Seated Figure Wearing a Skin

This type of image-showing a human clothed in a sacrificial victim’s skin, visible around the mouth and wrists-is one of the most awesome created by Mesoamerican artists. The figure represents the deity Xipe Totec or a human impersonator. Among the later Aztecs, Xipe was associated with fertility, rain, and renewal. Perhaps the wearer, upon shedding the skin, was conceived as a sprout emerging from a withered husk. Xipe also had military connections.