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Female effigy bottle
Nasca
Early Intermediate period (Nasca Phase 7)
550–650
Object Place: Peru, South Coast
Medium/Technique
Earthenware: slip paint
Dimensions
Overall: 17.1 × 13.3 × 13.3 cm (6 3/4 × 5 1/4 × 5 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
Gift from the Collection of Shirley and Hy Zaret
Accession Number2008.192
CollectionsAmericas
ClassificationsCeramics – Pottery – Earthenware
Representations of women are rare before A. D. 500, when they became common on Nasca ceramics. This woman, holding bunches of produce, wears a tunic embellished with lobsters and pollywogs.
DescriptionThis bottle is modeled and painted in the form of a woman grasping two bunches of produce, perhaps the tumbo plant. She wears a long-sleeved tunic, its lower edge embellished with lobsters and pollywogs. A mantle, decorated with geometric designs, covers her head and back.
ProvenanceSamuel Kirkland Lothrop (b. 1892 - d. 1965), Washington, DC and Cambridge, MA [see note]; March 14, 1998, Lothrop collection and others sale, Skinner Auctioneers (sale 1833), Bolton, MA, lot 27, to Lands Beyond Gallery, New York; sold by Lands Beyond Gallery to Hy and Shirley Zaret, Westport, CT; 2008, gift of Shirley Zaret to the MFA. (Accession Date: June 25, 2008)
NOTE: This vessel may have been acquired as early as the 1920s through the 1940s.
NOTE: This vessel may have been acquired as early as the 1920s through the 1940s.