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Lot 7
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Pre-Columbian Mezcala Stone Axe-God Figures, Group of 3
Pre-Columbian Mezcala Stone Axe-God Figures, Group of 3
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Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Guerrero, Mezcala, ca. 700 BCE – 300 CE. A trio of abstracted anthropomorphic figures carved in the spare, geometric idiom that defines the Mezcala lapidary tradition of ancient Guerrero. Each was worked from a polished celt blank, the human form coaxed from the stone through a sequence of shallow string-sawn grooves that delineate the head from the shoulders, the arms from the torso, and the legs from one another. The result is the so-called "axe-god," a hybrid object in which tool and effigy share a single body, a conceptual fusion characteristic of west Mexican ritual aesthetics.

Two of the figures are cut from a mottled green stone, dense and slightly waxy in surface, while the third is rendered in a paler gray stone with a softer, more weathered finish. None is jade or jadeite; the carvers of the Balsas River basin worked a range of locally available metamorphic stones, often selecting for color and translucency that approached, without matching, the prestige material of the highland elites. The central greenstone figure carries the most articulated visage, with incised brow line and pellet eyes notched into a rounded cranium. The pale gray example and the larger green example are each pierced through the upper torso with a biconical suspension hole, suggesting their secondary or primary use as pendants worn against the body.

Mezcala stoneworkers produced such figures in great numbers from the Late Preclassic into the Classic period, and their objects circulated widely, deposited as offerings in caches well beyond Guerrero, including in the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan, where the Aztecs gathered them as antiquities a millennium after their making. Whether amulet, ancestor effigy, or charged ritual implement, the axe-god distills the human form to its essential vertical axis, a small cosmos held in the palm. Size of largest: 1.6" W x 4" H (4.1 cm W x 10.2 cm H).

Provenance: private Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private San Antonio, Texas, USA collection

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Item # 203131

  • Condition: Fair. Weathering to surfaces with chipping and abrasions as shown. Liberal remaining detail with earthen deposits throughout. Two larger have suspension holes and are wearable as pendants.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
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Louisville, CO, US 80027

Artemis Fine Arts

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Bid Increments
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$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000