Peruvian Faces FIG. 9 (right): Detail of a tapestry-woven panel with central truncated “flying” personage and felines. Chimu, North Coast, Peru. AD 1100–1460. Camelid wool. 50.8 x 81.3 cm. Private collection, Tarrytown, New York. FIG. 10 (right): Anders Jensen Bundgaard (1864–1937), Gefion fountain, 1897–99/1908. Copenhagen. Bronze. Photo: Daderot. Details remain obscure, but the dramatic “sun face” image from the Nazca culture, a motif that occurs with relative frequency, thus becomes especially relevant as an example of a heavenly body endowed with human-type characteristics (figs. 6 and 7). Such an image brings us to another point key to human-type visages in textiles: shamanism. Quechua tradition is replete with examples of metamorphosis from the human to the zoomorphic state, accompanied by the acquisition of corollary attributes. This is clear in the Nazca ceramic in fig. 3, which depicts supernatural figures with large wings who are transporting prisoners. Such interchange of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic aspects has parallels with the beliefs of certain North American indigenous peoples, for whom particular animals could have specific associations: the bear and the shaman, the mountain lion and the warrior, and the wolf and the tracker, for example. Transformation between the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic states has been a universal religious and artistic credo throughout the ages and across the cultures of the world. One has only to walk along the waterfront of Copenhagen to encounter the majestic fountain sculpture of the goddess Gefion and her four rampaging oxen, who, as mythology tells us, were originally her sons that she transformed into oxen in order to plough out the territory of Zeeland (fig. 10). The same waterfront also features the famous “Little Mermaid,” an iconic transitional human/fish creature. In the pre- Columbian Americas, transformational anthro-/zoomorphic imagery was particularly prevalent and certainly represented the shaman’s ability to move between sky, earth, and water, and through the realms of animals, men, ancestors, and gods, in order to promote and maintain the well-being and prosperity of his or her people (figs. 8 and 9). Given the paucity of indigenous documentation, it is difficult to differentiate what is intended as an everyday human face from one possessing divine attributes in these weavings. In our own Classical antiquity, such deities as Apollo, Aphrodite, and Diana are habitually portrayed in human form. It is only the associated literary references that clarify their divine status, often by identifying particular attributes in their depictions. Though such contemporary sources are totally absent in Peruvian pre-Columbian iconography (save for the above-mentioned Quechua clues), it is logical to assume that at least some of the often super-human, sometimes hallucinogenic personages were more than mythological fantasies or even shamans in transition, but were humanoid figures enriched by the traits and capabilities of the Pacific zoomorphic world to indicate divine status. Little is known of ancient Peruvian deities. We believe they were both male and female, as in our Classical world, though artistic representation sometimes provides little evidence of this. This is not unique. In traditional Africa, the figural finial of a Senufo harvester’s staff has sharply articulated triangular breasts, the only clear indicators that the figure’s otherwise genderless cubistic face is indeed that of a woman (fig. 11). Such defining gender markers are virtually nonexistent in ancient Peruvian textile iconography. Thus a huge painted cotton mantle depicting hundreds of frontal personages from the great Pachacamac religious sanctuary located some twenty kilometers from FIG. 11 (right): Agricultural staff (detail), tefalipitya or daleu. Senufo, Côte d’Ivoire. Wood. H: 139 cm. Private collection.
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