Quetzalcoatl - San Jose, CA
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Metro2
N 37° 19.868 W 121° 53.315
10S E 598460 N 4132186
This sculpture is located in Cesar Chavez Plaza in downtown San Jose, CA.
Waymark Code: WMEBFJ
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 05/02/2012
Views: 3
This 1994 sculpture of Quetzalcoatl (also known as The Plumed Serpent) is by Robert Graham and constructed of concrete polymer. It is listed on the Smithsonian Inventory (
visit link) which also informs us:
"Commissioned by the city of San Jose to honor the culture of its Latino citizens, for $500,000. Quetzalcoatl is an Aztec deity who symbolizes fertility and order. The sculpture created controversy at the time of its installation, because some citizens found it objectionable in religious, economic and aesthetic terms."
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds more about the deity:
"Quetzalcoatl... is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent". The worship of a feathered serpent deity is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BC or first century AD. That period lies within the Late Preclassic to Early Classic period (400 BC–600AD) of Mesoamerican chronology, and veneration of the figure appears to have spread throughout Mesoamerica by the Late Classic (600–900 AD).
In the Postclassic period (900 – 1519 AD) the worship of the feathered serpent deity was based in the primary Mexican religious center of Cholula. It is in this period that the deity is known to have been named "Quetzalcoatl" by his Nahua followers. In the Maya area he was approximately equivalent to Kukulcan and Gukumatz, names that also roughly translate as "feathered serpent" in different Mayan languages. In the era following the 16th-century Spanish Conquest a number of sources were written that describe the god "Quetzalcoatl" and relates him to a ruler of the mythico-historic city of Tollan called by the names "Ce Acatl", "Topiltzin", "Nacxitl" or "Quetzalcoatl"."
A plaque at the site reads:
"The plumed serpent is one of the embodiments of quetzalcoatl, an important mythological figure of the mesoamerican pantheon. Depictions of quetzalcoatl as a plumed serpent are found in mesoamerican art from the olmec period starting in 1200 bc until the arrival of hernan cortez and the spanish conquistadors and into the modern period. Quetzalcoatl when depicted as the plumed serpent, symbolized the blending of heaven and earth. Quetzalcoatl is also associated with the planet venus, the wind and breath of life, the discovery of corn, the invention of writing and the arts, birth and renewal. Quetzalcoatl is derived from quetzal meaning feather and coa-tl meaning snake."