Olmec Seated Figure with a Harpy Eagle Crest in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, June 2018

Seated Figure with Harpy Eagle Crest

Unknown (Artist)

ca. 1000–500 BC

Culture: Olmec

Category: Sculpture

Medium: terracotta and black bitumen

Collection: Pre-Columbian Art

Geography: Central America,Mexico,Gulf Coast,Mesoamerica

Dimensions: Overall: 12 1/4 × 9 1/8 × 7 in. (31.12 × 23.18 × 17.78 cm)

Object Number: 80.327

Period: Middle Formative

Credit Line: Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund

Ceramic figures of this type, associated with the Olmec culture, were produced throughout Central Mexico between 1500 and 500 BC. The figures are distinguished by highly naturalistic, infantile combined with unnatural features such as exaggerated facial characteristics and, in this case, a head crest, all of which suggest supernatural beings or shamans in the act of spiritual transformation. The jagged crest symbolizes this figure’s transformational state between a human and the harpy eagle, one of the primary deities of the Olmec.

Text from: vmfa.museum/piction/6027262-12968964