Testa colossale

The photograph is part of the iconographic material of the volume Museo Nazionale di Antropologia di Città del Messico (Mondadori, 1979), included in the series Musei del Mondo. The texts in the volume were authored by Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti and Licia Collobi. The sculpture is reproduced in the catalog with the following caption (pp. 32–33): Colossal Head. Circa 850–150 B.C. Basalt stone; 2.70 × 190 cm. Discovered in 1945 by Stirling, it was still located in the jungle of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlàn (Veracruz) in 1963; it was brought to the Museum by J. J. Sweeney on the occasion of the Olmec sculpture exhibition organized by the Houston Museum that year. Catalog no. 13-419. Fondazione Centro Studi sull’Arte Licia e Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Lucca, Photographic Archive, Oriental and Non-European Art section, folder 235/T, file ‘Latin America_Pre-Columbian Mexico