Bottle with masked figure

Nasca ceramicists of Peru’s South Coast produced refined polychrome vessels in the early and middle centuries of the first millennium of the Common Era. Nasca artists depicted animals, plants, people, and supernatural beings in great detail, including distinctive hairstyles, nose ornaments, and elaborate clothing. These fine polychrome ceramics were used in ceremonies attended by hundreds of people, who transported these vessels back home as prestige items and as carriers of religious knowledge.

Certain figures appear repeatedly in Nasca art. Among the most prominent is the Masked Being, named by contemporary scholars after its design: a richly dressed figure with large, open eyes, and a face largely obscured by a diadem (diadem is usually a head ornament that would not obscure the face) and an elaborate nose ornament with feline whiskers. Regularly shown flying or floating, the Masked Being sometimes carries a severed human head in one hand, a weapon in the other, and a row of heads hanging on its back as if they were ornaments. In this depiction of the Masked Being, the figure holds a plant while devouring its fruit. The same plant sprouts from the mouth of a disembodied head in the back of the Masked Being, suggesting a connection between death and fertility.

The Nasca style was the dominant artistic tradition of the South Coast of Peru between 1 and 600 CE. In many ways, it was the continuation of the earlier Paracas style, but Nasca artists distinguished their work through the use of colorful slips—watery mixtures of clay and pigments—applied before firing, thereby permanently fixing the color to the ceramic surface. Nasca artists also distinguished themselves from their predecessors in their compositions: the complex incised images of Paracas were initially replaced with simple repeating natural depictions of animals or plants, as well as simple repeating geometric shapes (see, for example, MMA 64.228 and 1992.60.6). Over time, the images became more complex, as seen on the present example.

References and further reading

Ikehara-Tsukayama Hugo C., Dawn Kriss, and Joanne Pillsbury. Ikehara-Tsukayama Hugo C., Dawn Kriss, and Joanne Pillsbury. “Containing the Divine: Ancient Peruvian Pots.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Vol. 80, Number 4 (Spring 2023). “Containing the Divine: Ancient Peruvian Pots.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin vol. 80, no 4 (Spring 2023).

Pardo, Cecilia, and Peter Fux. Nasca. Lima: Museo de Arte Lima, 2017.

Peters, Anne. Funerary Regalia and Institutions of Leadership in Paracas and Topara. Chungara, Revista de Antropolgia Chilena, 32, no. 2 (2000), pp. 245-252.

Proulx, Donald A. “Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society” in Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth Benson and Anita Cook, pp. 119-136. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001.

Proulx, Donald A. A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography: Reading a Culture Through its Art. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006.

Proulx, Donald A. “Paracas and Nasca: Regional Cultures on the South Coast of Peru” in Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William Isbell, pp. 563-584. Springer Press, 2008.

Sawyer, Alan Reed. Ancient Peruvian Ceramics: The Nathan Cummings Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966.

Vaughn, Kevin J. "Craft and the Materialization of Chiefly Power in Nasca," in Foundations of Power in the Prehispanic Andes, edited by Kevin J. Vaughn, Dennis Ogburn, and Christina A. Conlee. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, No. 14, pp. 113-30. American Anthropological Association, 2005.