Chancay Pottery Stargazer Figure – Standing Female (Auction 2026-06-05, Lot 75)

$385.50

Pre-Columbian, Peru, North Coast, Chancay culture, ca. 1000 to 1470 CE. A wonderfully direct and unflinching Chancay figure, this standing female ‘stargazer’ turns her face slightly upward, as if listening for something just beyond the room. Modeled in pottery and painted in the Chancay palette of warm earthen tan and deep black, she wears a simple tunic, her arms lifted and spread in a gesture that reads at once as welcome, invocation, and ritual display. The body is rendered with the bold, graphic clarity that makes Chancay sculpture so immediately recognizable: rounded head, large eyes, simplified features, and a strong silhouette meant to be read from across a space. Her exposed genitalia is intentional, not incidental – a frank emphasis on fertility, womanhood, and the life-giving power celebrated in Andean ceremonial art. The upward tilt of the head reinforces the figure’s iconic ‘stargazer’ identity, suggesting prayer, trance, or communication with ancestors and the unseen world. Size: 7.5″ W x 11″ H (19 cm x 27.9 cm)

Figures of this type are closely associated with Chancay funerary traditions, where sculptural ceramics served as companions, guardians, and symbolic offerings. At once intimate and monumental, she embodies a culture that understood the human body not as something to conceal, but as something sacred – a vessel of continuity, lineage, and return.

Publication: Please note that this piece is for local pick up only due to its delicate condition.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA collection; previously bequeathed to the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, Israel, stored for many years and exhibited in 1988; ex-Yosef A. Maiman collection, Consul of Peru A.H., acquired in 1993; ex-Kate Kemper collection, Switzerland, acquired in the 1940s or earlier

Condition: Overall delicate condition with losses, flaking, and chipping to surface as shown. Local pick up only.