Located in downtown San Jose, the Museo de Oro is an underground Museum featuring pre-Columbian relics.....many of which were fashioned in gold.
This sculpture is reminiscent of the Mayan chacmool found at Mexico's pyramid at Chiche'n Itza'.
This sculpture is made from pieces of machinery.
This website (
visit link) describes the chacmool:
"The chacmool is a sculptural figure seated on the ground with its upper back raised, the head is turned to a near right angle, the legs are drawn up to the buttocks, elbows rest on the ground, and its hands hold a vessel, disk or plate on the stomach where offerings may have been placed or human sacrifices carried out.
The current name chacmool is derived from the name "Chaacmol" which Augustus Le Plongeon gave to a sculpture he and his wife Alice Dixon Le Plongeon excavated from within the Temple of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chiche'n Itza' in1875. He translated "Chaacmol" from Yucatecan Maya as the "paw swift like thunder" (Le Plongeon 1896:157). The name, he said, was given by the ancient Maya to a powerful warrior prince who had once ruled Chiche'n Itza', and was represented by the sculpture.
In an article on the archaeological work of Le Plongeon by Stephen Salisbury, Jr. that was published in 1877 in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, the name Chaacmol was changed to chacmool (an archaic Yucatecan Maya word for puma).
The chacmool excavated by the Le Plongeons was hidden near the village of Piste', about one kilometer from Chiche'n Itza', while they waited for permission from the president of Mexico, Lerdo de Tejada, to ship it to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition in 1876. It was discovered however, and then paraded with great fanfare into Me'rida, the capital of Yucata'n. The Yucatecans considered it a great cultural treasure and put it on display, but within a short time the new president, Porfirio Diaz, recognized its importance and sent an armed military contingent to Me'rida to bring it to Mexico City where it has remained.
Chacmools are found in Central Mexico and Yucata'n with the greatest number concentrated at the archaeological sites of Tula, Hidalgo, and Chiche'n Itza', Yucata'n. A chacmool excavated from the Aztec Templo Mayor in Mexico City in the early 1980s was found fully polychromed. At Tula and Chiche'n Itza', the chacmool was usually placed in the antechamber of a temple presumably to receive offerings or for sacrifice."
Unfortunately there is no information provided at the site concerning the title, artist or date.