File:Oculate Being, Paracas culture. 350 BCE–60 CE Met Museum.jpg

Page contents not supported in other languages.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original file(2,652 × 2,490 pixels, file size: 9.22 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/310222

This bowl depicts the Oculate Being, a creature named for its oversized circular eyes, popular in the Ica region of the south coast of Peru during the last centuries B.C. The white oval head of the Oculate Being, painted in the middle of the vessel, is the central focus of the scene, its green body extending to one edge. A snakelike appendage, ending in another head, emerges from the mouth. A yellow band along the back of the body terminates in a tail with a triangular tip, recalling the shape of an obsidian knife. The Oculate Being holds a disembodied head whose hair tuft resembles the cords often passed through the frontal bone of skulls found in the Paracas region (sometimes called trophy heads, or curated heads). The outside of the bowl was painted red with a series of yellow felines, shown in profile and facing left.

Paracas-style ceramics are characterized by their vibrant and lustrous colors. Combining mostly mineral pigments with a binding agent, artists created paints that were applied on the surface of the pottery post firing (Kriss et al., 2018).

More at the museum page, and more nice photos. The exterior of the bowl is four smiling felines who look vaguely dinosaurian!

Dimensions: H. 2 1/8 × W. 6 7/8 × D. 6 7/8 in. (5.4 × 17.5 × 17.5 cm)

On display at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 202
Date
Source Oculate Being, Paracas culture. 350 BCE–60 CE
Author Peter D. Tillman from USA

Licensing

Creative Commons CC-Zero This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

This image was originally posted to Flickr by Pete Tillman at https://flickr.com/photos/29050464@N06/52641959082. It was reviewed on 23 January 2023 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-zero.

23 January 2023

Captions

Oculate Being, Paracas culture. 350 BCE–60 CE Met Museum

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

2 May 2022

image/jpeg

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current07:54, 23 January 2023Thumbnail for version as of 07:54, 23 January 20232,652 × 2,490 (9.22 MB)TillmanTransferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons
The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed):

Metadata