Brazier in the Shape of a Figure with Split Tlaloc Mask and Maize

Artist: Unknown

Audio Guides

Mary Miller, Scholar

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Scholar Mary Miller, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History of Art at Yale

NARRATOR: The figure on the front of this Aztec incense burner is wonderfully complex and lively. His crenulated headdress, the large paper ear flares, and the goggle over one eye all symbolize the great Aztec rain god Tláloc . But as Yale Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art Mary Miller explains, the figure is combined with another god as well.

MARY MILLER: Look across the rest of the body. As we look down across his chest, we see this wonderful, great necklace that is made of maize cobs. What we may be seeing then is the layering of the rain god, on one side, overlapping the maize god. These are the things that you would need in order to bring fertility and bounty.

NARRATOR: The Aztec dominated the Valley of Mexico some four hundred years ago, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Their capital was at Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City. But this object was probably made in a small provincial town.

MARY MILLER: One can see how, for example, this great loincloth that he's wearing has been rolled out like a sheet of gingerbread and how there are parts of this that have been made through really a kind of cookie-cutter technique. Other parts, for example, those strips of clay that run along the bottom of the brazier, have been rolled out like snakes of Play-Doh. So you have the sense here of a kind of cottage industry.

NARRATOR: A priest would've carried the incense burner in seasonal rituals related to planting and harvesting.
Medium

Ceramic with white slip or stucco and pigment

Dimensions

16 1/16 × 12 3/16 × 12 3/8 in. (40.8 × 31 × 31.5 cm)

Credit Line

Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903, Fund

Accession Number

1973.88.14

Geography
Culture
Period

Late Postclassic Period

Classification
Disclaimer

Note: This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect the Yale University Art Gallery’s complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of records is ongoing.

Provenance

Provenance

Stendahl Galleries, Los Angeles, Calif., acquired by 1956 (Stendahl Ledger no. 3718); sold to Fred Olsen (1891-1986) and Florence Quittenton Olsen (1899-1996), Guilford, Conn., July 1956 (Olsen #11); sold to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 1973.
Bibliography
  • Susan B. Matheson, Art for Yale: A History of the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 2001), 168–69, fig. 167
  • Elise K. Kenney, ed., Handbook of the Collections: Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 320, ill.
  • George A. Kubler, ed., Pre-Columbian Art of Mexico and Central America (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1986), 54–55, 218–19, no. 63, Color plate 3, pg. 21, fig. 34
  • "Acquisitions, 1973," Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin 35, no. 1 (Summer 1974), 76, ill.
Object copyright
Additional information

Object/Work type

braziers (heating equipment), mythology

Technical metadata and APIs

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