Cleveland Museum of Art

Geometrically Patterned Female Figure

Date

400–100 BCE

Medium

Ceramic, slip

Culture

Mesoamerica, Guanajuato or Michoacán, Chupícuaro

Department

Art of the Americas

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Artists of the Chupícuaro culture, based to the north of modern-day Mexico City, may be best known for hollow ceramic figurines like this one. Always female and often apparently pregnant, such figurines commonly are painted with stepped geometric motifs in vibrant, highly burnished slips (creamy mixtures of water and crushed minerals). The meanings of the motifs and the figurines themselves are poorly understood. This figure was formed in two halves that were hollowed out and joined at the hips.

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.