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Jan 1, 1300
Walking Buddha
This particular buddha originated from Sukhothai, thailand. The walking-budda is a statuary type that is unique to Thailand due to its distinctive soft elastic body and hanging limbs. -
Jan 1, 1308
Bamboo Groves in Mist and Rain (Guan Daosheng)
Considered one of Guan Daosheng's best paintings. She restricted the ink tones and blurred the bamboo thickets in order to achieve a misty atmosphere. The work is a handscroll, and the style was very similar to calligraphy which was a very important, cherished, respected, and traditional Chinese art form. -
Jan 1, 1311
Qutb Minar
Located in Delhi, India and built by Qutb al-Din Aybak as the city's first mosque in order to mark the triump of Islam in northern India. The minaret, at 238 feet, is the tallest minaret in the world. -
Jan 1, 1347
Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (Huang Gongwang)
This painting was made with ink on paper and is a section of a handscroll. It is one of the great works of Yuan literati painting. His use of rhytmic brush and ink captures the landscape's inner structure and momentum. -
Feb 27, 1347
Stalks of Bamboo by a Rock (Wu Zhen)
Painted with ink on paper, this handscroll was made during the Yuan dynasty by literati painter Wu Zhen. His proficiency is obvious in his treatment of the bamboo and the characters. -
Jan 1, 1401
Sacrifice of Isaac (Ghiberti)
Made of gilded bronze and a competion panel for the east doors of the Florentine baptistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti. Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were finalists, but Ghiberti came out victorious. Ghiberti's figures are gracefully posed in a way that references classical statuary in contrast with Brunelleschi's emotional and frantic depiction. It also show's Ghiberti's interest in spatial perspective. -
Jan 1, 1413
Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (January)
Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry was a beautifully illustrated Book of Hours made by the Limbourg brotheres Pol, Herman, and Jean. The manuscript illustrations were made with ink on vellum. The brothered took care in rendering architectural detail. The are considered by some to be the most famous in the history of manuscript illumination and captured the relationship of the duke with his peasants. -
Jan 1, 1417
Dome of the Florence Cathedral (Brunelleschi)
Brunelleschi was given the challege of designing and constructing a dome for the large crossing square of the unfinished Florence Cathedral. Brunelleschi had a broad knowlege of Roman construction principles with enabled him to solve the problem considered impossible to many architects. He could not support the dome with buttressed walls and the space was to wide to be constructed witht eh aid of traditional wooden centering. He had to devise new building methods and invent new machinery. -
Jan 17, 1424
Holy Trinity (Massacio)
(1424-1427) Painted by Italian painter Massacio in Santa Maria Novella in fresco, the Holy Trinity shows the application of mathematics to the depiction of space. Massacia effectively used Brunelleschi's science of linear perspective. It also demonstrates Massacio's ability to paint figures that are bathed in light. -
Jan 1, 1425
Mérode Altarpiece
ca. 1425-1428 Painted by Robert Campin in oil on wood. The subject of the painting is the Annunciation which Campin set in the home of a Flemish merchant. The everyday objects have symbolic significance, such as the mouse trap standing for trapping the devil. It also shows how artists in the Northern Renaissance were more concerned with detail, realism, and symbolism that perspective, -
Jan 1, 1432
Ghent Altarpiece
Completed in 1432, Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece was a polyptych with the interior and exterior painted. It is oil on wood. Many of these polyptychs contained donor portraits. Van Eyck used extremely meticulous detail and intese color. This attention to detail was characteristic of Flemish painting during the 15th century. -
Jan 1, 1434
Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride
Part of the revival of portraiture, this piece was a purely secular portrait, though it had it's regilious overtones. It was painted by Jan van Eyck with oil on wood. Consistent is van Eycks meticulous attention to detail. Almost every object is a symbol pertainting to the prospertity of the marriage. The picture was made to record and sanctify the marriage. -
Jan 1, 1435
Deposition
Painted by Rogier van de Weyden, the Deposition is the center panel of a triptych of oil painted on wood. It is from Notre-Dame hors-les-murs, Louvain, Belgium. The figures are compressed in a shallow stage filled with action rather than a deep landscape. The passion and agony that permeates the figures and their expressions is unmatched. -
Jan 1, 1440
David (Donatello)
Made by Donatello during 1440-1460 and of bronze. David posses a relaxed contrapposto and revived the classical statuary style. This was the first life-size nude since Greek and Roman times. During the Middle Ages, nude statues were considered indecent and idolatrous, with nudity only appearing when refering to Adam and Eve or sinners in Hell. -
Jan 1, 1450
The Borgia Codex: Mictlantecuhtli and Quetzalcoatl
Illustrated books wer prized by Mesoamerican peoples. The Borgia Codex is one of ten surviving non-Mayan books that escaped Spanish destruction. It is the largest and most elaborate of several manuscripts known as the Borgia Group. This illustration depicts the two gods Quetzalcoatl (black) and Mictlantechutli (white), the gods of life and death respectively. The theme of life and death is important in Mesoamerican art. -
Jan 1, 1469
Coyolxauhqui (She of the Golden Bells)
The Aztecs would sacrifice their conquered enemies on the top of the Great Temple then hurl their bodies down the stairs onto this disk that depicted the murdered, segmented body of the moon goddess Coyolxuahqui. The carving is in low relief and is characteristic of Mesoamerican painting. -
Jan 1, 1483
Virgin/Madonna of the Rocks (Da Vinci)
The central alterpiece for the chapel of the Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception in San Francesco Grande, the Virgin on the Rocks features a pyramidal grouping and unified environment. All the objects share the same atmosphere. Da VInci effectively uses atmospheric perspective and brilliant shading techniques. -
Jan 1, 1484
Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
(ca. 1484-1486) Painted by Botticelli with tempera on canvas, the Birth of Venus was inspired by an Angelo Poliziano poem and classical statues of Aphrodite. Botticelli brought back the theme of the female nude. The pose was referenced from classical statues. The female nude had been very rare during the MIddle Ages. Botticelli ignored the scientfic knowledge of perspective because the seascaoe is a flat backdrop that lacks atmospheric perspective. -
Jan 1, 1487
Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt)
It is speculated that the colossal statue could have stood in the Great Temple complex. It depects the beheaded goddess Coatlicue who wears a necklace of human hands and hearts. Her skirt is made of entwined snakes. All of these attributes are meant to symbolize death. -
Jan 1, 1495
splashed-ink landscape (Sesshu Toyo)
Toyo used broad, rapid strokes. He was a Muromachi painter who used the haboku style, or splashed-ink style which had Chinese roots. -
Jan 1, 1500
Lotus Mahal
The Lotus Mahal is a mixture of Hindu and Islamic architectural elements. It is located in Vijayanagara, India and is the cities sacred center. It took two centuries to build. -
Jan 1, 1503
Fall of Man (Albrecht Dürer)
Dürer's studies of the Vitruvian theory of human proportions are represented in this engraving. Though the figures are idealized, Dürer maintained naturalism in the background. The foliage authenticates the images, and the animals are symbolic–the choleric cate, melancholic elk, sanguine rabit, and phlegmatic ox represent the four humors and humanity's temperaments. -
Jan 1, 1504
Tempietto (Bramante)
Bramante was inspired by round Roman temples. He was celebrated as the first to revive the classical style in architecture. Bramante achieved a remarkable balance in the relationship of the dome, drum, and base. it used antique models, but the combination and design was modern and new. -
Jan 1, 1509
Philosophy from School of Athens (Raphael)
One of four paintings that decorates the four walls of the Stanza della Segnatura in the papal apartments (Theolody, Law (Justice), Poetry, and Philosphy). It depicts the greatest minds, philosophers, and scientists of the ancient world. Figures are identified/characterized by their works/beliefs/accomplishments. Raphael masterfully depicted a vast perspective and grand space. -
Jan 1, 1510
Isenheim Altarpiece (Matthais Grünewald)
Made for the chapel of the Hospital of Saint Anthony in Isenheim Germany, Grünewald painted panels that depict suffering, disease, healing, hope, and salvation. Each piece and story shown when the altarpiece is at various staged of being open reinforces these themes. -
Jan 1, 1519
Madonna of the Pesaro Family (Titian)
Titian was trained by Bellini and Giorgione, and was appointed the official painter of the Republic of Venice after Bellini's death. His personal style included rich surface textures and dazzling color. He placed the figures on a steep diagonal rather than in a horizontal and symmetrical composition. The Madonna who is the focus of the piece is off the central axis, but Titian brings attention to he through perspective lines, inclination of the figures, and directional lines of gaze and gesture. -
Jan 1, 1533
The French Ambassadors (Hans Holbein the Younger)
The two humanists and French ambassadors to England (Jean de Dinteville on the left and Georges of Selve on the right, where shown with a collections of objects that represented their worldliness and learning. And anamorphic skull dashes throught the center of the double portrait as a reminder of death and can only be seen in proper proportion and a particular angle. The objects were rendered with meticulous care. -
Jan 1, 1534
Madonna with the Long Neck (Parmigianino)
Painted by Parmigianino and shows stylish elegance rather than classical form. Focuses on Mannerist idea of style, displayed through the small oval head, long neck, thin hands, and ambiguous perspective. Artists began to deviate from classical ideals. -
Jan 1, 1559
Netherlandish Proverbs (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)
This piece by Pieter Bruegel the Elder of a crowded Netherlandish village depict proverbs and passion dor clever imagery because of the Netherlandish obssession. The meaning of the more than a hundred proverbs is clear dure to Brugel's anecdotal details. -
Burial of Count Orgaz (El Greco)
El Greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos, was born on Crete but emigrated to Italy where he learned the traditions of LAte Byzantine frescoes. He eventually moved to Spain, but maintained a Late Byzantine and Mannerist style. He masterfully blended the two styles with intense emotionalism and heavy reliance on color. This painting displays distinct terrestial and celestial spheres. The terrestial sphere adheres to firm realism, whereas the celestial sphere in more personal style. -
Great Temple, Madurai, India
Built during the Nayak Dynast, and made up of several colossal gopuras, the Great Temple at Madurai's complex consists of temples that sever as almost independent cities. The sculptures recieve a fresh coat of paint every 12 years. -
Conversion of Saint Paul (Caravaggio)
It was painted for Cerasi Chapel in Roman church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Caravaggio was criticized for departing from traditional depicts of religious scenes, but his eloquence and humanity impressed many others. He did employ variety of formal devices: used perspective and chiaroscuro to bring viewers as close as possible to scene’s space and action as if participating. The low horizon line augments sense of inclusion. -
Entombment (Caravaggio)
Large scale painting in Caravaggio's distinctive style: plebian figure types, stark use of darks and light, and invitation of viewer to participate in the scene. Theological implications: men seem to be laying Christ’s body on the altar which serves to give visual form to doctrine of transubstantiation, (transformation of the Eucharistic bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ) a doctrine central to Catholicism that Protestants rejected. -
Elevation of the Cross (Rubens)
Peter Paul Rubens painted the triptych for the Church of Saint Walburga in Antwerp. The triptych reveals Ruben’s interest in Italian art scene and brings together tremendous straining forces and counterforces. He explored foreshortened anatomy and violent action. The emotional and physical tension are strong and intensified by the modeling in dark and light. It heightens the drama. -
Still Life with Flowers, Goblet, Dried Fruit, and Pretzels (Peeters)
Peters was a pioneer of still life painting. She was Flemish, but spent time in Holland and inspired the Dutch artists Pieter Clauz, Williams Kalf, and Rachel Ruysch. She was renown for her depictions of food and flowers together. Still lifes that included bread and fruit became known as breakfast pieces.
Her skills are on full display, and her virtuosity in painting. She depicts the variety of objects convincingly. -
Judith Slaying Holofernes (Gentileschi)
Painted by Artemisia Gentileschi who was a female painter with a successful career pursued in Florence, Venice, Naples, and Rome; she helped disseminate Cara’s style throughout the peninsula. She was the most renowned woman painter in Europe during the 1st half of the 17th century + 1st woman ever admitted membership in Florence’s Accademia de Disegno. She used tenebrism and “dark” subject matter narrative involving a heroic female (favorite theme of hers). -
David (Bernini)
Bernini’s sculpture is expansive and theatrical. The element of time plays an important role. Donatello's and Verrochio's Davids depict David after triumph over Goliath. Michelangelo's depicts Daivd before the encounter. Bernini's depicts the combat itself. Sculpture is aimed to capture moment of max action. Made of Marble
D seems to be moving through time + space. -
Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a memorial to his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. It eventually became his burial place as well. It could symbolize the Throne of God above the gardens of Paradise. It has an illustion the the tomb is suspended above water. -
Night Watch (Rembrandt)
Rembrandt's dramatic use of light is evident. Night Watch is one of many civic guard group portraits produced during this period, and Rembrandt captured the excitement and frantic activity of the men preparing for the parade. -
Pine Forest (Hasegawa Tohaku)
Painted with ink on a six-panel screen, Tohaku painted a grove o fmist-shrouded pines. He used, thick, thine, short, long, dark, and pale brush strokes to create a calm mood. -
Kogan
Kogan are vessels used in the Japanese tea story the represent refined rusticity, or wabi, and the value found in weathered object, or sabi. It was made during the Momoyama period. -
Las Meninas (Velasquez)
Velasquez's greatest masterpiece. His mastery of form and content is noteworthy for visual and narrative complexity. Velazquez elevated the art of painting in the person of the painter, to the highest status visually complex portrayed realities of image on canvas and mirror image, optical image, and the two painted images. He masterfully observed and represented form and shadow: allowed great number of intermediate values of grey rather than simply placing the two extremes next to each other. -
Feast of Saint Nicholas (Steen)
It rejected the tidy calm of the Dutch household, and instead opted for chaos and disruption. The allusion to selfishness, pettiness, and jealously are evident. -
The Letter (Vermeer)
Vermeer was the foremost Dutch painter of interior scenes. He was a master of pictorial light and rendered space convincingly using it. He used mirrors and the camera obscura. He achieved classical serenity and used true colors. He appeared ahead of his time in color science and theory. -
Hall of Mirrors, the Amalienburg, (Francois de Cuvillies)
Rococo was a very femimine style as far as interior decorating in France. It featured gilded moldings, mirrors, small sculptures and paintings, floral ornament, and sinuous curves. -
L'Indifferent (Antoine Watteau)
Watteau is most associated with French Rococo. This painting was simpler, more delicate, and lighter than its Baroque counterparts. Rococo was a culture that was available to a wider aristocracy concerned with private taste rather than public opulence. -
Auspicious Objects (Lang Shining)
Lang Shining was the name Giuseppe Castiglione went by in China. He was the most prominent European artist at the Qing court. He had a hybrid Italian-Chinese style. The subject is Chinese, while the three dimensional form and shadows are European. -
Breakfast Scene (William Hogarth)
Hogarth's styoe was considered truly English due tot he way it satirized the lifestyle of thenewly prosperous middle class. During this time period the British would import master painters from Continental Europe and Hogarth tried very hard to challenge the British feeling of inferirority to these artists. Breakfast Scene is part of a narrative series called Marriage a la Mode which satirizes the marital immoralities of the moneyed classes in England. -
Evening Bell at the Clock (Suzuki Haranobu)
This wookblock print is from the series Eight Views of the Parlor. It is a nishiki-e, or brocade picture, that gets its name from its costly pigments and paper. Haranobu was a ukiyo-e painter. Flatness of the objects and rich color recall court painting and refined techniques are characteristic of the nishiki-e style. -
Death of Marat (Jacques-Louis David)
This painting is Neoclassical due to its spareness, but it has realism that convincingly conveys pain and outrage. Narrative details like the knife, wound, blood, and letter help confront the viewer with the scene. David effectively made Marat out to be a martyr. -
Ancient of Days (William Blake)
William Blake is considered a Romantic artist though he incorporated classical references in his works such as ideal classical anatomy. He combined it with the inner dark dreams of Romanticism. He found inspiration for his work from his dreams. -
Napoleon at the Penthouse at Jaffa ( Antoine-Jean Gros)
Gros was taught by Jacque-Louis David and hired by Napoleon to record and incident that occurred during the bubonic plague as a type of propaganda and damage control after Napoleon ordered all plague-stricken French soldiers to be poisoned so he wouldn't have to return them to Cairo or abandon them to the Turks. -
Monticello (Thomas Jefferson)
The movement to adopt Neoclassicism in the United States was championed by Jefferson and his Virginian home has Paladian characteristics and is reminiscent of Chiswick House in England. He liked to borrow from classical architecture and make unique designs. -
Feather cloak
The elegant Hawaiian feather cloaks would belong to mean of high rank. Called 'ahu'ula, the cloak would reflect the status of its wearer. The red and yellow feather came from 'i'iwi, 'apapane, 'o'o, and mamo birds and were considered highly precious. Some of the birds could only prodyce six or seven suitable feathers for a full-length cloak that could require up to 500,000 feathers. The cloaks conferred the protection of the gods on their wearers and provided physical protection. -
The Great Wave of Kanagawa (Hokusai)
Hokusai was a very prominent ukiyo-e painter. This woodbloc used Western techniques and Europen Prussian blue, but he used graphic forms and a highly Japanese style. -
Liberty Leading the People (Eugene Delacroix)
Delacroix captured the passion and energy of the French Revolution. He balanced contemporary historical fact with poetic allegory. This is a Romantic painting and aligns with the interest in the French perception of the Greeks brutal struggle for freedom with the Ottoman Turks. -
Reliquary guardian figure
Made by the Kota, the guardian figures have large heads and bodies in the form of an open lozenge. The are made of wood that is covered with polished copper and brass sheets. The gleaming surfaces are believed to repel evil. The hairstyles are flattened out laterally above and beside the face. the lower portion of the image is inserted into a basket or box of ancestral relics. -
Tatanua Mask
Tatanua masks are worn by dancers during malanggan rites to represent the deceased in New Ireland. The mask is made of wood, fiber, shell, lime, and feathers. The masks are traditionally painted black, white, yellow, and red. These colorsw are associated with warfare, magic spells, and violence. New Irelanders reuse their masks. -
Ugolino and His Children (Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux)
Carpeaux based this sculptural group on Dante's Inferno and it depicts Ugolino biting his hands in despair as he waits with his sons to die by starvation.Carpeaux focused on the vivid reality in anatomy and shows his interest in study from life. -
Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California (Albert Bierstadt)
Bierstadt was a member of the Hudxon River School and used the landscape genre as an allegorical vehicle to address moral and spiritual concerns. He traveled west and produced paintings that depicted the Rocky Mountains, Yosemite Valley, and other similar sites, -
Hair ornaments from the Marquesas Islands
Warfare was widespread through the late 19th century in the Marquesas islands and these ornaments functioned as protective amulets. THey were made of bone or ivory and warrior wore them until they avenged the death of a kinsman. They are a form of tiki. The large rounded eyes and wide mouths are typically Marquesan. -
Nail figure from Kongo
This nail figure is made of wood, nails, blades, medicinal materials, and cowrie shell. These nkisi n'kondi were Kongo power figures that only trained priests using ritual formulas could consecrate. The figures embody spirits that can heal or inflict harm. The statue has simplified facial features and a magnified head size though it is relatively naturalistic. -
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat)
Seurat was a post-impressionist, but the themes he chose were Impressionist but my depicting them in an intellectual way pushed him towards post-impressionism. He developed a painstaking system of painting based on color analysis known as pointillism or divisionism which involves carefully observing color and separating it into different parts that are then applied to the canvas in tiny dots or daubs. The images become comprehensible from a distance becuase the viewer's eye blends the dots. -
Starry Night (Vincent van Gogh)
This was painted while van Gogh was self-committed to Saint-Paul-de-Mausole which was an asylum in Saint Remy during the year before his death. The cyprus trees and placement of the constellations are in line with the view the artist would have had from his window. He uses expressive line, shape, and color. -
At the Moulin Rouge (Toulouse-Lautrec)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was influenced by Degas, Japanese prints, and photography, but he utilized glaring lighting, masklike faces, and dissonan colors to put his own take on the impressionist style. -
Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (in Sun) (Monet)
Monet intensively studies light and color and made several paintings of the same subject such as this one. He would observe the cathedral from practically the same viewpoint at different times during the day and conditions. Though Monet was looking at the cathedral, the light and color was really the subject of the painting. -
Mende Sowie Masks
This is a female mask made by the Mende people. It refers to Ideals of female beauty, morality, and behavior. The large head represents wisdom, the thick, folded neck beauty and health, and the plaited hair the meticulous order of ideal households. It hase a small closed mouth and downcast eyes that indicate the silent serioud demeanor expected of ewcent initiates. It is made of wood and pigment. -
Chilkat blanket with stylized animal motifs
Named for an Alaskin Tlingit village, the Chilkat blanket was a characteristic Northwest Coast art form. Men would provide the templates for the blankets via wooden pattern boards and the females would weave them. The blankets are woven of shredded cedar bark and mountain goad wool on an upritght loom. They took at least siz months to complete and were robes worn over the soilders. They possess symmetry, rhythmic repetition, schematic abstraction of animal motifs and eye designs. -
Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Picasso)
Picasso was inspired by African and ancient Iberian sculpture as well as the later paintings of Cezanne. This work was paramount in establishing Picasso's new styles and methods of presenting form in space. His new ideas were called Cubism and Primitivism. -
Auuenau
Painted with the "X-ray style" where the figure's internal organs and external appearance are visible, this depicts a Dreaming. Dreamings are ancestral beings whose spirits pervade the present and were frequently painted by Aboriginal painters. It was painted with ochre on bark. The depicted Dreaming, Auuenau comes from Arnhem Land in northern Australia. The painting has a fluid and dynamic quality with the figure defined against the solid background. -
Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow (Mondrian)
Mondrian cofounded the De Stijl movement with van Doesburg in 1917 and published a magazine of the same name. THe De Stijl utilizes the same utopian spirit and ideals of the Suprematists and Constructivists of Russia. Those ideals reached to Mondrian in Holland. Mondrian limited his formal vocabulary to the primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, the three primary values, black white, and gray, and the twoprimary directions, horizontal and veritcal. -
American Gothic (Wood)
Grant Wood painted as part of the Midwestern Regionalism movement. THis movement foucused on American subjects. Wood focused on images that represented his native Iowa. His movement reacted to eh modernist abstration of Europe and New York. This painting became a national icon. -
The Persistence of Memory (Dali)
Dali is considered one of the most influential and famous surrealist painters. HIs goal was to paint "images of concrete irrationality". This painting is representative of empty space after time has ended. Dali strived to make the world of his paintings as convincingly real as he could with his dreamscape motif. -
Blackware jar (Maria Montoya Martinez)
Traditionally, Native American women created pottery. Martinez made black on black vessels of striking shapes with matte designs on highly polished surfaces. Her husband painted the designs while Martinez coiled, slipped, and burnished her pots when there became a high demand for them. She is from the San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico. They invented the black-on-black ware. -
Fountain (Duchamp)
Duchamp was a Dada artists and created "readymade" sculptures that were mass produced objects that he modified or altered so that viewers would be forced to reimagine and see an everyday object in a new light. Fountain is considered the most outrageous of these sculptures. It is a urinal made by the Mott plumbling company that was turned on its back and signed R. Mutt. -
Rent Collection Courtyard (Ye Yushan)
The subject of these sculptures is the exploitation of peasants by their merciless landlords during the grim times before the Communists' takeover of China. It is a tableau that spans 100 yards and contains 114 figures. -
Ta Tele (Trigo Piula)
This painted is a commntary on modern life showing Confolese citizens transfixed by television pictures of the world outside Africa. The central traditional power figure has a TV screen for a chest which represents how the modern age is taking over traditional values. -
Homage to Steve Biko (Willie Bester)
This mixed media painting is a tribute to Steve Biko, a leader of the Black Liberation Movement that protested apartheil in South Africa. The injustice of his death is referenced several times in the painting. Biko's portrait is next to that of James Kruger the police minister who transported Biko 1,100 miles to Pretoria in the yello Land Rover ambulance scene twice left of and below Biko. -
Moai
THe Easter Island Moai were made with volcanic tuff. If there was a head piece it was made wtih red scoria called pukao. They are monolilthic statues that could be as much as 40 feet tall. The majority of scholars believe they portray ancestral chiefs. They were placed on platforms that marked burials or sites for religious ceremonies. These blocky figures had planar facial features such as large staring eyes, strong jaws, straight noses with articulated nostrils, and elongated earlobes.
