Feathered serpent ornament

Glittering gold catches the rays of sunlight filtering onto this feathered serpent ornament and reflects it back to the viewer’s eyes. Ancient artists molded this precious metal through a repoussé technique, hammering thin sheets of gold from the back to create delicate, undulating designs that catch and reflect light from multiple angles. The ornament bears a single perforation near the top, suggesting that it was meant to be attached to a surface in some way, perhaps sewn onto clothing, nailed into wood, or hung on a human body or effigy as part of ritual regalia.

The Met’s collection includes four feathered serpent ornaments: two forming a pair (1979.206.1152 and 1979.206.1153) and two individual pieces (1979.206.1154 and 1978.412.199). All four ornaments share a nearly identical iconography: they are L-shaped, with the head of a serpent facing outwards at the end of the lower horizontal line. The serpent’s mouth opens to reveal sharp teeth, and a fan of feathers arcs up above its eyes and snout and out to either side. Turning at a sharp 90-degree angle, the body of the serpent rises vertically, marked with geometric shapes including circles, horizontal bars, and delicate volutes curling in multiple directions. A single large circle graces the tip of the creature’s tail, with feather panaches extending to either side. Small volutes curl at even distances below the serpent’s body, suggesting that it moves through water or clouds.

Through interviews conducted with informants who once worked as moneros or looters, these objects have been tentatively traced back to an ancient cemetery at the site of El Chanal in the West Mexican state of Colima (Kelly 1980, 1985). Metallurgy (both repoussé and lost wax techniques) had flourished in West Mexico for centuries prior to the creation of these ornaments. Their style, however, does not represent work typically created in this region; instead, the iconography aligns closely with that created by Mixtec artists, while similarly perforated gold sheet ornaments have been found in Mexica (Aztec) contexts, including the Templo Mayor at Tenochtitlan. These incongruencies speak to their likely role as trade objects in the Postclassic Period. Long-established and closely overseen trade routes would have ferried gold dust from various parts of Mesoamerica to the heart of the Mexica empire, where artists would have created gold ornaments that would then be redistributed, sold, and traded throughout the region.

This centralized trade system led to the creation of shared visual vocabularies that formed part of a larger "International Style" to which these gold ornaments inevitably belong.


Catherine Nuckols, Sylvan C. Coleman and Pam Coleman Fellow in the History of Art and Visual Culture, 2025