Moche Portrait Head Stirrup Vessel

With proud, distinctive features, this Peruvian aristocrat projects an air of serene confidence. At the height of the Moche Empire, such vessels were modeled from life and pressed in molds. Buried in tombs they sometimes represented the deceased and sometimes were offered as tokens of respect form the living. The large tube earrings this man wears suggests his high social status. The abstract closed flower on his headdress and the dark and light paint on his face are associated with funerary rituals. Though he cannot speak, when we look upon his face we understand vital things about his vanished world.