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Panel with Royal Woman
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
In this panel, probably from a palace interior, the woman’s static posture contrasts with the liveliness of the creature she holds, a god of royalty with a serpent leg and a grotesque head with a smoking torch on its brow. (The same deity is shown in the nearby Eccentric Flint.) Other signs of high rank are her jade jewelry and costume, its beauty suggesting that textiles and featherwork were great Maya arts, now lost to a tropical climate. The hieroglyphics refer to an undefined ritual that the woman completed in 795.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit linePanel with Royal Woman, c. 795. Sculpted by K’in Lakam Chahk, and Jun Nat Omootz. Limestone; overall: 60.4 x 69.8 cm (23 3/4 x 27 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1962.32
