The Hands of the Maize God

Abstract

It is not a complete exaggeration to affirm that Copan was a curious stranger within the array of maya communities from the lowlands. The dynasty founded by Yax K’uk’ Mo’ early during the fifth century was both geographically far away from the dynastic centers from the maya lowlands as well as marked by its complex relations with peoples from the south of Mesoamerica and the northern part of Central America. Copan has represented the great type-site of the ancient maya civilization at the same time that the copan art has been considered both totally representative of one of the most precious ambitious of a wider visual tradition as well as an example of its greater achievements. The Copan´s Maize God´s representative success of a calligraphic scheme has little to do with the quality norms of copan art vis a vis the wider Maya visual tradition from the lowlands. The plastic sophistication and tridimentionality that the maya line assumes in this piece is anomalous, rather extraordinary within the mayan art corpus from the lowlands. Geographically and culturally more distant, the people from Copan had more freedom and initiated a different conversation with the visual rhetoric of the maya tradition from the lowlands.