God N Emerging from a Turtle Shell
Unknown Maya Artist, God N Emerging from a Turtle Shell, About 600-900, possibly Jaina Island, Campeche region, Mexico. Ceramic with post-fire applied pigment; 4 ½ x 4 in. Museum exchange, 1956.107.
This Jaina-style figurine shows the head and upper body of a deity known as God N emerging from a turtle shell. He wears a tall, wrapped turban with remnants of blue paint, white shell earflares, and a beaded necklace with a large white pendant shell. His arms are crossed in front of his chest, with elbows resting on the ground. This elderly god was a world sustainer. Both singular and multiple, he was believed to hold up the four corners of the world. In this figurine, he is shown emerging from a blue-painted turtle shell. In ancient Maya belief, the earth's surface was envisioned as a great turtle floating on the primordial sea. This small figurine, then, represents both the earth and the deity who sustained it, as it does the world's center and its four directions. It is, in other words, a cosmogram: the cosmos in miniature.
To produce these kinds of figurines, ceramic artists used several techniques. They pressed elements like the face and body into molds, while other features, such as arms, legs, wrapped headdresses, and additional ornamentation, were hand made. As a result, one finds frequent repetition in faces in the Jaina corpus, as many were produced in the same molds. The head encountered here, for instance, is found on other figurines, though the associated bodies differ in position and details.
--Lucia R. Henderson, 2016
- “Stampede: Animals in Art” — Denver Art Museum, 9/10/2017