HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



caricature must be ascribed to overshooting the mark through crude- 

 ness in technique rather than to a frivolous and wilful exaggeration of 

 natural characters. 



Portrait Types in Clay. — We should be on our guard against too 

 sympathetic an appreciation of the delicate bits of sculptural art in 

 clay made after the close of the Archaic Period. The impetus toward 

 these higher forms seems to have come from the Maya of the low- 

 lands who began to show indubitable signs of coming greatness about 

 the time of Christ. A remarkable increase in anatomical knowledge 

 and in modeling skill is shown in these faces. There is also a notice- 

 able standardization into portrait types. The extensive use of clay 

 molds must have aided in this standardization, since pleasing prod- 

 ucts could be used as master models and the copies widely distributed. 



Two Maya heads from Salvador are reproduced in plate in, a 

 and b, and it will be noted that one example is almost the exact 

 replica of the other. Other heads of this full-round type from the 

 same region may be seen in the collections of the American Museum 

 of Natural History. As a contrasting type, also well developed, c and 

 d present two faces in rather low relief from the Toltec Period of the 

 Valley of Mexico. How far the differences between these two types 

 are to be explained by an actual difference in physiognomy between 

 the natives of the two regions, the writer is not able to say. The use 

 of these heads casts no light on the question as to whether some of 

 them may be portraits. The Maya specimens are decorative details 

 broken from pots, while the Toltec ones probably are parts of votive 

 jointed dolls in which the head and torso made up a single piece. 

 Within these types there is, of course, a certain amount of individu- 

 ality, but this would inevitably occur through slips and inequalities 

 of workmanship. 



Zapotecan Funerary Urns. — The funerary urns found in Zapotecan 

 tombs were made centuries later than the quaint funerary effigies of 

 the Archaic Period, already described, after religion had made great 

 advances and government had become strongly theocratic. Close 

 connections with the best ceramic work of the Maya can easily be 

 demonstrated. The urns proper are cylindrical vessels concealed be- 

 hind elaborate figures built up from molded and modeled pieces. 

 Many of the figures represent human beings while others have the 

 outward features of grotesque divinities. However, it may be signifi- 

 cant that normal human faces underlie the projecting mask-like fea- 

 tures of the grotesque divinities (pi. iv). The idea may have been to 

 indicate the semi-sacred character of deceased priests or nobles by 

 the device of a divine mask. 



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