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Bottle with Caiman

Cupisnique artists, 1000–800 BCE. Peru, north coast.

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Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A ceramic bottle with a tall straight spout, its rounded body carved with a stylized caiman in raised curving bands and painted dark gray and red.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Nearly three thousand years ago, a potter of the Cupisnique culture on the north coast of Peru shaped this bottle and carved its body with the head and body of a caiman, a close relative of the alligator. The creature’s features are turned into bold curving bands, outlined and raised from the surface, so that it wraps around the vessel. After firing, parts of the surface were painted with cinnabar, a mineral that gives a deep red. Above it all rises a tall, straight spout. For peoples of the ancient Andes the caiman was a powerful creature of water and fertility. Here it is held still in clay, still potent.

Look closely

  1. Find the caiman’s eye and jaws.
  2. Notice the red paint. Where did the potter put it?
  3. Look at the spout. How does it change the shape of the whole bottle?

While you sit

A river creature, carved into clay three thousand years ago. Stay as still as a caiman in the shallows.

Your seat in the galleries: a terracotta slab bench incised with curving lines and painted cinnabar red.

About the work

Title
Bottle with Caiman
Artist
Cupisnique artists
Date
1000–800 BCE
From
Peru, north coast
Medium
Ceramic, post-fire paint (cinnabar)
Size
H. 12 3/4 × W. 8 1/16 × D. 5 3/8 in. (32.4 × 20.5 × 13.7 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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