Cleveland Museum of Art
Seated Deity
- Date
- 1350–1519
- Medium
- gray volcanic stone with red pigment
- Culture
- Mexico, Aztec, Valley of Mexico near Teotihuacan, Macuilxochitl (?), 14th-16th century
- Department
- Art of the Americas
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 155405
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
The crested headdress with tassels suggests that this youthful, seated male is Macuilxochitl (Five Flower), an Aztec supernatural patron of many forms of pleasure, among them music, dance, feasting, games, and sex. His cult was popular among common people, and this effigy probably was created for use in a small neighborhood temple. The stone surface could have been plastered and then brightly painted. The Aztecs associated the number 5 with excess: there were five gods of pleasure, one named “Five Flower.”
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James C. Gruener
- Provenance
- ?-1958: (Black Tulip Galleries, Inc., Dallas, TX, sold to James C. and Florence C. Gruener) | 1958-1990: James C. [1903-1990] and Florence C. Gruener [1908-1982], Cleveland, OH, bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 1990-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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