Important vase cérémoniel

carved in the round on the perimeter of a frieze personifying the Kukulcan god Quetzalcoatl, in the form of a face with a bifid tongue, scroll and spiral motifs and various symbols. This sequence is delimited by two friezes in snake scales on the bottom and top, at the birth of the lips. The handles are sculpted with the Jaguar god on the lookout, his mouth open, showing his fangs and his ears erect. The foot is perforated with temple staircase motifs. Travertine, hollowed out at the drill bits, carved and semi-polished, a few small chips from time, tiny scattered microcracks. Maya, Ulúa river valley, western Honduras, 600-900 AD 17 x 25 x 20 cm Provenance: former Reinhard Kristermann collection, New York. Sale Master Castor Hara, Drouot Montaigne of December 4, 2009, number 172 of the catalog reproduced on the cover. The lower Ulúa Valley, in northwestern Honduras, lies between the Maya geographic zone and the lower part of Central America. The workshop that produced the distinctive semi-translucent vases of this region, carved from a single block of marble, has been located in the Travesía region (cf. Luke, C., "Materiality and Sacred Landscapes: Ulúa Style Marble Vases in Honduras" in Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Society, 2012, Boston, vol. 21, issue 1, p. 114). The Travesía region was famous for the production of cocoa, which was the source of the population's wealth according to the size of the harvest. These precious vases, made of fine-grained marble and charged with religious symbolism, were also offered as gifts or traded in Mesoamerica, between Guanacaste and the center of the Maya Lowlands. The quality of the brilliance of the stone used for these vases was probably associated with the mythological kingdoms of water, clouds and mist. Kukulkan is the god of resurrection and reincarnation and plays a role identical to that of Quetzalcoatl among the Aztecs. Kukulkan comes, according to the legend, from the ocean and will perhaps return there one day. According to the Maya, he will return to earth at the end of the world.