The Raimondi Stela is a major piece of art of the Chavin culture of the central Andes. The stela is seven feet high, made of highly polished granite, with a very lightly incised design which is almost unnoticeable on the actual sculpture. For this reason, the design is best viewed from a drawing.
Chavin artists frequently made use of the technique of contour rivalry in their art forms, and the Raimondi Stela is frequently considered to be one of the finest known examples of this technique. Contour rivalry means that the lines in an image can be read in multiple ways, depending on which way the object is being viewed. In the case of the Raimondi Stela, when viewed one way, the image depicts a fearsome deity holding two staffs. His eyes look upward toward his large, elaborate headdress of snakes and volutes. This same image, when flipped upside-down, takes on a completely new life. The headdress now turns into a stacked row of smiling, fanged faces, while the deity's face has turned into the face of a smiling reptile as well. Even the deity's staffs now appear to be rows of stacked faces.
This technique speaks to larger Andean concerns of the duality and reciprocal nature of nature, life, and society - a concern that can also be found in the art of many other Andean civilizations.
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