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Nayarit artist(s) | House model | Nayarit | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Unknown New England private collection, 1960s–1970s (?); Allan L. Long, New York, until 2000 (?); [Ancient Art of the New World, New York, until 2002]; Andrall E. and Joanne P. Pearson, North Palm Beach, FL, 2002–2015

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Hanging with Crown and Escutcheon | Peru | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.

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Lambayeque (Sicán) artist(s) | Funerary mask | Lambayeque (Sicán) | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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This mask, made of hammered sheet gold alloy and covered in red pigment, once adorned the body of a deceased ruler on Peru’s north coast. Powerful dynasties arose in this region between the eighth and the fourteenth centuries A.D. and amassed great riches in gold and silver before they were conquered by the Inca Empire in the late fifteenth century. The lords of these dynasties were the patrons of vast workshops where finely crafted ornaments and ceremonial vessels were created (see 1991.419.62; 66.196.27). At death, the lords were buried deep in monumental mud-brick platform mounds along with large numbers of objects of precious metal, shell, and cloth. In addition to beakers, disks, and other ornaments, the burials included large masks made of sheet gold. As many as five masks were placed into one burial: one attached to the head of the textile-wrapped body, and the other four stacked at the feet of the deceased.

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Donnan, Christopher B. Moche Art of Peru: Pre-Columbian Symbolic Communication. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, 1978, p. 27, fig. 48.

Newton, Douglas, Julie Jones, and Kate Ezra. The Pacific Islands, Africa, and the Americas: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.

Castillo, Luis Jaime. Personajes míticos, escenas y narraciones en la iconografía mochica. Lima: Fondo Editorial, Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú, 1989.

Donnan, Christopher B., and Donna McClelland. Moche Fineline Painting: Its Evolution and Its Artists. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1999.

Jones, Julie, and Heidi King. "Gold of the Americas." The Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art vol. 59, no. 4 (Spring 2002), p. 16.

Falchetti, Ana Maria, and Universidad de los Andes, Ediciones Uniandes: Instituto Colombiano de Antropologia e Historia. Lo humano y lo divino: Metalurgia y cosmogonía en la América antigua. Bogota, 2018, p. 200, fig. 67.

Holcomb, Melanie, ed. Jewelry: The Body Transformed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018, pp. 16-17, 30-37, pl. 8.

Seo, Ji Mary. "How to Wear Body Ornaments from the Ancient Americas." In #MetKids Blog. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018, https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/metkids/2018/how-to-wear-body-ornaments-from-the-ancient-americas.

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Ear Ornament, Winged Runner | Moche | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Donnan, Christopher B. Moche Art of Peru: Pre-Columbian Symbolic Communication. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, 1978, p. 27, fig. 48. Newton, Douglas, Julie Jones, and Kate Ezra. The Pacific Islands, Africa, and the Americas: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987. Castillo, Luis Jaime.

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This fine tapestry-woven garment features identical black-and-white checkerboard designs on front and back, inside and out, with a red, V-shaped yoke and meticulously embroidered finished edges. Worn by men over a loincloth, such garments were one of the primary markers of identity in the Inca Empire. This type of tunic was first mentioned in 1532 by Francisco de Jerez, secretary to the conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Jerez described the meeting between Atahualpa, the Inca emperor, and Pizarro's men in Cajamarca, Peru, noting that the first regiment of the Inca army wore checkerboard livery.

Cloth was of profound importance in Inca culture: no political, military, social, or religious event among the Inca was complete without textiles being exchanged or gifted, burned or sacrificed. Fine tapestry¬ woven tunics would have been bestowed on warriors who distinguished themselves on the battlefield, or given as diplomatic gifts by Inca rulers in their campaigns to expand their vast empire. Ownership and use of tapestry tunics would have been closely controlled by the Inca state, and only those upon whom such gifts were bestowed were allowed to wear them. The Inca also exerted tight control over the production of tapestry tunics, and surviving full-size examples display remarkably little variation in size.

Inca tapestry tunics were woven as a single panel with single-interlocking joins, with the neck slit held closed by a temporary weft yarn that was removed after the weaving was complete. Once the finished weaving was cut from the loom, all seams and selvage edges were completely covered with fine double¬ faced embroidery. The seams were concealed with a precisely repeated series of multicolored bands of different widths. Along the bottom, just above that embroidered edge, a zigzag line was created with similarly colored yarns. The precise meaning of this zigzag line is unknown, but it was of such importance that it was included in depictions of royal tunics in one of the earliest illustrated manuscripts concerning the Inca Empire (Guaman Poma de Ayala, 1615-1615).

References and Further Reading

Correa-Lau, Jacqueline, Carolina Agüero, Jeffrey Splitstoser, Ester Echenique, Tracy Martens, Calogero M. Santoro, " Inka Unku: Imperial or provincial? State-local relations." PLoS ONE 18(2): e0280511. (2023).

Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe (1615). El primer nueva coronica y buen goberno. Det Kongeige Bibliotek, Copenhagen. The Guaman Poma website: A Digital Research Center of the Royal Library.

Jerez, Francisco de. (1534). True Account of the Conquest of Peru. Edited by Eván R. Reyna. Reprint, London: Peter Lang, 2013.

Pillsbury, Joanne. "Inka Unku: Strategy and Design in Colonial Peru." Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 7 (2002):68-103.

Pillsbury, Joanne. "El uncu Inca: Tradición y transformación," in Arte imperial Inca: Sus orígenes y transformaciones desde la conquista a la independencia (edited by Ramón Mujica), pp. 274-311. Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2020.

Rowe, Ann Pollard. "Technical Features of Inca Tapestry Tunics," Textile Museum Journal 17 (1978), pp. 5-28.

Rowe, Ann Pollard. "Provincial Inca Tunics of the South Coast of Peru," Textile Museum Journal 31 (1992), pp. 5-52.

Rowe, Anne Pollard, and John Howland Rowe. "Inca Tunics." In Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks Vol. 2, edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, pp. 453-465. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996.

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Checkerboard Tunic | Inca | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Reportedly acquired by Steve Berger, Arte Textil, San Francisco, between 1982 and 1984]; private collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico, early 2000s-2010; [Steve Berger, Arte Textil, San Francisco]; private collection, New York, 2010-18