Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
Tunic Border
(Ancient Americas )
This tunic border shows the love of complementary dualities that is, as art historian Tom Cummins has written, “…a social principal and an aesthetic ideal in the Andes.” In this piece, diagonally divided squares with reversed stepped fret patterns and dots of a contrasting color are interspersed with rectangles featuring two heads of figures with feathered rays emanating from them, demonstrating this duality. These deity figures are very simplified copies of the figure at the center of Tiwanaku's Gateway of the Sun monument, showing a central or solar deity. While the stepped fret is a more abstract symbol, some scholars have suggested that in the extremely arid region of the Nazca Valley, the stepped patterns may actually reference water’s flow along the irrigation channels the Nazca people painstakingly created in their desert region.
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.
Purchased by Georgia de Havenon, New York; given to Walters Art Museum, 2016.
Exhibitions
| 2012-2013 | Exploring Art of the Ancient Americas: The John Bourne Collection Gift. The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville. |
Geographies
Peru (Place of Origin)
Measurements
H: 3 x L: 43 in. (7.62 x 109.22 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Georgia and Michael de Havenon, 2016
Location in Museum
Not on view
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
2011.20.12