Jaguar Head Kero

CC0 Public Domain Designation

1600–1800

Maker unknown (Inca)
Viceroyalty of Peru (probably Peru or Bolivia)

During the Inca Empire, wooden kero drinking cups were only decorated with geometric designs. But after the Spanish invasion, the Inca royal court retreated to lower elevations in the Amazonian jungle, a place they called Vilcabamba. Likely in response to the introduction of European heraldry featuring lions and building on representations of felines by their Andean predecessors, Inca makers created new keros shaped like feline heads. Rather than depicting highland pumas, however, such keros are spotted like Amazonian jaguars.

Status: On View, Gallery 136
Department: Arts of the Americas

Culture: Inca
Title: Jaguar Head Kero, Jaguar Head Kero (Drinking Cup)
Places: Bolivia (Object Probably made in), Peru (Object Probably made in), Peru, Viceroyalty of (Object made in)
Date: 1600-1800
Medium: Wood and mopa-mopa resin
Inscriptions: Inscribed on base, in red pigment: .R.57.96
Dimensions: 21.2 × 15.3 × 18.5 cm (8 3/8 × 6 × 7 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Arts of the Americas Discretionary Fund
Reference Number: 2022.587
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/263126/manifest.json

Robert Goldwater, The Museum of Primitive Art, Selected Works from the Collection [Selected Works 2], exh. cat. (New York: New York University Press and The Museum of Primitive Art, Summer 1957), cat. 19. (ill.).
Alan Sawyer, Ancient Treasures of Peru, exh. cat. (Worcester, MA: Worcester Art Museum, 1960), cat. 86 (not ill.), as Collection: The Museum of Primitive Art.

Carlebach Gallery, New York, by 1950 [Carlebach inventory no. V11187, this and the following according to Museum of Modern Art object card; copy in curatorial object file]; sold to Nelson A. Rockefeller (died 1979), New York, Nov. 6, 1950 [Rockefeller inventory no. R.57.9; on loan to MoMA, New York, Apr. 1975–Feb. 1978]; by descent to his estate, 1979; sold, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, Nov. 5, 1980, lot 75; sold to private collection; sold, Sotheby’s, New York, May 14, 2018, lot 155, to David Bernstein Fine Art, New York [Bernstein inventory no. n8014]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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