Colima Seated Figure with Effigy Pendant, Comala Style, Protoclassic, 100 BC - AD 250

Joseph Haddad, Los Angeles
Edwin and Cherie Silver, Los Angeles, acquired from the above on October 9, 1972

Inventoried by Hasso von Winning, November 2, 1972, no. 102

Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, Los Angeles, Companions of the Dead: Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West Mexico, October 11 - November 27, 1983

Jacki Gallagher, Companions of the Dead: Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West Mexico, Los Angeles, 1983, p. 46, fig. 30 

Hunchbacks were frequent actors in the array of Colima figures of socio-religious significance. Their exaggerated form was considered a sign of enhanced consciousness and supernatural ability, engendering them to a shamanic role. They were depicted later in Maya art as royal court attendants and in Aztec times they lived in specially appointed quarters. It was said they were Moctezuma’s confidants in religious matters (Gallagher, Companions of the Dead, 1983, p. 39).

The subject figure denotes a position of status, wearing a large effigy pendant of a coatimundi requiring triple necklace strands for support. The pendant animal has slender forearms grasping its snout and a tapering body (exactly as carved on the greenstone pendant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MMA 1978.412.239). The dwarf’s overall posture belies an intense concentration, leaning forward with muscled arms and shoulders, a fixed gaze, and finely modeled mouth. He wears a loincloth with tasseled ties in the front.

For a hunchback figure in the Art Institute of Chicago, see Townsend, ed., Ancient West Mexico, 1998, p. 83, fig. 14; for two figures in the UCLA Museum of Cultural History, see Gallagher, Companions of the Dead, 1983, figs. 28 and 29.