The Huastec Adolescent
About 900 to 1250
A slim, naked young man stands upright with his arms at his sides and a small child on his back. Half of his body is smooth and the other half is covered in fine incised designs: maize plants, flowers, symbols of the sun and a stylised face. The figure is life size and the proportions are elegant and slightly elongated, with a serene expression that has made it one of the best loved sculptures in the museum. It is known as the Adolescent, and it comes from the Huastec region of northern Veracruz and San Luis Potosi.
The carving is a lesson in contrast. Look first at the plain half, where the sculptor has modelled the collarbone, ribs and knees with restraint, and then at the decorated half, where the skin becomes a page. The incised plants are almost certainly maize, and the figure has been read as a priest of Quetzalcoatl, or as the young maize god himself, carrying the sun or a child on his back. The Huastecs practised body painting and tattooing, and the sculpture may show what a ceremonial participant actually looked like.
The statue was found in the early twentieth century at El Consuelo, near Tamuin in San Luis Potosi, a Huastec site of the Postclassic period. It entered the national collection and travelled widely in exhibitions abroad, where it was often compared to archaic Greek sculpture for its combination of stiffness and grace. It now stands in the Gulf Coast hall beside its rougher cousins, the Huastec old men and goddesses, and it is worth seeing from all sides: the child on the back is easy to miss from the front.
Did You Know? The young figure carries a small child on his back, sometimes interpreted as the sun being carried across the sky.
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