Diquis Volcanic Stone Seated Male Effigy Figure

Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, Diquis. A seated male effigy carved from gray volcanic stone, its large ovoid head sitting low on narrow, sloping shoulders. The face is worked in low relief: a long ridge of nose, faint arcs for brows and eyes, and a small mouth set above a pointed chin. The arms are reduced to shallow bands that wrap the torso. Both broad hands are spread across the stomach, and each finger is cut as its own parallel bar, a rhythmic ladder of grooves across the belly. Below them, the drawn-up legs and the male anatomy are shown in simple rounded volumes. The coarse, granular stone gives the figure a soft, weathered skin. Seated effigies like this one were probably meant to stand for ancestors or other figures of standing, although we cannot know exactly what this one meant to its makers. The Diquis region, around the delta of the Rio Terraba in southern Costa Rica, belongs to the wider Gran Chiriqui cultural area that it shares with western Panama. Its peoples are best known for the large, almost perfectly round stone spheres found across the delta plain. They also made a lively tradition of figural sculpture in volcanic stone, from small effigies like this one to full-size standing figures. Gold and tumbaga ornaments from the same communities show that this was a society with ranked elites, and stone images of people were probably part of how those elites displayed their status. Item # 205633

Estimate:$500

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