Virú (Gallinazo) Vessel Depicting a Bound Captive

North Coast of Peru, Early Intermediate Period, ca. 200 BCE–300 CE.

A hand-modeled iron-rich orange-red earthenware jug, fired in a partially reduced atmosphere that has left the characteristic sooty grey-black fire-clouding across the crown, one shoulder, and the underbelly, with a lightly burnished natural slip and no polychrome decoration. The globular chamber is worked into the globular body of a male prisoner, the arms modeled in low relief and drawn back  so the hands meet behind the vessel in the bound posture standard for Virú captive iconography, nipple pellets differentiated from the swollen belly, and the head projecting forward from the shoulder with a pronounced hooked nose, slit eyes in the coffee-bean manner, a tight closed mouth, and applied ears; a single tubular vertical spout rises from the rear of the vessel and is joined to the crown of the head by a broad flat strap handle, the diagnostic spout-and-handle configuration that defines the Virú/Gallinazo ceramic tradition and separates it from the stirrup-spouted captive jars of neighboring Vicús.

Prisoner and trophy imagery of this kind is broadly understood as an offering vessel associated with warfare, sacrifice, and elite funerary ritual on the North Coast, and would have been made to contain a ritual liquid 'chicha or water' presented at burial.

Condition is very good, with stable surfaces, expected mineral encrustation and root marks, minor restoration at the spout.

Size: 7 in. high x 8 in. long (17.8 cm x 20.3 cm)

The vessel compares closely to Virú/Gallinazo spout-and-handle figural jars in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (cf. 64.228.20, Nathan Cummings gift), to captive and prisoner effigies in the Museo Larco, Lima (ML series), and to related North Coast prisoner vessels at Dumbarton Oaks and in the Ethnologisches Museum Berlin.

Estate of Rael Gleitsman. MFA Cermaics RISD, Fall River MA  02720, Acquired 1980s.