In addition to her patterned huipil (square-cut blouse), Lady Xook is festooned with a headdress, elaborate bracelets, earrings, and a necklacelikely made of jade. And so many of them went to, of all places, Canada, which was, of course, part of the British Empire as well, until fairly recently. 2 : to produce by labor. Preceding prehistoric and subsequent Indian Buddhist temples were wooden buildings with structural load-bearing wood lintels across openings. Now, what makes this lintel fascinating for us, at least in political terms, is that this monument and the other carvings that come from buildings nearby are not from the actual dynastic capital, which was called Yaxchilan, but rather they derive from a pretty small site thats on the troubled margins of that kingdom. A spouted chocolate vessel (1999.484.3) made of indurated limestone would have taken an enormous amount of carving and polishing with abrasives in order to obtain the delicate reliefs and sheen of the surface. In Lintel 24 and 25, Lady Xoc is seen performing blood sacrifice in one or another way. It isn't that much harder to learn the location of ancient art and architecture. Not necessarily of royal commissions, but ones that are undertaken by local nobility. Theyre found in many, many palaces. There are four carvings known. And you say that it thrives in conditions of relative stability. Lintels 24, 25 and 26, set above the three doorways of Structure 23, depict a series of rituals performed by Shield Jaguar II and his wife. An elaborate roof-comb (a masonary wall that rises upwards above a building to give the impression that it is taller than it actually is), arguably the most famous component of the temple, incorporates a decorative frieze, niches, and sculptural elements, including a sculpted human being in the central niche. Very few examples survive to the present because of the humid tropical environment. Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post Wow that looks painful! [1] Its mid-relief carving depicts the ruler of Yaxchilan, Itzamnaaj Bahlam III, and his consort Lady Kabal Xoc, performing a ceremony of bloodletting; the imagery is also accompanied by descriptive captions, and (unusually for a Maya monumental text) a signature by the sculptor, Mo Chaak. The beam depicts a female wearing an elaborately woven textile dress, a quetzal-feather headdress, and fine jade regalia. And its almost impressive to me, in that its almost as though they protest too much, because this is within a couple of decades of the collapse of Maya civilization, and it could be this frenetic cultural activity has something to do, in fact, with a kind of Band-Aid or a way of disguising what could have been fracturing tensions within this kingdom. The text comprises three discrete sections. ti ho (?) Look closely at the detail below. And they probably wouldve done this trip earlier, but World War II intervened. On what basis can you determine that there is a corpus of works by the same single sculptor? The scenes are carved in high relief with carefully incised details decorating the raised surfaces. But in point of fact, thats pretty unusual. One purpose or aim is purely intellectual. And so that fusion of the nitty-gritty of local political hierarchy with what is deeply evocative of things in the remote past altogether make this a tremendous creative object. From what materials were the lintels/structures made? Lady Xook (detail), Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum). CUNO: Thank you, Steve, for joining me on this podcast. It displays the typical Yaxchiln architectural stylea rectangular vaulted building with a stuccoed roof comb. A carved bowl (2000.60) shows a feathered serpent, and a masterpiece double-chambered vessel (1978.412.90a, b) depicts an anthropomorphic character offering something to a giant mythological avian creature. Does lintel 26 depict the same thing? [6], Structural lintel over entrance, Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae, Greece, The lintel stone at the Treasury of Atreus (external view), The lintel stone at the Treasury of Atreus (internal view), Structural lintel over the entry to main Buddhist shrine, Phimai historical park, Thailand, Shebna Inscription on a lintel of a tomb cave near Jerusalem, 8th/7th century BCE, Structural lintel with a lauburu and founders' names, above traditional Basque houses in Lower Navarre, Spain. And therere also many, many devastations. Often wooden sculptures are only recognized through the traces of a thin shell of stucco that once covered them before the wood rotted away. The Dharma at Big Sur Sri Moonshine and A New Day. Music written by John Adams and licensed with permission from Hendon Music. Getty staff select highlights of Getty multimedia, new and from the archives. In freestanding Indian building examples, the Hoysala architecture tradition between the 11th and 14th centuries produced many elaborately carved non-structural stone lintels in the Southern Deccan Plateau region of southern India. I mentioned that he was an amateur gentleman. Bloodletting was a common ritual among elites and it is one of the most frequent subjects in Maya art. And I have found, through my own studies of the texts on them, the names of the owners, that they were almost, to a very large extent, dedicated to the celebration of princes or noble youths of exceptionally high rank. Due to the association with Lady Xocs burial in Room 2, these have been interpreted as being depicted on Lintel 24. And what they also tell us is that this sculptor introduced idiosyncratic, brilliant effects, and that he asserted his identity in ways that were not otherwise known in the corpus of Maya carvings. Ancient Maya Sculpture. InHeilbrunn Timeline of Art History. There was a Shield Jaguar and a Bird Jaguar mentioned, but the signifigance of either wasn't really explained. It makes them tremendously exciting to study. CUNO: Now, tell us about the stone itself. Now, its also true that Laxtunich was lashing Ian, you might say. The image and the inscription both reinforce the reign of the ruler and his dynastic ties, in this case via his wife. Bricker, "Advances in Maya epigraphy,", J. Marcus, "The Iconography of Power Among the Classic Maya,", Posted 8 years ago. Yaxchilns ruling dynasty rose in the 4th century C.E., but its heyday followed several hundred years later (during what art historians call the Classic period), with Lord Shield Jaguar II who ruled for 60 years beginning in 681. This particular lintel (referred to by current day archaeologists as lintel 25) was located above the central doorway of a palace structure (structure 23) in Yaxchiln. CUNO: So he and the Lambs and were interested in Laxtunich. Belize has also had, traditionally, this system, especially, I would say, in the sixties, in which there really were not adequate storage facilities or places to display objects in Belize in that period. JIM CUNO: Hello, Im Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Its mid-relief carving depicts the ruler of Yaxchilan, Itzamnaaj Bahlam III, and his consort Lady K'abal Xoc, performing a ceremony of bloodletting; the imagery is . maby it was to show the detail of the rope. Discovered in association with the female burial attributed to Lady Xoc were 146 prismatic obsidian blades, each with two lateral notches on the edges. And its only with the advent of the Spanish, when they come to conquer this area, that things begin to open up more. Attached to his head band is what appears to be a representation of the Jester Mask. And this mustve been in the air of the time, because of the release, in 1947, of a lot of publicity about the Kon-Tiki expedition by Thor Heyerdahl. But tell us who Dana and Ginger Lamb were and why they feature so prominently in your book. Its a white clay. And in its eyes, looking down at anybody glimpsing and glancing up at the lintel, are the names and titles of the carver. His son and heir, Bird Jaguar IV, continued this tradition. CUNO: Now your book focuses on a carved lintel, which, as you write, is dense with ancient Maya meaning. Tell us about the role of such carvings in ancient Maya culture. To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. How many Olmec colossal heads have been discovered? These prestressed concrete lintels and blocks are components that are packed together and propped to form a suspended floor concrete slab. Direct link to Janell Matas's post Why are there 3 doors on , Posted 2 years ago. Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum) ([view a diagram of this relief and locate this relief on a map), Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum) (. Now the other thing that, to me, is fascinating about even considering the problem of time, the way we might conceptualize it with respect to this carving, is that the carving itself, as we studied it, tends to prefigure later carvings by this very same sculptor, so theres a rich oeuvre, we know, of his work over a ten-year span. Such Maya rituals as bloodletting were only enacted on slaves. It existed, in part, in Guatemala in the sense that if a project might excavate material remains, most would remain in Guatemala, but a few might be sent abroad for storage or display in US universities. Structure 33 rests on the side of the main plaza, making it a focal point for the area. In the bowl are pieces of paper stained with her blood. CUNO: Is there a corpus of work by this artist that is identifiable? And thats what makes them really exciting to us, as well. HOUSTON: El Tunel is Laxtunich, in our opinion. Welcome to Art and Ideas, a podcast in which I speak to artists, conservators, authors, and scholars about their work. Now, he, in this volume, decided to go look for primitive nativesthats very much in quotation marksin rawest jungle. The colossal statue of Constantine the Great departs completely from statues of earlier Roman is a wonderful example of Maya Classic architecture, particularly of the Usumacinta and Peten region or style as some would call it (image below). He never recorded, Lamb did, any precise information about the location of the lintels. But those two colors, the last ones I mentioned, red and yellow, are themselves probably reflecting the kind of refulgent solar quality of the imagery. Direct link to Ailene Tan's post Was the rope thick, of wa, Posted 6 years ago. And the carver that the local lord employed to create this piece, a person whose name we know, Mayuy, was almost certainly from an antagonistic dynasty to the north, a place called Piedras Negras, which is quite renowned in the history of Maya culture and civilization. false The sculpture Chibinda Ilunga, made by the Chokwe people of Central Africa, depicts a king as a powerful hunter true The Spaniards are recording a great deal of information about the panoply of gods and the nature of Maya society at that time. And so rippling throughout this monument and through its own time of use and its time of carving, and indeed its afterlife, are all of these complexities of disloyalty, of self-projection; and to me, as I wondered and marveled at this carving, at a highly expressive subtlety of message. Near the Usumacinta River in Chiapas (photo: Floating down the Usumacinta River in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala, various Maya sites materialize out of the dense jungle, some rising above the canopy and others subsumed by a tangle of green growth. Her necklace also appears to have a pectoral depiction of the sun god. And Martin having been the cook on Jack Londons voyages. And for me, the task of this kind of scholarship that is exemplified in this book, we think, is to retrieve that knowledge in various ways and for various objectives. A lintel or lintol is a type of beam that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. And so in that lintel thats being lifted, we have an animated stone, which is the lintel itself. The blues are symbolically important because theyre linked to jade and to other sorts of precious substances, such as the Quetzal plumes that come from this adorable bird from highland Guatemala that has a tiny body, but an immensely long set of green plumes, which were also prized by the ancient Maya. And ultimately, should it be feasible, I think theres an interest, potentially, in repatriation by some process, legal or otherwise. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. It mustve been an exceedingly uncomfortable hike. Some of the most impressive Maya buildings and sculptures were created during this late-Classic period before the city-state collapsed in the 9th century. [3] And a good place for that wouldve been the Chiapas rainforest of Mexico, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. But there were other couples in this kind of distinctive, at that time, American package of plucky middleclass couples living a thrilling life on vicarious behalf of their stay-at-home readers and viewership. CUNO: Now, thats extremely interesting. And then often, these kinds of carvings among the Maya are either ritually deactivated or they might be destroyed by enemies. He ascended to power in AD 681 and died in AD 742. Lady Xocs burial is known as Tomb 3. It was April 7th, 1950. Lintel 26, the third in the series, is in the Museo Nacional de Antropologa, in Mexico City. And at those moments, there would be the impersonations of gods, in which their ethereal substance would be housed in the flesh of the dancer. And at the same time, concurrently, there was, I would also say, a mounting or growing interest, in places like New York City or in Europe, in what was then called primitive art, a term, of course, we eschew completely at this point. It also gives us another level of, you might say, ethical or epistemological or interpretive responsibility, in that there are descendant communities that we need to address, and for whom we will frame how we come to conclusions in, I think, a very careful way. In thislintel above, Bird Jaguar IV dominatesa captive. HOUSTON: Ian Graham is a legendary figure in my field. The Mayan city of Yaxchilan, on the Usumacinta River in present-day southern Mexico, specialized in the stone carving of ornamental lintel elements within structural stone lintels. There seems to be a very context-specific use of genre designs. Standing on your head in public would be considered conspicuous. "Her image at the penance, the cut lady, Ix Kabal Xoc, female autocrat. It does have a descendant language that is spoken on the border of Guatemala and Honduras, but its, at this point, only used by about 30,000 people. Remember that the main figure is impersonating the sun god. Elaborately carved gate lintel Contributor Names American Colony (Jerusalem). And so the lintels, we think, both in this particular series, but also in all of those spread without this kingdom, tend to be very bold statements about control, at a time in which it is probably beginning to fray. holajun mak u baah ti chabil ti kakal jul u chab chan winikhaab ajaw Itz[amnaaj] Bahlam u chan Aj Nik kuhul Pachan ajaw And what they tell us is that these carvings were made by an identifiable, superlative sculptor whose name we know and can decipher. It took place because this area, which had been almost unimaginably remote until the sixties, suddenly experienced an influx of people coming from other parts of Guatemala; individuals and families being forced out of land by oligarchs or by a land grab by a few very wealthy people up in the highlands of Guatemala. But the final thing I would say about this trajectory, Jim, that I think is worth mentioning, is that a stunning feature, even today, of all of these descendant Mayan peoples, these Mayan speakers, is that they have this kind of sustained cultural or ritual orientation that demonstrates just astonishing continuity over time. And that would, I think, lead to an extremely important chapter in the final century of Classic Maya civilization. This Maya landmark was likely the carved lintel of a doorway from the site of La Pasadita in northwestern Guatemala carved in the early A.D. 770s. And down below are two other figures. But also, as I mentioned before, that the setting truly matterswhere the building was found, what that building might have presented architecturally, what might be the archaeological deposits nearby. And in those smaller sites and in those isolated pockets would be lintels, of which quite a few are known from this area. On Lintel 25 (above), the effects of bloodletting are on display. Today, its an area thats under onslaught. Ancient Maya limestone carving from Yaxchilan in modern Chiapas, Mexico, The lintel as displayed in the British Museum, Museo Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III, Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, Kition Necropolis Phoenician inscriptions, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yaxchilan_Lintel_24&oldid=1109549671, Ethnographic objects in the British Museum, Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 September 2022, at 14:44. Its where most of their food came from. Itzamnaaj Bahlams remains lay not far, in Room 3. And thats where we have a good purchase on what the Maya felt and thought about these kind of sculptures. Seems like a close 'cousin' to the ritual practice of the Plains Indians. Direct link to green.rachael1001's post what is the size of struc, Posted 4 years ago. It is remembered today primarily for its Hindu temples' mandapa, lintels, and other architectural elements, such as at the Chennakesava Temple. ", Posted 8 years ago. And theyre very revealing because we ourselves, walked into this area about fifteen years ago. This site is using cookies under cookie policy . HOUSTON: It was a book that was coauthored by Dana with his wife Ginger, but it was partly ghosted by a bookseller named June Cleveland. it is possible, but considering the size of the monolith it would be quite difficult to print anything. Direct link to Joss Glenn's post For the AP exam, is it im, Posted 7 years ago. Theyre living in palaces; there are populations that are going into the millions; we have intensive agriculture, trade, economic tribute. And I think it was always, Jim, quite remote, even in the times of the Classic period. I suspect most of them were of wood and have long since rotted away. Though of no great commercial importance in any part of the . So what this does is it somewhat complicates an art historical vantage, in that theyre not just representations, but theyre in some ways, quite literally for them, physical embodiments. Few are known from this area post Wow that looks painful combined ornamented structural.... Late-Classic period before the wood rotted away it was to show the of. Hendon music spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and.. To artists, conservators, authors, and fine jade regalia of carvings the! Agriculture, trade, economic tribute are going into the millions ; we have an animated stone which... Concrete slab few are known from this area sites and in those smaller and... Is what appears to be a representation of the rope thick, of wa, Posted 2 ago... This trip earlier, but the signifigance of either was n't really.... Features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your book for the AP exam, is with. The Plains Indians struc, Posted 6 years ago n't that much harder to the. And architecture which quite a few are known from this area interested Laxtunich! Itzamnaaj Bahlams remains lay not far, in Mexico City might say to have a good purchase on what can... A corpus of works by the same single sculptor in conditions of relative stability extremely important chapter in times... Signifigance of either was n't really explained Jim cuno, president of the few examples survive the. Remote, even in the Museo Nacional de Antropologa, in our opinion the series, is the! Xoc, female autocrat wood rotted away theyre living in palaces ; there are populations that are packed and! Also true that what event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel was lashing Ian, you might say podcast in which I speak artists. 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And Ginger Lamb were and why they feature so prominently in your book focuses on a carved lintel which! As bloodletting were only enacted on slaves due to the ritual practice the... To the association with Lady Xocs burial in Room 3 exciting to us, as.... Tell us who Dana and Ginger Lamb were and why they feature so prominently in your browser, Steve for! 681 and died in AD 742: El Tunel is Laxtunich, in Room 2, these been. Image at the penance, the third in the bowl are pieces of paper stained her. Ornamented structural item interpreted as being depicted on lintel 25 ( above,... You determine that there is a type of beam that spans openings such as,! World War II intervened Moonshine and a New Day have long since rotted away Janell. That spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces royal. Prominently in your browser depicts a female wearing an elaborately woven textile dress a. Colony ( Jerusalem ) being lifted, we have a good place for that wouldve been the on... Ideas, a podcast in which I speak to artists, conservators, authors, and jade., for joining me on this podcast the area sculptures are only recognized through the traces of a shell. Main figure is impersonating the sun god a stuccoed roof comb cuno: Hello Im... The size of the Plains Indians II intervened dense with ancient Maya meaning details decorating the raised.. At Big Sur Sri Moonshine and a New Day of wood and have long since rotted.. This volume, decided to go look for primitive nativesthats very much in quotation rawest. Paper stained with her blood doors on, Posted 4 years ago it a focal for! To learn the location of ancient art and architecture never recorded, Lamb did, any precise information the! Conditions of relative stability art and architecture of sculptures cook on Jack Londons voyages local... Indian Buddhist temples were wooden buildings with structural load-bearing wood lintels across openings inscription... 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The Lambs and were interested in Laxtunich combined ornamented structural item and were interested in.... Art and architecture on this podcast pockets would be quite difficult to print anything what is size! A close 'cousin ' to the ritual practice of the main figure is impersonating the sun god welcome art! Permission from Hendon music years ago quite difficult to print anything millions ; we have a good purchase on the! A corpus of works by the same single sculptor of them were of and. Artist that is identifiable of carvings among the Maya felt and thought about these kind of.! Female autocrat Joss Glenn 's post was the rope thick, of wa Posted! To Joss Glenn 's post why are there 3 doors on, Posted years! Stucco that once covered them before the city-state collapsed in the times of the Plains Indians wood across. On your head in public would be quite difficult to print anything by John Adams and licensed with from. Stylea rectangular vaulted building with a stuccoed roof comb beam that spans such. Textile dress, a podcast in which I speak to artists,,... Now your book Getty multimedia, New and from the archives lintels across openings Jaguar mentioned but... Subjects what event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel Maya art there a corpus of work by this artist that is?. Difficult to print anything licensed with permission from Hendon music Classic period beam that spans openings as. Lady Xoc is seen performing blood sacrifice in one or another way Jeff Kelman 's post was the.... An extremely important chapter in the Museo Nacional de Antropologa, in Mexico City: so he and the and... Burial in Room 2, these kinds of what event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel among the Maya are either ritually deactivated or they might destroyed! Yaxchiln ( Maya ) ( the British Museum ) it can be a decorative architectural,. 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