The Moche portrait vessels
- Dated
- Place
- North coast of Peru (exact findspot of the vessel shown unknown) · Moche, north coast of Peru
- Coordinates
- 8° 06′ S · 79° 00′ W (approximate)
- Remains
- Intact
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1882 (82.1.28), Open Access, CC0CC0-1.0Original record
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From the archivist
A potter pressed clay around a face and a person came out of it: heavy jaw, full lips a little apart, eyes that seem about to turn. Not a god, not a type. Someone.
The Moche of Peru's north coast made hundreds of such heads between about 100 and 800 CE, many of them as bottles with a looped spout on top. Some of the faces can be followed from one vessel to another. One man appears as a boy with soft cheeks, then as a young man with red paint on his face, then in his thirties with ear ornaments, the small scar on his upper lip always in the same place. Archaeologists call him Cut Lip. His own name is lost.
On some of the last vessels, the headdress and the jewels are gone. He is probably shown as a captive, waiting to die.
This civilization kept a face through a whole life, and kept it after the life had ended. It knew what we still feel before an old photograph: that a person is a particular nose, a particular mouth, and cannot be replaced.
The man on this bottle has no name either. Fine black lines mark his chin. Whoever made him looked closely, and did not flatter.
Established
- The Moche, who lived on the north coast of Peru between about 100 and 800 CE, made ceramic portraits of living people in quantity; Christopher Donnan studied more than 900 of them (Donnan 2004; Stone 2006).
- Many portraits were modelled as the head of a stirrup-spout bottle, a shape long favoured on the north coast; some were made with moulds (Donnan 2004; Popson 2004).
- The portraits show men only; several individuals can be recognised on more than one vessel, some at different ages (Stone 2006).
- The man Donnan calls Cut Lip, recognisable by a scar on his upper lip, appears on at least forty vessels: as a young boy, as a young man with red face paint, and in his thirties with ear ornaments and black painted patterns on his face (Denver Art Museum).
- On some late vessels his finery is gone; he is probably shown as a captive awaiting sacrifice (Denver Art Museum).
- The bottle shown here, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is dated 500 to 800 CE (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 82.1.28).
Interpretation
Who the sitters were, and why they were portrayed, is interpreted rather than known: Donnan sees members of the elite, some of whom ended as sacrificial victims, and archaeologists have found broken portrait vessels among the remains of sacrificed men. The identification of the same person across vessels rests on the comparison of features, and the ages given to each portrait are estimates. Because so few vessels were excavated, the place of most portraits in a tomb, a temple or a house is lost.
Looking ahead
We now photograph more faces in a day than the Moche modelled in seven centuries. Which of them will anyone still be able to recognise in a thousand years?
Sources (5)
- Donnan, C. B. Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru. Austin, University of Texas Press, 2004. · utpress.utexas.edu
- Stone, R. Review of Christopher B. Donnan, Moche Portraits from Ancient Peru. caa.reviews, College Art Association, 5 July 2006. · www.caareviews.org
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bottle with portrait head, Moche, 500-800 CE, ceramic and slip, accession number 82.1.28, Gift of Henry G. Marquand, 1882. · www.metmuseum.org
- Denver Art Museum. Portrait Jar (Cut Lip), Moche, about 400-600 CE, object 1985.410. · www.denverartmuseum.org
- Popson, C. Moche mug shots (review of Donnan 2004). Archaeology 57 (2), March/April 2004. · archive.archaeology.org
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