CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Mayan Art and Architecture
Art of the Maya of southern Mexico and Central America: carved stelae and lintels, painted vases and murals, jade, and temple cities.
No works indexed yet
No open-access works for Mayan Art and Architecture are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
Maya art is at its most personal in the portraits and texts of its rulers. During the Classic period, roughly AD 250 to 900, rival city-states in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras raised stone stelae and lintels showing rulers in feathered regalia, with carved glyphs giving names and dates. On a lintel from Yaxchilán, carved around 725, Lady K'abal Xook draws a thorned rope through her tongue. At Copán, sculptors cut royal figures in such deep relief that they seem to step out of the stone.
Builders worked in cut stone and stucco, spanning rooms with the corbel vault and crowning temples with tall roof combs. At Palenque, the tomb of the king K'inich Janaab Pakal has a lid carved with his fall into the underworld. The murals of Bonampak, painted around 790, show court ceremony and battle in brilliant colour, and painted cylinder vases carry scenes of palace life and myth.
More in Cultural and Religious Styles
Mbole Art
Meiji Art
Mende Art
Mesopotamian Art
Ming Dynasty
Minoan Art
Moche Art
%252C%2520Rembrandt%252C%2520c.%25201656-61.jpg%3Fwidth%3D960&w=3840&q=75)