Page 621 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

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In Tairona art there are two common versions of
BAT-MAN PENDANT the cacique pendant: one represents a normal BAT-MAN PENDANT
human figure; the other, though similar in most
Tairona Tairona
gold of its details, has the head of a bat instead of a cast gilded gold-copper alloy
it is not
2
13-3 (5 /4J human face. On small-scale figures, depicted a 2.9 X 4.6 (iVsX 1 /4J
3
always clear whether
the goldsmith
Jan Mitchell and Sons, New York composite creature from the world of mythology Museo del Oro, Banco de la Republica, Bogota
or a masked human being engaged in ritual or
ceremonial activities. On this large and splendid This figure also appears to be wearing a mask.
pendant, the wrinkles that define the face of the On his head are two representations of birds, and
bat may also be meant to indicate the edges of a the stylized representation of a serpent is distin-
mask, similar to the wooden ones in use today guishable on his girdle, which he holds in his hands.
among the Kogui Indians, the descendants of the A.M.F.
prehistoric Tairona tribes. In Kogui mythology the
bat is identified as the first animal in creation
and, because of the blood-sucking habits of certain
species, is linked with menstrual blood and female
fertility.
This pendant was collected before 1894 by an
engineer who worked in Colombia and was sold in
Geneva by his daughter sixty years later, making
it the earliest documented Tairona gold item to have
survived until the present. w. B.

620 CIRCA 1492