Cleveland Museum of Art
Big-Eared Brown Bat Vessel
- Date
- 200–850 CE
- Medium
- ceramic, slip
- Culture
- Central Andes, North Coast, Moche people
- Department
- Art of the Americas
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
This bat, perhaps shown opening its wings before taking flight, illustrates Moche artists’ keen interest in realism and in capturing activity at its peak. Moche bat symbolism may be linked to the animal’s paradoxical traits—for instance, bats fly but have fur rather than feathers. Such traits may have caused the Moche to link bats with transitional states, such as the passage between life and death. The vessel depicts a member of the Histiotus mochica species , a big-eared brown bat that researchers described in 2021 and, due to this vessel, named in honor of the Moche, also known as the Mochica. This vessel depicts a big-eared brown bat.
The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
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