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Beaker with faces, snakes, and pumas

1400–1535 CE
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 361
Beakers with faces featuring pronounced noses resembling bird beaks have been found on Peru’s Central and South coasts. This one is unusual, as it has a face on either side and is enlivened by two feline heads and two undulating serpents above the faces.

According to newspaper accounts in 1900, this beaker was found on a farm near Lima, Peru, and was sent by “the orphans of Lima” to the New York Herald to be auctioned for the benefit of those left fatherless and motherless by the great Galveston storm of 1900—the single most deadly natural disaster in U.S. history.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Beaker with faces, snakes, and pumas
  • Artist: Inca artist(s)
  • Date: 1400–1535 CE
  • Geography: Peru, Lima
  • Culture: Chimú
  • Medium: Gold
  • Dimensions: H. 6 1/2 × W. 5 1/8 × D. 4 3/4 in. (16.5 × 13 × 12.1 cm)
  • Classification: Metal-Containers
  • Credit Line: Gift of Charles W. Gould, 1928
  • Object Number: 28.128
  • Curatorial Department: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

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