Eagle Pendant

When Spaniards arrived on the coast of what is now Costa Rica in the sixteenth century, they encountered individuals wearing “águilas” (Spanish for eagle) or avian pendants suspended from cords around the neck. A photograph of Antonio Saldaña, one of the last kings of the Bribris, taken in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, shows him wearing some half dozen of these ornaments. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact species of bird represented here as these pendants mix closely observed details from the natural world in imaginative ways, it is clearly a bird of prey, perhaps a harpy eagle, shown with a fishlike creature in its beak from which descends a double-headed serpent. Carefully cast using the lost-wax method, the bird features a band of raised dots on the underside of the wing, spiral earspools, and eyes that function as bells, complete with clappers.