Guatemala or Mexico, Usumacinta River region, Maya style / c. 795
Panel with Royal Woman
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Panel with Royal Woman as sculpture (Guatemala or Mexico, Usumacinta River region, Maya style · c. 795).
This panel, likely from a palace interior, depicts a royal Maya woman.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this sculpture as limestone and credits K’in Lakam Chahk.
The museum's collection notes: In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in 795.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtPanel with Royal WomanOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.