Xipe Totec, c. 900–1200

Xipe Totec, the Aztec god of spring and regeneration, appears in many Mesoamerican cultures. A life-death-birth deity, Xipe Totec (Our Lord the Flayed One) vividly conveys the concept of death and rebirth by wearing the flayed skin of a sacrificial victim. Xipe Totec is also associated with the arrival of spring, when the earth covers itself with a new coat of vegetation and exchanges its dead skin for a new one. During the corn-planting festival, Xipe Totec was impersonated by a priest who, dressed in the skin of a flayed captive, ritually enacted the death-and-renewal cycle of the earth. Xipe Totec was the divine embodiment of life emerging from the dead land and of the new plant sprouting from the seed.

In this sculpture, the face of a living being is seen behind the mouth and eye openings of the sacrificial victim, whose skin is laced together by cords at the back of the wearer’s skull. Similar lacing is also seen on the chest, indicating where the victim’s heart was removed. This clay sculpture of Xipe, with its dynamically articulated body covering, closely resembles Aztec stone figures in the precise modeling, sturdy body, and rounded lips and eyes.