TEOTIHUACAN
115
FIG. 8 (PAGE DE DROITE) :
Masque du ngil. Fang,
Gabon. XIXe siècle.
Boi, kaolin et clous de laiton.
H. : 69 cm.
Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac,
inv. 71.1965.104.1.
© mqB-JC, photo : Claude Germain.
115
Cipactli. The combined image, with shells surrounding
the serpent bodies, may indicate that
the Feathered Serpent Pyramid is rising from the
primordial sea (fi g. 3). Perhaps relating to this,
recent archaeology in the Ciudadela suggests the
presence of hydraulic systems that could have
been used to deliberately fl ood the plaza that
surrounds the pyramid.
The Feathered Serpent consistently appears
on ceramics and murals as well. In fact, it is the
polychrome paintings of the Feathered Serpent
looted from a residential compound known as
Techinantitla in the 1960s that form the basis
FIG. 11 (above): Mask.
Teotihuacan, Anahuac,
Mexico. AD 300–600.
Green serpentine. H: 21.6 cm.
Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collections, Robert
Woods Bliss Collection,
inv. PC.B.054.
Photo © Dumbarton Oaks,
Pre-Columbian Collection,
Washington, D.C.
Image courtesy of the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco.
of the relationship between the Fine Arts Museums
of San Francisco and INAH. The unexpected
bequest by local collector Harald J. Wagner
of a large number of murals to the de Young
prompted a series of negotiations over several
years that resulted in a collaborative conservation
and repatriation agreement between the
two institutions, and also resulted in an extraordinary
series of exhibitions and exchanges over
the last twenty-fi ve years. The present exhibition
will provide an opportunity to reunite the three
known Techinantitla Feathered Serpent murals,
all of which can be traced back to Wagner and
the mid 1960s (fi gs. 4, 7, and 8). One was retained
by the de Young; the second was returned
to INAH and the Museo Nacional de Antropología;
and the third is part of the collection of
the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
Their inclusion will represent the fi rst time the
murals have been together on public view in
over a thousand years.
The exhibition concludes with a four-foot-tall
marble sculpture, excavated in 2002 in the pa-
FIG. 12 (left):
Standing fi gure.
Teotihuacan, Anahuac,
Mexico. AD 200–250.
Greenstone. H: 36 cm.
Zona de Monumentos Arqueológica
de Teotihuacán/INAH Proyecto
Tlalocan. Photo: Jorge Pérez de Lara
Elías, © INAH.
Image courtesy of the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco.