ABSTRACT
Maya architecture consists of a relatively small inventory of simple architectonic forms. Ancient Maya builders replicated the platforms, walls, and roof of the ordinary house in stone and then multiplied these features to compose great rambling palaces or isolated them atop massive platforms to form grand temples and shrines. Interlocking webs of palace buildings, dark interiors, and swagged awnings – these are reduced to simple forms framing stone monuments or wrapped around Maya vases. In conceiving pictorial space and its human occupants, the Maya conflated several aspects of representation, and they may have done this with a careful eye to the ways that visual and verbal representation differed, even in their capabilities. The Kimbell Art Museum Panel allows us to see several aspects of Maya representation. An enthroned lord, upper left, receives a kneeling lord; the latter presents three bound captives who sit or kneel in front of the throne.
