Tlatilco Standing Female Figure, Early Preclassic, circa 1200 - 900 BC

Alexis Gregory, New York

Sotheby’s, New York, May 18, 2021, lot 109, consigned by the estate of the above 

Acquired at the above auction by the present owner

This large female is a particularly forceful and well-modeled example of the specialized category of Type DK figures. Her facial features are crisply defined with long narrowed eyes, arched brows, and a small set mouth. She is adorned with distinctive earspools and the tall turban bears the incised insignia front and back of the “Displayed Deity complex”, the stylized emblems representative of fertility and power. Her truncated arms float to the side, with thin prominent clavicles and small breasts. She is covered extensively with original encrustations over the deep reddish-brown slip.

For a discussion of the Displayed Deity figures, see Douglas E. Bradley and Peter David Joralemon, The Lords of Life: The Iconography of Power and Fertility in Preclassic Mesoamerica, Notre Dame, 1993, and for a similar figure see ibid., p. 41, no. 17. See also Leo Rosshandler, Man-Eaters and Pretty Ladies: Early Art in Central Mexico from the Gulf to the Pacific, 1500-BC-500 AD, Montreal, 1971, p. 58, fig. 118, for the type.