Vessel Depicting a Sacrificial Ceremony for a Royal Accession
Date:
750–800, probably 753
Artist:
Late Classic Maya Mexico or Guatemala
About this artwork
This vessel, used to consume a chocolate drink, depicts a key event in a royal Maya accession ceremony, which shows the relationship between human sacrifice and the assumption of power. The expectant king is flanked by servants, musicians, and masked nobles, while a terrified captive—bound to a scaffold—awaits his death. It is probable that the victim was a warrior from a rival community defeated by the prospective king during a coronation war. Such sacrifices were required as proof of a new ruler’s military abilities, provided an offering to his patron gods, and served as a sign of the triumphant reign to follow.
Vessel Depicting a Sacrificial Ceremony for a Royal Accession
Place
Mexico (Object made in)
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
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Allen Wardwell, “Mayan Treasures at the Art Institute of Chicago,” Apollo: The International Magazine of Arts (June 1972), 487, 488; plate xii; drawing fig. 3.
Anne Paul. History on a Maya Vase. In Archaeology vol. 30, no. 2 (April 1976), pp. 118-126.
Linda Schele and Mary Miller. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, exh. cat. (Kimbell Art Museum, 1986), plate 92, pp. 227-228, 238-239.
Bryan Just, Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom, exh. cat. (Princeton University Art Museum and Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 30-31, 200-204 (ill.).
Richard Townsend with Elizabeth Pope, Indian Art of the Americas at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2016), 205, cat. 162 (ill.).
Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, May 17–Aug. 24, 1986, cat., plate 92; traveled to Cleveland Museum of Art, Oct. 8–Dec. 14, 1986.
Princeton, N. J., Princeton University Art Museum, Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom, Oct. 6, 2012– Feb. 17, 2013, cat. no. 8 (ill.)
Robert and Marianne Huber Fine Arts (Huber Primitive Art), Dixon, Ill. and New York; sold to Art Institute, 1969.
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