{"secondaryobjectnumber":null,"periodterms":[{"id":2039054,"period":"Early Preclassic"},{"id":2035648,"period":"Early Preclassic"}],"creditline":"Gift of Gillett G. Griffin","caption":"Tlatilco (Type D4), Early Formative Period, 1400–1100 BCE, Mexico City, Central Mexico, Mexico, Mesoamerica, Double-faced female figurine. Ceramic with red and yellow slip-paint; 9.5 × 4.8 × 2.1 cm. Gift of Gillett G. Griffin (1999-245)","cultureterms":[{"id":2035688,"culture":"Tlatilco"}],"type":"artobject","dimensionsproposed":"","terms":[{"id":2096754,"term":"beauty","aatid":300055821,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2055657,"term":"figures (representations)","aatid":300189808,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2055437,"term":"figurines","aatid":300047455,"termtype":"Classification"},{"id":2088280,"term":"women","aatid":300025943,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2049167,"term":"ceramics","aatid":300151343,"termtype":"Classification"},{"id":2039054,"term":"Early Preclassic","aatid":300016970,"termtype":"Period / Style"},{"id":2089653,"term":"dancer","aatid":300025653,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2035648,"term":"Early Preclassic","aatid":300016970,"termtype":"Period / Style"},{"id":2035688,"term":"Tlatilco","aatid":300017007,"termtype":"Culture"},{"id":2055673,"term":"nude","aatid":300189568,"termtype":"Subject"},{"id":2168423,"term":"pigment","aatid":300013109,"termtype":"Materials"},{"id":2160750,"term":"ceramic","aatid":300235507,"termtype":"Materials"}],"geography":[{"displaygeography":"Place made: North America, Mexico, Mexico City, Central Mexico, Tlatilco","code":"Place made","continent":"North America","subcontinent":"Mesoamerica","country":"Mexico","region":"Central Mexico","state":null,"city":"Mexico City","county":null,"subregion":null,"locale":"Tlatilco","locus":null,"river":null,"excavation":null,"geoname":"http://www.geonames.org/3530597/mexico-city.html","location":{"lat":"","lon":""}}],"dimensionelements":[{"element":"Overall","type":"Height","units":"centimeters","dimension":"9.50"},{"element":"Overall","type":"Width","units":"centimeters","dimension":"4.78"},{"element":"Overall","type":"Depth","units":"centimeters","dimension":"2.10"}],"markings":null,"accessionyear":"1999-01-01","newaccession":0,"makers":[],"datecomputed":-1250,"signed":null,"restrictions":null,"classification":"Ceramic","packages":[{"packageid":225488,"name":"Gallery_20(Pavilion5)-AAA"},{"packageid":206417,"name":"image_descriptions_top250"},{"packageid":278831,"name":"10282025-DAY1-ONVIEW"},{"packageid":167646,"name":"web_highlights"},{"packageid":197269,"name":"web_highlights -revised 2021"}],"catalograisonne":null,"classifications":[{"id":2055437,"classification":"figurines"},{"id":2049167,"classification":"ceramics"}],"exhibitions":[],"cultures":[{"id":13858,"culture":"Tlatilco","alphasort":"Tlatilco","begindate":0,"enddate":0,"displayculture":"Tlatilco (Type D4)","displaydate":null}],"primaryimage":["https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/1999-245"],"displaytitle":"Double-faced female figurine","displayculture":"Tlatilco (Type D4)","displaymaker":null,"captionhtml":"Tlatilco (Type D4), Early Formative Period, 1400–1100 BCE, Mexico City, Central Mexico, Mexico, Mesoamerica, Double-faced female figurine. Ceramic with red and yellow slip-paint; 9.5 × 4.8 × 2.1 cm. Gift of Gillett G. Griffin (1999-245)","displaydate":"1400–1100 BCE","medium":"Ceramic with red and yellow slip-paint","media":[{"id":74537,"uri":"https://media.artmuseum.princeton.edu/iiif/3/collection/1999-245","isprimary":1,"rank":1,"mediatypeid":1,"mediaviewtype":"(not assigned)","restrictions":null,"caption":"Bruce White Photography"}],"displayperiod":"Early Formative Period","extended_content":false,"campuscollections":"false","bibliography":[{"boilertext":"

Frances Pratt and Carlo T. E. Gay, Ceramic figures of ancient Mexico: Guerrero, México, Guanajuato, Michoacán, 1600 B.C.-300 A.D. (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1979).

","citation":"

Frances Pratt and Carlo T. E. Gay, Ceramic figures of ancient Mexico: Guerrero, México, Guanajuato, Michoacán, 1600 B.C.-300 A.D. (Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1979).

, fig. 99 (illus.)","date":1979,"id":6204,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/8347609"},{"boilertext":"Gordon Bendersky, \"Tlatilco Sculptures, Diprosopus, and the Emergence of Medical Illustrations,\" Perspectives in Biologly and Medicine 43, no. 4 (2000): 477-501.","citation":"Gordon Bendersky, \"Tlatilco Sculptures, Diprosopus, and the Emergence of Medical Illustrations,\" Perspectives in Biologly and Medicine 43, no. 4 (2000): 477-501., fig. 2, pp. 477–501 (illus.)","date":2000,"id":2533,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/538250225"},{"boilertext":"Gerald Berjonneau, Emile Deletaille, and Jean-Louis Sonnery, Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras (Boulogne: Editions Arts, 1985).","citation":"Gerald Berjonneau, Emile Deletaille, and Jean-Louis Sonnery, Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras (Boulogne: Editions Arts, 1985)., cat. no. 112 (illus.)","date":1985,"id":2538,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/13186418"},{"boilertext":"Michael D. Coe et al., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, 1996)","citation":"Michael D. Coe et al., The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, 1996), fig. 3, p. 51 (illus.)","date":1996,"id":2564,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/34103154"},{"boilertext":"Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz, Mexico from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, 7th edition (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2013).","citation":"Michael D. Coe and Rex Koontz, Mexico from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, 7th edition (London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2013)., fig. 23, p. 46 (illus.)","date":2013,"id":2569,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/823552387"},{"boilertext":"Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013)","citation":"Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 114","date":2013,"id":1994,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/865020505"},{"boilertext":"\"Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1999,\" Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 59, no. 1/2 (2000): p. 70-101.","citation":"\"Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1999,\" Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 59, no. 1/2 (2000): p. 70-101., p. 96 (illus.)","date":2000,"id":3036,"uri":"https://www.jstor.org/stable/3774806"},{"boilertext":"Deborah Aaronson, Diane Fortenberry, and Rebecca Morrill, Body of Art (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2015).","citation":"Deborah Aaronson, Diane Fortenberry, and Rebecca Morrill, Body of Art (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2015).","date":2015,"id":6856,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/905521888"},{"boilertext":"Jill Guthrie, ed., In celebration: works of art from the Collections of Princeton Alumni and Friends of The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1997).","citation":"Jill Guthrie, ed., In celebration: works of art from the Collections of Princeton Alumni and Friends of The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1997)., cat. no. 65","date":1997,"id":852,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/231714876"},{"boilertext":"Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007)","citation":"Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 109 (illus.)","date":2007,"id":474,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/191864564"},{"boilertext":"Richard Schlagman and Phaidon Press, The Art Museum (London; New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2011).","citation":"Richard Schlagman and Phaidon Press, The Art Museum (London; New York: Phaidon Press Inc., 2011)., fig. 3, p. 234 (illus.)","date":2011,"id":741,"uri":"https://search.worldcat.org/title/714731902"}],"nowebuse":"False","periods":[{"id":24008,"period":"Early Formative Period","alphasort":"Formative Period, Early","begindate":0,"enddate":0,"displayperiod":"Early Formative Period","displaydate":null}],"department":"Art of the Ancient Americas","attribute_groups":[{"id":2199317,"term":"Art of the Ancient Americas","termtype":"Collecting Area"}],"daterange":"2000-1000 B.C.","dateend":-1100,"depicted":[],"titles":[{"title":"Double-faced female figurine","titletype":"Primary Title","displayorder":1}],"hasimage":"true","creditlinerepro":"","objectnumber":"1999-245","inscribed":null,"texts":[{"texttype":"Online","textpurpose":"Provenance","textentryhtml":"

\n\tBy April, 1967, Gillett G. Griffin (1928-2016), Princeton, NJ [1]; 1999, gift of Gillett G. Griffin to the Princeton University Art Museum.\n

\n

\n\tNotes:\n\t
\n\t[1] According to a dated slide (GG90003146) in the Griffin archive.\n

","remarks":null},{"texttype":"Online","textpurpose":"Gallery Label","textentryhtml":"

Although not the first places where ceramics were produced in Mesoamerica, villages in the central basin of Mexico, now encompassed by Mexico City, the adjacent valley of Morelos to the south, and the region around the modern town of Las Bocas, Puebla, are among the areas most renowned for their ancient ceramic vessels and figurines. Local workers and amateur pothunters were the first, in the early twentieth century, to encounter the remains of these villages. The objects they looted from the sites and sold on the art market became prized by a small number of art collectors in Mexico and the United States. Later, archaeologists excavated sites in the area, contributing crucial information about the original burial context for these works.\n

Among the thousands of figurines discovered at Tlatilco, some represent uncommon human characteristics, including diprosopus (conjoined twins), as depicted elsewhere in this case. Intriguingly, this figurine possesses three eyes, two mouths, and two noses. The figurine is unbroken, with still-vibrant yellow and red coloration, but its strict, intentional symmetry is disrupted by the surface accretions of dark material that probably adhered to the object in the burial context, adding variety and a sense of age.\n 

","remarks":"AAA1_20-T6-3_CLA_FA_9_17_25.pdf - Day 1 installation"}],"datebegin":-1400,"sortnumber":"1999 245","published_date":"2026-02-11 10:58:58.868601","objectid":39164,"dimensions":"9.5 × 4.8 × 2.1 cm (3 3/4 × 1 7/8 × 13/16 in.)","on_view":true}