Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

With its gaping mouth and a body that is simultaneously swollen and skeletal, this vessel presents a tremendously powerful image. It is believed to come from Santa Cruz, an Olmec-related site which is renowned for producing especially fine ceramics. Images of old women are rare throughout Mesoamerica, and those in the form of vessels are even less common. The post is traditional for giving birth, suggesting a young woman, while the wrinkled face, drooping breasts, and skeletal ribs imply one much older. Dualities of this sort (old/young, life/death) are not uncommon.

Olmec scholar David Peter Joralemon, who has studied the old-woman theme extensively, suggests that the figure might portray an aged woman with an illness resulting in a bloated stomach or a priestess with a similar affliction. Another interpretation proposes that this powerful sculpture, with enlarged stomach but otherwise skeletal body, depicts a person on the verge of death from starvation, her open mouth begging for food. Additional interpretations suggest this particular image may refer to a deity who was believed to be the ancient mother of all gods and humans, and who, along with her consort, determined exactly when a person would be born.