Portrait Vessel of a Young Man with a Scarred Lip

Moche · 100 BCE–500 CE

Medium

Ceramic and pigment

Original size

16.2 × 16.2 cm (6 3/8 × 6 3/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Medieval

Among the most arresting objects to survive the ancient Americas, this Moche portrait vessel captures an individual human face with a specificity that feels startlingly modern. The Moche people flourished along the northern coast of what is now Peru between roughly 100 and 800 CE, and their ceramic artists produced a body of portraiture unmatched in the ancient world for its psychological directness. Working in fine earthenware, they built vessels by hand and with molds, then painted them with mineral-based slips in warm ochres, reds, and creams. What sets the portrait vessels apart from almost all other pre-Columbian art is their insistence on individuality — the Moche sculptor recorded not an idealised type but a particular person, with particular features. This young man's scarred lip is rendered without flinching and without comment, simply observed. Scholars believe many of these subjects were real individuals of social or ritual significance, their likenesses preserved in clay as a form of enduring presence. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates that presence into a new medium, working from close study of the original held at the Art Institute of Chicago to preserve the subtlety of the modelled form, the quiet dignity of the gaze, and the warm palette that gives this ancient face its lasting life.