\n\tBy April, 1971, Arte Primitivo, Inc. (William Kaplan), New York [1]; 1975, sold to the Princeton University Art Museum.\n
\n\n\tNotes:\n\t
\n\t[1] According to Robert Sonin archive, Notebook 3, Rolls 208-210. The slides are date-stamped April 1971. Additionally, the work was exhibited in the exhibition The Maya Scribe and His World at the Grolier Club, New York, from April 20 to June 5, 1971, according to installation photographs in the curatorial files.\n
With graceful, sure lines painted on a cream ground, this famous Maya chocolate-drinking cup, known as the Princeton Vase, presents a story that stretches around the entire vessel. Subtle visual devices link the primary scenes and encourage the viewer to rotate the vessel, allowing the story to unfold. Here, for example, a young noblewoman taps the foot of the woman in front of her while turning her head in the opposite direction: She bridges two scenes and encourages her companion, as well as the viewer, to shift her attention around the vase. A thin, meandering line connects the mouth of the old man to the hieroglyphic text that records his speech, just above the woman’s head. Frustratingly, surface accretions in this area of the vessel have hindered decipherment of this key piece of textual information.\n
The dramatic scene of human sacrifice on this side of the drinking cup was long thought to depict a scene recorded in the colonial-period K’iche’ Maya manuscript known as the Popol Vuh, in which the Hero Twins disguise themselves and trick the lords of the underworld into requesting their own decapitations. The elaborately costumed actors do not, however, share features with the Hero Twins as they normally appear in this era. Their victim may be a supernatural scribe, perhaps one whose place in the royal court of God L, the patron deity of trade and tobacco, has been taken by the rabbit scribe portrayed on the other side of the vessel. Some other Maya vase paintings depict moments in the humorous humiliation of God L, in which the rabbit is a key actor on behalf of the Sky God and the Moon Goddess.\n
A woman standing with her head bent in concentration holds a vessel similar in size and shape to the uk’ib on which it is painted. A stream of liquid chocolate pours down from it into another similar vessel, now barely visible. In this method of preparation, chocolate was frothed for drinking in a vessel like this one, as specified by one of the hieroglyphic texts on the vessel. The vertical pier represents the rear wall of a palace structure, marking the boundaries of the overall composition on this vase. This self-referential\n\nvignette, which shows the vessel in use at the end of the narrative, functions as a sort of coda.\n
On this side of the drinking cup, curtains, used as doors by the ancient Maya, have been drawn to reveal an old, toothless underworld god. He sits on a throne within a palace, represented by the pier behind him and a cornice above. This deity, known as God L, wears his characteristic brocaded shawl and a broad-brimmed hat bedecked with owl feathers and a taxidermy owl. In addition to ruling the Maya underworld, God L was the patron deity of tobacco and merchants. Five elegant female figures—possibly concubines—surround him. Each wears a loose, flowing sarong and earrings, necklaces, and wristlets. A rabbit scribe, who might be spying on God L, sits below, writing in a book. God L ties a wristlet on the woman before him, but her attention is about to shift as another woman taps on her heel.\n
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