Cleveland Museum of Art
Male Dog
- Date
- 200 BCE–300 CE
- Medium
- earthenware with burnished red slip
- Culture
- West Mexico, Colima, Comala style
- Department
- Art of the Americas
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
One of the best-known subjects of West Mexican tomb sculpture is the native hairless dog, which is shown naturalistically-as here-but also wearing a human mask, signaling complex meanings.These meanings are not well-understood, but like later Mesoamericans, West Mexicans may have believed that dogs served as guides or guards in the underworld realm of the dead. For the living, they also served as food.
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