Panel with Royal Woman
K’in Lakam Chahk
c. 795
Medium
limestone
Dimensions
60.4 × 69.8 cm
Classification
Sculpture
Department
Art of the Americas
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1962.32
Tags
Latine and Hispanic Artists
About this artwork
In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the...