Polychrome dish

Between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the Maya, people settled in the southeast of Mexico and the north of Central America. Multicolour decoration of their pottery is apparent from the 1st century AD, a style that flourished during the Late Classic Period (600-800). Courtyard scenes and cosmological images with texts were commonly depicted.The bottom inside of this dish is decorated with a recurrent theme: renaissance and fertility. A young man, personifying corn or representing eternal rebirth, comes back to life. He emerges from the emaciated head of a terrestrial monster, image of the earth, whose head is adorned with a water lily symbolising the surface of the waters which separate our world from the underground world. The scene is surrounded by four motifs indicating the cardinal points as well as the way to the world below (probably through a cave), the source of fertility.The inside of the dish features an aquatic frieze presenting the snakelike form of the terrestrial monster. Its head, decorated with a water lily and repeated four times, is surrounded by a range of different creatures including fish, reminding us of the aquatic milieu from whence the young man is emerging.