Style
The lintel is done in high relief style with the background deeply recessed. All three were apparently commissioned by Lady Xoc for the doorways of Structure 23. The lintels show the elaborate costumes of the king and queen with remarkable detail and with an uncharacteristic lack of abstraction. These lintels are considered by some to be the pinnacle of Mayan Art. We are able to study the detail of Mayan weaving as depicted in these carvings, and see the pearls woven into the fabric. Subtle differences in the three lintels suggest that the compositions were completed by two or three different artists. Each of the works is signed, indicating that the production of such works was regarded as a highly specialized skill rather than a trade.
Read more about this topic: Yaxchilan Lintel 24
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“I might say that what amateurs call a style is usually only the unavoidable awkwardnesses in first trying to make something that has not heretofore been made.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“His style is eminently colloquial, and no wonder it is strange to meet with in a book. It is not literary or classical; it has not the music of poetry, nor the pomp of philosophy, but the rhythms and cadences of conversation endlessly repeated.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)