Quetzalcoatl Brooch

The feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, one of the central deities of ancient Mexico, coils across this brooch in low-relief repousse with applied bronze accents. The composition takes a Pre-Columbian subject and renders it in a flowing, scrollworked modern vocabulary, the serpent's body curling into organic forms rather than archaeological literalism. It is a clear instance of the method Spratling used throughout his career: taking motifs from Pre-Columbian design and translating them into a style accessible to a wider audience (Stromberg, p. 27).

The relief is hand-fabricated and worked from the reverse in repousse, the silversmith's hammer and embutador raising the design from the sheet. The applied bronze introduces a second metal tone, warming the composition where the serpent's feathered crest and scrollwork catch the light against the silver ground.

Dating to 1939-1940, the brooch belongs to the period when Spratling's Taxco revival was at full strength and the Pre-Columbian past supplied a deliberate, nationalist vocabulary for modern Mexican design, the same current that ran through the muralists and the postrevolutionary cultural programs of the era (Stromberg, p. 21). The Quetzalcoatl subject sits squarely in that program.

The brooch is held in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.2013.4.11) and is recorded in Gobi Stromberg's Silver Seduction: The Art of Mexican Modernist Antonio Pineda (2008, p. 92, plate 80). It carries Spratling's circular conjoined-WS mark.

Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles, California

Quetzalcoatl Brooch (Prendedor de Quetzalcóatl)

Accession M.2013.4.11. Official museum record Photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

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