The Wrestler is an ancient basalt

Basalt

Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

 statuette that is one of the most important sculptures of the Olmec

Olmec

The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....

 culture. The near life-size figure has been praised not only for its realism and sense of energy, but also for its aesthetic qualities. Since 1964, the sculpture has been part of the collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología

Museo Nacional de Antropología

The Museo Nacional de Antropología is a national museum of Mexico. Located in the area between Paseo de la Reforma and Calle Mahatma Gandhi within Chapultepec Park in Mexico City, the museum contains significant archaeological and anthropological artifacts from the pre-Columbian heritage of...

 in Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

.

This 66 centimetres (26 in)-high Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

n statuette was discovered in 1933 by a farmer in Arroyo Sonso, in the Mexican state of Veracruz

Veracruz

Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...

 near the Rio Uxpanapa and not far from its confluence with the Coatzacoalcos River

Coatzacoalcos River

The Coatzacoalcos is a large river that feeds mainly the south part of the state of Veracruz; it originates in the Sierra de Niltepec and crosses the state of Oaxaca in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, flowing for toward the Gulf of Mexico. Tributaries include El Corte, Sarabia,...

, an area now known as Antonio Plaza.

It is considered unlikely that this sculpture, also known formally as Antonio Plaza Monument 1 as well as El Luchador Olmeca (Spanish, "the Olmec wrestler") actually represents a wrestler.

Description

The statuette shows a seated male figure. The legs are delicate and rather diminutive, with the right leg bent in front of the body and the left folded backward, almost underneath the body. The arms are upraised and, similar to the legs, bent and asymmetrical. Both hands are clenched. In a position unusual for Olmec art, the shoulders are not situated directly above the hips, but twisted slightly to the right, giving the sculpture a sense of movement that is accentuated by the well-defined muscles and the dynamic positioning of the arms.

The head is bald, but it lacks the highly stylized cranial deformation

Artificial cranial deformation

Artificial cranial deformation, head flattening, or head binding is a form of permanent body alteration in which the skull of a human being is intentionally deformed. It is done by distorting the normal growth of a child's skull by applying force...

 found in many Olmec figurines or the wooden busts of El Manati

El Manatí

El Manatí is an archaeological site located approximately 60 km south of Coatzacoalcos, in the municipality of Hidalgotitlán 27 kilometers southeast of Minatitlan in the Mexican state of Veracruz...

. The figure wears a mustache and goatee

Goatee

Goatee refers to a style of facial hair incorporating hair on a man’s chin. The exact nature of the style has varied according to time and culture.Traditionally, goatee refers solely to a beard formed by a tuft of hair on the chin...

, relatively rare features in Olmec sculpture which appear on only a few relief

Relief

Relief is a sculptural technique. The term relief is from the Latin verb levo, to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is thus to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane...

s such as La Venta Monument 3.

The figure wears only a lightly outlined breechcloth

Breechcloth

A breechcloth, or breechclout, is a form of loincloth consisting in a strip of material – usually a narrow rectangle – passed between the thighs and held up in front and behind by a belt or string. Often, the flaps hang down in front and back.- Native Americans :In most Native American...

, leading to the supposition that the statuette originally was dressed in ritualistic clothing that has perished with the passage of time.

This sculpture is fully three-dimensional and presumed to be intended for viewing from all sides: the rear view shows carefully sculpted shoulder blades and a slight naturalistic bulge that is visible above the belt at the hips. Mary Ellen Miller finds that "the long diagonal of line of the figure's back and shoulders is as beautiful and commanding as the frontal view". The figure clearly is more free-flowing than other three-dimensional Olmec sculptures (than, for example, San Martin Pajapan Monument 1

San Martín Pajapan Monument 1

San Martín Pajapan Monument 1 is a large Olmec basalt sculpture found on top of the San Martin Pajapan volcano, in the Tuxtla Mountains of the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is notable for its original location and its Olmec iconography.-Description:...

), which frequently are boxy and seemingly "confined" by the medium from which they are carved.

Subject and dating

Despite its name, it is unlikely that the figure represents a wrestler and it is thought that the mustache and goatee connect the subject to the "political-religious hierarchy". Based on similarities with Jacques le Moyne

Jacques Le Moyne

Jacques le Moyne de Morgues was a French artist and member of Jean Ribault's expedition to the New World. His depictions of Native American, colonial life and plants are of extraordinary historical importance.-Expedition:...

's painting of a 16th century Timucua

Timucua

The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The various groups of Timucua spoke several dialects of the...

 ritual, art historian Roy Craven suggests that the figure is that of a shaman, although this proposal has received little notice. Based on the individuality of the piece as well as the detail inherent in the face, it is thought that the sculpture is a portrait.

Being a work of stone without archaeological context

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

, it has been difficult to date the sculpture. While some researchers consider it an early work, dated as early as 1200 BCE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

, others consign it to a period closer to 400 BCE, near the end of the Olmec culture. This dating is based largely on its dissimilarities to earlier formalistic Olmec sculptures. Michael Coe simply assigns it to the period between 1500 BCE and 400 BCE.

Unusual, or a forgery?

The sculpture falls outside the norms for much of the known Olmec art:

• The sculpture has no overt iconography
  Iconography
  Iconography is the branch of art history which studies the identification, description, and the interpretation of the content of images. The word iconography literally means "image writing", and comes from the Greek "image" and "to write". A secondary meaning is the painting of icons in the...
  
  , in contrast for example to Las Limas Monument 1
  Las Limas Monument 1
  Las Limas Monument 1 is a greenstone figure of a youth holding a limp were-jaguar baby. Found in the Mexican state of Veracruz in the Olmec heartland, the statue is famous for its incised representations of Olmec supernaturals and is considered by some a "Rosetta stone" of Olmec religion...
  
  .
• Whereas seated Olmec figures almost invariably have a broad base, this figure's base is narrow in proportion to its torso.
• The rotation of the upper body is unique in surviving Olmec sculptures, as is its "sensitive detail" such as the foot, complete with arch and rounded toes.
• In their petrographic analysis of Olmec artifacts, Williams and Heizer found that the basalt "is distinctive and . . . no other monument seen by us in Veracruz or Tabasco is made of the same material." They speculate that "it may be an imported piece . . . and its non-local origin is also suggested by the remarkable realism which is displayed".

The art historian Nancy Kelker of Middle Tennessee State University argues that a vague provenance, atypical stone, unusual carving of the back, nonstandard posture, recent publication of scholarly material on Olmec jades, and an urgent interest among Mexicans to find a myth for their origin in antiquity all suggest that it is a modern sculpture. The art historian Esther Pasztory of Columbia University concurs that it is a fake. In response to these arguments, the archaeologist Michael Coe and the art historian Mary Miller, both of Yale University, defended the sculpture as authentic, arguing that its similarity to Monument 34 from the Olmec site San Lorenzo, and the fact that we know little about Olmec art make it probable that this is an Olmec masterpiece from antiquity. At a separate time Coe stated that if Heizer felt the sculpture was a fake based on the petrographic analysis, then "something must be wrong with the petrographic analysis!". Susan Milbrath also argues against the possibility of a forgery. Milbrath maintains that its 1933 discovery, well before archaeologists defined Olmec culture or excavated Olmec sites, precludes falsification. She suggests that the Wrestler represents "a little known aspect of Olmec monumental art".

Appraisals

Superlatives abound in descriptions of this sculpture by archaeologists and art historians alike. Richard Diehl

Richard Diehl

Richard A. Diehl is an American archaeologist, anthropologist and academic, noted as a scholar of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures...

 says it is the "most spectacular" Olmec three-dimensional sculpture while Hugh Honour

Hugh Honour

Hugh Honour is a British art historian, famous for his writings. His A World History of Art, co-authored with John Fleming, is now in its seventh edition; his Chinoiserie first set the phenomenon of chinoiserie in its European cultural context, and his overview of Neoclassicism is still "an...

 finds it "the finest of all Olmec sculptures". For Ignacio Bernal

Ignacio Bernal

Ignacio Bernal was an eminent Mexican anthropologist and archaeologist.Bernal excavated much of Monte Albán, originally starting as a student of Alfonso Caso, and later led major archeological projects at Teotihuacan. In 1965 he excavated Dainzú...

 it is "one of the greatest of Olmec works of art", a thought later echoed by Michael Coe who says it is "one of the supreme examples of Olmec art" with a "feeling for individual character and for human physique [which] could only come from long study of anatomy".

Comparing it to other pre-Columbian art, archaeologist Mary Ellen Miller describes the Wrestler as "among the most powerful three-dimensional portraits of the ancient New World".

Art historian George Kubler

George Kubler

George Alexander Kubler was an American art historian and among the foremost scholars on the art of Pre-Columbian America and Ibero-American Art....

 discerns few rivals anywhere, stating that "the spiraling motion of the body, the multiplicity of profile, the coherent muscles, and the expressive restraint of the work set it apart as among the great works of sculpture of all ages". In 1996, the government of the United Mexican States issued a one-ounce silver coin bearing the image of the sculpture on its obverse

Obverse and reverse

Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags , seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, obverse means the front face of the object and reverse...

, one of six in the Olmec cultural set.

External links

• The rear view of the sculpture