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Course: Art of the Americas to World War I > Unit 3
Lesson 8: MocheMoche Portrait Head Bottle
Portrait Head Bottle, 5th–6th century (Moche culture), Peru, ceramic,
32.39 cm high (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Speakers: Dr. Sarahh Scher and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is the stirrup spout purely a stylistic design, or does it have a function? easier to tie to things maybe?(4 votes)
- It appears by the its angle that it would make it easier to pour out its contents.(4 votes)
Video transcript
(upbeat piano music) - [Voiceover] We're standing in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in the galleries devoted to the pre-Columbian
art of South America. And looking at an object that comes from what is present day Peru that was made by the Moche culture. It's a ceramic bottle and
this is one of thousands of bottles that have been found. - [Voiceover] It seems to
have been something that was very important for them to
produce in large numbers. We know that they used
molds to produce a lot of their ceramics and so
they were making things in multiples even when
they were finishing the surfaces by hand. - [Voiceover] And we see
some beautiful finished work. First of all, it's clear
that the clay has been burnished probably with
a smooth implement like river stone or something
that would have been able to produce that very
glossy, almost glaze-like quality, but this is not glazed. It is, however, very
characteristic of Moche's ceramic ware with this very unusual spout which is known as a stirrup spout. - [Voiceover] It's something
that we see quite a lot in Moche vessels that are made
for high status consumption. It's something that is
a revival to some extent of earlier styles that
are seen in the Chavin and the Cupisnique culture and may even refer to the Moche looking back to those earlier cultures in their prestige and claiming it for themselves. - [Voiceover] So this object
that we're looking at, although itself is very
old, could be referring to something even more ancient. So let's take a close look at it. We have this beautiful human face. This probably male face with a sharp nose who seems to be looking
directly out at us. The ears are sort of oddly pushed forward and he's also clearly
wearing something wrapped around his head. - [Voiceover] He's wearing a head cloth. In this case, it's been
placed over the head and then folded and
wrapped so that you have what is essentially a
kind of cap of fabric and then another flap coming down the back and covering most of the hair. - [Voiceover] You can see its
folds and its overlapping, but you can also see
that this representation presumably of something
woven into the cloth that shows a dragon-like
figure or kind of serpent. - [Voiceover] Yeah,
they're referred to usually as feline serpents
because they tend to have ears and they're a very
common motif in Moche art. You find them everywhere. - [Voiceover] So this is
a ceramic representation of a depiction in cloth. You can also see the painting
directly on the face. - [Voiceover] We do see
a lot of body painting both on men and women in Moche art. There's not been a lot
of research that's been able to show what particular designs mean, with one exception and we see it here. - [Voiceover] Here I think
you're probably referring to the very faint rendering
that we see just at the chin. - [Voiceover] Yes, the
band that runs along the contour of the chin,
and looks like it has these three little oblong
objects that are hanging from it and those are meant to be representations of the pupae of flies. And as grotesque as that may
sound, what it's a reference to is the sacrifice that was
practiced in Moche culture of warriors who then,
were very frequently left exposed for a certain
amount of time for the flies to devour and for their
flesh to at least partially to decompose and there
are some associations in Moche art of flies
as being almost vehicles for human spirits to the underworld. And it's a way of marking
somebody as someone who's going to be sacrificed. - [Voiceover] What's
interesting is that the figure is shown with such
nobility and yet we're also seeing a figure that is to be sacrificed. - [Voiceover] Well, in
the case of the Moche, it was important that the
person being sacrificed was healthy and strong and brave. And so he would have been
somebody from the elites who had proven himself in warfare, but had lost one critical battle. - [Voiceover] And so,
when then is a vessel like this made? How was it used? We know so little about these people. - [Voiceover] These sorts
of objects are not just being found in graves,
they're also being found in domestic spaces. In areas that we might think of as being middle class and so these
may have been objects that were not only used
by the elites, but also given as gifts to the middle class perhaps as status gifts to help associate them and to bind them symbolically
to the upper classes and that were part of their participation in the mythology and the
world view of the elites. That legitimized their rule. - [Voiceover] I want
the face on this vessel to open its mouth and to tell
us exactly what it means. - [Voiceover] That would be fantastic. (upbeat piano music)