Arts & LifeArts Center Stage

Center Stage

Young Masters 2013: The Face of Rain

The following is one of the art essay selections for the fifteenth annual Young Masters exhibition. It is based on and inspired by the art piece pictured.

Mask, possibly of Tlaloc, c. 1350 1521

The Face of Rain

By Benjamin Lee

Rain, thunder, power. All cultures of this earth have been awed by the terrible, beautiful ways nature reveals itself. Water in any language is life. Lightning by any image conveys fear and wonder. As the ancient Aztecs revered the god behind rain and flood, life and death, so do we, in our surroundings, find the same common ties that link us with Man who lived ages before us.


Preceding Roman imagines (wax portraits of the dead) and other forms of magnifying portraiture, ceremonial masks enabled wearers to elevate their own identity beyond mortality to greatness. The ancient Mesoamericans were particular experts, notably with death and ritual masks, in preserving a symbol in heightened glory. Using such techniques, the mask of Tlaloc, crafted between the 14th and 16th century,[1] immortalizes the Mesoamericans’ passion toward the enduring marriage of Man and Nature. Tlaloc, the god of rain, was not man, but of Nature. In this rendering, the spirit of his essence—raging storms and violent lightning—has been encapsulated into the likeness of a human.


For the mask’s construction, Mixtec artisans acquired exotic turquoise from the Ppolom and Pochteca, long-distance merchants who traded goods from as far as the Cerrillos Mines of present-day New Mexico.[2] The use of such a luxurious medium attests to the dominance of rain and sky over the Mixtec’s way of life. Mesoamerican landscapes deemed agriculture essential,[3] so as they were molded by their environment, so the mosaic is comprised of Nature’s stones. The pastel blue tiles elicit a sense of light water, as if from a shower or river. In antiquity, the mask, with each tesserae pounded paper thin, would have shimmered as if a large drop of water or a slice of the sky had been converted to faceted diamond. Symbolically, elements from Earth (resins and natural glues) bind the individual tiles together.


The mask’s link to rain is further strengthened by the history of the Aztec Empire. By the 15th century, the Mixtecs, a skilled group of artisans residing in present-day southern Mexico, found themselves within the expanding empire of the conquering Aztecs.[4] Delicate gold and turquoise artifacts left behind by these assimilated people groups accredit the name they gave themselves: ñuu-dzavui, or rain people. The stylization of the eyes is meant to resemble large pools of water. The long curves in the face could be interpreted as serpents[5] that breached the clouds to bring rain. The twisting serpents are also evocative of thunder and lightning, both of which awed Mixtecs and Aztecs alike. Continual references to animals were employed; the mouth of the mask would have wielded long jaguar fangs, emulative of flowing streams. All of these elements were used to convey a special meaning for the mask.


Tlaloc could be benign[6]—within his eyes were pools of life and nourishing water, but imagery attesting to his control over the climate reveals a terrible dualism to his identity. He held within his hands death by drought or flood. In ceremony and ritual, the mask would have undoubtedly fulfilled its purpose of inspiring wonder toward the earth we inhabit. In tribute, the Mixtecs would have shown their Aztec rulers a powerful symbol of what truly bound their culture to the natural world.

[1] Bonnie Pitman, ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (Dallas:DallasMuseum of Art, 2012), 50.

[2] Colin McEwan, et al., Turquoise Mosaics from Mexico (London:BritishMuseum Press, 2006), 27.

[3] Lynn Peppas, Life in Ancient Mesoamerica (New York: Crabtree Publishing Company, 2004), 87.

[4] Michael Coe, Dean Snow, and Elizabeth Benson, Atlas of Ancient America (New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1986), 98.

[5] Jorge Enciso, Design Motifs of Ancient Mexico (New York: Dover Publications, 1953), 4.

[6] Caitlin Campbell, “Tlaloc,” Aztec’s Main Deities, PacificLutheranUniversity, accessed November 8, 2012,

Top Picks