FEMALE STATUETTE, MATERNITY "parturient women"
Culture Nayarit, Western Mexico
San Sebastian style
Proto-Classical period, 100 BC - 250 AD.
Terracotta and pigments
Height: 25 cm; Width: 15 cm
Anthropomorphic statuette depicting a kneeling woman in terracotta with a brown-cream ochre slip. Her body, entirely covered with numerous body paintings of lines and spirals in red ochre, is richly adorned with jewelry: a three-row torque necklace, shoulder pads, multiple hoop earrings, bracelets and a large nose ring.
Her hands rest on her protruding abdomen, thus referring to her motherhood; her hair sports a precisely defined design in a set of incisions organized around a median parting; her eyes are shaped like coffee beans, her nose is aquiline, and the top of her deformed skull creates a piercing effect.
These statuettes are called "parturients" because of the labor of childbirth that their statistical image seems to have sought to capture.
As funeral companions, they were placed beside the deceased, to accompany him into the world of the afterlife.
Bibliography: It is reproduced in the catalogue of the exhibition Childhood and Motherhood, organised by the KeramioN gallery, from 11 February to 5 March 2011, p.38.
Text and photos © FCP CORIDON
Ref.: 7305
+33681153179
ff.coridon@wanadoo.fr
www.proantic.com/galerie/coridon/
