An Important Nayarit seated couple, Ixtlán del Rio polychrome style, Protoclassic, ca. 100 B.C.-A.D. 250

the lively and majestic couple in the prime of youth elaborately dressed for a ceremonial event, the male playing a large turtle shell carapace with an antler, the female holding a bowl, each with mouths open in chant or song, the female wearing a low slung wrap skirt with finely punctate edge, bead or shell tasseled armbands, tightly spaced ear and noserings, and multiple thin necklaces with central curving pendant, her finely striated coiffure secured with a headband, the male in a zigzag patterned tunic, loincloth and waistband, with large pierced earlobes, and tall conical headdress with pelt headband, each with striped facial designs, in black, white and deep reddish brown.



For a couple of highly similar style, see Townsend (1998: 43, fig. 13).

Stendahl Gallery

Jacques Sarlie Collection

Acquired from the above, ca. 1968

New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Before Cortes, Sculpture of Middle America, Elizabeth Kennedy Easby and John Scott, eds., September 30, 1970-January 3, 1971, fig. 104

Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago, Ancient West Mexico, Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, Richard Townsend, ed., September 5- November 22, 1998, pg. 127, fig. 29, cat. no. 193; continuing to Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 20, 1998- March 29, 1999

Overall excellent, they appear intact except as shown loss to tip of nose ornament on male figure, and thumb of right hand playing shell drum. Please contact dept for further details.
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The Nayarit ancestral pair is testimony that the ceramic art of West Mexico is among the finest made in the ancient Americas.  Over 2,000 years ago, creative ceramicists achieved technical and artistic excellence in modeling and baking clay, and in creating exquisite surface finishes and compelling detail.  In a society that lacked a writing system, the spectrum of outstanding ceramic art from West Mexico bears witness to the culture and achievements of its fascinating people.  

Buried in underground shaft tombs, the ceramic art of West Mexico lay hidden and protected for hundreds of years.  In the late-1800s, European explorers such as Adela Breton and Carl Lumholtz first brought outside attention to West Mexico's striking ceramic art.  It was Mexico's great artist couple, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who in the early 20^th century began collecting West Mexican ceramic art.  Their passion and knowledge gave immediate stature to the ceramic art of ancient West Mexico.

Artists of Nayarit sculpted this pair of exquisite male and female figures to honor their kin and ancestors.   The sculptures were interred in an elite shaft tomb as part of the ancestors' treasured belongings along with bowls filled with food and drink for the journey to the underworld.  The clay images signify the importance of depicting family and kinship in ancient West Mexican art.  Made to honor a family's bloodline, the male and female Nayarit figures may portray a marriage pair, siblings, or a founding couple of a lineage.   The term 'ancestor pair' allows for varied interpretations.     

The Nayarit figures embody the theme of kinship in the many shared elements of their physical and decorative attributes.  Their facial features, combed hair, and limbs express a family resemblance, while their parallel adornments give them a shared social identity.  The figures' embellishments of extensive body paint and jewelry are exclusive status symbols that must have permeated ancient West Mexican art and society.   

The figures are sumptuously adorned with modeled and painted costume and adornments.  These elements are symbols that communicated the ancient social order and, for the living, coded a person's village, ethnic or kin identity in West Mexico.  Intricate polychrome designs appear across the faces and upper torsos of both figures. Differently colored parallel stripes and zigzag lines replicate ancient practices of body art of tattoos, stamped designs or body paint for both genders.   

Both figures wear socially expressive headgear indicative of the high status shared by both males and females in ancient West Mexico. The male figure wears an exclusive cone-shaped hat which seems folded together suggesting it was made of textile or basketry.  His hat has an ornate brim centered by a significant round emblem with tassels or feathers at the sides. The female wears a headband decorated with polychrome zigzags that communicates her social identity. For the figures' hair, the precise and detailed incising suggests the importance of personal presentation.  

In addition to comparable tattoos and high status headgear, the ancestral pair dons the same styles of personal jewelry that emphasize further a commonality of identity. The female figure's sophisticated jewelry includes an appliqué nosering with at least six hoops.  Her earrings feature eight colorful hoops. The male's ornate nosering is decorated perhaps with a projecting shell.  His stretched out earlobes have empty holes that originally may have held missing stones or perishable earrings made of feathers or flora.  The ancestral pair wears nearly identical six-banded necklaces placed tightly around the neck. The necklaces each feature a central crescent-shaped pendant that probably signified a shared kinship; a collective emblem from the living that was embedded in the funerary art.  Finally, that each figure wears two sets of similarly decorated armbands communicates again their bond of kinship.  

The imagery of the Nayarit ancestral pair is not limited to family - but as their accoutrements reveal – the pair also portrays a great celebration.  The objects held by each figure connote a festival or celebration, in all likelihood one that honored the lineage and ancestors whom they represent.  The female figure holds her decorated polychrome bowl for sustenance of food and drink in the afterlife.  For the ceremony, the male plays a rhythmic instrument shaped like a turtle carapace.  The exceptional sculptures reinforce the view that funerary rites were a time when the living honored their heritage to an ancestral couple or sibling pair.   The legacy of these ceramic figures is not simply their artistic qualities; they serve as a vivid source of information about the ancient peoples of West Mexico.  

--Kristi Butterwick, Ph.D.