Figural Pendant
Unknown Artist
1–800 CE
Medium
gold, cast and hammered
Dimensions
29.4 × 16.2 × 1 cm
Classification
Metalwork
Department
Art of the Americas
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
Accession Number
2015.1
About this artwork
Colombia's Tolima region is justly famous for arrestingly abstracted figures like this one, among the largest of its kind. Such figures, worn as necklace pendants by chiefs and other elites, seem to be based on the human form. But they also incorporate animal features, often an upturned, bifurcated tail sometimes compared to that of a serpent and large, angled head appendages that may refer to animal ears or even insect antennae.