Currently not on view

Two-part censer in the form of an architectural model

1998-221 a-b
Numerous mass-produced, mold-made elements compose this assemblage sculpture. The upper portion was made to be lifted off, so that copal (pine-tree resin) or rubber incense could be placed inside; the smoke emanated from the tube that runs through the center of the scene. The platform and angled roof indicate an architectural setting in distinctively Teotihuacan style. Birds and severed human arms hang from a temple structure above a pair of seated human figures. Three additional figures, two wearing dog or coyote masks, accompany the humans while an owl descends from the sky to perch at the very top.
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Information

Object Number
1998-221 a-b
Medium
Ceramic with pigment
Dates

A.D. 400–550

Dimensions
top: h. 55.0 cm., diam. 29.0 cm. (21 5/8 x 11 7/16 in.) base: h. 17.0 cm., diam. 28.5 cm. (6 11/16 x 11 1/4 in.)
Culture
Teotihuacán style
Credit Line
Gift of Samuel Merrin in honor of Allen Rosenbaum
Place Made

North America, Guatemala, Esquintla, Maya area

Type
censers, models (representations), ceramics, incense burners, sculpture
Subject
metropolises, owls, temples, figures (representations), tableros, building, masks (costume)
Materials
ceramic, pigment

December 1998, gift of Samuel Merrin, New York, to the Princeton University Art Museum.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774795

"Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1998," <em>Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University </em>58, no. 1/2 (1999): p. 86-123., p. 122

3044 1999
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/191864564

<em>Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection</em> (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 172 (illus.)

474 2007
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/865020505

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

1994 2013
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1023261406

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos, <em>Art and Myth of the Ancient Maya</em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017)<br>, p. 146, fig. 62

9578 2017

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