Early Silver Eagle Brooch

Incised lines do the work of definition in this early silver eagle brooch, the engraving carving the bird's features and feathers from an otherwise plain silver body. The eagle was a Pre-Hispanic subject Spratling drew from ancient Mexican sources, and the incised-line treatment gives a flat silver form its sense of an animal.

The eagle motif at Las Delicias derived from Monte Albán models (Morrill, p. 38), and Spratling translated such Pre-Columbian imagery into an accessible modern style (Stromberg, p. 27). Here the abstraction is carried by engraving rather than relief, the incised lines supplying all the detail.

As an early first-period eagle brooch built on incised definition, it belongs to the figural Pre-Columbian work that was central to the workshop's identity, and early examples reach the market only occasionally.