Stirrup-spout vessel with deer hunting scenes
Peru, north coast, Moche culture
c. A.D. 450–550
Ceramic
10 x 6 1/4 x 9 1/8 in. (25.4 x 15.88 x 23.18 cm)
The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., 1969.2.McD

The regional Moche, or Mochica, culture was dominant on the north coast of Peru from the 1st to the 8th century. At its peak, about A.D. 400, the Moche realm occupied an area about 370 miles long and encompassed ten contiguous river valleys. Moche art comprised enormous platform mounds constructed of adobe brick; sophisticated metallurgy in gold, silver, and bronze; and a prolific ceramic tradition that often made use of molds.

Moche potters favored flat-bottomed vessels with stirrup spouts and restricted color to red-brown and cream. They excelled at modeling, which they used to produce portrait heads, plants, animals, and figural compositions, all of considerable naturalism, and they were adept at fine-line painting, through which they documented events of ritual significance. This vessel combines the two approaches in treating an important Moche theme, the deer hunt. The modeled three-dimensional forms of hunter and deer complement the delicately painted scene that covers the vessel. Elaborate garments and headdresses suggest a ceremonial occasion and elite status for the three hunters, one of whom sits in a litter. Seen amid the lacy branches of acacia trees, the hunters have killed three deer trapped by the net that stretches across the top of the vessel, beneath the stirrup, and they have speared another that falls between them. Long-tailed spotted dogs in the painted scene seem to attack the modeled deer that leaps above them