory, Aztec Art (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983)., pl. 292 (illus.)

2654 1983

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13186418

Gerald Berjonneau, Emile Deletaille, and Jean-Louis Sonnery, Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras (Boulogne: Editions Arts, 1985)., cat. no. 31 (illus.)

2538 1985

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/884745984

Cecelia F. Klein, "Masking Empire: The Material Effects of Masks in Aztec Mexico", Art History 9, no. 2 (June 1986): p. 135-67., fig. 6 (illus.)

2781 1986

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/14244748

Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 55 (illus.)

1899 1986

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/55955322

Elizabeth P. Benson et al., Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits (San Antonio, Tex.: San Antonio Museum of Art, 2004)., fig. 6, p. 53 (illus.)

139 2004

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57144932

Felipe Solís, The Aztec Empire: Catalogue of the Exhibition (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004)., cat. no. 138 (illus.)

2930 2004

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/57120073

Felipe Solís, The Aztec Empire (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004)., fig. 21 (illus.)

2956 2004

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774829

Allen Rosenbaum, "'Gillett and Me': How a Eurocentric Museum Director Learned to Love Pre-Columbian Art," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 64 (2005): 8-19., fig. 1, p. 8; fig. 2, p. 9; fig. 3, p. 10

2745 2005

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/865020505

Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 222

1994 2013