Containing the Divine: Peru

Containing the Divine: Peru is on view in the Great Hall Balcony from May 25, 2022 to September 29, 2023. Read about the installation in Spanish here.

Four thousand years ago, artists in the Andean region of South America began transforming a ubiquitous material—clay—into vessels. Their works ranged from simple pots for everyday tasks to elaborate bottles for ritual use. Delicately modeled and decorated containers were a means of connecting with divine powers and were essential to public feasts that established and strengthened communities.

As there was no tradition of writing at this time, the exact interpretation of the pots’ complex imagery is unknown. The depictions of supernatural beings, animals, and people, however, reveal aspects of religious traditions that thrived for millennia before the rise of the Inca Empire in the fifteenth century. The vessels were designed to hold physical substances, but they also contain ancient Andean concepts of transformation, power, and cosmological knowledge.

Emerging Styles

Early potters emphasized the contrast between textured and polished surfaces in their ceramics, suggesting that these works were intended to be both a visual and a tactile experience. While muted colors were more common, potters occasionally applied red pigments after firing to create a more dramatic visual effect. Depictions of felines and other predators were imaginative, with animals often reduced to their most noticeable features or combined with elements of different creatures. These vessels, part of a religious tradition known today as Cupisnique or Chavín, were used in large gatherings at monumental ceremonial centers. Some pots were smashed and discarded; others were reused before they were eventually deposited in burials.

Stirrup-Spout Bottles

Stirrup-spout bottles were adopted by potters on Peru’s North Coast around 1200 B.C. Named in modern times after the spout’s resemblance to a riding saddle stirrup, these bottles remained the most recognizable vessel type in this region for the next 2,700 years. The peculiar spout provided a useful handle, but its main appeal may have been symbolic. By manipulating the flow of liquids, the spout could represent the circulation of water from rain to lakes, rivers, plants, and people. The water cycle may have been an organizing principle that aided Andean communities in understanding the complexity of the world and their place within it.

Apex Predators

This vessel depicts an otorongo (jaguar), a powerful feline from the Amazon rainforest, and a macanche (boa constrictor). Fierce, strong, and agile, these animals are cunning hunters that use surprise attacks to catch prey. Two San Pedro cacti, known for their hallucinogenic properties, are modeled on either side of the bottle. Ritual participants who ingested a beverage made from the cacti might have perceived themselves transforming into a jaguar or a snake. Four fearsome, animal like heads shown in profile are lightly incised on the vessel’s shoulder, continuing this message of power and predation.

Paracas: Colorful Palettes

Potters from the Paracas culture in Peru’s South Coast preferred incised and brightly painted bottles with spout-and-bridge handles. To color the vessels, artists typically combined mineral pigments with organic binders, applying the paint after the pots were fired. The resulting delicate surfaces imply that these bottles were not for everyday use. Early Paracas artists borrowed imagery—such as highly stylized, almost abstract felines—from their northern neighbors. They later developed more inventive motifs, including a creature identified by scholars as the Oculate Being, a flying figure holding a severed head.

Topará: Elegant Imitations

After 400 B.C., some South Coast communities developed a new local pottery style, known today as Topará. This substyle is distinct from other Paracas ceramics, featuring simple shapes, single-color surfaces, and polished exteriors. Often, bottles were shaped like gourds, a callback to the plant’s role as the original vessel used in the Andes. South Coast artists produced Topará ceramics for many centuries, even after the Paracas style was abandoned.

Nasca: Experiments with Color

Descendants of the Paracas tradition, Nasca artists developed bottles with colorful, durable surfaces capable of withstanding greater use. Potters applied slips—a mixture of clay and water, often with minerals added for color—before firing. Because mineral slips change color under high temperatures, this innovation must have required intensive experimentation. These vessels, decorated with religious imagery, were distributed after large festivals and carried to homes along the South Coast. The Nasca style dominated ceramic production until A.D. 650, when the Wari Empire began to influence the region.

Beer

Aqha or chicha, beer made of corn, has been the most important ceremonial drink in the Andes for hundreds of years. Here, vessels that may have once held beer celebrate corn imagery. A Nasca artist depicted the key components of a corn plant, from the roots to the cobs, shown without their leaves or husks. On another vessel—a ritual object known as a paccha—an Inca potter combined the shapes of a foot plow, a cob, and a jar. The work’s imagery neatly summarizes the process of planting, harvesting, and fermenting corn.

Wari Imperial Pottery

A large portion of what is now Peru was once controlled by the Wari, an empire centered in the Andean mountains that conquered a vast region, including the Pacific coast. Coastal artists developed a hybrid style, combining imperial Wari iconography with local pottery traditions. This bottle features a modeled feline head, characteristic of the highlands, with the colorful slip style developed on the coast by earlier Nasca potters. Painted on the flask-like body of the vessel, the feline’s claws grasp another animal, perhaps a reference to imperial reach and power.

Moche: Interspecies Designs

Prolific and inventive, Moche potters created a striking new style on the North Coast during the first centuries A.D. Early examples portray animals and humans with considerable fidelity; later vessels feature one or more animals fused with the bodies of warriors in compositions that dissolve the boundaries between species. Animals were not part of a natural world to be dominated, but rather, beings to emulate with desirable abilities like flying, swimming, and hunting.

Moche: Portrait Vessels

During the mid-1st millennium A.D, Moche artists excelled at creating “portrait vessels,” named for their striking evocation of specific individuals. In some cases, it is possible to recognize what appears to be the same person represented across multiple vessels which trace their growth from youth to middle age. It is tempting to see the portraits as depictions of heroic leaders, victorious warriors, or possibly communal ancestors. Yet the fox head bottle complicates this reading, reminding us that these works often defy interpretation.

Root Beings

This vessel presents an unexpected combination of a fanged human head emerging from a potato body. The tail and limbs are shaped like manioc roots, another important vegetable in the ancient Andes. The limbs were positioned to evoke the movement of an insect or a crustacean. By manipulating clay and pigments, water and fire, this artist created a being that is simultaneously potato, manioc, and human. How many people ever imagined that a root vegetable could appear restless and dangerous?

Enduring Legacies

In the centuries after the fall of the Moche civilization, the Chimú kingdom rose and conquered most of the Pacific coast from present-day Ecuador to the modern Peruvian capital of Lima. By this time, potters used molds to produce large quantities of vessels. Grey-black ceramics became the signature ware of the Chimú. Even though this stirrup-spout bottle was created some 2,000 years after the earliest Cupisnique vessels, its feline shape attests to the enduring traditions in ancient Peruvian ceramics.