Tablet of the Cross.
Palenque Statue.
On either side of the doorway opening to the inner sanctuary of the Cross, were originally two male figures sculptured in low-relief on stone; one of them, which appears to represent an aged royal person, is beautifully clad in a leopard’s skin, while the opposite figure, designed probably to represent youthful manhood, is arrayed in what may be an elaborate military dress and plumed crest of magnificent character. He wears what appears to be a cuirass about his shoulders and chest. These tablets were removed to the village of Santo Domingo years ago and set up in a modern house, where they were offered to M. Waldeck on the sole condition that he should marry one of the proprietresses, though he at the time was more than sixty-four years of age. Stephens could have obtained them by purchasing the house in which they had been placed, but did not.[562] On the slope of the pyramid of the Cross, M. Waldeck found two statues just alike, one of which was unfortunately broken; the other, subsequently sketched by Catherwood, is shown in the cut, a photographic reduction from Waldeck. These statues were ten and a half feet high, though two and a half feet of their length, not shown in the cut, formed a tenon by which they were embedded in the floor of the pyramidal surface, where Waldeck supposes they stood supporting a platform about twenty feet square, in front of the central doorway. These are the only statues ever found at Palenque; but it is doubted whether they can be technically called statues, since the back is of rough stone, and unsculptured. They probably rested against a wall and served as supports for an upper roof or floor, as indicated by Waldeck. The head-dress has been pronounced Egyptian by all who have seen it.[563]
In the temple of the Sun, in a position precisely corresponding to that occupied by the tablet of the cross, stands a somewhat similar tablet cut in low-relief on three slabs covering an area of eight by nine feet. The figure of the cross in this instance is displaced by a hideous face or mask supposed to represent the sun, supported by a framework resting on the shoulders of crouching men. The priest and priestess occupy the same positions as occupied by them in the tablet of the cross. Each is in the act of presenting a child with masked face to the sun, and each is standing upon the back of a kneeling slave. The lateral tablets are covered with columns or rows of hieroglyphics, as in the tablet of the cross.[564] The stuccoed roofs and piers of both the temples—Cross and Sun—may be truly pronounced works of art of a high order. On the former, Stephens observed busts and heads approaching the Greek models in symmetry of contour and perfectness of proportion. M. Waldeck has preserved in his magnificent drawings some of these figures, which are certainly sufficient to prove beyond controversy, that the ancient Palenqueans were a cultivated and artistic people. In passing to Uxmal the transition is from delineations of the human figure to the elegant and superabundant exterior ornamentation of edifices, and from stucco to stone as the material employed. The human figure, however, when it is represented, is in statuary of a high order. The artists of Uxmal did not improve upon the Palenque models so much in the design as in the execution of their subjects. Uxmal statuary approximates more closely to what properly may be called statuary, being cut more nearly “in the round” and having less unfinished back surface than the Palenque statue. The elegant square panels of grecques and frets which compose the cornice of the Casa del Gobernador, delineated in the works of Stephens, Baldwin and Bancroft, are a marvel of beauty, which must excite the admiration of the most indifferent student of this subject. The ornamentation of this great cornice, equal to one-third the height of the building, is cut on blocks of stone and inserted in the wall with the utmost precision, so that every line matches, and the graceful arabesques and bas-reliefs, which sometimes cover several blocks with a single figure, are unbroken by apparent joints. The grandest specimens of American ornamental sculpture are, however, to be seen on the inner fronts of the four buildings of the Casa de Monjas, a plan of which is given on [page 351] of this work. It will be remembered that these fronts face the court around which the buildings were constructed. The court front of the eastern building is probably one of the most tasteful and interesting specimens of sculpture to be met with in America.[565] M. Waldeck considers that it presents an appearance of grandeur of which it would be difficult to give an idea, while Stephens considers its chasteness of design a great relief from the gorgeous masses of other façades. The cornice over the central doorway and the corners of the eastern court façade are ornamented with ugly masks and “elephant trunks” protruding from them, as in the Governor’s home.[566] If the preceding façade is the most generally admired of those at Uxmal, “the most magnificent and beautiful front in America” is that of the Serpent Temple, or western court façade of the Nunnery, as is shown in the accompanying engraving, which is a photographic reduction of Waldeck’s drawing employed in Mr. Bancroft’s work.
Western Court Façade—Casa de Monjas.
Sun Symbol.
The marked feature of the sculpture is the formation of square panels by the intertwined bodies of two huge stone serpents with monster heads, surmounted by plumes and enclosing between the jaws of each a human face. A head and tail as shown above occupy opposite extremes of the front. This may be a representation of the plumed serpent of the Central American mythology. The stone lattice-work (a feature of Uxmal sculpture) underlying the serpents and covering the panels formed by their folds, is more complicated and beautiful than any other in America. At regular intervals large grecques or arabesques, with their connecting bars lengthened to the width of the entire sculptured portion of the façade, are distributed. Several panels are ornamented with life-sized human figures, while each panel contains a human face, some of which are as beautiful as the Greek models. The upper cornice is ornamented, as are all the other cornices of the Nunnery, with what are supposed to be Sun symbols, one of which is shown in the cut, reduced photographically from Waldeck’s drawing. The appended “feathers” are almost Assyrian in their type, while the double triangle within the circle is certainly an ancient symbol in the old world.