Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas

Art of Africa, Oceania and the Americas

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 137. MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC.

MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC

Auction Closed

May 13, 08:41 PM GMT

Estimate

5,000 - 8,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Private Collection, California

MEZCALA STONE TEMPLE LATE PRECLASSIC, CIRCA 300-100 BC


Height: 5 ¼ in (13.4 cm)

Mezcala temple models were collected as early as the 19th c. by William Niven among other explorers in Guerrero. Their appeal blossomed in the 1960's after publications by Miguel Covarrubias, and Carlo Gay's "Mezcala Architecture in Miniature" ( in Jones, Houses for the Hereafter, Funerary Temples from Guerrero, Mexico, From the Collection of Arthur M. Bullowa, New York, 1987, pp. 9-10). 


This andesite temple is carved with stairs to the upper platform, here supporting two broad columns with a banded, tapering roof comb. See Gay and Pratt, Mezcala, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico, Geneva, 1992, p. 179, fig. 114, for the type.