Cleveland Museum of Art

Panel with Royal Woman

K’in Lakam Chahk

Date

c. 795

Medium

limestone

Culture

Guatemala or Mexico, Usumacinta River region, Maya style

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in 795. This panel, likely from a palace interior, depicts a royal Maya woman.

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