Seated male figure

This male figure and its female companion (see MMA 1999.272.1) are examples of the Lagunillas style, notable for its smooth burnished surfaces and painted ornamentation that contrast with the heavy, three-dimensional costumes and jewelry typical of other West Mexican styles.

The pair are represented as complementary. Shown with the woman’s legs folded under her and the man seated cross-legged, they are nearly equal in size, with rounded stomachs and thin arms. Both are nude from the waist up, the women dressed only in a red skirt, the man in a red loincloth, each with red and black markings that may represent tattooing or body paint. Earlobe perforations indicate that both once wore ear ornaments, likely made of metal, clay, or feathers. Differences in gender, however, are clearly shown by the exposed breasts of the female and the male’s genitalia, evident through his loincloth. He sits with his hands resting on his thighs, while the woman holds a bowl with geometric designs, a sign of her domestic role within society.

The man wears a headband of twisted cloth woven in a similar geometric pattern, while the female’s head is bare. Typical of Lagunillas style, the hair of both figures is of a rough, unburnished texture, contrasting with the smooth surface of the rest of the figure.

Paired sculptures depicting male and female figures frequently are found among the burial goods of the shaft tombs in western Mexico. Sometimes dug beneath house platforms, these tombs served as family mausoleums and were periodically opened to bury the more recently deceased. They may represent the recently interred, or ancestors who help to prolong the family line through their guidance and fertility, thus connecting those of the remote past with present and future generations.

Patricia J. Sarro, 2024

Further Reading

Baumbach, Otto Schöndube. EL HORIZONTE CLASICO: Las Culturas de Jalisco, Colima y Nayarit / THE CLASSIC HORIZON: The Cultures of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit. Artes de México, no. 119 (1969): 23–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24315718.

Butterwick, Kristi. Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico: The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection. New York, New Haven, London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 85–86, no. 38.

Cabrero G., Ma. Teresa and Carlos López Cruz. Las Tumbas de tiro de El Piñon, En El Cañon de Bolaños, Jalisco, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 9, no. 4 (1998): 328–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3537031.

Gallagher, Jacki. Companions of the Dead. Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West Mexico. Los Angeles: University of California. 1983.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima. Los Angeles: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989.

Pickering, Robert B., and Ephraim Cuevas. The Ancient Ceramics of West Mexico: Corpse-Eating Insects and Mineral Stains Help a Forensic Anthropologist and a Chemist Determine the Authenticity of 2,000-Year-Old Figurines. American Scientist 91, no. 3 (2003): 242–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27858214.

Pickering, Robert B. and Cheryl Smallwood-Roberts. West Mexico: ritual and identity. Tulsa: Gilcrease Museum, 2016

Townsend, Richard, ed. Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

Zepeda, Gabriela, Nayarit prehispánico. In Introducción a la arqueología del Occidente de México. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia: 2004, pp. 371-396.