The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 10, 2026

A bulbous cream earthenware vessel tapers toward a wide rim, featuring three horizontal bands. The top red band contains repeating cream geometric shapes. In two wider bands below, large stylized heads with radiating appendages repeat in red, gray, and dark brown. These mask-like figures have simple facial features and limb-like extensions across the cream surface. Dark outlines define the earth-toned patterns, which encircle the vessel in a rhythmic sequence.

Vessel with Abstract Heads

100 BCE–700 CE

Peru, South Coast, Nasca

earthenware with colored slips
Overall: 10.4 x 14 cm (4 1/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
James Albert Ford Memorial Fund 1946.279
Location: 232 Andean

Description

Late Nasca supernatural depictions became abstract, detailed, and focused on the head. In this vessel's central register, for instance, a deity is reduced to two mask-like faces, edged by volutes and linked by tongues; the only remains of a body are the hands. The lower register carries a similar image, and the upper register has severed human heads.
  • Treasures of Peruvian Gold. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 23-April 3, 1966).
    Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; February 23-April 3, 1966. "Treasures of Peruvian Gold."
    Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art; November 9, 1945- January 6, 1946. "Art of the Americas."
  • {{cite web|title=Vessel with Abstract Heads|url=false|author=|year=100 BCE–700 CE|access-date=10 September 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1946.279