Introduction to the Spanish Viceroyalties in the Americas
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Juan Baptista Cuiris, image of Christ made with feathers, c. 1590–1600, 25.4 x 18.2 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” These opening lines to a poem are frequently sung by schoolchildren across the United States to celebrate Columbus’s accidental landing on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola as he searched for passage to India. His voyage marked an important moment for both Europe and the Americas—expanding the known world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and ushering in an era of major transformations in the cultures and lives of people across the globe.
When the Spanish Crown learned of the promise of wealth offered by vast continents that had been previously unknown to Europeans, they sent forces to colonize the land, convert the Indigenous populations, and extract resources from their newly claimed territory. These new Spanish territories officially became known as viceroyalties, or lands ruled by viceroys who were second to—and a stand-in for—the Spanish king.
Girolamo Ruscelli, “Nveva Hispania tabvla nova,” engraved map of New Spain, 1599, 19 x 25 cm (David Rumsey Historical Map Collection). Note that at its height, the Viceroyalty of New Spain also included Central America, parts of the West Indies, the southwestern and central United States, Florida, and the Philippines.
Folding Screen with the Siege of Belgrade (front) and Hunting Scene (reverse), c. 1697-1701, Mexico, oil on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 229.9 x 275.8 cm (Brooklyn Museum)
The Viceroyalty of New Spain
Less than a decade after the Spanish conquistador (conqueror) Hernan Cortés and his men and Indigenous allies defeated the Mexica (Aztecs) at their capital city of Tenochtitlan in 1521, the first viceroyalty, New Spain, was officially created. Tenochtitlan was razed and then rebuilt as Mexico City, the capital of the viceroyalty. At its height, the viceroyalty of New Spain consisted of Mexico, much of Central America, parts of the West Indies, the southwestern and central United States, Florida, and the Philippines. The Manila Galleon trade connected the Philippines with Mexico, bringing goods such as folding screens, textiles, raw materials, and ceramics from around Asia to the American continent. Goods also flowed between the viceroyalty and Spain. Colonial Mexico’s cosmopolitanism was directly related to its central position within this network of goods and resources, as well as its multiethnic population. A biombo, or folding screen, in the Brooklyn Museum attests to this global network, with influences from Japanese screens, Mesoamerican shell-working traditions, and European prints and tapestries. Mexican independence from Spain was won in 1821.
The Viceroyalty of Peru
Lands governed by the Viceroyalty of Peru, c. 1650
The Viceroyalty of Peru was founded after Francisco Pizarro’s defeat of the Inka in 1534. Inspired by Cortés’s journey and conquest of Mexico, Pizarro had made his way south and inland, spurred on by the possibility of finding gold and other riches. Internal conflicts were destabilizing the Inka empire at the time, and these political rifts aided Pizarro in his overthrow. While the viceroyalty encompassed modern-day Peru, it also included much of the rest of South America (though the Portuguese gained control of what is today Brazil). Rather than build atop the Inka capital city of Cusco, the Spaniards decided to create a new capital city for Peru: Lima, which still serves as the country’s capital today.
In the eighteenth century, a burgeoning population, among other factors, led the Spanish to split the viceroyalty of Peru apart so that it could be governed more effectively. This move resulted in two new viceroyalties: New Granada and Río de la Plata. As in New Spain, independence movements here began in the early nineteenth century, with Peru achieving sovereignty in 1820.
Pictorial Otomí catechism (pictorial prayer book), 1775-1825, Mexico, watercolor on paper, 8 x 6 cm (Princeton University Library)
Evangelization in the Spanish Americas
Soon after the military and political conquests of the Mexica (Aztecs) and Inka, European missionaries began arriving in the Americas to begin the spiritual conquests of Indigenous peoples. In New Spain, the order of the Franciscans landed first (in 1523 and 1524), establishing centers for conversion and schools for Indigenous youths in the areas surrounding Mexico City. They were followed by the Dominicans and Augustinians, and by the Jesuits later in the sixteenth century. In Peru, the Dominicans and Jesuits arrived early on during evangelization.
Convento, San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century (photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The spread of Christianity stimulated a massive religious building campaign across the Spanish Americas. One important type of religious structure was the convento.Conventos were large complexes that typically included living quarters for friars, a large open-air atrium where mass conversions took place, and a single-nave church. In this early period, the lack of a shared language often hindered communication between the clergy and the people, so artworks played a crucial role in getting the message out to potential converts. Certain images and objects (including portable altars, atrial crosses, frescoes, illustrated catechisms or religious instruction books, prayer books, and processional sculpture) were crafted specifically to teach new, Indigenous Christians about Biblical narratives.
Aztec deities, Bernardino de Sahagún and collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
This explosion of visual material created a need for artists. In the sixteenth century, the vast majority of artists and laborers were Indigenous, though we often do not have the specific names of those who created these works. At some of the conventos, missionaries established schools to train Indigenous boys in European artistic conventions. One of the most famous schools was at the convento of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco in Mexico City, where the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, in collaboration with Indigenous artists, created the encyclopedic text known today as the Florentine Codex.
Church of Santo Domingo and Qorikancha, Cusco, Peru (photo: Håkan Svensson, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Strategies of Dominance in the Early Colonial Period
Spanish churches were often built on top of Indigenous temples and shrines, sometimes re-using stones for the new structure. A well-known example is the Church of Santo Domingo in Cusco, built atop the Inka Qorikancha (or Golden Enclosure). You can still see walls of the Qorikancha below the church.
Great Mosque of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain, begun 786, cathedral added 16th century (photo: Toni Castillo Quero, CC BY-SA 2.0)
This practice of building on previous structures and reusing materials signaled Spanish dominance and power. It had already been a strategy used by Spaniards during the so-called “Reconquest,” or reconquista, of the Iberian (Spanish) Peninsula from its previous Muslim rulers. In southern Spain, for instance, a church was built directly inside the Great Mosque of Córdoba during this period. The reconquista ended the same year Columbus landed in the Americas, and so it was on the minds of Spaniards as they lay claim to the lands, resources, and peoples there. Some sixteenth-century authors even referred to Mesoamerican religious structures as mosques, revealing the pervasiveness of the Eurocentric conquest attitude they brought with them.
Throughout the sixteenth century, terrible epidemics and the cruel labor practices of the encomienda (Spanish forced labor) system resulted in mass casualties that devastated Indigenous populations throughout the Americas. Encomiendas established throughout these territories placed Indigenous peoples under the authority of Spaniards. While the goal of the system was to have Spanish lords educate and protect those entrusted to them, in reality it was closer to a form of enslavement. Millions of people died, and with these losses certain traditions were eradicated or significantly altered.
Title page from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government, c. 1615 (The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen)
Nevertheless, this chaotic time period also witnessed an incredible flourishing of artistic and architectural production that demonstrates the seismic shifts and cultural negotiations that were underway in the Americas. Despite being reduced in number, many Indigenous peoples adapted and transformed European visual vocabularies to suit their own needs and to help them navigate the new social order. In New Spain and the Andes, we have many surviving documents, lienzos, and other illustrations that reveal how Indigenous groups attempted to reclaim lands taken from them or to record historical genealogies to demonstrate their own elite heritage. One famous example is a 1200-page letter to the king of Spain written by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an Indigenous Andean whose goal was to record the abuses the Indigenous population suffered at the hands of Spanish colonial administration. Guaman Poma also used the opportunity to highlight his own genealogy and claims to nobility.
Saint John the Evangelist, 16th century, featherwork (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City)
Talking about Viceregal Art
How do we talk about viceregal art more specifically? What terms do we use to describe this complex time period and geographic region? Scholars have used a variety of labels to describe the art and architecture of the Spanish viceroyalties, some of which are problematic because they position European art as being superior or better and viceregal art as derivative and inferior.
Juan Baptista Cuiris, image of Christ made with feathers, c. 1590–1600, 25.4 x 18.2 cm (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Some common terms that you might see are “colonial,” “viceregal,” “hybrid,” or “tequitqui.” “Colonial” refers to the Spanish colonies, and is often used interchangeably with “viceregal.” However, some scholars prefer the term “colonial” because it highlights the process of colonization and occupation of the parts of the Americas by a foreign power. “Hybrid” and “tequitqui” are two of many terms that are used to describe artworks that display the mixing or juxtaposition of Indigenous and European styles, subjects, or motifs. Yet these terms are also inadequate to a degree because they assume that hybridity is always visible and that European and Indigenous styles are always “pure.”
Applying terms used to characterize early modern European art (Renaissance, Baroque, or Neoclassical, for instance) can be similarly problematic. A colonial Latin American church or a painting might display several styles, with the result looking different from anything we might see in Spain, Italy, or France. A Mexican featherwork, for example, might borrow its subject from a Flemish print and display shading and modeling consistent with classicizing Renaissance painting, but it is made entirely of feathers—how do we categorize such an artwork?
It is important that we not view Spanish colonial art as completely breaking with the traditions of the pre-Hispanic past, as unoriginal, or as lacking great artists. The essays and videos found here reveal the innovation, adaptation, and negotiation of traditions from around the globe, and speak to the dynamic nature of the Americas in the early modern period.
Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank and Dr. Steven Zucker, “New Spain, an introduction,” in Smarthistory, February 24, 2017, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/new-spain/.
The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red
by Amy Butler Greenfield
Page from the Codex Zouche-Nuttall, 1200–1521 C.E., Mixtec, painted deer skin, 19 x 23.5 cm (photo: The British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
The power of red
Once there was a color so valuable that emperors and conquistadors coveted it, and so did kings and cardinals. Artists went wild over it. Pirates ransacked ships for it. Poets from Donne to Dickinson sang its praises. Scientists vied with each other to probe its mysteries. Desperate men even risked their lives to obtain it. This highly prized commodity was the secret to the color of desire—a tiny dried insect that produced the perfect red.
How could a color be so valuable? In culture after culture, red commands the eye. We are drawn to its power, and to its passion, its sacrifice, its rage, its vitality. It’s not an accident that this coveted color is red: It turns out that we humans are unusually susceptible to scarlet hues. Studies show that the color quickens our pulse and breath, perhaps because we link it with birth, blood, fire, sex, and death.
The quest for a color
But for much of human existence, broad mastery of the color crimson was elusive. Only a few natural substances produce red dye. Henna, madder roots, brazilwood, archil lichens, and fermented stews of rancid olive oil, cow dung, and blood numbered among the sources over the centuries, but most of them fell short—faltering as dyes for textiles and setting into corals, russets, and persimmons instead of true scarlets. The worst of them faded fast into dull pinkish browns. True reds proved rare, and the evocative pigment became even more prized.
Thousands of years ago, however, Mesoamericans discovered that pinching an insect found on prickly pear cacti yielded a blood-red stain on fingers and fabric. The tiny creature—a parasitic scale insect known as cochineal—was transformed into a precious commodity. Breeders in Mexico’s southern highlands began cultivating cochineal, selecting for both quality and color over many generations.
The results were spectacular. The carminic acid in female cochineals could be used to create a dazzling spectrum of reds, from soft rose to gleaming scarlet to deepest burgundy. Though it took as many as 70,000 dried insects to make a pound of dye, they surpassed all other alternatives in potency and versatility.
Illustration of cochineal collection in José Antonio de Alzate y Ramírez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza, cultivo, y beneficio de la grana…, (Essay on the Nature, Cultivation, and Benefits of the Cochineal Insect), 1777, colored pigment on vellum (photo: Newberry Digital Collections for the Classroom, Edward E. Ayer Manuscript Collection, VAULT Ayer MS 1031).
Cochineal spread through ancient Mexico and Central America, where it was used for the quotidian and the sacred. Textiles, furs, feathers, baskets, pots, medicines, skin, teeth, and even houses bore the brilliant red dye. Scribes colored the history of their people with its crimson ink.
Cochineal comes to the world
When the Spanish conquistadors landed in Mexico, they were struck by the stunning scarlets of the New World. The exotic source of the dye became a sensation back in Europe, where it was deemed the “perfect red.” The Spanish would go on to ship tons of the dried insects back to the Old World and beyond. Their monopoly on the color’s source made it one of their most valuable exports from Mexico, second only to silver.
Dried cochineal insects (photo: H. Zell, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Europeans largely used cochineal on textiles, where it produced red fabrics of an unmatchable sheen and intensity. (It could also be used to make shades of peach, pink, purple, and black—but the reds were what made cochineal famous.) To see this magnificent red was to see power. Court gowns and royal robes were made with cochineal, as were the uniforms of British officers. The scarlet dye even found its way back across the ocean, into the “broad stripes” of the embattled banner over Fort McHenry that inspired the U.S. national anthem.
Original “Star-Spangled Banner” seen by Francis Scott Key (photo: Smithsonian National Museum of American History, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Painting and pitfalls with the new red
Cochineal also found a spot in the artist’s paint box. If you were a European artist on a tight budget, you could procure your cochineal from shreds of dyed cloth, but fresh-ground insects yielded much better results. Artists usually combined their cochineal with a binder, creating a pigment known as a lake.
It’s impossible to tell with the naked eye which painters used cochineal to make their reds. But recent advances in chemical analysis have confirmed its presence in numerous masterpieces. Among those works is Rembrandt’s The Jewish Bride.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of a couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as The Jewish Bride, about 1665–69, oil on canvas, 121.5 × w 166.5 cm (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
Between the muted browns and golds, the bride’s red gown draws the eye. A combination of vermilion base and cochineal glaze allowed Rembrandt to give the dress its great depth and luster. Other painters of the period also loved to use cochineal lakes to paint glowing red fabrics, such as the shimmering scarlet silks in Anthony van Dyck’s Charity and possibly in the Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini as well.
Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Agostino Pallavicini, c. 1621, oil on canvas, 85 1/8 × 55 1/2 inches (The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Eye-catching though these cochineal lakes were, they had one great drawback. Unlike cochineal dye on cloth, which usually holds fast to its color, cochineal pigments in paint tended to fade with exposure to light. This was especially true of watercolors. J. M W. Turner’s cochineal-reddened sunsets, for example, literally pale in comparison to what he originally set down.
Cochineal could be fugitive in oils too. A lake made with minimal cochineal, or cochineal of poor quality, faded in a matter of years. Even quality cochineal has dimmed over the centuries. The dowdy jacket in Thomas Gainsborough’s Dr. Ralph Schomberg and the blotchy pastel backdrop of Renoir’s Madame Léon Clapisson both are pale versions of the original.
Thomas Gainsborough, Dr. Ralph Schomberg, c. 1770, oil on canvas, 233 x 153.5 cm (The National Gallery, London, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Yet while Dr. Schomberg is consigned to his discolored suit for the foreseeable future, Madame Clapisson recently was given new life. A team at Northwestern University and the Art Institute of Chicago analyzed the cochineal that remained in the portrait and digitally recreated the painting in all its glory. Regard the original and the restoration, and you can see both the force of cochineal and its weakness.
When new artificial reds like alizarins made from coal tar became available in the late 19th century—ones more lasting and less expensive than those created by the naturally occurring insect—artists eagerly picked them up. By the late 20th century, artists had abandoned cochineal. Dyers, too, turned to cheaper alternatives. Even in its homeland, the insect nearly disappeared.
A red reborn
Today, in a surprising turn of history, the cochineal market is booming again—thanks to contemporary demand for safe food and cosmetic coloring. See names like carmine, carminic acid, crimson lake, Natural Red 4, or E120 on a label, and you may be looking at a modern manifestation of the color once fit for kings.
A few artists and dyers, too, have been tempted back by its revival—drawn to its intensity and sheen, its historical and cultural resonances. One is Elena Osterwalder, whose stunning installations employ both cochineal and the amatl bark-paper used by Mesoamericans before the Conquest.
In Oaxaca, once the epicenter of the cochineal trade, you can still find traditional weavers breathing new life into the ancient color.
Cochineal yarn used in a weaving in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca (photo: Sarahh Scher, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Though the high era of cochineal may have ended, the power conveyed by its potent hue remains. Over centuries and continents, we humans have always been drawn in by red. After all, it’s in our blood.
This essay first appeared in the iris (CC BY 4.0).
Source: Amy Butler Greenfield, “The Bug That Had the World Seeing Red,” in Smarthistory, September 15, 2019, accessed August 24, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/cochineal/.
The Medici collect the Americas
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Woodcut of the Wunderkammer room, from Ferrante Imperato, “Dell’historia naturale…” Libri XXVIII (Naples, 1599) (photo: Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0)
Americana and cabinets of curiosities
After Christopher Columbus landed on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1492 and the subsequent Spanish invasion and colonization of much of the Americas, material objects, flora, and fauna from these faraway lands were shipped back to Europe where many people perceived them as exotic items of wonder and fascination. Americana—objects sent from the Americas—were found in numerous cabinets of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammern). Cabinets of curiosities first appeared in sixteenth-century Europe as a way to display items perceived as exotic, curious, and wondrous. The strategy of collecting Americana and displaying it in cabinets of curiosities offered a way to engage with the Americas for those who might never undertake the voyage. In a sense, we might even say that this allowed Europeans to take possession of these distant lands.
Map of Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the Americas
The origin of cabinets of curiosities in the sixteenth century coincides with the discovery, by Europeans, that the world was much larger than they previously believed. It also coincides with the invasion and the colonization of the Americas and the millions of people who lived there. Technological and scientific advancements in mapping and navigation spurred interest in collecting items from around the globe, as well as the instruments needed to create maps and sail the seas.
Cabinets of curiosity created a microcosm of a world that could be studied, ordered, and understood, but they were not spaces in which just anyone could encounter and study such objects, these were personal spaces for the elite (and anyone they invited). They often combined human-made (artificialia), natural elements (naturalia), and scientific objects and instruments (scientifica), as we see in Ferrante Imperato’s 1599 illustration of a Wunderkammern.
Of the naturalia sent from the Americas, living animals—especially birds—were among the most popular. Turkeys, parrots, and macaws were among the birds that arrived in Europe. The armored appearance of armadillos were also a continuous source of wonder; and their shell retained its shape, even if they died on the transatlantic voyage. Apparently, some were even gilded and displayed on pillars in Europe.
Among the human-made items from the Americas found in Renaissance curiosity cabinets are Olmec masks, Mesoamerican codices (such as the Codex Vaticanus A), New Spanish featherworks, Brazilian hammocks, Taíno objects, and more. Among the most exceptional objects to first enter European Wunderkammern were those sent by Hernán Cortés in 1519, as gifts to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Turquoise masks, golden figurines, featherworks, and more were met with excitement and amazement by people in Toledo, Valladolid, and eventually Brussels. Albrecht Dürer even remarked that “In all my life I have seen nothing that made my heart rejoice so much as these things. Here I have found wonderful, costly things and I have marveled at the subtle ingenuity of people in strange lands.”[1]
The Medici Popes
Among the most avid collectors of Americana were members of the powerful Florentine Medici family. Medici popes Leo X (Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, who reigned as Pope from 1513–21) and Clement VII (Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, who reigned from 1523–34) collected Americana—and in fact were some of the earliest to do so. They never traveled across the Atlantic, yet their desire to understand these lands increased, especially with ongoing evangelization attempts. Leo X commissioned frescoes filled with American flora and fauna. For instance, he commissioned the artist Giovanni di Udine to paint maize (also known as corn and first domesticated by Indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago) in festoons in the Loggias (designed by Raphael) in the Vatican palace.
Giovanni da Udine, Loggia of Cupid and Psyche, Villa Farnesina, Rome (with detail of festoon showing maize), 1506-10, built for Agostino Chigi, treasurer for Pope Julius II (photo: Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)
Udine had, though, painted the first known depictions of maize earlier, between 1515–17, in the festoons around frescoes by Raphael in the Loggia of Psyche within the Villa Farnesina in Rome, which belonged to the wealthy Sienese banker Agostino Chigi. Pope Clement VII was likewise among the earliest patrons to commission artworks that depicted subjects related to this foreign world which he had never seen with his own eyes. In his Villa Madama (Sala di Giulio Romano, c. 1520) in Rome, he had Udine paint a naturalistic turkey along with other birds like peacocks.
Giovanni da Udine, Villa Madama, Rome, 1523-27
Popes Leo X and Clement VII also actively acquired Americana as well. In 1514, the Portuguese king, Manuel I, sent Leo X a gift of flora and fauna from the Americas and India. It is likely that part of this gift included plants like maize and beans from the Americas, as well as the special gift of an elephant, called Hanno, from India, of whom Leo was extremely fond.
The Ñudzavui (Mixtec) Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus I, one of the few surviving pre-conquest Mesoamerican screenfold codices, was owned by Clement VII. The King of Portugal reportedly sent it to Clement VII, along with other gifts from the Americas, sometime before 1523. A decade later, the Medici pope received another gift of objects from the Spanish Dominican friar, Domingo de Betanzos, who had traveled to New Spain to aid in evangelizing the Indigenous populations. The Dominican friar apparently gifted the pope featherworks, Ñudzavui turquoise masks, and codices.
Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus 1, image from a facsimile edition (original in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Austria)
Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain: The Florentine Codex, Book 11, volume 3, p. 748.
The First Grand Duke: Cosimo I de’ Medici
Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (who reigned from 1537–1574) and his wife, Duchess Eleanora di Toledo, like their Medici family members, never traveled to the Americas. But they too continued to acquire plants, animals, and other objects from these far-away lands. They also commissioned artworks that made visual reference to the Americas, possibly as a way to participate in a vicarious conquest of these foreign peoples and places. Cosimo was partly able to collect Americana because of his marriage to Eleanora, a noblewoman of the Spanish court. Their marriage in 1539 helped to cement a Medici alliance with Spain, which would aid Cosimo in his collecting practices. The two grew maize, and apparently even started to cultivate tomatoes and medicinal plants (also introduced from the Americas). Cosimo had live birds, including turkeys, at Medici estates. Beyond their interest in living flora and fauna, the Medici Duke and Duchess also had also obtained a number of objects from the Americas, including mosaic masks, objects made of jade, and feather cloaks.
How items such as these were listed in Medici inventories reveals the challenges that Europeans faced when classifying Amerindian objects. In a 1553 inventory, Aztec masks were listed under ‘jewelry’ (goia), but not long thereafter in another inventory they were listed as “theatrical masks” (maschera) in an attempt to compare them with recognizable European forms with clear functions. At this time there was also an interest in Greco-Roman theatrical masks, so perhaps the Aztec masks were eventually believed to function in a similar capacity. This reframing of Mesoamerican masks—from jewelry to masks—could also relate to broader ways in which Europeans were trying to understand and reconcile American objects, many of which were unfamiliar to them. [2]
Grand Dukes Francesco I (1574 to 87) and Ferdinando I (1587 to 1609)
Jacopo Ligozzi, Psittacus Ararauna (Blue and Gold Macaw), c. 1580-1600, 67 x 45.6 cm (Uffizi)
Cosimo and Eleanora’s eldest son, Francesco, was similarly drawn to the naturalia and artificialia of the Americas, sharing his father’s keen interest in birds and plants. At one point, he commissioned Jacopo Ligozzi to create naturalistic drawings of local and exotic plants and animals, some of which came from the Americas. Among the most remarkable are his depictions of a pineapple, a macaw, and the American century plant (Agave americana), all drawn circa 1570.
Jacopo Ligozzi, Pineapple (Bromelia ananas) and Agave americana, c. 1570
Ligozzi had live models on which to base his clearly articulated images, and his almost microscopic details were praised. Francesco’s interest in the American naturalia extended to his experiments as well. In the Casino di San Marco in Florence which had workshops, including the Medici porcelain factory, Francesco conducted experiments and studied his collection of plants and animals. Like his father, he continued to grow plants, some of them from the Americas, in a nearby botanical garden. He would use some in his alchemical experiments, creating medicines and other distillations. Francesco often gifted objects and naturalia from the Americas to other high-ranking individuals who were similarly fascinated with items from distant lands. One sumptuous gift was given to Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria in 1572, and it included featherworks, gold and silver figurines, parrots, food items, and more.
Francesco’s younger brother, Ferdinando, also had a desire to collect Americana. As a cardinal in Rome, he acquired numerous objects, such as multiple featherworks, one of which was a bishop’s mitre. He also came into ownership of the Florentine Codex, an encyclopedia produced between 1575 and 1577 under the direction of the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún along with Indigenous collaborators. This twelve volume text included discussion of cochineal, which produced a highly coveted red dye, along with other types of resources from the Americas. One can imagine Ferdinando’s interest in possibly learning from the Florentine Codex how to manufacture cochineal.
Jacopo Ligozzi, Passiflora coerulea
When Francesco died in 1587, and Ferdinando became Grand Duke of Florence, he moved from Rome to Florence with his collection. Ligozzi, who had remained in the employ of the Medici court even after Francesco’s death, would then paint, at the request of Ferdinando, one of his most well-known and final botanical images: the Passiflora coerulea, or the passion flower (or Granadilla or maracot originally). Previously unknown to Europeans, it had only recently become known, and sent across the Atlantic to Europe. The plant sparked immense curiosity because of the manner in which it visually evoked the crown of thorns, and so became a powerful Christian symbol.
Knowing the unknown
Medici fascination with Americana in the sixteenth century was certainly not unique. Across Europe, many powerful individuals sought to acquire objects taken from the Americas, as a way to know the unknown, to exert some control over the colonial processes underway, and to possess exotic and rare things. The Medici popes and three grand dukes provide a more focused example of the ways in which Americana intersected with European interests in conquest and colonization, science and alchemy, and collecting and visual culture in the sixteenth century.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Lydia Parker.
Notes:
[1] Adriana Turpin, “The New World collections of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici and their role in the creation of a Kunst- and Wunderkammer in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Curiosity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R.J.W. Evans and Alexander Marr (London: Ashgate, 2006), p. 64.
[2] Isabel Yaya, “Wonders of America: The Curiosity Cabinet as a Site of Representation and Knowledge,” Journal of the History of Collections (2008), pp. 1–16.; Turpin, p. 73.
Christian F. Feest, “The Collecting of American Indian Artifacts in Europe, 1493–1750,” in America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), pp. 324–60.
Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “The Medici collect the Americas,” in Smarthistory, June 18, 2019, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/medici-americas/.
Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
In 1581, an Indigenous artist from San Gabriel, Cholula (near the city of Puebla in Mexico, then part of the viceroyalty of New Spain) created an extraordinary map that shows the main buildings and spaces of the city—all centered around the convento of San Gabriel and the plaza mayor (or main plaza).
How did this remarkable map come to be? In 1577, the King of Spain (Philip II) asked towns throughout the Spanish viceroyalties to complete a questionnaire that included 50 questions about the terrain, built environment, demographics, natural resources, and more. The goal was to help the Spanish Crown gather information about its territorial possessions. The responses are now known as the relaciones geográficas. One of the questions asked for a map (on the questionnaire it is called a pintura or painting), and requested that it include the town’s center, streets, plazas, monasteries, and other important features.
Answers to the survey and the map would be separate objects, although they were intended to be kept together. For the map, the Spanish corregidor of Cholula (the local administrator), Gabriel Rojas, answered the questions on the survey, while a currently unidentified Indigenous artist produced the map—both of which would be sent back to Spain. Because these maps were largely produced by Indigenous artists (indicated by the use of such elements as Indigenous language inscriptions or imagery), they provide important insight into how they visualized space in the wake of colonization and also the visual entanglements and negotiations that occurred as a result of different cultures coming into contact. The materials, iconography, textual inscriptions and more speak to these entanglements.
The map is organized on a grid—as was the actual city it represents. At the map’s center is the large Franciscan church of San Gabriel, which takes up two city blocks. It is clearly the most important building on this map—even more than the buildings of government below it. This church (part of a convento) was founded by the Franciscans, the first mendicant order to arrive in New Spain, as an aid in converting the Indigenous peoples.
The convento of San Gabriel and the royal chapel (detail), map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
The convento’s royal chapel is on the left (on the map, it’s labeled ‘cabila’ which is a variant of capilla), connected to the church. Its distinctive many-domed ceiling is visible, as are its bell towers. Despite its name, the chapel was not meant for royalty, but for the local population to gather and worship. The chapel has an open arcade on the front (both in the map and still extant today), and inside the chapel there is an undifferentiated space filled with columns—similar to a hypostyle hall such as we find in a mosque like Spain’s Great Mosque of Córdoba. Other open chapels built primarily for Indigenous peoples in the early colonial period also used this form, and it is likely that making the structure look like a mosque was both functional (to accommodate large numbers of people) and symbolic (the more recent waves of conquest throughout Iberia had involved transforming mosques into Christian spaces). The convento of San Gabriel also was built with an atrium (open courtyard) to accommodate the large numbers of new Indigenous converts, around whicha wall was constructed to demarcate the sacred space, also included in the map.
Fountain, plaza and marketplace (detail), map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
The city center
The artist has drawn a fountain directly below the convento, and to the left we see a series of connected buildings, and below that an arcaded building. This is the city square (the plaza) in which the city’s main marketplace (labeled as tianquizco, the Nahuatl word for marketplace) was situated (and still is today). The arcaded building is where the cabildo, or town’s government, was located. On the opposite side of the square is the corregidor’s residence (labeled gorregidor ychā), a multi-storied building with an arcaded balcony on the second floor. Roads leading out of the city are also indicated around the square, all labeled with the name of a town and the Nahuatl word ohtli (path or road)—they head to Tlaxcala, Acapetlahuacan (today, Izúcar de Matamoros in Puebla), Huejotzingo, and Mexico City.
The barrios
A church in a specific altepetl (detail), map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
Surrounding the city center, we see city blocks outlined in black ink filled with smaller unnamed structures (homes and other types of buildings) and six churches, that occupy a full block and are often shown from the front or side, and in connection with a mountain (or tepetl in Nahuatl) to designate a location (not because there was necessarily an actual mountain; explained more below). They are all labeled with a name and a number, such as “2. Sanctiago Cabezera,” and they represent barrios (neighborhoods) of the city.
Cholula has many churches, even today, and many of the early ones were built directly atop Indigenous places of worship. The way the churches are depicted was likely influenced by imported European prints. The artist used light and shadow to model them, giving them a three-dimensional quality, which was a European renaissance artistic strategy introduced to this area.
Tollan Cholula (detail), map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
Tollan Cholula
One of the most interesting features of the map is a block on the top right that shows Tollan Cholula, the thriving Mesoamerican city that was here before the colonial era (Tollan means, “among the reeds”; Cholula comes from acholloyan, or the “place where the water flows”). This site is indicated by a Native place sign which combines a mountain with a trumpet, the native atl sign (the sign for water, shown like a spiral in the water), and reeds.
Great Pyramid of Cholula, now partially overgrown (with the small church of Our Lady of Remedies atop it), Cholula, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 3.0)
It marks the place of the famous pyramid that was once the thriving center of the city before the Spanish Invasion. Cholula’s massive pyramid still stands today, one of the largest in the world and the biggest in the Americas. Cholula was also the supposed birthplace of the deity Quetzalcoatl (“feathered serpent”), one of the oldest divine presences in Mesoamerica. On the map, the pyramid and the water connected to it are the only forms that spill into other blocks on the map, highlighting its significance to the city, and likely to the artist.
Painted by an Indigenous artist-scribe
The location of Chapultepec, for example, would include a hill (tepetl) and a grasshopper (chapolin). Detail, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century, folio 45v (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
The artist is believed to be Indigenous not solely because of the prominence of the pyramid and the use of the Native place sign, but also because the map includes text in Nahuatl. Atop the pyramid is the word ‘Tlachivaltepetl’, another name for the pyramid (today spelled Tlachihualtepetl); it literally means “built mountain” or “man-made mountain.” Its importance on the map also refers to the concept of the altepetl (in Nahuatl atl is water, and tepetl is mountain). Altepetl referred to a specific socio-political unit (something like a city-state) found among the Indigenous peoples. On maps, Nahua artists often used the image of a mountain in association with other glyphs or symbols to denote a specific altepetl. The tepetl or mountain glyph designated a specific place; the addition of other symbols (like reeds or a trumpet) helped to identify the specific place. This convention was a common feature of Indigenous maps before and after the Spanish Conquest. The city of Tollan Cholula (recall that it means “among the reeds” and “place where the water flows”) has the mountain, a trumpet, the Native sign for water, and reeds.
The Indigenous artist was likely a tlacuilo, an artist-scribe, someone who both divined knowledge and recorded it in visual form. The tlacuiloque (the plural of tlacuilo) were an important class of individuals prior to the Spanish invasion and conquest, responsible for producing painted pictographic codices that contained knowledge about history, myths, the gods, and more. Many of the manuscripts and maps (like this one) produced after 1521 were painted by tlacuiloque.
Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas, 1581, 31 x 44 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas)
The power of the grid
The grid plan had conceptual and literal power at this time too. Cities developed after the waves of Spanish conquests in the Americas were sometimes built on a grid plan. Others were symbolically conceived as grids (although not necessarily built as such), and still others were only visually represented as grids because of the symbolic weight of the plan. The grid plan had associations with order, as well as ties to ancient Roman building practices and ideas about power and imperialism. While the grid plan here was likely connected to Spanish imperial ideas, it is important to note that some cities and towns in Mesoamerica developed grid plans (such as Teotihuacan), so this urban plan was not unique to Europe.
Translation and entanglement
The relaciones geográficas, of which this map was a part, are remarkable moments of translation. The original questions disseminated by order of the King were written in Spanish. Once they made their way around the viceroyalty to towns and cities with a prominent Indigenous population, the questionnaire was then translated into the local language (such as Nahuatl). The questions were then answered in the Native language before being re-translated back into Spanish. The map is another act of translation because it records information in both visual and textual ways, and often includes Spanish and the local Indigenous language.
The entanglements of different traditions are also reflected by the materials. Both imported and local pigments are found on the map. One of the local pigments is cochineal, which created a red color. The paper is imported European paper, and includes a water mark, although some maps are done on locally made paper.
The map of Cholula, while only one map of many that formed the relaciones geográficas, provides insight into the Spanish imperial project in the 16th century, Indigenous artists working in the early colonial era, cultural entanglements, and the conceptualization of space. They also testify to the importance of visual materials as forms of documentary evidence.
Source: Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank, “Map of Cholula, from the relaciones geográficas,” in Smarthistory, January 22, 2021, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/map-cholula/.
RELIGION and PHILOSOPHY
Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain
by Dr. Maya Jiménez
Ex Convento de Tepoztlán dedicated to the Virgin of the Nativity. The Tepoztlán Ex Convento Museum was built by the Tepoztecan Indians under the orders of the Dominican friars between 1555 and 1580 (photo: Gunnar Wolf, CC BY-SA 3.0)
In the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Roman Catholic Church was an important—if not the most important—art patron, commissioning churches, altarpieces, paintings, and sculptures, a result of the system of Royal Patronage (Patronato Real), which granted the Spanish Crown unprecedented privileges in Church affairs in exchange for Spain’s funding of missionary ventures abroad (this was a unique system in Europe). The colonization of New Spain therefore worked in favor of both the Crown’s imperialist and material aspirations, and the Church’s desire to evangelize local indigenous populations.
These goals were accomplished largely through the work of missionaries and mission churches, as well as through an active artistic program that initiated the construction of new buildings and art schools that trained Amerindians in the art of painting, sculpture, and even cartography. Royal Patronage also meant that colonial authorities exercised considerable power over the Church in New Spain, controlling church appointments, revenues, and architectural programs.
The importance of mission churches
Diego Valadés, illustration of preaching to the indigenous population in New Spain, from Rhetorica christiana ad concionandi et orandi vsvm accommodata, 1579 (Houghton Library, Harvard University)
The Christianization of the Americas began in 1537, following the papal bullSublimis Deus, through which Pope Paul III declared that the native populations were in fact human beings with souls and the intellectual potential to understand the tenets of Christianity, and thus were not subject to enslavement (prior to this moment they had been considered savage and even demonic by the Church).
This religious fervor grew even more severe in 1545, when the Council of Trent convened in response to the rising threat of Protestantism, a new form of Christianity that emerged in the sixteenth century as a reformed version of Roman Catholicism. In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent launched a global campaign—known as the Counter-Reformation—that reaffirmed Roman Catholic beliefs and teachings. One of the results of this effort was that religious institutions like churches, monasteries, and convents were expected to play an active role in expanding their congregations and expounding the values of Roman Catholics through the proliferation of religious spaces.
Mural depicting the first twelve Franciscan monks in Mexico in the Sala de Profundis, Ex-Convento of San Miguel Arcángel, Huejotzingo, Puebla, Mexico, constructed 1526-70 (photo: AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
From 1523 to 1580, many religious orders arrived in New Spain, among them the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Jesuits. Determined to convert the native people and expand the congregation, friars built mission churches, also called conventos, in indigenous communities, such as the Franciscan Church of San Miguel in Huejotzingo (above) and the Augustinian Church of San Salvador in Malinalco (below).
Ex Convento of Divino Salvador, Malinalco, constructed 1540-60. Left: entrance and belltower (photo: AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 3.0); right: cloister murals (photo: Karen Apricot, CC BY-SA 2.0)
These mission churches, which followed a similar architectural plan but varied in terms of decoration, are among the earliest examples of colonial architecture—a testimony to the importance given to missionary work within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. A religious militia of sorts, the friars not only empowered the Church, but also facilitated the colonization of New Spain without the use of a standing army.
Map of Oaxtepec, September 24, 1580, ink and pigments on European paper, 62 x 85 cm (Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin)
Colonial maps like the Map of Oaxtepec reiterate the importance of mission churches. Here, the convento, identified by the large patio (courtyard), appears as the nucleus of the community. Near the edges of the map, and connected through a network of roads, the artist depicts seven additional churches. Their identical appearance suggests that they are meant as symbols for “church,” rather than visualizations of how these spaces actually looked. [1] This repetition reinforces the firm presence and power of the Roman Catholic Church in New Spain.
Pedro de Gante, page from Catecismo de la doctrina cristiana, a pictorial catechism used to teach indigenous converts, 16th century (Biblioteca Nacional de España)
The Franciscan Mission in New Spain
Franciscans were among the earliest monks to arrive in New Spain, including the three prominent Flemish Franciscans Peeter van der Moere of Ghent (a.k.a. Pedro de Gante), Jehan der Auwera (a.k.a. Juan de Aora), and Johan Dekkers or de Toict (a.k.a. Juan de Tecto). For monks, the first order of business was to begin construction on mission churches that functioned as “theaters of conversion,” as art historian Samuel Y. Edgerton refers to them, since they served as sites of theatrical performances and processions that merged both pre-Hispanic and Christian rituals. [2] In preparation for this process of conversion, monks—particularly Franciscans—would learn the languages and cultures of the local populations, allowing them to integrate indigenous names, iconography, and customs into the Christian practices of New Spain. The most powerful of didactic tools, however, were visual aids that helped overcome the challenges of illiteracy and language barriers.
Ex Convento de San Miguel, Huejotzingo, constructed 1526-70 (photo: Airvillanueva, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The exterior of the Franciscan mission Church of San Miguel in Huejotzingo serves as an exemplar of the importance of designing a proper space of conversion. Featuring high, thick walls topped by crenellations, the church appears—at least from the exterior—as a type of fortress. This design might have suggested the permanence of these Christian missions in New Spain. Monks came and went, but the church and its congregation remained. The design might have also alluded to the belief that Christian monks were the soldiers of God—though such associations might have been lost on the indigenous population.
Exterior wall and northwest posa chapel, Ex Convento de San Miguel, Huejotzingo, constructed 1526-70 (photo: AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Unique characteristics
The convento was, in and of itself, a foreign concept. Therefore, the fact that these churches were built by indigenous masons and often times in an indigenous style helped to further legitimize the idea of the convento as part of their local community. A unique characteristic of Mexican conventos was the creation of open spaces, like the capilla india, used to address large native crowds, and the smaller posa chapels in the corners of the atrium (typically found in Franciscan churches), used for ritual processions involving portable altars. While the creation of these outdoor spaces solved the problem of accommodating the growing population of converted Christians, it resonated among the natives who, during the pre-Columbian period, performed dances and rituals in walled outdoor spaces, recalling the open-air layout of the Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan.
Reliefs, northwest posa chapel, Ex Convento de San Miguel, Huejotzingo, constructed 1526-70 (photo: PetrohsW, CC BY-SA 4.0)
As was typical of Franciscan mission churches, the Church of San Miguel includes four posa chapels, each located in a corner of the perfectly squared patio. Above the archway, relief sculptures of angels appear inside a knotted cord, a reference to the habits of the Franciscan monks, who each tied a cord around their waist. Above these angels, four shields contain the emblems of the Franciscan order. The distinctive pyramidal roof is another common trait of posa chapels.
Atrial Cross, Convento of San Agustín de Acolman, mid-16th century (photo: Dr. Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Sculpture and painting in conventos
Found in conventos of different religious orders, atrial crosses were sculpted stone crosses displayed in courtyards, such as the one found at the Convento of San Agustín de Acolman. They usually represented the instruments of Christ’s passion in relief, thus avoiding the need to represent the actual Crucifixion. By avoiding a realistic depiction of Christ’s sacrifice, the early missionaries were intentionally de-emphasizing the existing ideas about human sacrifice prevalent in Mesoamerican cultures.
Crucifixion, San Agustín de Acolman murals, c. 1560-90, large cloister of the Ex Convento of San Agustín de Acolman (photo: Dr. Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
At the Convento of San Agustín de Acolman, one can also find a series of frescopaintings that detail the Passion of Christ through a narrative sequence. Indigenous artists, who were most likely looking at religious prints imported from Europe, created these frescoes, with their sparse composition and limited color palette. Much like the atrial cross, these murals functioned as didactic tools that gave visual clarity to an otherwise complex narrative, and borrowed from both Christian and native practices.
Carefully combining local and foreign practices, these mission churches created a unique colonial iconography and architecture that is indebted as much to Amerindians as it is to Europeans. While conventos served to first congregate and convert locals during the early decades of colonization, they largely fell out of favor by the end of the sixteenth century. Yet despite their demise, Catholicism continued to flourish in New Spain, and even after independence.
Source: Dr. Maya Jiménez, “Mission churches as theaters of conversion in New Spain,” in Smarthistory, October 9, 2018, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/missions-new-spain/.
Defensive saints and angels in the Spanish Americas
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Luis Juárez, The Guardian Angel, early 17th century, oil on wood, 68.3 x 58.66 in (Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Guardian angels
Brandishing a fiery sword, standing in a balletic pose, and stretching almost top to bottom in a painting, an angel protects a young boy. His pink and green clothes flutter behind him and his delicately painted wings compliment his golden curls. The boy wears expensive clothing—indicating he is elite, or possibly even royalty—and stands on a blue orb. He gestures toward the angel, as if to acknowledge his divine protector, and in turn the angel makes the same gesture toward the light of God in the upper right. The angel protects the child from the two figures in the darkened lower left corner: a woman with an exposed breast and wearing jewelry (perhaps an allegory of Lust or Temptation), and Satan holding a hook. They look toward the boy, as if to tempt him or catch him in sin. They are the dark to juxtapose the light streaming from the opposite, diagonal corner. In this painting, by the artist Luis Juárez in New Spain, the guardian angel protects the noble child from evil.
Map of the Viceroyalty of New Spain c. 1800
Map showing the Viceroyalty of Peru; early boundaries demarcated in red. The viceroyalty of Peru would eventually be split up into three separate viceroyalties in the 18th century.
The theme of protection, or more accurately, protection of Christians and the Christian faith, was common in the Spanish viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru (and eventually the viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata). Painted around 1615, the subject of Juárez’s painting can be understood in relation to several important historical events. To begin, about a hundred years earlier (as the invasion and colonization of the Americas was still in its early phase in the early sixteenth century) the Catholic Church split after the Protestant Reformation erupted in northern Europe. For much of the next century, the threat of Protestantism loomed large, which caused reforms in the Catholic Church that were decided at the Council of Trent which convened between 1545–63. The powerful Ottoman Empire continued to be cause for concern among many European Christians as well; the Ottomans represented a powerful Muslim empire and had already defeated the Byzantine Empire (among others). Even with the perceived threats to Catholicism, the Catholic Church remained tremendously powerful and exerted its influence across the globe. In Europe, images of angels as protectors became more common during the Counter Reformation (the Catholic Church’s response to the Protestant Reformation) as did other depictions of saints who defended the Christian faith from supposed heretics, infidels, and invaders.
Jerome Wierix after Martin de Vos, St. Michael Triumphing Over the Dragon, 1584, Engraving in black on ivory laid paper,
291 × 202 mm (Art Institute of Chicago)
Ideas about heretics and infidels, as well as the subjects of heavenly protectors, arrived in the Americas with Spanish colonization. The subject of heavenly protectors not only communicated the same messages, but also conveyed new meanings in these newly colonized lands. The defense of the Church and the protection of Christians had a particular urgency as mass forced conversions occurred, as millions of Indigenous people and entire continents came increasingly under the control of Euro-Christian forces. The desire to convert Indigenous peoples to Christianity seemed especially urgent because many Christians believed the Second Coming of Christ and Judgment Day would occur soon—and when that happened, any unbaptized souls would be condemned to suffer for eternity.
Luis Juárez, Saint Michael the Archangel, early 17th century, oil on wood, 175 x 153 cm (Museo Nacional de Arte, INBA; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
St. Michael the Archangel
Besides images showing guardian angels, another popular subject was St. Michael the Archangel. Paintings, prints, and sculptures of St. Michael as a defender of the faith were common across the Spanish Americas. In many instances, Michael is shown in Roman military clothing standing atop Satan, who falls face forward toward the ground. In another painting by Juárez, Saint Michael the Archangel, Michael poses triumphantly on Satan’s back, holding a spear (topped by a banner) angled towards the Devil. The painting calls to mind the Book of Revelation (chapter 12), in which Michael defends the Woman of the Apocalypse (understood by Christians to be the Virgin Mary). Rays of divine light illuminate Michael from above, giving the impression of light battling darkness yet again. Here, Michael is a symbol of the Church Militant (the idea of the church battling against heresy and sin). Michael was understood as protecting the expansionist agenda of the church, which amounted to supporting European colonialism and the conversion of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This painting was possibly paired with the one of the Guardian Angel above.
Master of Calamarca, Archangel with Gun, Asiel Timor Dei, before 1728, oil on canvas and gilding, 160 x 110 cm (Museo Nacional de Arte, La Paz, Bolivia)
Armed angels
The idea of militaristic angels spawned new art forms in the Spanish Americas. In the viceroyalty of Peru (in what is today Bolivia), a genre of painting now called ángeles arabuceros (or harquebus-holding angels — a harquebus is a type of gun) developed. In one by the Master of Calamarca, we see an angel wearing elaborate clothes and accoutrements—enormous puffy sleeves, fanciful and delicate lace, golden embroidery, and a hat topped with feathers. Its body is almost lost underneath all the fanciful clothes, but its graceful legs stand firmly on the ground. The angel holds a harquebus aiming it toward the upper right corner. One of the messages of the painting is that the angel defends Christians, supported by the inscription “Asiel Timor Dei” (Asiel Fear of God).
Santiago on Horseback, 16th century, polychromed and gilded wood (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City, Mexico; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Saint James (Santiago)
Saint James (Santiago in Spanish), the patron saint of Spain, was another defender of the faith who was popular in the Spanish Americas. He was often displayed on horseback, brandishing a sword. In one polychrome (painted) and gilded wooden sculpture from central New Spain, Santiago sits on a horse. Realistic elements like stirrups, hair, and leather make the sculpture seem more realistic. This type of sculpture is called a paso, and it was meant to be carried or even wheeled during a religious procession. For instance, it would have been processed on Saint James’s feast day in July. Underneath the horse’s feet is an empty box, but originally would have included figures painted on it (either Muslims or Indigenous peoples) to give the illusion that the horse was trampling them (perceived as enemies, heretics, and pagans).
“St. James the Great, Apostle of Christ, intervenes in the war in Cuzco.” Page 406v from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, The First New Chronicle and Good Government or El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, c. 1615 (The Royal Danish Library, Copenhagen)
Santiago’s popularity in Spain dates back to the 8th century when he miraculously came to the aid of Christians fighting Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula (today, Spain and Portugal). His bodily remains were also popular relics in northwestern Spain in Compostela and many medieval pilgrims made journeys to venerate them. In Spain, he was often represented as Santiago Matamoros, or Saint James the “Moorslayer”—literally as someone who kills Muslims.
This trope as defender of Christians also came to the Americas, where he was sometimes understood and shown as Santiago Mataindios, “Saints James the slayer of indios.” He is also credited with fighting for the Spanish conquistadors against Indigenous peoples. In one well-known apparition, Santiago helped Spanish forces during a battle in Cuzco in 1536 when he appeared on a white horse with a sword to defend them against the Inka. As a result, he soon appeared through the viceroyalties as a defender of Christians and as a sign of triumph. Native Andean author-artist Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala illustrated the event in his letter to the King of Spain, showing Santiago on horseback and trampling an Inka warrior. Interestingly, some Indigenous peoples venerated Santiago, which may seem contradictory. For some Indigenous Andeans, he came to be associated with Ilapa (a deity of lightning and thunder), demonstrating the complex ways in which Catholicism was transformed, nuanced, or altered after the Spanish Conquests.
Saint Christopher and the Christ Child, 16-17th century, polychromed wood (Museo de Arte de Sacro, Cuernavaca, Mexico)
Saint Christopher
Saint Christopher is another protective saint who was popular in the Spanish Americas. He is often shown carrying the Christ Child to demonstrate his care of Christians, such as we see in another Novohispanic (from New Spain) polychrome and gilded wooden sculpture. The saint has well-developed musculature, and he dwarfs the young child who sits upon his shoulders. Christopher was known as the cristo ferens, or Christ bearer. He had devoted himself to the teachings of Jesus, and in doing so began to ferry people across the river on his shoulders. One day, he carried a child across the river, but with each step the Child grew heavier and the ferrying grew more challenging. Once on the other side of the river, the Child identified himself as Jesus and told Christopher he had just carried the weight of the world on his shoulder (this is also why Christopher is the patron saint of travelers).
Virgin of Christopher Columbus, oil on panel, first half of the 16th century, 20 x 18 inches (Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid)
Christopher was a popular saint in the Americas because he also symbolized the carrying of Christianity across the Atlantic. In a painting from the first half of the 16th century, Christopher Columbus kneels before the Virgin Mary and Christ Child in Hispaniola. Christopher (with Christ upon his shoulder) places his hand on the back of Christopher Columbus to demonstrate his divine protection and to indicate that Columbus was himself another Christ bearer—his voyages initiated the waves of European invasion and colonization that would occur in the Americas after 1492.
Main altar with Saint Michael the Archangel, Shrine of San Miguel del Milagro, Tlaxcala, Mexico (photo: Isaacvp, CC BY-SA 4.0)
None of these protector saints were unique to the Spanish Americas, but they did acquire new meanings when they traveled from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean. Some of them, such as Saint Michael, would even appear miraculously on American soil (such as at San Miguel del Milagro in Mexico), prompting pilgrimages to sites of these saints’ miraculous apparitions. With these apparitions new local manifestations of these protective saints developed, attesting yet again to the ways in which Catholicism transformed and developed on American soil.
Loving mother. Devoted wife. Ideal woman. Queen of Heaven.
Who could ever be this perfect? For Christians, the Virgin Mary carries all these titles, and she is often celebrated in art as a mother, wife, and queen. With Spanish colonization of the Americas, devotion to the Virgin Mary crossed the Atlantic.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 16th century, oil and possibly tempera on maguey cactus cloth and cotton (Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City; photo: Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
The conquistador Hernán Cortés even carried a small statue of the Madonna with him as he searched for gold and encountered the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. After the defeat of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521 and the establishment of the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain (Spanish rule in Mexico, Central America, and part of the U.S., 1521–1821), the Virgin Mary became one of the most popular themes for artists. One Marian cult image eventually became more popular than any other however: the Virgin of Guadalupe, also known as La Guadalupana. Her image is found everywhere throughout Mexico today, gracing churches, chapels, homes, restaurants, vehicles, and even bicycles.
Imagery from the Book of Revelation and the Song of Songs
Virgin of Guadalupe, 16th century, oil and possibly tempera on maguey cactus cloth and cotton (Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City; photo: Ari Helminen, CC BY 2.0)
Many people consider the original image of Guadalupe to be an acheiropoieta, or a work not made by human hands, and so divinely created. Some consider the image the product of an Indigenous artist named Marcos Cipac (de Aquino), working in the 1550s. In the original image, still enshrined in the basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City today, Guadalupe averts her gaze and clasps her hands together in piety. She stands on a crescent moon, and is partially supported by a seraph (holy winged-being) below. She wears Mary’s traditional colors, including a brilliant blue cloak over her dress. Embroidered roses decorate her rose-colored dress. Golden stars adorn her cloak and a mandorla of light surrounds her.
The image of Guadalupe relates to Immaculate Conception imagery, which drew aspects of its symbolism from the Book of Revelation and the Song of Songs. For instance, the Book of Revelation describes the Woman of the Apocalypse as “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” In the Guadalupe image, twelve golden rays frame her face and head, a direct reference to the crown of stars.
Ashen skin
Guadalupe’s ashen skin is the subject of some discussion. It is possible that she represents an Indigenous Madonna. However, the Virgin of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Spain, after whom Mexico’s Guadalupe is named, is a black-skinned Madonna—a direct reference to Mary’s beauty based on a passage from the Song of Songs: “I am black but beautiful.” Black Madonnas were popular long before Guadalupe’s appearance in Mexico, and so it is possible that her ashen skin situates her within this pre-existing tradition.
Virgin of Guadalupe, 16th century, oil and possibly tempera on maguey cactus cloth and cotton (Basilica of Guadalupe, Mexico City; photo: Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Seeing her today
Today, millions travel annually to her basilica to glimpse the original image, which visitors see while zooming beneath it on a conveyor belt. The original shrine devoted to Guadalupe, on a hill above the basilica, marks the site of her initial miraculous appearance.
Her miraculous revelation to Juan Diego
The story associated with her miraculous revelation varies depending on the author, but the general story goes something like this: In December 1531, a converted Nahua man named Juan Diego was on his way to mass. As he walked on the hill of Tepeyac(ac), formerly the site of a shrine to the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin, Guadalupe appeared to him as an apparition, calling him by name in Nahuatl, the language of the Nahua. According to one textual account written in Nahuatl, Juan Diego described her as dark-skinned, with “Garments as brilliant as the sun.” She requested that Juan Diego ask the bishop, Juan de Zumárraga, to construct a shrine in her honor on the hill. After recounting the story, the bishop did not believe Juan Diego and requested proof of this miraculous appearance. After speaking again with Guadalupe on two other occasions, she informed Juan Diego to gather Castilian roses—growing on the hillside out of season—inside his tilma, or native cloak made of maguey fibers, and bring them to the bishop. When Juan Diego opened his tilma before Bishop Zumárraga the roses spilled out and a miraculous imprint of Guadalupe appeared on it. Immediately, Bishop Zumárraga began construction of a shrine on the hill.
This engraving depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe at the top of the page. The borders of the print incorporate small scenes narrating miracles of the Virgin. Samuel Stradanus, Indulgence for donation of alms towards the building of a Church to the Virgin of Guadalupe (modern facsimile impression), 1608 (facsimile 1930–40), engraving, 43 x 28 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Devotion to Guadalupe
Initially, devotion to Guadalupe was primarily local. Yet veneration of Guadalupe increased, especially because people attributed her with miraculously interceding on their behalf during calamitous events. For instance, she was thought to assist in ending a flood in Mexico City in 1629 and an epidemic that ravaged the population of the capital between 1736–37. After the 1737 epidemic subsided, Mexico City declared her patron of the city. In 1746, Guadalupe was even declared the co-patroness of New Spain along with St. Joseph, and Pope Benedict XIV granted a feast day and mass in her honor for December 12 in the year 1754.
This engraving shows the Virgin of Guadalupe coming to the aid of Mexico City during the 1736–37 epidemic. Importantly, the artist has shown criollos (kneeling in the foreground) as those explicitly receiving her protection. Frontispiece by Baltasar Troncoso y Sotomayor, in Cayetano de Cabrera y Quintero, Escudo de armas de México (Mexico City, 1746). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
She was so revered that people of different social and ethnic backgrounds paid her reverence. In particular, criollos (or creoles, pure-blooded Spaniards born in the Americas) promoted her devotional cult. They wrote some of the earliest texts recounting her miraculous appearance on Novohispanic soil, a fact they advertised as proof that God blessed the Americas and approved of a new nation. To support this notion, artists often included the motto “Non fecit taliter omni nationi” (Psalm 147:20—He has not dealt thus with any other nation) into their artworks.
Miguel González, The Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe), c. 1698, oil on canvas on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl (enconchado), canvas: 99.06 × 69.85 cm / frame: 124.46 × 95.25 cm (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
True copies
Images depicting Guadalupe proliferated in the seventeenth century as devotion to her increased. Prints, paintings, and enconchados (oil painting and shell-inlay) replicate the original tilma image. Sometimes artists included inscriptions that mention the representation is a true copy of the tilma image.
Manuel de Arellano, Virgin of Guadalupe, 1691, oil on canvas, 181.45 x 123.38 cm (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
For example, Manuel de Arellano writes “After the original” (Tocada el original) on his 1691 version of Guadalupe. This statement suggests that artists based their work on the original image and some of the power of the original image transferred to the replication. Besides replicating the tilma image, artists often included the narrative of the miracle in the four corners of the composition, as Arellano’s and Isidro Escamilla’s version from 1824 demonstrate. Frequently flowers frame the mandorla surrounding Guadalupe, a direct reference to the Castilian roses in Juan Diego’s tilma.
Isidro Escamilla, Virgin of Guadalupe, 1824, oil on canvas, 58.1 x 38.1cm (Brooklyn Museum)
To prove further that New Spain was equal to Europe, some of the most famous artists of the eighteenth century, such as Miguel Cabrera and Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz, were invited by the clergymen of the Basilica of Guadalupe to inspect the image on April 30, 1751 to authenticate that the image was indeed miraculous. In 1756, Cabrera published the result of this inspection as Maravilla Americana (American Marvel) in which he declared that the tilma image was indeed an acheiropoieta.
Guadalupe and national identity
Standard of the Virgin of Guadalupe carried by Miguel Hidalgo during the start of Mexico’s War of Independence in 1810. (photo: Marcuse, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Other visual motifs further communicate the political connotations with which Guadalupe increasingly became linked. For instance, some artists placed an eagle perched on a cactus below Guadalupe (such as in the enconchado above), which had long functioned as a sign for the establishment of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan that became Mexico City after the Conquest. Guadalupe’s connection to creole identity and the creole desire for Mexican independence was solidified after father Miguel Hidalgo raised a liturgical banner of Guadalupe during his cry for independence in 1810.
“the making, the modeling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms…” The Popol Vuh
So goes the Quiché Maya creation story recorded in the Popol Vuh. The myth recounts that the creator gods made four attempts at constructing humanity: first from animal parts, then mud, followed by wood, and finally, corn. With corn they were ultimately successful, indicating corn’s importance not only as sustenance, but also as symbolically charged with life force.
Crucifix of the Señor de la Sacristía, 16th century, polychromed corn pith, Cathedral of Morelia, Michoacán, México (author’s photo, all right reserved)
Corn pith sculptures,pasta de caña
Corn was a staple crop of Mesoamerica, and was widely laden with sacred symbolism associated with creation. Indigenous artists not only sculpted images of the corn god, but also modeled objects out of corn using stalk fibers mixed with orchid glue into a paste. [1] Sadly, pre-hispanic corn sculptures using this method do not survive, but this same Indigenous technology (often likened to papier-mâché), was used extensively for Christian religious sculpture in the early colonial period (primarily the 16th century). In fact, the cristos de caña are emblematic of emerging Indigenous Christianity.
Franciscan missionary Gerónimo de Mendieta wrote of the corn pith sculptures, called pasta de caña, in his chronicle Historia Ecclesiástica Indiana: “They also carry crucifixes made from reeds that are the size of a large man but weigh as little as a child.” [2] Similar (but much heavier), sculptures made of wood were common in the Spanish world. They were made with a polychroming encarnación technique known for making saints and holy figures appear remarkably life-like. However, the pasta de caña technology allowed for much lighter sculptures—making them far more appealing as processional objects.
Take, for example, the 16th-century crucifix of the Señor de la Sacristía, housed in the Cathedral of Morelia, Michoacán. Made of pasta de caña, the figure features copious blood flowing from Christ’s wounds, thereby emphasizing his human suffering. The sculpture is venerated in July, when historically it was carried in procession. This time of year corresponds with the pre-hispanic P’uhrépecha month of Caheri Cascuaro, or “Great feast of Lords.” This celebration of lordship in the Indigenous context likely paralleled the veneration of Christ as lord in the new, Christianized, context. Additionally, this month was associated with planting and immature corn stalks, furthering the associations between the local cristo de caña and Indigenous concepts surrounding the sacrality of corn. [3]
Religious processions like the ones held in Michoacán, were most famously enacted during Semana Santa (Holy Week). Still practiced today in many towns and cities in Latin America, typically these public processions would bring together people from all walks of life to witness the spectacle of those marching in the parade in fine clothing and bearing various sacred and liturgical objects. Often organized by confraternity members, the processions were multiethnic, public declarations of piety and social standing. It was for this context specifically that the pasta de caña sculptures, oftentimes images of Jesus Christ (cristos de caña), were made.
Pre-hispanic codices inside
The cristos de caña were modeled with a reed framework upon which the corn pith mixed with gum was modeled into a naturalistic body. Paper was also sometimes inserted into the matrix of the objects, and recent x-ray studies have revealed the placement of pre-hispanic codices (books) within the inner layers. [4]
As corn was a sacred Indigenous substance and the ancient books were prestige items, scholars have speculated that the sacred nature and worth of the materials that made up the statues may have added to their meaning in the eyes of Indigenous converts by linking them to the pre-hispanic past.
The development of these processional sculptures has been credited to the bishop of Michoacán, Don Vasco de Quiroga. Known as a “protector of Indians,” the bishop advocated against Indigenous enslavement, insisting that Natives be organized into administrative congregations for the purposes of Hispanization and conversion. He was inspired by Sir Thomas More’s Utopia which imagined a land where people worked communally, governed by order and discipline. As bishop, Quiroga named the city of Pátzcuaro the capital of the diocese. There he founded the Seminary of San Nicolás, where the local P’uhrépecha population were taught Christian religion, government, and craftsmanship.
While the cristos de caña likely held Indigenous associations for the locals who made and used them, their association with Indigenous practices soon became de-contextualized in their use in churches throughout Mexico as well as in places as far away as Spain and the Canary Islands. While as scholars today we may be tempted to refer to the cristos de caña as hybrid objects for their merging of Indigenous technologies with Christian iconography, it is important as well to recognize that these ideas may not always have been relevant to the period in which they were made. The technology, producing lightweight and naturalistic bodies, suited itself well for the processional and devotional practices of the Spanish colonial world, revealing that Indigenous peoples, far from passive receptors of Spanish culture, left their mark, both seen and unseen.
Notes:
[1] This technique is believed to have been developed in the regions of Michoacán by members of the P’uhrépecha (also known as Tarascan) ethnic group.
[2] Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia ecclesiástica indiana, edited by Joaquín García Icazbalceta (Whitefish, MO: Kessinger Publishing, 1870).
[3] Analysis of the Señor de la Sacristía was borrowed from the work of Óscar Mazín and Dominique Elise Garcia. See Óscar Mazín, “Del Cristo de las Monjas al Señor de la Sacristía. Imágenes y relaciones sociales en Valladolid de Michoacán, siglo XVIII,” Historias, number 46 (2000), pp. 45–54 and Dominique Elise Garcia, “Materials of the Sacred: 16th to 18th Century Religious Materiality in Michoacán,” M.A. Thesis, University of California Riverside, 2012.
The Mass of St. Gregory, 1539, feathers on wood with touches of paint, 26-1/4 x 22 inches / 68 x 56 cm (Musée des Amériques, Auch; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Imagine a two-dimensional artwork made of feathers instead of paint, pen, or pencil. The feathers rustle with the breeze or as you exhale, their iridescent qualities creating a luminous effect as you turn the artwork in your hands or lift it upwards. Feathered artworks were created in Mesoamerica before and after the Spanish Conquest in 1521, with Spaniards and other Europeans marveling at their shimmering beauty and originality.
A clash of traditions
In 1539, the Nahua noble and gobernador (governor) of Mexico City, Diego de Alvarado Huanitzin (nephew and son-in-law to Moctezuma II, the last Aztec ruler before Spanish colonial rule began in 1521), commissioned a featherwork for Pope Paul III showing the Mass of St. Gregory. This artwork, made of different types of bird feathers attached to a wood panel, is remarkable for several reasons. Not only is it the oldest surviving featherwork from colonial Mexico, but it was made by an Indigenous man in order to be sent to the Pope during the early period of Spanish colonization. Two years before the featherwork’s creation, Pope Paul III had issued the bull Sublimus Dei that decreed Amerindian peoples to be rational human beings complete with souls, and called for an end to their enslavement.
The Mass of St. Gregory, 1539, feathers on wood with touches of paint, 26 1/4 x 22 inches / 68 x 56 cm (Musée des Amériques, Auch; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The subject of the Mass of St. Gregory was popular at this time because of its focus on transubstantiation—the belief that the bread and wine transform into the body and blood of Christ during Mass. Saint Gregory was an important 6th-century pope, and one day during Mass he raised the consecrated host (the bread) and experienced a miraculous vision of Christ on the altar. His vision offered proof that the bread literally became Christ’s body when consecrated. Christ appeared to Saint Gregory as the Man of Sorrows—a type of image of Christ, where he is shown above the waist, with his wounds displayed on his hands and side.
The featherwork production of TheMass of Saint Gregory was likely supervised by the famous Franciscan missionary, Pedro de Gante, who came to the Viceroyalty of New Spain (the Spanish colonies in North America) from Flanders to aid in converting the native peoples to Christianity. He established a well-known school that trained Indigenous men in European artistic conventions and techniques. Prints were often supplied as models for these Christian neophytes. The featherwork represents the clash of different worlds—its technique is Mesoamerican, but the subject is European and Christian.
Israhel van Meckenem, The Mass of Saint Gregory, c. 1490/1500, engraving (National Gallery of Art)
Indigenous artists of early colonial Mexico learned about European artistic techniques and Christian subject matter in schools attached to conventos (missionary centers). Mexico City had some of the most famous, including the School of San Jose where Pedro de Gante worked. Some of the most common models supplied to the students were prints brought from Europe. The Mass of St. Gregory featherwork compares to Israhel van Meckenem’s The Mass of St. Gregory, c. 1490—suggesting the print came to New Spain and provided a model for the 1539 featherwork.
The instruments of the Passion of Christ (also known as the Arma Christi— specifically the instruments of Christ’s suffering, including the column, nails, sponge, cock, and flagellant whip) appear on or surrounding the altar in both van Meckenem’s print and the featherwork. Other colonial Mexican artworks—especially those used to aid in conversion of Indigenous populations—displayed passional instruments. On atrial crosses (crosses found in the courtyards, or atria, of missionary churches), for example, friars could point to the different Arma Christi as they taught native peoples about Christian dogma and biblical history.
Saint John the Evangelist, 16th century, featherwork (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City)
Featherworks
Featherworks were among the most highly prized objects in the early post-Conquest period. Hernan Cortes sent feathered objects to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to dazzle him with their richness and unique qualities. Others, like Diego de Soto, carried packages of featherworks from New Spain to Spain to give to Charles V soon after the Spanish Conquest. Many featherworks found their way into cabinets of curiosities throughout Europe, no doubt collected because they symbolized the exotic “New World” across the Atlantic. Still today, feathered goods like the so-called Headdress of Moctezuma are some of the most prized possessions of European museums.
Detail, Codex Mendoza, folio 46r (Bodleian Library, Oxford). The text records feathers paid as tribute (from top to bottom and left to right: “four pieces of rich feathers, made like handfuls into this form,” “eight thousand little handfuls of rich turquoise feathers,” “eight thousand little handfuls of rich red feathers” and “eight thousand little handfuls of rich green feathers.”
We find many Indigenous groups used feathers to adorn luxury goods, festoon clothing, and function within ceremonies. The Mexica (more commonly known as the Aztecs), were among those groups who prized feathers. Through long-distance trade, the Aztecs acquired feathers from afar. The most highly prized feathers—those of the resplendent quetzal—came from Guatemala. Hummingbirds, macaws, and many other birds supplied feathers. The Mexica also collected feathers as tribute from areas they conquered. Tribute lists illustrated in the Codex Mendoza, produced after the Spanish Conquest, demonstrate the large number of birds and feathers sent to the Aztec capital city, Tenochtitlan. In Tenochtitlan, featherworkers comprised their own special social class. They lived in a neighborhood called Amantla, which is why they were called amanteca.
Amanteca in the Florentine Codex, Book 9, c. 1577–1579, folio 65v
The amanteca and their featherworks were both valuable, as indicated by the attention paid to them in the encyclopedic Florentine Codex, produced by the Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagun and his Indigenous collaborators between 1577–79. The Codex devotes many pages to the amanteca and provides numerous illustrations detailing how they worked, including how they glued feathers to flat surfaces.
The Mass of St. Gregory (detail), 1539, feathers on wood with touches of paint, 26 1/4 x 22 inches / 68 x 56 cm (Musée des Amériques, Auch)
Divine Light
As religious or devotional objects, iridescent featherworks like TheMass of St. Gregory seemed to communicate ideas about divine light. As air passed over their surface, the feathers rustled and moved, animating the object with a life force. Depending on how you held the object, the colors of the feathers seemed to transform as well. Green hummingbird feathers became purple or pink, corresponding to Christian notions of divine light. The iridescent qualities of feathers and their Christian symbolism compare to stained glass windows in Gothic cathedrals, all of which relate to Christ as the lux mundi (the light of the world).
Juan Bautista Cuiris, Portrait of Christ, Hummingbird and Parrot feathers (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
The potential religious connotations of featherworks stimulated the creation of liturgical garments and objects made of feathers. Examples of bishops’ garments (like miters and stoles) and eucharistic altars still exist. Many of the liturgical garments were sent to Europe in the sixteenth century. We know, for instance, that Ferdinando I de’ Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, actively collected featherworks and other items from colonial Mexico.
Sacred Eucharistic Featherwork, 16th century, feathers on wood with silver trimmings, 55.7 x 37.2 cm (Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Several sixteenth-century eucharistic triptychs portray the Last Supper flanked by saints Peter and Paul. The central panel also includes a Latin inscription that relates the moment when Christ offers his body and blood—the very same words a priest would say during Mass at the moment of transubstantiation.
Additional resources:
“The Mass of St. Gregory,” in Painting a New World, exh. cat., ed. Donna pierce, Denver Art Museum (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), pp. 98–102 (available online).
Around 1541, the first viceroy of the viceroyalty of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, commissioned a codex to record information about the Mexica (Aztec) Empire. The codex, now known as the Codex Mendoza, contained information about the lords of Tenochtitlan, the tribute paid to the Aztecs, and an account of life “from year to year.” The artist or artists were Indigenous, and the images were often annotated in Spanish by a priest that spoke Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Nahuas (the ethnic group to whom the Aztecs belonged). Viceroy Mendoza intended to send the Codex to the Spanish King, Emperor Charles V of Spain, although it never made it to Spain; French pirates acquired the Codex and it ended up in France. Upon its appearance in sixteenth-century France, it was acquired by André Thevet, the cosmographer to King Henry II of France, and Thevet included his name on several pages, including at the top of the Codex Mendoza’s frontispiece.
In the center of this cosmological diagram is the deity Xiuhtecuhtli (a fire god), standing in the place of the axis mundi. Four nodes (what look almost like trapezoidal petals) branch off from his position, creating a shape called a Maltese Cross. East (top) is associated with red, south (right) with green, west (bottom) with blue, and north (left) with yellow. Codex Féjervary-Mayer, 15th century, f. 1 (World Museum, Liverpool)
The Codex contains a wealth of information about the Aztecs and their empire. For instance, the Codex’s frontispiece relates information about the organization and foundation of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan—the place of the prickly pear cactus. Tenochtitlan was established in the middle of Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico in 1325.
Given that much of the former Aztec capital is below modern-day Mexico City, the Codex Mendoza frontispiece corroborates other information we have about the capital city and its origins. For instance, it shows us a schematic diagram of Tenochtitlan, with the city divided into four parts by intersecting blue-green undulating diagonals. The city was made of canals, similar to the Italian city of Venice, and was divided into four quarters. The image displays the quadripartite division of the city and the canals running through it. The division of the city into four parts was intended to mirror the organization of the universe, believed to be four parts aligned with the four cardinal directions (north, east, south, west), such as we see represented in the Codex Féjervary-Mayer.
At the center of the schematic diagram of Tenochtitlan is an eagle on a cactus growing from the midst of a lake. The eagle and the cactus relate to the narrative surrounding the capital’s establishment. According to Aztec myth, their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird Left), told the Aztecs’ ancestors to leave their ancestral home of Aztlan and look for a place where they saw an eagle atop a cactus growing from a rock. He informed them that when they saw this sign, they should settle and build their city. For the Aztecs, they observed the sign in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and so established their capital on an island in the lake.
Mexican flag
The cactus upon which the eagle rests also symbolizes the place name of Tenochtitlan. The cactus is a nopal, or prickly pear cactus, which in Nahuatl is nochtli. The cactus grows from a stone, or tetl. When paired together, they form te-noch to connote the place of the prickly pear cactus, or Tenochtitlan. Today’s Mexican flag similarly displays the eagle on a nopal cactus growing from a stone in the middle of a lake, relating to the mythic origins of the Mexican capital.
Besides the eagle on the cactus, other figures and symbols on the frontispiece aid us in understanding the city’s foundation and early history. For instance, below the cactus and stone in the middle of the drawing is a war shield, indicating the Mexica did not settle peacefully in the Valley of Mexico. The simple structure above the eagle likely symbolizes a temple, possibly an early phase of the Templo Mayor, or the Aztecs’ main temple that was located at the heart of the city in the sacred precinct. To the right of the eagle is a simplified skull rack (tzompantli), another structure found near the Templo Mayor. Different types of plants, including maize, or corn, dot the city’s four quadrants, no doubt alluding to the agricultural fertility associated with the city.
Ten men are also depicted in the four quadrants, wearing white garments and displaying top knots in their hair. These figures are the men who led the Aztecs to this island location. Their name glyphs are attached to them in a manner typical of pre-Conquest manuscripts; a thin black line connects to a symbol that denotes their name. One man, different than the rest and seated to the left of the eagle, has gray skin, as well as a different hairstyle and red mark around his ear. These traits identify him as a priest because he let blood from his ear as offerings to deities and ash covers his skin. His name glyph identities his as Tenoch. Other motifs, such as the speech scroll coming from his mouth and the woven mat upon which he sits, convey his high status as well. Tenoch died in 1363, and the first Aztec tlatoani, or speaker (the ruler), was elected in 1375 by a council of elders.
Surrounding the entire page are year glyphs, beginning on the upper left with the date 2-House (1325 C.E.) and finishing (counter clock-wise) with the date 13-Reed. There are a total of fifty-one year glyphs. One year is marked—the year 2-Reed, which occurred twenty-six years after Tenochtitlan’s establishment; the reed has a cord wound around it and a fire drill appears above it. These symbols note that the year 2-Reed was the first year of a new 52-year cycle, the time during which new fire was drilled to begin the new cycle and signal the completion of the previous 52-year cycle. For the Aztecs, the New Fire ceremony occurred every 52 years—a complete cycle of the solar calendar—and it assured that the sun would rise again. Just prior to the beginning of a new cycle, new fire was drilled in the body of a sacrificial victim. After this point, the fire was distributed among people to light their homes.
Below the schematic diagram of the city are two scenes of military conquest. The artist emphasizes the military power of the Aztecs by showing two soldiers in hierarchic scale: they physically tower over the two men they defeat. The Aztec warriors are also identified by their shields—identical to the one above that is associated with Tenochtitlan—and their obsidian-bladed weapons (called macana). The defeated men come from two different locations, both identified with place glyphs as Colhuacan and Tenayuca, both located around Lake Texcoco. In this case, burning temples paired with specific hills note that Colhuacan and Tenayuca were defeated. Spanish glosses also identify these place names as “colhuacan pueblo” and “tenoyucan pueblo.” This scene of conquest alludes to early Aztec military victories, which aided them in building their power even prior to their first official tlatoani came to power.
Sheet 7 of tribute, with a featherwork of the Madonna and Child, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
The earliest known image of the Madonna and Child made by an Indigenous artist of the Americas shows the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ against a blue background on a sheet of amatlpaper. A frame of red, gold, and green rectangles surrounds them. Many other items also fill the page—bundles of reeds, long green feathers, golden disks, loincloths, sandals, and people—all of which initially seem disconnected from the holy image. It is unclear where we are, what these things mean, and why they are on this page together.
These images were made in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain by Indigenous artist-scribes (called tlacuiloque) from the town of Huejotzingo (spelled earlier as Huexotzinco) less than ten years after the Spanish Conquest in 1521. This page is a record of goods supplied by the Huexotzinca (the people of Huejotzingo) to the Spanish conquistador and administrator Nuño de Guzmán for his conquest venture to western Mexico (what would become known as Nueva Galicia after he succeeded in taking control of it). Seven other sheets of varying sizes (and in no particular order) were made along with this one as records of the services and physical goods the Huexotzinca gave to the Spaniards during a two-year time period. The eight pages form part of what is called the Huexotzinco Codex, compiled in 1531 after the image sheets and written testimonies became evidence in a court case that involved the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. He claimed that during his absence (while he was in Spain), goods and services that belonged to him were appropriated by other Spaniards. The images in the Huexotzinco Codex reveal the complex situation of the early colonial period in New Spain and the ways in which Indigenous groups—like the Huexotzinca—navigated the colonial situation.
The Huexotzinco Codex belongs to a larger group of objects called tribute codices—documents that did not always take the form of an actual codex. These are documents made by Indigenous peoples that visually recorded the tribute items they were forced to pay, and they were made both pre- and post-Conquest.
Other well-known tribute lists include the Matrícula de Tributos (likely made before the Conquest, and with Spanish annotations added later) and the Codex Mendoza (mid-16th century, and modeled on the Matrícula de Tributos or a lost prototype), both of which include pages illustrating the tribute that different conquered groups were forced to pay to the Mexica Empire (as opposed to Spaniards in the Codex Huexotzinco). In one folio in the Codex Mendoza showing the tribute paid annually and semi-annually from Tochtepec (a province in southern Veracruz and northern Oaxaca), we see cloaks, warrior costumes, feathers, golden objects, greenstone beads and jewelry, rubber balls, cacao and more—all of which totaled more than 30,000 items.
In the Huexotzinco Codex, written testimonies that now accompany the images note that the Huexotzinca created the sheets to document what they felt was excessive tribute that they were forced to give to Nuño de Guzmán, Juan Ortiz de Matienzo, and Diego Delgadillo—members of New Spain’s high court (called the First Audiencia)—during Cortés’s absence. The Audiencia was actually created to check the power that Cortés had accrued during and after the Conquest. The sheets in the Codex Huexotzinco likely survive because they were used as evidence in Cortés’s lawsuit to reclaim what he felt had been taken from him by these three men of the Audiencia.
The legal dispute and the formation of the Codex
During Cortés’s initial inland march toward the city of Tenochtitlan in 1519, he had encountered the Huexotzinca, who would ally themselves with Cortés—they were no allies of the expansionist Mexica at this time who tried to control them. Thousands of Indigenous peoples (not only the Huexotzinca) would forge alliances with Cortés to defeat the Mexica Empire (as opposed to the myth that it was just a few hundred Spanish conquistadors). After the fall of the Mexica, the Huexotzinca received benefits from the Spanish Crown. They appealed to the Crown for tax exemptions, citing their early alliance with Spanish forces as evidence of their loyalty.
After the Conquest, Cortés was granted Huejotzingo, along with services and goods to be provided by the Huexotzinca. In the legal case, Cortés claimed that in 1528—when he returned to Spain—Guzmán, Ortiz de Matienzo, and Delgadillo took what rightfully belonged to him. With so many goods and services listed across eight sheets, we can imagine Cortés’s displeasure to see others take what he felt was his.
Luckily for Cortés, the people of Huejotzingo had created the paintings that recorded the goods and services they gave as tribute for the two years of his absence, and Cortés’s lawyer requested them as evidence. From Huejotzingo the documents traveled to Mexico City along with three Huexotzinca witnesses. Their testimonies—spoken in Nahuatl and translated into Spanish—were written down as they were shown the image sheets and asked to talk about them. The written testimonies were recorded on more than 70 sheets of paper that came from Italy unlike the local materials on which the images were drawn. The case was successful in Mexico, and retried again in Spain. Even King Charles of Spain eventually noted that two-thirds of all the tribute extracted from the Huexotzinca should be returned to Cortés.
Eventually the pages of text and images were combined together to form the Codex Huexotzinco. The image sheets are larger than the written text pages, so they were folded and sewn into the center of the codex (although now they have been conserved and all creases removed).
Sheet 2 of tribute, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
Tribute
Each of the sheets displays rows of tribute given to Guzmán, Ortiz de Matienzo, and Delgadillo. The artist(s) records the tribute pictographically—in the style of Nahua manuscripts that had been made long before the invasion of, and conquest by, Spanish forces. Nahua writing used glyphs and signs to record information. Each item of tribute is shown as a glyph atop a flag, bundle of reeds, or bag. The flags, reeds, and bags were a visual shorthand for a numeric quantity of goods.
Detail of the top of sheet 2 of tribute, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
The second sheet of tribute shows approximately four rows of items. On the upper left we see bowls atop flags. It is possible these are gourd bowls (xicalli). A flag was a count of 20, meaning that 60 bowls were given as tribute. To the right of the bowls are some unidentified objects that appear on a bundle of reeds and flags. A bundle was equal to 400; coupled with the two flags, the count was 440 of these items. At the center top are two bags containing eggs. A bag (xiquilli) was a count of 8,000, which means that the Huexotzinca gave 16,000 eggs! The eggs were likely turkey because chickens—not from the Americas—were not yet common. Plus, the next item of tribute is a count of 8,060 turkeys, represented by the artist with turkey heads on flags and a turkey head in a bag. Imagine all that gobbling!
The first sheet in the Codex included construction materials for a project in Mexico City that involved building monasteries, houses, and an irrigation ditch. Pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
Sheet 4 with textile designs, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
On the first page, among the other tribute items you can find wooden planks, lime, and adobe bricks used for construction; 3,600 bundles or pieces of cloth; 32,800 bushels of maize (or even just the cobs); 48,000 chile peppers (or possibly bundles of chiles); and 8,400 chia seeds (or more likely, 8,400 of some specific quantity of chia seeds—they are very tiny!).
Several sheets focus on textiles given as tribute. On one sheet we see a tribute list of different cloths running vertically. Next to each count of cloth is a red rectangle, inside of which can be found a flower or a clawed animal. It is thought that each rectangle is a different type of pattern that could be found on textiles. If these are indeed textile designs intended to be on a red background, it suggests the costliness of the cloths. Red-dyed textiles were expensive, with the color red likely derived from cochineal.
Sheet 5 with possible textile designs, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
Another sheet also likely displays different patterns for textiles, this time in a stepped-fret design (what was later called grecas in Spanish). These too are shown in red, indicating yet again the likelihood that they were made with red dye. Other later colonial manuscripts include similar types of images of textile patterns, including the early colonial Codex Magliabechiano. Textiles were a common tribute item before the Spanish invasion, and elaborate ones like these were a sign of wealth. Like so many of the other items shown across these sheets, they also speak to the specialized craft economy that flourished in Mesoamerica.
Sheet 3 (right; showing an enormous amount of maize that was to be ground, possibly to feed soldiers embarking on the journey and conquest of Nueva Galicia) and Sheet 6 tribute, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
It would take too long to detail all the tribute across all eight sheets. What we do find across the other seven pages are some of the same items, such as turkeys, cloth, maize, and chiles. Some pages also include pots, sandals, bundles of feathers, darts, loincloths, and more. It is an impressive count of goods, and makes one wonder how it was gathered and stored.
Detail of Sheet 7 of tribute, with a featherwork of the Madonna and Child, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
Mary, a featherwork, and a military banner
The Mass of St. Gregory, 1539, feathers on wood with touches of paint, 26 1/4 x 22 inches / 68 x 56 cm (Musee des Jacobins)
The image of the Virgin Mary and Child that that we looked at earlier is actually a military banner (or war standard), one that was going to be carried by Guzmán in his efforts to conquer west Mexico. In the written testimonies, the Huexotzinca witnesses noted it was made of feathers and gold. Featherworks had a long history in Central Mexico, and were considered precious items. The Mexica Empire demanded feathers as tribute because of their status as luxury materials. After the Conquest, featherworking traditions continued, albeit with a transformation in subject matter to reflect the desires of Christian colonizers.
The Marian banner displayed in the tribute sheet was apparently so costly that the Huexotzinca had to sell enslaved peoples to produce it—indicated in the painting with the row of enslaved men (wearing maxtlatls) and women (wearing quechquemitls) in different patterns, possibly to indicate where they were from). Selling them permitted artists to buy gold disks, which we see on the right side of the sheet, as well as bunches of smaller feathers and large green feathers. The Marian banner was a large work, measuring half an arm’s length in height and width. The frame was also made of differently colored feathers.
Military banners adorned with Mary were common in Europe, and had been used on the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) during the Reconquista. Mary’s associations with conquest (she was sometimes known as la conquistadora, the conqueress) meant that her image was sometimes placed atop hills after defeating a local Mesoamerican population; after the Mexica empire was toppled, an image of Mary was carried as a sign of Spanish triumph. When Guzmán planned to march to west Mexico with his gold and feathered Marian banner he participated in this tradition, and he not only had Spaniards among his forces, but also Huexotzinca who he had forced to fight (as indicated in sheet 8).
Not only is the painting in the Codex the first known Marian image made by an Indigenous artist, but it is the first reference to a Nahua featherwork made with a Christian subject. After the Conquest, missionaries like the Franciscans began to establish schools where they could train Native men to read and write, and to learn European visual techniques and strategies. When the Franciscans arrived in Huejotzingo in 1525 they built the convento of San Miguel Arcangel, which became prominent and eventually did have such a school. It is possible that the featherwork cited in the image was made there.
Sheet 8 shows two warriors holding shields and spears next to a date glyph of 11-House (the year 1529 here, and so likely indicating the beginning of the conquest of Nueva Galicia). The banners below the warriors suggest that this is a record of 320 Huexotzinca warriors provided to Guzmán. Sheet 8 of tribute, pigments on amatl paper, made by Huexotzinca artists, before 1531; then combined with written pages to form the Huexotzinco Codex, 1531 (Library of Congress)
Complex entanglements
Other surviving documents from the 16th century tell us that the Huexotzinca continued to speak out against excessive tribute, with a 1560 letter to the Spanish Crown inquiring as to why their tribute had increased more than sevenfold, and once again expressing their frustration given that they had been loyal allies to the Spaniards, had converted to Christianity, had submitted to the Spanish Crown, and always paid their tribute. The earlier eight sheets documenting the tribute paid by the Huexotzinca during Cortés’s absence, like later documents, help to showcase the Huexotzinca’s agency and resiliency, and the complex entanglements that occurred as the viceroyalty of New Spain was established in Central Mexico. The images in the Huexotzinco Codex help us to learn more about tribute, conquest and the conditions of colonialism, Native agency, Nahua writing systems, Indigenous knowledge, the importance of images, early Christianity in the Americas, and legal disputes.
* The Huexotzinco Codex remained in the hands of the heirs of Cortés for hundreds of years, before eventually being sold to a bookdealer and eventually ending up in the Library of Congress in Washington DC (Harkness Collection) where it remains today.
Images of Africans in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan
by Dr. Elena FitzPatrick Sifford
Detail from folio 45 recto, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century, 21 x 30 cm (Mexicain 385, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
A dark skinned figure holding a cross hangs by a noose from a wooden scaffold. His lifeless body slumps downward, a head of dark curls. The figure is likely the first visual rendering of an African in the Americas. It is found within the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, a manuscript created in central Mexico in the mid-sixteenth century that includes a ritual feast calendar, a divinatory almanac, and a chronicle of 350 years of Mexica history, and which was created by Indigenous artist-scribes, known in Nahuatl as tlacuiloque.
This image records the events of a slave uprising that took place in Mexico City in 1537, and along with a handful of other images, provides a view of the often violent colonial encounter between Spaniards, Africans, and Indigenous peoples, with Indigenous artists playing an important role in documenting the contact period using centuries old literary and pictorial traditions. The artists who created the Codex Telleriano-Remensis likely copied the images from several earlier Mesoamerican texts, yet the cataclysmic changes of the colonial period necessitated the introduction of new iconographies, resulting in a hybrid document that merges Indigenous and European modes of representation and record keeping.
Codex Borgia, facsimile edition published by Testimonio Compañía Editorial, 2008
Manuscripts through contact and conquest
Codex Borgia, c. 1500, f. 25 (Vatican Library)
In 1519 when the conquistador Hernán Cortés reached the Gulf Coast of Mexico, he was entering an empire ruled by an ethnic group called the Mexica. They ruled from their capital located in the highland basin of Mexico in a city called Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City). Some of the most revered and highly educated members of their society were the tlacuiloque (singular tlacuilo) who practiced a picture-writing tradition that combined glyphs and images for writing and record keeping, a tradition which dated back millennia in Central Mexico.
Although many Indigenous manuscripts were destroyed by Spanish colonizers after the conquest of 1521, new manuscripts were commissioned that merged Mesoamerican and European writing and artistic systems. They were created by Indigenous artists who had been trained in the tradition and who continued many Mesoamerican conventions while merging them with imported European texts and pictorial styles.
Folios 1r and Quetzalcoatl (18r), Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century, 21 x 30 cm (Mexicain 385, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
One such manuscript is the Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Throughout it, the figures are rendered in profile with large heads, frontally faced eyes, and exaggerated facial features, as was typical of Mesoamerican manuscripts from Central Mexico. While the first two sections of the manuscript follow earlier Mesoamerican conventions quite closely, the chronicle (called xiuhtlapohualamoxtli) augments the traditional historical annals (recording of historic events) to include the early events of the contact and conquest period. It is within this context that a tlacuilo of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis recorded the events of the 1537 slave uprising.
Detail from folio 45 recto, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century, 21 x 30 cm (Mexicain 385, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Early colonial Indigenous manuscripts featuring images of Africans
The revolt was the result of a plot between an African “king” who along with Indigenous allies plotted to overthrow the Spaniards and take over their lands. [1] In the image that accompanies the description of the revolt, the artist incorporates a Black African phenotype into a manuscript that retains much of its Central Mexican figural style. The artists use skin color, hair style, clothing, and headgear to differentiate between the various ethnic and racial groups within the annals. The Indigenous figures on the same page, located to the left of the African figure, are shown wearing a standard male hair style with bangs. They sport tilma garments, likely fashioned from maguey fibers, identifying them as Mexica commoners.
Such observations of difference had long standing precedent in Central Mexican visual culture, which is expanded here to include newly arrived European and African groups. [2]
We see curiosity about and recording of racial difference in other written and illustrated sources from the colonial period as well. The Florentine Codex, for example, discusses Mexica Emperor Moctezuma II sending scouts to the coast to survey Cortés’s recently arrived fleet. The text, made up of ethnographic interviews of elder Nahuas, mentions in Nahuatl that some of the men had ocolochtic, or tightly curled hair. The accompanying Spanish translation, written opposite the Nahuatl, reads: “Among the Spaniards came Blacks, who had crisply curled dark hair.” Note how the Nahuatl text mentions only the hair type while the Spanish translation also makes note of their skin color. This difference is important because it reveals to us some key differences between European and Indigenous conceptions of Blackness that may explain the prominence of Africans within several early contact period Indigenous manuscripts.
“The March of the Spaniards into Tenochtitlan,” Codex Azcatitlan, folio 23, c. 1530, 21 x 28 cm (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
An image showing the march of Cortes into Tenochtitlan within the Codex Azcatitlan, a mid-sixteenth century manuscript created by tlacuiloque in the city of Tlatelolco, is particularly poignant for its revelation of the multi-ethnic and multi-racial reality of the colonial encounter. On this page we see two types of Indigenous people as well as two types of Spaniards (African and European).
Leading the group is Malinche, an Indigenous Nahua noblewoman from the Gulf Coast who became an interpreter for Cortés. She perhaps serves as a liminal figure between Cortés, directly behind her, and Moctezuma who was presumably on the far left hand slide of a now lost adjacent folio.
Codex Azcatitlan, c. 1530, 21 x 28 cm (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Behind Cortés and an armed henchman stands the singular African in the group holding a spear and reins belonging to the dismounted leader. This figure may reference a man named Juan Garrido, an auxiliary in Cortés’s militia who was born in Africa but lived in Seville in Spain before traveling to the Americas. Garrido famously petitioned the Spanish King Charles I for a royal pension in return for his involvement in several conquest missions between 1508 to 1519, including those of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Florida, and Mexico. [3] Garrido is pictured as part of the Spanish retinue, trailed by a grouping of armored henchmen.
Trailing Malinche, Cortés, and Garrido are three Indigenous porters, likely Tlaxcalans who had allied themselves with Cortés to defeat their enemies, the Mexica. All of the figures are differentiated via skin color, dress, hairstyle, and related objects. Malinche’s skin is painted a light brown, which contrasts with the much darker color of Garrido. She wears her hair in two horn-like braids typical of female Nahua-speakers. Again, as in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis, the Black figure is rendered with cropped curly hair.
In the image, the Spanish retinue (including Malinche and Garrido) is rendered along a rolling path that serves as a horizon line. The Tlaxcalans, however, are divorced from that perspectival space and two of three seem to hover above the horizon, perhaps aligned with Indigenous modes of representation more concerned with legibility over naturalism. As some scholars have noted, European perspectival drawing was used for sections of the manuscript most relevant to Spanish interests. [4] With this subtle difference in perspective, we can imagine that the Indigenous artists and onlookers pictured both Garrido and Malinche as Spanish while the Tlaxcalans retain their Indigenous identity.
Four deities, two of whom are shown with black skin, on folio 10r of Bernardino de Sahagún and collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, book 1, 1575–77, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
Blackness through Indigenous eyes
The earlier interest by Indigenous artists of the Codex Telleriano-Remensis and Codex Azcatitlan likely displays a view of Blackness that was still unentangled with Spanish notions of white supremacy and anti-Blackness. Indeed the color Black and even Black or Blackened skin held positive connotations in Mesoamerican worldview. In the Florentine Codex the Black conquistadors are referred to as “soiled gods,” connecting them with sacred power associated with darkness. Mexica priests and political leaders at times would paint their bodies Black using salves derived from potent hallucinogenic or poisonous plants. The Black paint associated the body with the power of male deities and provided bodily protection during rituals, especially those involving caves—dark spaces that were seen as transitional portals of emergence and descent into the underworld. Given that Black skin held such prestige, it follows that Indigenous artists and informants took special note of the dark skin of certain members of the Spanish retinue.
Battle scene (detail), Biombo with the Conquest of Mexico and View of Mexico City, New Spain, late 17th century (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City)
These manuscripts are our earliest visual records of the encounter, and feature an Indigenous viewpoint. Later visual culture, dominated by Hispanized artists, tend to leave out the African presence in images that showed the conquest. By the seventeenth century, for example, the conquest scene pictured on a folding screen orbiombo displays the homogenous binary of white European Spaniards versus brown Indigenous Mexica. Multiethnic categories are largely ignored and the Africans amongst the Spanish retinue are completely absent.
Juan Correa, Biombo, allegory of Africa (detail), side showing an allegory of the Four Continents, c. 1675, oil and gilding, 199 x 556 cm (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City)
By the seventeenth century, Black Africans instead came to be seen largely in mythologized or stereotyped imagery. This could take the form of positive images of Blackness, such as in images of Black saints or the Black magus. Black figures were also pictured as personifications of Africa within a grouping of four, each figure serving as an allegory for one of the four known continents. Afro descendants were also pictured within casta paintings of the eighteenth century, oftentimes embodying negative stereotypes associated with Blackness in a white supremacist society.
Detail from folio 45 recto, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 16th century, 21 x 30 cm (Mexicain 385, Bibliothèque nationale de France)
The image of the March into Tenochtitlan in the Codex Azcatitlan is notable for its articulation of the multi-racial and multi-ethnic realities of the Spanish conquest. The Indigenous authors pay particular attention to the Black member of the Spanish retinue, giving him pride of place within the composition. Similarly, the image from the Codex Telleriano-Remens is notable for its recoding of an African figure. Combined with Mesoamerican glyphs, the tlacuilo illustrates the discord of the colonial period, possibly alluding to alliances between Black and Indigenous rebels during the 1537 uprising in Mexico City. Taken together, the images provide us with a new precedent for the recording of Africans and their descendants in the Americas, recorded by Indigenous artists rather than the assumption that European artists were the first to document and record the various peoples who formed the fabric of a burgeoning society. The images of Africans recorded by the Indigenous tlacuiloque stand out in the visual record for their early date and the ways that they add nuance to our understanding of the cross-cultural encounters of the early colonial period.
Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, Florentine Codex
by Erika Nelson
Aztec deities, Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
How would you try to understand a culture that was completely unknown to you? In the sixteenth century, shortly after the Spanish arrived in what today is Mexico, one of the first things they created was a 12-volume encyclopedic work, known as the Florentine Codex, or The General History of the Things of New Spain. The 12 volumes document the culture, religious and ritual practices, economics, and natural history of the indigenous central Mexican peoples in the years immediately preceding the Spanish Conquest, as well as the events of the Conquest itself.
The Codex is quite large with 1,200 folios (pages) and 2,468 painted illustrations! The Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún, and a group of Nahua (one of the indigenous groups that occupied Central Mexico) writers and illustrators, conceived of and compiled the Codex. Today, we think of the Florentine Codex as one of the most remarkable manuscripts created in the early modern era (roughly the period from the late 15th through late 18th centuries).
Activities in the temple (detail), Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, book 2, f. 135r, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
When it was completed in 1579, they sent the Codex to Madrid, where it was likely meant to train Spanish missionaries about Nahua people and customs. Exactly when and under what circumstances the book traveled from Madrid to Florence is unclear. We refer to the work of Sahagún and his collaborators as the Florentine Codex because of its present-day location. The Medici family of Florence, Italy, assumed ownership of the manuscript no later than 1588. It first appeared in a catalog of the Medicea-Laurenziana Library in 1793, but it remained untitled for nearly a century until 1886 when it acquired its current title.
The creation of the Codex
The divining arts, Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 1, book 4, f. 52v, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
Sahagún’s preparation for the creation of the Florentine Codex began shortly after his arrival in 1529 to New Spain, an area that included modern-day Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Philippines, Florida, and most of the southwestern United States. A viceroy (like a governor) ruled New Spain on behalf of the King of Spain. During his first years in New Spain, Sahagún prepared for the creation of this encyclopedia through the training of young indigenous students who became his collaborators in the creation of the Codex. He also produced an earlier manuscript, known as the Primeros Memoriales (First Memorials) in Nahuatl, a language spoken by the Nahua and other indigenous groups in Central Mexico before the Conquest. Primeros Memoriales served as the foundation for the Florentine Codex.
By about 1549, Sahagún began the process of assembling the Florentine Codex, collaborating with two groups. First, the principales (literally, the chiefs), a group of Nahua wise elders, answered questionnaires about their culture and religion. They recorded the answers as paintings, using pictographs (icons that communicate meaning by resembling a specific object, like drawing two parallel squiggly lines to suggest a river). Painted manuscripts with pictographs had been a traditional Nahua practice. Second, the grammarians, a team of Christianized indigenous nobility who were trained in Latin, Spanish, and Nahuatl, interpreted the principales’ paintings, expanded the answers, and transcribed them into alphabetic Nahuatl. By 1569, this information took the shape of twelve books, and the grammarians had completed the alphabetic Nahuatl text. By 1576, Sahagún and his collaborators began to create and include new illustrations and to translate the text into Spanish. They completed the entire project by 1579, when they sent it to Spain.
The structure of the Codex
The Codex is composed of twelve volumes, each of which documents a specific component of Nahua culture. They include:
Diagram of Spanish and Nahuatl columns, Florentine Codex
Book 1: The gods
Book 2: The ceremonies
Book 3: The origin of the gods
Book 4: The soothsayers
Book 5: The omens
Book 6: Rhetoric and moral philosophy
Book 7: The sun, moon and stars, and the binding of the years
Book 8: Kings and lords
Book 9: The merchants
Book 10: The people
Book 11: Earthly things
Book 12: The conquest
Each page of the Florentine Codex contains parallel columns of Nahuatl and Spanish text. The Nahuas recorded their culture and history in their own language in the right text column, and Sahagún had the Nahuatl translated into Spanish in the left text column. These translations are abbreviated, so the Spanish text is not as long as the Nahuatl. This provides numerous opportunities for the insertion of illustrations–thousands of these appear throughout the 12 volumes.
Cross-cultural influence
Featherworkers, Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 2, book 9, f. 64v, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
In the illustrations of the Codex, we see the ability of the Nahua artists to continue working in a style characteristic of the Mesoamerican (or pre-Hispanic Nahua) painted manuscripts, but they also demonstrate the ability to adapt to European methods of perspective and shading.
For example, in Book 9, we see a representation of Nahua featherworking (left), another artistic practice that predated the arrival of the Spanish, in which artists “painted” by pasting brightly colored feathers to sheets. The artist who illustrated this scene for the Florentine Codex worked in a manner similar to the earlier, indigenous painted manuscripts. For example, the profile views and the heavy outlines of the bodies and objects are characteristic of the pre-Hispanic Nahua painted manuscripts. Yet, the imagery also demonstrates clear shifts from Nahua graphic systems to European modes of representation. For instance, in these same scenes, the backgrounds also feature typical classical Renaissance architecture, like doorways flanked by columns. The artist, or artists, also use linear perspective (in which parallel lines appear to converge in the background, creating a convincing illusion of space) in their depiction of the tiled floors in each illustration, thus recalling European artistic methods. The Nahua did not use linear perspective prior to Spanish colonization.
Top scene (above) and middle scene (below) of featherworkers (details), Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 3, book 9, f. 64v, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
The subject matter of the three scenes on folio 64v depict the artists working in both European and Nahua modes of representation. For instance, in the top scene (above, left), an artist paints a man who has his arms outstretched. He has used shading to convey roundness of form, a technique that was not typical of Nahua painted manuscripts. Also, in the middle and bottom scenes, we see featherwork artists at work—pasting brightly colored feathers to create beautiful imagery. In fact, in the middle scene of folio 64v (above, right), a disembodied hand appears to rest atop a blank white mat to suggest and emphasize an artist’s involvement in creating a featherwork “painting.” Featherworking not only pre-dated the Spanish but also continued and transformed after their arrival. In fact, the conquistador Hernán Cortés marveled at featherwork objects and sent them back to Spain. In these scenes, we get a sense of both the Spanish appreciation of this practice, and its importance to the Nahua.
A Nahua perspective?
Nahua tactics of warfare, Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 3, book 12, f. 74v, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
In the Florentine Codex, the Spanish text is not a strict, literal translation of the Nahuatl text, but rather in some instances an approximation or summary. For this reason, discrepancies occur between the two sets of text. These discrepancies are in no way arbitrary, and, through them, some of the European biases become clear. In the image to the left (folio 74v), the Nahuatl text describes Nahua tactics of warfare and the failed Spanish attempt to use a catapult. The Nahuatl text takes up two full-page columns, but the Spanish translation only amounts to two lines. Sahagún leaves the column reserved for the Spanish translation blank, as he was unlikely to translate in great detail the failings of Spanish forces. Sahagún also possibly planned the empty spaces for more images, but we know that epidemics prevented the images’ completion.
Even though the Spanish text often attempts to de-emphasize the “unpleasant” aspects of the Conquest in Book 12, the illustrations cannot conceal its sheer violence and destruction. We see this in an illustration of the Toxcatl massacre, an event that took place on May 20, 1520, during the celebration of a main deity. The Nahuatl text describes the massacre in which the blood of warriors “ran like water,” and the ground became “slippery with blood.” The Spanish text leaves much of this text untranslated. However, the event is illustrated in chapter one of Book 12 (below), directly below the title of the book. It shows Spanish soldiers hacking away at a group of Nahua people at a temple, with bodies strewn about the temple base. So while the Spanish text and the Nahuatl text do not correspond precisely, if we consider the two texts with the illustrations, we get a more complete understanding of the events of the Spanish Conquest. This is true in many instances in the Florentine Codex, which often conveys the conflicting views and ideas of the time period. Importantly, we get a sense of the Nahua perspective from this period through some of these discrepancies.
Toxcatl massacre (detail), Bernardino de Sahagún and Indigenous collaborators, General History of the Things of New Spain, also called the Florentine Codex, vol. 3, book 12, f. 1v, 1575-1577, watercolor, paper, contemporary vellum Spanish binding, open (approx.): 32 x 43 cm, closed (approx.): 32 x 22 x 5 cm (Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence, Italy)
Reading the Florentine Codex today
Due to its unparalleled wealth of information regarding the people and culture of central Mexico immediately preceding the Conquest, and its discussion of the Conquest itself, scholars have made the text of the Florentine Codex accessible to a larger audience through comprehensive translations of both the Nahuatl and Spanish. A full digital version is also now available at the website of the Medicea-Laurenziana Library. Together, the images and text in the Florentine Codex demonstrate the complex negotiation of culture, tradition, and identity in the years immediately following the Spanish Conquest.
Remembering the Toxcatl Massacre: The Beginning of the End of Aztec Supremacy
by Bérénice Gaillemin
Toxcatl Massacre, Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 1 (detail) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
Competing Histories
This May marks 500 years since the Toxcatl massacre, in which Indigenous people were killed during a festival that took place in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (today’s Mexico City). Two competing histories of this event exist. In the Spanish telling, the conquistadors acted in self-defense, yet a very different narrative emerges in the Indigenous version.
On May 22, 1520, Spanish conquistadors and their Indigenous allies attacked the Mexicas—the Nahuatl-speaking ethnic group that dominated a vast multi-ethnic territory that spanned from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf coast, and from central Mexico to present-day Guatemala. The attack during the Toxcatl festival incited a war that led to the end of Mexica supremacy and to the beginning of the conquest of Mexico.
Spaniards order Mexicas to prepare the Toxcatl festival and female ritual practitioners preparing amaranth dough that will be made into an incarnation of the deity Huitzilopochtli for the Toxcatl festival while Spanish soldiers observe their work, Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fols. 29v and 30 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
Unveiling of the amaranth-dough incarnation of Huitzilopochtli (the patron deity of the Mexica associated with warfare, fire, and the Sun) and richly dressed leaders dancing and singing during the Toxcatl festival, Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 31v (details) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
For most of the past 500 years, this history of the conquest of Mexico has been based on the accounts of Spaniards. Francisco López de Gómara’s La conquista de Mexico was one of the most influential historical accounts of the conquest of Mexico, drawing on Hernán Cortés’s letters addressed to the Spanish king that justified the attack. The Spaniards claimed the festival was a cover-up for an Indigenous rebellion. However, Nahuatl-language texts survive that tell us an alternative version. They excruciatingly detail the human horror and the treachery of a mass murder, now known as the Toxcatl Massacre. One of the most critical Indigenous sources is Book 12 of the Florentine Codex, the manuscript that is the focus of a digital research initiative at the Getty Research Institute.
The Mexica Perspective
Book 12 of the 16th-century Nahuatl-Spanish encyclopedia, known as the Florentine Codex, preserves the point of view of the Mexicas. It is the longest and most detailed historical account of the conquest written in Nahuatl, the lingua franca of pre-Hispanic central Mexico. Here the Toxcatl Massacre is described as an attack carried out with cruelty, stealth, and treachery. The Nahua authors write that the Spaniards ordered the ceremony to take place, even after they detained the Mexica ruler, Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin, and looted the palace for gold.
Book 12 of the Florentine Codex begins with an illustration of the Toxcatl Massacre. The Nahua authors and artists deliberately placed this image at the beginning of the book to foreground their underlying argument: the treacherous attack and ensuing war on Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital, and the sister city Tlatelolco were unjustified.
First page of Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”) showing the Toxcatl Massacre and a second illustration of the omens foretelling the arrival of Spaniards. Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 1 (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
Toxcatl Massacre, Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 1 (detail) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
The image depicts the gruesome attack: armed Spaniards crowd in from all sides and hack away at unarmed Mexicas gathered for the ceremony. In the background is the Templo Mayor, Tenochtitlan’s main ceremonial temple, signaling the sacred environment in which this massacre was perpetrated. Two traditional drums in the foreground, the vertical huehuetl and the horizontal teponaztli, underscore the violent interruption of the religious festival. The Nahuatl text in Book 12 and in other 16th-century Nahuatl sources, such as the Codex Aubin, detail how the Spaniards initiated the attack by cutting off the hands of the drummer and then dismembering him—a traumatizing memory also captured in multiple images in the manuscript.
Spaniard severing the hand of a drummer, Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 33 (detail) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
Toxcatl Massacre in Diego Durán, Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme, 1579, fol. 211 (detail)) (Biblioteca Nacional de España)
These painful visual elements are echoed in this colorful image painted in a history of New Spain compiled by the Dominican friar Diego Durán in 1579. Again, we see two drums at the center, Spaniards entering the sacred courtyard from all four sides, and dismembered and bleeding Mexica bodies. This image was most likely painted by an Indigenous artist. We see a European-style colonnade, but the architecture and people are flattened against the pictorial plane to allow for maximum visibility following Indigenous artistic norms.
The Nahuatl text of Book 12 recounts the bloody scene:
Then they stabbed every one with iron lances and struck them with iron swords. They stuck some in the belly, and then their entrails came spilling out. They split open the heads of some, they really cut their skulls to pieces, their skulls were absolutely pulverized. And some they hit on the shoulders; their bodies broke open and ripped. Some they hacked on the calves, some on the thighs, some on their bellies, and then all their entrails would spill out. And there were some who were still running in vain: they were dragging their intestines and seemed to get their feet caught in them. Eager to get to safety, they found nowhere to go.Book 12 of the Florentine Codex
The Mexica Counterattack
Soon, the Mexicas organize a counterattack. The Nahua authors record a speech calling the warriors to take up arms: “Mexica! Warriors! Come running, get outfitted with devices, shields, and arrows. Hurry! Come running! The warriors are dying; they have died, perished, been annihilated. Mexica! Warriors!”
Mexica man calling warriors to action and Mexica warrior battling Spaniards in Book 12 of the Florentine Codex (“Of the Conquest of New Spain”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fol. 34 (details) (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)
The chapter on the Toxcatl Massacre ends with the Mexica fending off the attackers, in an atmosphere described as “yellowish” (cozpol). The color yellow refers to the blur of arrows, harpoons, and darts, all made from reeds, falling upon the attackers. The Mexicas win this battle but will lose the war that follows. The story ends with the surrender of the Mexicas, led by Cuauhtemoc, the last ruler of Tenochtitlan.
“Burning of the Idols,” in Diego Muñoz Camargo’s Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
“Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
Two men hold long torches, aflame at one end, to a large mass of carefully depicted things that hover in the air, all of it encompassed by more flames curling outwards. Some of the bigger flames have even been emphasized with added brown ink. Looking closely at what these two men burn, we notice numerous heads—some human, others fantastic, as well as banners, shields, and other ornaments. The two men engaged in the act of burning are not the main focus of this drawing’s composition however—what they seek to destroy is. Less noticeable are two slightly smaller figures wedged into the right side.
Detail of Tlaloc, “Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
The artist clearly wanted anyone looking at this drawing to focus on what is being burned: here, objects and materials associated with Mesoamerican divinities from Central Mexico, divinities who were worshipped prior to the Spanish invasion that began in 1519. We can make out one figure with a long, protruding bill or snout—this is the wind god, Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl. A skeletal figure with an open mouth likely represents Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Underworld (Mictlan). A large figure at the top with goggle eyes is Tlaloc, the god of rain.
This drawing in ink is from the late 16th-century colonial era manuscript known as the Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, an important source for its discussion of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521. The Description is composed of three “sections.” [1] The initial section of more than 200 pages of text was written between 1581–84 by Diego Muñoz Camargo, a mestizo born in the region of Tlaxcala to a Spanish conquistador father and Indigenous mother (likely a noble Tlaxcalan woman). Two other sections are composed of more than 150 images drawn by unknown Indigenous artists who worked with Muñoz Camargo.
This scene of the bonfire has become the most reproduced image from Muñoz Camargo’s manuscript because it relates to what some art historians have called the war on images that occurred after the Spanish conquest. [2] In the drawing, two Franciscan missionaries—who were one of several groups directly responsible for the conversion of the Indigenous population to Christianity—are the ones who actively destroy the material culture of Indigenous peoples that they believed threatened their attempts at evangelization. They are identifiable as Franciscans by the outer garment (habit) they wear, complete with a knotted belt, and their haircut that involved shaving a bald spot at the top (tonsure).
“Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
“Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
Also of interest in this scene are the two young men behind one of the Franciscan friars: these are Tlaxcalan boys who have brought kindling for the fire. The artist shows them as active participants in the destruction of their own cultural heritage. Whether or not this was accurate, the image conveys that some Indigenous peoples willingly sided with missionaries to bring Christianity to the peoples of Mesoamerica, now part of the viceroyalty of New Spain controlled by the Spanish Crown. In fact, the Tlaxcalteca (the people of Tlaxcala) had sided with Spanish conquistadors against the Mexica—their arch enemies—and were the first Indigenous community to publicly embrace Christianity. This religious transformation and the acceptance of the conquerors’ religion is signaled here by the aid of the two young men in the destruction of the “old ways.”
Like the image visualizes, many objects associated with Indigenous religion and knowledge were burned or destroyed in what have been called “extirpation campaigns.” If you’ve ever wondered why so few prehispanic manuscripts survive today, it is because many of them ended up on bonfires. One Franciscan friar, Diego de Landa, in the Yucatán noted that Maya books were thought to contain nothing but “superstitions and falsehoods of the devil” and so he had them burned; he is estimated to have destroyed more than 5,000 objects (books among them) in a single bonfire. [3] And he was not alone; these acts of iconoclasm are among the biggest in history.
The scene of the bonfire relates to power, conversion, and conquest—from one point of view—and trauma, resiliency, and identity from a very different perspective. Indigenous communities were resilient in the face of such destruction (often accompanied by waves of epidemics that decimated entire communities). Sometimes objects were hidden away for safeguarding. Others were buried beneath new Christian things erected atop. For some, the knowledge remained and was funneled into new visual expressions—radically transformed in appearance perhaps, but harnessing new media or technologies to encode Indigenous knowledge (such as sculptures using European visual modes). Some types of images even continued to flourish after the conquest, such as featherworking and mural painting.
Church and Ex-Convento of San Francisco de la Asunción de Nuestra Señora, c. 1537, Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico (photo: Jose montealegre, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Tlaxcala and Diego Muñoz Camargo’s account
Tlaxcala as a community and city played an interesting role in Mesoamerican history and during the events of the conquest. The Tlaxcalteca had long managed to ward off Mexica (Aztec) imperial forces in the years before 1519. When Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés traveled from Veracruz inland to Tenochtitlan in 1519, he encountered the Tlaxcalteca, and described their city in his letters to the King of Spain as one of plentiful food, good buildings, and large in size. The Tlaxcalteca would decide to ally with Cortés and his men to defeat the Mexica, and were a major reason as to why the Spanish conquest was successful. Also, because Tlaxcala became one of the initial centers of Christian conversion by the Franciscans (who were the first group of Christian missionaries to arrive in New Spain), the Tlaxcalteca adopted Christianity early. As a result of their alliance with Spain, Tlaxcalan nobles intermarried with Spanish conquistadors.
“Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
Diego Muñoz Camargo was born of these two worlds as a mestizo, and he found ways to navigate his place and his communities’ places within these worlds. His noble status in both groups (the son of a conquistador and Tlaxcalan noble) afforded him privileges that other Indigenous peoples did not have. He was born into the first generation of mestizos after the conquest, and because of his parentage and position was given an education at a mission school in Mexico City, before returning to Tlaxcala and playing an important civic role. At one point, he even traveled to Spain to meet King Philip II and hand deliver him documents, including the Description. He wrote it in response to the 1577 Spanish royal survey, Instrucción y memoria, that asked different regions of Spain’s vast territories to describe the land and its resources, the cities and major buildings, and the makeup of its inhabitants. It is important to keep this context in mind when we look at the Description because it was mainly created for a Spanish courtly audience—not for the Tlaxcalteca.
The Description and the accompanying images sought to identify Tlaxcala’s important role in the conquest and conversion, and to champion the importance of the Tlaxcalteca’s place within colonial society. It traced the history of Tlaxcala until its establishment as a colonial city, and documented the Tlaxcalteca’s conversion process. In most of the images found in the Description, Tlaxcalteca appear with Spaniards, such as the two young Tlaxcalteca accompanying the Franciscan friars who burn the idols. He likely did this as an attempt to remind anyone reading the text of their alliance. It was undoubtedly important to Muñoz Camargo to maintain the noble privileges he had as a result of this union.
Idolatry
“The first twelve Franciscans,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242. Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
Christianity is also important in Muñoz Camargo’s text and the accompanying images. Besides the image of the burning of the idols, we see images of baptism, the cross, and missionary friars. One shows the first twelve Franciscans kneeling before a cross that is threatened by flying demons who have the faces of Mesoamerican deities, reinforcing the idea that the Mesoamerican divine was evil and worship of these deities was idolatrous. Just as he wanted to remind readers of the Spanish-Tlaxcalan alliance, Muñoz Camargo also wanted to convey that the Tlaxcalans were good Christians. Not long after the conquest, new buildings, such as the missionary complex of San Francisco de la Asunción de Nuestra Señora shown earlier, began to be built to serve as spaces for conversion and education. Muñoz Camargo describes the city in great detail in his account, both as a way to demonstrate its beauty and civic virtue, as well as to note the many Christian spaces and the activities that occur within them.
In both text and images, it is clear that Muñoz Camargo also wanted to demonstrate that the Tlaxcalteca had rid themselves of pagan worship of “idols.” Extirpation campaigns heavily targeted “idols” in Tlaxcala, which is indicated not only in the bonfire image in the Description but others that show the Franciscans in Tlaxcala hanging idolaters (people who worship idols).
The Spanish inscription translated into English reads: “Bonfire of all the clothing, books, and accouterments of the idolatrous priests, that the friars burned.” “Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
The Spanish inscription that accompanies the image even describes idolatrous priests (“los sacerdotes idolátricos”) as the individuals who used the items being burned.
Nahuatl inscription at the top of the page. “Burning of Idols,” drawn by an unidentified Indigenous artist, to accompany Diego Muñoz Camargo, Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala, c. 1581–84 (Ms. Hunter 242, fol. 242r, Glasgow University Library, Scotland)
The text written in Nahuatl at the top of the page also states that here we are seeing the burning of teopixque or “caretakers of the gods,” further reinforcing the idea of these as idols and justifying the mass destruction of Mesoamerican religious materials. Both inscriptions further suggest that Muñoz Camargo wanted to clearly communicate to his Spanish audience that worship of Mesoamerican deities was unorthodox (here understood to mean non-Christian) and so needed to be rooted out and destroyed.
Between worlds
Even though Muñoz Camargo described in detail Tlaxcala’s important role in the conquest and the Tlaxcalteca’s conversion to Christianity to demonstrate how they are both good allies and Christians, he was critical in his text of the Spanish destruction of Tlaxcala’s cultural heritage and the mistreatment of the Tlaxcalteca. His manuscript was an attempt to inform the Spanish King of these issues with the hope that the ruler could address these problems and hopefully gain additional privileges for the Tlaxcalteca from the Spanish Crown. While he was likely successful in the short term, eventually the Spanish Crown would reverse course and remove exemptions it had made for Tlaxcala in an attempt to increase profits for the Spanish Crown. [4]
Engravings in Diego de Valadés’s Rhetorica Christiana
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Diego Valadés, “Didacus Valadés Fecit,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579. (New York Public Library Digital Collections)
The first book ever printed by an American author was Rhetorica Christiana (or Christian Rhetoric) in 1579 in the city of Perugia, Italy. It was written in Latin and illustrated by Diego de Valadés, who was born in Mexico to a Spanish conquistador father and an Indigenous mother in 1533. He would become the first mestizo to join the Franciscan religious order in the viceroyalty of New Spain, and in 1570 he traveled to Rome on behalf of the Franciscans. His written account was the first published text to describe the evangelization and conversion of Indigenous peoples in the Americas from the perspective of a missionary, and it included twenty-seven copperplate engravings. One shows Valadés accompanied by an inscription that states “F. Didacus Valadés Fecit” or “F. Diego Valadés maker,” announcing to any reader that he created the engravings. Valadés died around 1582, never having returned to Mexico.
Author, Artist, and Missionary
Diego Valadés, “The Great Chain of Being”, 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
The Franciscan order was the first group of mendicant friars to arrive in New Spain after the Spanish conquest. They arrived in 1521 in order to convert the Indigenous populations. At the time Valadés joined the Franciscans, Indigenous converts were not allowed to enter the mendicant orders. This might explain why his name is omitted from some records. His father’s status as a conquistador may have helped the young Valadés gain entry to the Franciscan order.
One of Valadés’s teachers was friar Pedro de Gante (Pieter of Ghent), a well-known Franciscan friar who was among the first three Franciscans to arrive from Spain in Mexico, and who worked at the school of Santiago Tlatelolco. Gante helped to train young Indigenous men in the ways of European artistic conventions and to learn Latin and Spanish. Valadés himself was the product of this school. Gante was highly esteemed by Valadés, as well as the king, Charles V, who at one point asked Gante to become archbishop; in his book, Valadés notes that Gante refused.
Diego Valadés, “The Great Chain of Being,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Rhetorica Christiana reflects Valadés’s classical, humanist education under Gante, with its references to ancient Greco-Roman authors like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, and Horace, among others. One image called the “Great Chain of Being” encapsulates some ideas derived from ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonic thinkers in its illustration of a hierarchy of existence. God sits at the top of the hierarchy, with angels below him. They are all encompassed in clouds to suggest their spirit form, which was intended to convey their infinite, un-changing, and perfect form.
Lower on the hierarchy are beings that do change and are imperfect: (in order) humans, animals, plants, and finally stones and minerals. Hell is at the bottom of the engraving, with Satan ruling over the realm of the fallen and sinners. The image encapsulates a sophisticated understanding of matter, science, philosophy, and alchemy borrowed from classical and more modern sources, and speaks to Valadés’s own humanist education.
Diego Valadés, “The Great Chain of Being,” or 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Diego Valadés, “Mnemonic Alphabet,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Valadés would eventually work at San José de los Naturales (an important early center for conversation in Mexico City) with Gante between 1543 and 1553. Valadés claims in his book that he learned three Indigenous languages: Nahuatl, Tarascan, and Otomí. He, like many other Franciscans, learned Indigenous languages as a way to facilitate communication and conversion. Valadés served as a missionary for years among the Chichimecs in northern Mexico (in the modern states of Durango and Zacatecas) before he eventually traveled to Europe, most notably to Spain and Italy. It was during his time in Rome that he began work on the Rhetorica Christiana.
Rhetorica Christiana is written in Latin, which indicates its use for a learned audience, specifically Franciscan friars who wished to better understand the missionary ventures in the Americas. The book tackled a number of issues and themes, and supported the overall conversion goals of the Franciscans in New Spain. It includes a number of engravings accompanying the written text, suggesting the important role that Valadés accorded to images. Many of them function as visual mnemonic devices, or a means of using images to help cement ideas in a person’s memory.
Friar Preaching to the Indigenous Population
Valadés describes in the text and shows in the image how Franciscans converted the local Indigenous populations, as well as preached to them. One engraving in Rhetorica Christiana shows a Franciscan friar, likely Pedro de Gante, preaching to a large crowd of Indigenous converts. The friar uses a stick to point to images of the Passion, likely on a lienzo, a large painted cloth, and which was similar to the types of murals often found painted within missionary spaces. This engraving reveals the important role that images played in early conversion efforts because language barriers still existed, and using images became a powerful strategy to teach recent converts Catholic dogma.
Diego Valadés, “Friar Preaching to Native Converts,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Many of Valadés’s images include letters scattered about the scene to help viewers understand concepts. For instance, the letter A is located on the pulpit where the preacher speaks to the crowd and points to images. In the corresponding text, it notes that the letter A says that the friar speaks to the converts in an Indigenous language. With the letter B, it notes that the friar points to the image to correspond to what he says aloud.
The Ideal Atrium
In his discussions of evangelizing the Indigenous population, Valadés mentions that friars preached outside so that they could reach large crowds of people. The engraving of the “Ideal Atrio” is an image of idealized missionary conversion carried out by the Franciscans in Mexico. Letters included with each scene are connected to a key with explanations of each vignette in the scene.
Diego Valadés, “The Ideal Atrium,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
In the center of the image, the founder of the Franciscan order, St. Francis of Assisi, leads a procession, which also includes the principal Franciscan missionary Martin de Valencia who was the leader of the group of twelve Franciscans who came to Mexico in 1524. They lead other Franciscans as carriers of the church. The inscription accompanying the central scene states “The first to bring the Holy Roman church to the New World of the Indies.” Above the Franciscans carrying the church we see the dove of the Holy Spirit framed within the architecture, and above the structure itself is God holding Jesus on the cross, creating a vertical line connecting father, son, and holy spirit, and a common visual reminder of the Trinity.
Diego Valadés, “The Ideal Atrium,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
In the rest of the image, Franciscan friars teach young men and women about Catholicism. The image also shows friars administering the sacraments, which include baptism, confession, and marriage. Several friars are shown engaged in teaching, subjects such as the creation of the world and penitence.
Diego Valadés, “The Ideal Atrium,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
The long sticks used to point to images on a wooden board or textile are visible, once again revealing the importance of images as teaching aids in the early post-conquest period. Valadés even includes friar Pedro de Gante teaching Indigenous converts in the upper left corner.
At the bottom of the image, inside the arched structure, friars listen to confession, offer communion, deliver justice, and give last rites to a dying individual. We also see men and women separated, each within their own domed structures at each of the four corners. These chapels in the atrium’s corners recall posa chapels that were built in actual Franciscan missionary complexes, like that at Huejotzingo. They were used similarly to what we see in Valadés’s image: for friars to pause and teach Indigenous people about Catholic dogma or was way stations during processions.
Diego Valadés, “The Ideal Atrium,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
It is possible that the ideal atrium depicted here was directly borrowed from Valadés’s own missionary experiences during his time at San José de los Naturales under Gante. There, a large atrium and accompanying capilla indio, or chapel for Natives, had been created. This architectural form served as a model for other missionary complexes built throughout New Spain in the sixteenth century.
Indigenous Customs
Diego Valadés, “Mexico City” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Diego Valadés, “Mesoamerican and Julian Calendars,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Other parts of the book illustrate and describe Mesoamerican practices, ceremonies, and ideas. In one image, Valadés attempts to reconcile Indigenous timekeeping with European timekeeping. He tries to match the Mesoamerican calendrical wheel with the Julian calendar, although in the end it is not entirely accurate.In another image, we see a view of Mexico City with a teocalli, around which people engage in diverse activities. They are identifiable as Amerindians by the ubiquitous use of feathered headdresses. By this point, feathers had become a symbol for America and of the Indigenous peoples living there.
Valadés depicts the teocalli as an elevated platform, on top of which is an open air space and a rounded, apsidal space. Below the elevated platform, people dance in a slightly sunken courtyard. Surrounding the teocalli we find buildings, trees, pathways, and people engaged in day-to-day activities. This particular engraving was actually a fold-out image.
The importance of education
Rhetorica Christiana asserts the success of the Franciscan mission to convert Native peoples in New Spain. For Valadés the proof lay in Native peoples’ understanding Catholic dogma and liturgy. Throughout his text, Valadés argues for the education of Indigenous peoples, and in so doing also argues for their humanity. After the Spanish conquest in 1521, and throughout the sixteenth century, there were arguments over whether Indigenous peoples of the Americas qualified as human beings, as people with souls.
Diego Valadés, “The Seven Liberal Arts,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579 (Getty Research Institute)
Valadés makes his position clear—Native peoples needed to be educated. For Valadés, a Christian humanist education brought with it a civilizing influence, and so he argued for the need to educate the Indigenous population. One of his engravings shows the seven liberal arts, which included grammar, dialectic or logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. An engraving like this one reminded readers once again of the importance of a liberal arts education in an American context, and the images clearly played an important role within Valadés’s own vision of education and evangelization.
Round arches carried by columns in the with Doric order reflect classicizing trends in the former Franciscan convento of Tecali de Herrera, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Luis Espinoza, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The Renaissance — not just in Italy
The term “renaissance” generally invokes images of Italian cities, buildings, and artworks, rather than images of American ones. However, the renaissance had tremendous repercussions on the American continents, and its influence can be found from Philadelphia to Buenos Aires. In fact it might be more useful to think of the renaissance not as a European phenomenon at all, but as a wide-ranging cultural movement that centered on the rebirth and rediscovery of classical (ancient Greek and Roman) culture that sparked many innovations and changes in architecture, urbanism, pictorial art, theatre, science, literature, and more.
Map of New Spain. Note that at its height, the Viceroyalty of New Spain also included Central America, parts of the West Indies, the southwestern and central United States, Florida, and the Philippines.
Cities, buildings, and architects in New Spain
Spanish colonizers and criollos believed that adopting specific classicizing architectural styles from Europe helped to give their civic and religious buildings a sense of proper decorum. The idea of what constituted decorous architecture derived from Greek and Roman philosophical and architectural sources, including those written by Aristotle, Cicero, St. Augustine, and even Isidore of Seville.
In the sixteenth century, cities were considered to embody an ideal of sophisticated and refined living. This is an ancient idea that took root among peoples in Spain during the medieval period. In the Hispanic world, the term for this idea of a civilized urban center was policía (which derives from the ancient Greek term polis, meaning city). This idea of the ordered urban center was brought to the Americas where the structure and building of cities became one of the most important colonizing strategies of the Spaniards.
One of the regions in the Americas that saw a resurgence of classical culture was Mexico. From the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the territory roughly comprised by present-day Mexico, the midwestern and southwestern U.S., and parts of Central America was known as New Spain — a territory claimed and ruled by the Spanish Crown. Throughout this period, towns and cities in the central and southern part of New Spain (by far the most populated of the territory) grew in size. They were inhabited by a diverse population that included Spanish colonizers, criollos (the offspring of Spanish colonizers born in the Americas), Indigenous peoples of diverse ethnic origin, Africans (originally brought as slaves, many later becoming freed citizens), small communities of other Europeans, Asians, conversos (Jewish people who had been converted to Christianity), and many ethnic mixtures in between.
Aerial view of the city of Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico (image: Google Maps)
Cities acquired a prominent place in the colonizing strategies of the Spaniards. Spanish colonizers and criollos adopted architectural styles from Europe in an effort to validate their civic and religious institutions. Cities participated in dividing peoples along ethnic lines to create social and racial hierarchies. During the sixteenth century, cities were created for Indigenous peoples, while other cities were created for Spaniards and their offspring, in what was a clear effort to segregationist effort on behalf of the Spanish colonizers. Cities for Indigenous peoples were termed repúblicas de indios, while repúblicas de españoles was the term employed for cities destined for European colonizers and their offspring. In the repúblicas de españoles—and also in the república de indios, but arguably to a lesser extent—the preferred architectural language of the most representative buildings was classical in style.
Drawing of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, 1596 (image: Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
Residences for elite families or buildings such as city halls, educational institutions, and hospitals, drew from classical architectural sources. In a plan of Mexico City’s central square drawn in 1596, we can see that some of the most important buildings of the city had portals with classical elements such as columned porticoes. Mexico City at the time must have been (architecturally speaking) reminiscent of towns in the Iberian Peninsula (such as Trujillo or Cáceres, both in the region of Extremadura, the birthplace of conquerors and architects, like Francisco Becerra).
Episcopal Palace with classicizing details, Cáceres, Spain, 13th to the 17th century, with a renaissance façade (image: Horst Goertz, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Religious architecture, including cathedrals, monasteries, and church-sponsored buildings such as hospitals and orphanages, were also designed to employ the language of classical architecture—to indicate proper decorum and appropriateness.
Façade of the ex-convento of Tecali de Herrera, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Luis Espinoza, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The façade of the Convento de Tecali is considered to be one of the most refined late-Renaissance designs in New Spain. Some elements, like the proportions of the architectural orders, were likely taken from a treatise like the one by Sebastiano Serlio, an Italian architect who published a profusely illustrated treatise in the 16th century, which was extremely influential in both Europe and the Spanish Americas.
Sebastiano Serlio, Book 2 of The Book of Architecture, published by Jean Barbé, 1544 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Architects, patrons, and their sources
Some of the first classically trained architects, like Claudio de Arciniega and Francisco Becerra who arrived in New Spain (from Spain) began practicing their trade during the latter part of the sixteenth century. Their presence signaled the arrival of late-Renaissance architecture to the viceroyalty.
Becerra, Façade of the Casa del Dean, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
The façade and portal of the Casa del Deán, the residence of the dean of the Cathedral Chapter of the City of Puebla, showcases the classicizing renaissance influences brought to New Spain. The design of this urban palace has been attributed to Becerra, an architect born in Extremadura, Spain. The dean, named Tomás de la Plaza, was known to be a humanist, a person who studied classical literature and culture, which explains his choice of the classical style for his residence.
Even prior to their arrival, the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza (who ruled from 1535–1550), was well-versed in matters of architecture, and was known to have possessed copies of the architectural treatises by Vitruvius (the ancient Roman architect) and Leon Battista Alberti (the Renaissance architect). These treatises were the most important vehicles of transmission of classical architectural forms. We see the likely influence of these publications in the official architecture that was built during the sixteenth century in the viceroyalty, and the way cities such as Puebla and Mexico City were being designed and developed. For Europeans in New Spain, just as in Europe, these treatises represented the pinnacle of architectural theory; they were the accepted repository of knowledge regarding what classical architecture was, the knowledge needed to practice the discipline of architecture, and the manner of properly designing and constructing buildings and cities.
Façade of San Martín Huaquechula, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Thelmadatter, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Complicating Classicism
By the start of the seventeenth century, it appeared clear that the classical architectural tradition had taken root. At the same time, it was also clear that the Indigenous and mestizo builders who constituted the bulk of the work force in New Spain, had also established a style of their own. This was especially the case in towns and cities that were more distant from the repúblicas de españoles.
In reality, this architectural style had been there all along, as some of the first monasteries erected by the mendicant missionaries together with the native workers and builders, were fascinating architectural combinations of European influences—including Gothic, Mannerist, Plateresque, Mudéjar, and classicizing Italianate—combined with Indigenous traits and attributes.
Façade of San Martín Huaquechula (detail), 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
We see this in the façade of the Convento de Huaquechula, for instance, approximately 56 km (35 miles) south of the City of Puebla. It has a main portal of carved stone that displays native sculptural traits, such as floral designs in an Indigenous style, in which the stigmata are represented as a native motif of a bleeding wound (center of the image, on the spandrel within a coat of arms held by a cherub). The stigmata was a symbol employed by the Franciscan Order, reminiscent of their founder, St. Francis of Assisi, who received the stigmata. Today, this style has been called at times mestizo, other times hybrid, with no consensus among experts on a definitive term.
Baroque interior of the Church of Santa María Tonantzintla, Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, 18th century (photo: Photovicz, CC BY-SA-4.0)
Once the classical language of architecture took hold, it appeared to start its transformation into the next big architectural wave, which art historians often call the Baroque — which constituted the most developed and fascinating architectural tradition to flourish during the viceregal period in New Spain and other Spanish dominions in the Americas. It bears remembering, however, that Baroque architecture in New Spain and elsewhere borrowed elements from the classical language of architecture as a basis for articulating and ordering its own vocabulary.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City
by Dr. Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank
Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
In Mexico City’s main plaza, a bustling scene unfolds before our eyes. Horse-drawn carriages carry the city’s elite. Most people are on foot, and some can be seen promenading in a line at the canvas’s bottom edge. Other people congregate before the city’s massive cathedral on the left. Temporary tents are pitched in the furthest portion of the plaza, with people selling their goods. A more permanent structure made of stone surrounds even more shops in the foreground. Looking at the hundreds of individuals depicted here, we see a kaleidoscope of dress and accoutrements. We also see an artist attempting to represent the diverse ethnic makeup of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor (Zócalo) of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
This painting, by the famous artist Cristóbal de Villalpando from about 1695, is well-known for its subject. It shows the large market (called the Parián) in the Plaza Mayor (or Zócalo) of Mexico City, which existed until the 19th century when it was demolished (you won’t see it in the Zócalo today). Its name was borrowed from its counterpart in Manila (in the Philippines, which was also controlled by Spain at this time). Merchants brought goods from across oceans to sell to the residents of the city in the Parián. Mexico City, and the broader territory of New Spain, were at the center of a large network of global trade.
Routes of the Manila Galleon trade
Goods, people, and ideas travelled from Manila (having themselves come from many parts of Asia) to the port city of Acapulco via galleons (sailing ships often called Manila Galleons). From Acapulco, these goods either made their way to Mexico City or were carried to Veracruz on the Gulf Coast, at which point they’d be shipped across the Atlantic to Europe. Goods flowed likewise from Europe to New Spain. What makes this center even more complex and fascinating is that it did not just receive goods from Europe and Asia, but likewise sent finished goods and natural resources across the Atlantic and Pacific, and even down the coasts to the viceroyalty of Peru. Silver was among the most popular materials to travel to Asia from the Americas. The constant flow of objects, ideas, raw materials, and people added to the dynamic character of New Spain, and especially in a city like Mexico City which had a worldwide reputation as a beautiful, wealthy city energized by the constant influx of things.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, detail of the Parián, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
Transpacific trade and cosmopolitanism
Lacquerwares, folding screens, ivories, spices, silks, Chinese porcelain—these are but some of the many objects and natural resources that traveled across the Pacific from Asia to New Spain. Goods were often labeled as “de China” or “from China—a reference to something coming from what we call Asia today, and not paying close attention to where things originated specifically in Asia. In Villalpando’s painting, in the stone Parián enclosure it seems that some merchants are selling cloth, possibly silk, indicated by the multicolored lengths of fabric hanging from individual stalls.
Biombo with the Conquest of Mexico and View of Mexico City, New Spain, late 17th century (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Talavera vessel with the image of a crane, adapted from Chinese porcelain, 17th century, earthenware (Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Artists in New Spain began to adapt the forms and visual modes they encountered in these foreign goods, developing new art forms or modifying older ones. Japanese folding screens were popular trade items that stimulated Novohispanic artists to adapt the Japanese byobu (folding screens) into biombos. Many paintings, prints, sculptures, and furniture also incorporate representations of things that made their way to New Spain via trade networks.
José Manuel de la Cerda, Writing cabinet on table, c. 1750, Wood, Mexican lacquer, gilding, and silver drawer pulls, 102 x 155 cm (The Hispanic Society)
For example, we find Chinese blue-and-white porcelains represented on altars with sculptures of Christ, or locally produced ceramics adapting Chinese motifs, such as with talavera poblana (local ceramic production in Puebla). Clearly, the flow of goods through places like the Parian, that Villalpando so dynamically captures in paint, affected many different aspects of Novohispanic culture.
The transpacific trade also resulted in Asian peoples coming to new Spain, where they or their descendants worked in cities like Acapulco, but also Puebla and Mexico City. While some were enslaved, others worked in many different trades and occupations—adding yet again to the diverse society of the Spanish viceroyalty that Villalpando represents here.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, detail of the lower edge of the View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
A history painting?
Adding to the lively scene are details like dogs running or playing, children, people engaged in conversation, and people on the canal (that no longer remains today). This is an idealized view of daily life in Mexico City, where all peoples seem to exist in relative harmony.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, detail of the viceroy’s palace and volcanoes, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
Villalpando crafts a painting that gives the impression of a snapshot, or a realistic portrayal of Mexico City’s main plaza. Nevertheless, he took certain liberties. The Parian was under construction when he painted the scene, and here it looks more majestic than it likely did (and even more symmetrical than it actually was). One account describes it as “horrible,” in reference to its unsightliness. [1] The entrance to the viceroy’s palace is also larger than it was, perhaps a way to elevate the dignity of the viceroy himself.
The painting shows identifiable structures, many of which still stand today. Villalpando took great care to detail fabrics and faces, animals and spaces, almost creating a visual argument that this really is what the Zocalo looked like. The painting also references a recent important event in New Spain’s history: the burning and partial destruction of the viceroy’s palace after uprisings in 1692 over food shortages. The large horizontal palace in the back of the painting shows the partially destroyed structure. Villalpando also includes clear topographic features in his painting to situate the scene in Mexico City. In the far background we see the snow capped volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl—still famous today for their appearance above the skyline of Mexico City. Even the angle that Villalpando chose to depict the city is considered correct; he possibly observed the Zocalo from the top of one of the houses from the western side of the plaza.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, detail of the Parián, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
Shopping
Francisco Clapera, two paintings from a set of sixteen casta paintings, c. 1775, 51.1 x 39.6 cm (Denver Art Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
The painting’s focus on shopping and material consumerism reinforces the wealth of many criollo (Spaniards born in the Americas) and peninsulare (Spaniards from the Iberian Peninsula) residents of Mexico City and New Spain more broadly who had amassed fortunes from silver mining and other means. Villalpando’s portrayal of the residents of Mexico City as active consumers extends beyond the upper levels of society, but this is an idealized vision of the Zócalo and the city’s inhabitants. In reality, anxieties over ethnic mixing and blurred social divisions existed, as the later genre of casta paintings so explicitly communicate. Sumptuary laws tried to restrict not only what people could wear in public, but who could wear them. In Villalpando’s painting, people of many different social stations wear luxurious clothes and jewelry.
The cosmopolitan nature of Mexico City, with its steady influx of luxury goods from afar, meant that there was a desire to own and wear fanciful things. But there was also the fear that those of lower social status could give an impression of being above their station by wearing nice things. Travelers passing through Mexico City comment on how even servants were seen in pearls—to them an oddity and a social transgression.
Cristóbal de Villalpando, View of the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, c. 1695, oil on canvas (Corsham Court Collection, Wiltshire)
An ideal projection
For all of its attention to detail, Villalpando’s painting should not be read as an accurate image of what life was actually like in its lived experience for everyone in the capital of New Spain. The painting celebrates the city, the viceroyalty, its wealth, and its cosmopolitanism—but it is an ideal projection. It was commissioned by the viceroy Gaspar de Silva, Count of Gelves, who had been responsible for the food shortages in the 1690s. He apparently paid for the painting, and returned to Spain with it. The vision that Villalpando projects undoubtedly appealed to the viceroy who wished to believe that he had brought prosperity to the Spanish colony.
Notes:
[1] Richard Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493–1793 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 161
Additional resources
Barbara Mundy and Dana Leibsohn, “Patterns of the Everyday,” on Vistas: Visual Culture in the Spanish Americas, 1521–1820
Attributed to Francisco Becerra, façade of the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
Renaissance architecture and humanist culture in Puebla, Mexico
Close to Puebla’s cathedral and central square stands the once palatial residence known as the Casa del Deán or The Dean’s House. It was built around the year 1580, but most of the residence was demolished in 1953 to make room for a modern cinema house. Thanks to preservation activists, a fragment of the palatial residence survived—the façade and two upstairs rooms that contain a fascinating mural program, including elaborately dressed figures riding on horseback in a procession that takes place amongst rolling hills, patches of woods, bodies of water, mountains, and hamlets.
The Triumph of Chastity, murals of the Casa del Deán, Hall of the Triumphs, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
What remains of the residence is an outstanding example of renaissance architecture and murals made in the viceroyalty of New Spain. The building and murals also speak to the importance of renaissance humanism in the city after the Spanish conquest of surrounding lands in 1521 initiated waves of evangelization and colonization. Renaissance humanist ideas were important to some of the Spanish colonizers, as they believed Humanism, which was the study of Classical literature and sources, represented some of the outstanding traits of European and Spanish civilization.Tomás de la Plaza was known to be a humanist, a person who studied classical literature and culture, which explains his choice of the classical style for his residence.
With Spanish colonization underway, wealthy Spanish colonizers adopted the urban palatial residences found in Italy and Spain. Such palaces were built for high-ranking clerics and even some Indigenous noble families who enjoyed privileges for having fought alongside Spanish forces against the Mexica. Residences of the elite class formed part of the urban fabric in towns such as Puebla, where the religious and civil buildings designed along classical (ancient Greek and Roman) lines embodied the concept of urbanitas, or urban refinement and decorum. Spanish colonizers viewed the city as the site of their “civilizing” efforts.
While the facade displays some Classical elements, such as the pediments over the windows and doors, others, like the tracery on the windows on top, are of medieval origin. Juan Guas, Palacio del Infantado, 1480, Guadalajara, Spain
Like their prototypes in Italy and Spain, these renaissance palaces were used to to flaunt the magnificence and political weight of the urban elite. In Spain, while many palaces display a classicizing renaissance style, there is also the influence of plateresque, mudéjar, and gothic ornamentation.
The facade of Casa de Montejo, 1540–50, Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. The facade displays Plateresque motifs, identifiable in the intricate lace and vegetative ornaments, mixed with classical attached columns and pilasters. Of note is the violent character of the sculptures representing Spanish conquistadors standing on disembodied heads, a symbol of colonial subjugation. The Montejo family crest of arms is visible at the center of the upper body. (photo: Inri, CC0)
The urban palaces built in New Spain likewise displayed a mixture of classicizing, plateresque, mudéjar, and gothic ornamentation on their façades. Few examples of those palacios from the 16th century remain in present-day Mexico, and one of the most remarkable examples is the Casa del Deán.
The Spanish-born, high-ranking cleric named Tomás de la Plaza was the Dean of Puebla’s Cathedral Chapter and held important administrative roles. The design of the Dean’s House façade is attributed to the Spanish architect Francisco Becerra, who had come from Spain to design buildings that signaled the Spanish Catholic presence, including Puebla’s impressive new cathedral—a project De la Plaza was also involved with. Becerra was well-trained in classically-informed architecture, which he had practiced since he was a young man in his native Extremadura.
Attributed to Francisco Becerra, façade of the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
Sebastiano Serlio, Book 2 of The Book of Architecture, published by Jean Barbé, 1544 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
De la Plaza (the Dean) may have asked Becerra to remodel an existing building he had acquired. Becerra’s design for the entry portal possesses a sense of rhythm and repetition that lends the building a coherent sense of order (although it has been disrupted in its present state).
The balconies we see today were originally windows and the lower floor entries have changed in their dimensions and forms (see hypothetical reconstruction).
A hypothetical reconstruction of Casa del Deán in the late 16th century. Of note are the windows, which were transformed into balconies and the tower seen on the left side of the elevation. The ground floor entries and windows have also been extensively altered over the centuries (drawing by Trevor Wood, hypothetical reconstruction by Juan L. Burke)
The palace also demonstrates the important role that classical architectural principles had among some elite, intellectual Spaniards who participated in the colonial enterprise. The residence portal of the Casa del Deán reminds us of Sebastiano Serlio’s popular 16th-century treatise, The Book of Architecture, that borrowed from classical architecture and ideas, and which would influence a great deal of architecture throughout the Spanish Americas.
Attributed to Francisco Becerra, façade of the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
The lower level of the portal consists of an entry flanked by two engaged Doric columns on pedestals. The columns are fluted and sit below a robust entablature, which carries the second-story balcony. This second story balcony is fitted with a pair of rusticated jambs and lintels that are flanked by engaged and fluted columns with Ionic capitals. These columns support a cartouche of Tomás de la Plaza’s family coat of arms (now partially missing). The frieze displays the words Plaça Decanus (Plaza, the Dean), and the building’s year of completion, 1580. Flanking the upper-level balcony are two ogee windows, characterized by having a cusped lintel. These windows are complemented by classical pediments above them. Each pediment at Casa del Deán displays a sculpted scallop shell at its center—a possible sign of devotion, on behalf of de la Plaza, to St. James, the patron saint of Spain. Each window is crowned by an elegant finial.
Plan of the first floor of the Casa del Deán (before the 1953), 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (plan adapted from: YoelResidente, CC BY-SA 4.0)
From this doorway, a person walked into a covered vestibule space (known in Spanish as zaguán) that led into an open courtyard, encircled by a series of rooms on two levels. At Casa del Deán, the stairs were at the left hand of the main entry. The lower level was used for storage, to house horses, and for service spaces; sometimes lower-level rooms were rented out to shopkeepers or artisans. The upper level was known as the piano nobile, an Italian term that designates the living spaces of a residence. It included bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and sometimes even a small chapel. At Casa del Deán, the only two extant rooms were probably a living or dining room, and another one may have been a a study room.
Murals of sibyls on horseback holding standards. From left to right the sibyls are Cumana, Delphica and Hellespontica. North wall, Hall of the Sibyls, the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
The Casa del Deán’s murals
Besides its architecture, the most intriguing aspect of the Casa del Deán is its murals. In each of its two surviving halls, there is a cycle of mural paintings done in tempera, each one with a specific program and visual imagery. The Hall of the Sibyls is based on the figures of the Greek oracles that, during the renaissance period, were understood as pre-Christian prophetesses who predicted the coming of Jesus. The sibyls are depicted at Casa del Deán in a processional cycle, all of them riding on horseback. in the ancient Hellenic world, the sibyls were considered to be itinerant, which means they traveled from town to town performing their divinations, and this probably explains the reason they were represented on horseback at Casa del Deán. Each sibyl is holding a standard (type of flag) and a symbol or emblem of their prophecies. All are elaborately dressed, and their procession takes place against a picturesque landscape of rolling hills, patches of woods, bodies of water, mountains, and hamlets. These pastoral environments were referred to as a locus amoenus, a phrase in Latin meaning “beautiful place,” a common setting for classical literature and art in the pre-modern era. Framing the sibyls’ procession, at the top and bottom, are two elaborate horizontal friezes, in which putti mingle with birds, fruits, flowers, and vines, a veritable representation of a garden of delights.
Each of of the sibyls’ names are inscribed next to them, although some names became illegible over time, and their identities are now unclear. There are twelve visible sibyls in total, and each one carries a standard revealing their prophesies, which are all related to the coming, life, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The sibyl that starts the procession is called the Synagogue sybil, so-named because she represents the Old Testament. She is followed by the Erithrean sybil, who prophesied the Annunciation, and behind her is the Samian sybil, who prophesied the Nativity, and so on, ending the procession with a sybil whose name has been erased, who most likely prophesied the Ascension of Christ to the heavens.
The left (south) wall shows the Triumph of Eternity, the center (west) wall shows the Triumph of Love, and the right (east) wall, not visible here, shows the Triumph of Chastity. Murals of sibyls or horseback holding standards, Hall of the Triumphs, the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
The other hall contains a representation of the narrative poem, Triumphs (c.1351) by the Italian poet and humanist Petrarch, that was much admired in the late medieval and renaissance eras. The essence of the poem spoke of a transition from sin to Christian salvation. Petrarch populated the poem with a series of allegorical figures—Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity—that later artists often represented as a series of triumphal carts, pulled by horses, stags, or fantastical creatures such as unicorns. The murals in this room display a version of those allegorical figures in their carts.
The triumph represented in the figure above, a chariot pulled by two white unicorns, represents the Triumph of Chastity or Virtuosity. Unicorns were, in the European medieval period, considered to be a symbol of virtuosity too, an animal which was believed to be real but elusive and of a shy nature. The chariot is driven by a young female. The young woman is Laura, the love of Petrach to whom he dedicated the Triumphs. Laura is also, in this case, the embodiment of virtuosity or chastity. The women behind the chariot carry a palm in their hands, a symbol of victory in the ancient world. The embodiment of chastity carries a palm too, together with a torch, a symbol in the ancient world of a condition of enlightenment or purification.
The triumphant chariot driven by Laura can be seen running over a pair of people, a man dressed as a monk and a woman. The monk could represent Petrarch himself, who was a canon, a post of lesser rank in the Catholic Church. Petrarch made a vow of chastity but was still believed to have fathered two children. The woman in the picture could be interpreted as Eve herself, a symbol of the loss of virtuosity in Christian symbolism. This mixture of pagan (ancient classical) and Christian symbols interacting together is an interesting aspect of the representation of the Triumphs at the Casa del Deán.
Murals of the Casa del Deán, Hall of the Sibyls, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
Some interesting aspects of the murals are contained in the details and the backgrounds. For instance, in both halls the murals depict vistas that are reminiscent of Northern European landscape painting.
Paired monkeys, murals of the Casa del Deán, Hall of the Sibyls, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Juan Luis Burke)
Monkey scribe, murals of the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
However, even if at first glance the murals at the Dean’s House are reminiscent of European art, details reveal the Indigenous background of the artists. For one, many of the animals depicted in the mural cycles are native to the Americas, such as monkeys, jaguars, opossums, coyotes, and javelinas, and they reveal traces of Amerindian iconography.
In the Hall of the Triumphs we find further evidence of the Indigenous origin of the artists, such as representations of animals in cartouches (with anthropomorphic attributes), which are shown in a series of roles, such as scribes, musicians, or dancers.
A detail of a monkey in the Codex Borgia, c. 1500 (Vatican Library)
Interestingly, monkeys were held in very high regard by Mesoamerican cultures. The eleventh day of calendar was symbolized by a monkey and in some mythical narratives, like the Popol Vuh, monkeys were considered closely related to humans. In contrast, medieval Europeans considered monkeys to represent sin and debauchery. It is telling how, at Casa del Deán, monkeys are depicted carrying out human-like behaviors and in the friezes are seen with the characteristically Mesoamerican symbol of the spoken word (which looks like a little cloud close to the character’s mouth). Additionally, the monkeys depicted at Casa del Deán share many similarities with Mesoamerican depictions of these animals in pre-Hispanic or early post-Conquest documents, like the Borgia Codex.
We also see the presence of Indigenous objects, such as a jaguar depicted as a warrior holding a macuáhuitl (an Indigenous mallet used as a weapon) and a typical pre-Hispanic round shield.
Murals of the Casa del Deán, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
Penny Morrill has argued that the artists at work in the Casa del Deán might have trained at a Franciscan monastery in the Puebla-Tlaxcala region. [1] De la Plaza, who arrived to New Spain at the age of 19, traveled the territories that comprise present-day Oaxaca and Puebla states extensively as a missionary, where he may have acquired an affection and appreciation for native cultures, which he subtly displayed in his home’s murals. Additionally, it is worthwhile to note that de la Plaza, like many educated colonialists, might have had access to prints, which were a common visual source utilized by Indigenous artists to recreate European aesthetics and visual forms.
An important architectural relic
The Casa del Deán responded to notions of magnificence and decorum (the idea that individual buildings contribute to the beauty and magnificence of a city), while reaffirming the social standing of the residence’s owner and the cultural values that he stood for. The murals in the residence’s private spaces also responded to the intellectual and theological concerns of de la Plaza. The influence of Indigenous artistic styles and the presence of native cultural symbols in the frescoes is important, because in colonial societies, the colonized groups—as was the case with the Indigenous peoples of Mexico—were not often allowed to flaunt or display their cultural values, most often deemed inferior and undesirable by the colonizers. On the other hand, the Casa del Deán testifies to the importance of renaissance classicism and humanist culture in New Spain, and Puebla in particular, as part of the belief system of the Spanish colonizers and the values they upheld in the cities they established in the Americas.
Puebla de los Ángeles and the classical architectural tradition
by Dr. Juan Luis Burke
Fountain of San Miguel in the main plaza of Puebla, with the Cathedral towering in the background (photo: Gusvel, CC BY 3.0)
Standing at Puebla de los Ángeles’s central plaza, one can see people walking under tall, leafy trees and passing by the beautiful baroque water fountain in the square’s center. The square and its delimiting streets are of an exacting geometry: the square is a perfectly traced rectangle lined by arcades on three of its sides.
Arcades on one side of the main plaza of Puebla (photo: Luis Alvaz, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The rounded Roman half arches that make up those arcades are built of grey basaltic stone typical of many of the city’s historical constructions and supported by classical columns made of the same material. Above the arcades are rows of buildings of equal height, while on the fourth side of the plaza, toward the south, stands the imposing city cathedral, which towers above the square, severe looking in its basaltic grey stone finish and carefully crafted classical ornamentation.
The city was built on a grid plan—a series of intersecting orthogonal streets with a square at the middle where the most important civil and religious buildings coexisted, with orderly rows of buildings of similar heights lining the streets. This grid plan was the result of a long tradition of ideas about how cities should be designed.
Located in central Mexico, Puebla is today a large, thriving city. It is well-known for its colonial urban design, which was influenced by ideas about renaissance classicism, including concepts of order, perspective, and decorum (propriety or appropriateness). These concepts (discussed more below) arrived in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain (as Mexico was known during its colonial period) together with the Spanish colonizers, who employed these notions to establish many cities in the Spanish Americas. Renaissance classicism not only influenced the way cities were designed, but also shaped and influenced other forms of cultural expression, such as architecture, books, and painting.
What do we mean by renaissance classicism? Classicism here refers to that which is tied to ancient Greek and Roman cultures, while the related term renaissance humanism (known as studia humanitatis during the early modern period) was an intellectual movement that changed and renovated European thinking through the study of classical texts by the ancient Greeks and Romans, starting sometime in the late 14th century. To a large extent, the Italian renaissance—understood as a broad cultural movement—was fueled by humanism, given that the renaissance sought to study those classical texts and apply them to aesthetic and practical ends, such as the pictorial arts, literature, urbanism, and architecture, among others. It is broadly accepted that renaissance classicism began in northern Italy, spreading to other parts of Europe soon after, including Spain, and from there to the American continent via European colonizers.
Puebla Cathedral (photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The classical architectural tradition in Puebla de los Ángeles
Puebla was founded originally by Spaniards as a city exclusively for European colonizers. From its humble origins in 1531, Puebla grew quickly. It is estimated that the city had some 800 households by 1570. By 1600 that number had risen to about 1,500 households distributed in some 120 urban blocks.
The city’s central core, known as the traza principal or “main layout,” was the city’s most densely populated area. The plaza principal or main plaza marked the center of the city and contained a public water fountain and a pillory. Around the square stood important buildings made out of durable, stone masonry like the city hall and eventually an ambitious new cathedral building. Close to the main plaza stood the residences of the city’s elite (who were overwhelmingly Spaniards or criollos, their offspring). Meanwhile, in the city’s peripheries, communities of Indigenous migrants who came from neighboring native cities like Cholula or Huejotzingo (or some from the towns close to Mexico City, like Texcoco) lived in more informal constructions made out of adobe or shacks called jacales. Cramped tenements were also scattered throughout the city for the poorest inhabitants.
Puebla de los Ángeles quickly became New Spain’s second most important urban center and populous city after the viceroyalty’s capital, Mexico City. It was also an important artistic market for the whole viceroyalty and a popular destination for builders, thanks to wealthy elite Spanish colonizers. After settling in the Americas, they not only wished to emulate and replicate (as much as possible) the lifestyles and built environments of Spain, but also considered their way of life superior to that of the Native population, which was a reason they felt it their obligation to convert the Native population to their ideas about the benefit of living in cities. Most Indigenous towns in Mesoamerica, prior to the arrival of Europeans, were less dense than European cities. People lived scattered in the country, their homes surrounded by parcels of land. Residential units surrounded a core urban center where the community’s temples, markets, and the local elite lived. Mesoamerican cities also possessed deep connections to their natural environment, such as rivers, mountains, valleys, and more, which in turn connected their towns and villages to their cosmological belief system. Considering these traits, the Mesoamerican and European traditions differed greatly. In this way, renaissance classicism was part of a larger colonial enterprise that included the imposition of language, religion, and even the shaping of the built environment in the Spanish Americas.
El Escorial was the pet architectural project of Philip II, who personally supervised many elements of its construction, and which would be completed by the 1580s. El Escorial, begun 1563, near Madrid, Spain
In Spain, classicism would become the primary architectural style (over gothic, mudéjar, and plateresque ornamentation) because the Spanish monarchs Charles V and later his son, Philip II, used the classical style in some key buildings that they sponsored to emulate an idea of imperialism, perhaps reminiscent of the ancient Romans.
The case of El Escorial located close to Madrid in Spain is particularly outstanding. King Philip II set out to build a palace that would also be the burial vaults of his family lineage, the Habsburgs. The building contains an impressive and enormous library and also a monastery. The building uses a strict and sober classical vocabulary, evident in the simple and stark composition that uses the classical orders in a simple and straightforward manner, always employing heavy-looking columns, entablatures, and repetitive, symmetrical patterns in the distribution of voids and massing. The influence of the northern territories of Flanders, then a part of the Habsburg’s empire, is seen in the characteristic sloped, dark slate-tiled roofs, and the pointed turrets at the building’s corners.
Basilica plan in Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, 1565 edition
Plan of Puebla Cathedral
Knowledge of renaissance architectural classicism (or the “Roman style”) arrived in New Spain with educated Spaniards, like the first viceroy of the viceroyalty, Antonio de Mendoza, who brought many books from Spain with him and was well-read in many subjects, including architecture. Mendoza owned a copy of Italian renaissance humanist Leon Battista Alberti’s famous treatise on architecture called De re aedificatoria, written originally around 1450 in Italy and based on the treatise by the ancient Roman architect and engineer Vitrivius. De re aedificatoria was thoroughly dedicated to architecture, and discussions such as what made an architect, what were architecture’s classical rules on composition, how might an architect better design a building, among other topics.
Mendoza and his successor, Luis de Velasco, were also concerned with attracting European architects to New Spain to take on important building endeavors, such as cathedrals, city halls, hospitals, and other infrastructure works. The first Spanish architect trained in the classical tradition to arrive in New Spain was Claudio de Arciniega, who settled initially in Puebla. While there, Arciniega ornamented a public water fountain at the city’s main plaza, worked on the ornamentation of the city’salhóndiga (city public granary), and began working on Puebla’s new cathedral, until he was lured, after a couple of years, to Mexico City.
Other architects, like Francisco Becerra, Francisco Gutiérrez, and Pedro López Florín, also settled in Puebla in the latter part of the 16th century. Becerra is credited with designing the cathedral’s layout, an impressive edifice characterized by its classical ornamentation that has certain stylistic and formal parallels with Philip II’s El Escorial. One of the most important elements in Puebla’s cathedral, which is related to the classical tradition, is the building’s form, which is called a basilical plan. A basilica was a building type that harkened back to the ancient Romans. They used basilicas as public buildings where courts of law and other official affairs were conducted. The Christian tradition adopted the idea of a basilica as the notion of a large, religious building that was fit for congregating large amounts of people and carrying out processions throughout them. By the renaissance era, a basilica plan was a building model employed for important Christian religious buildings, notably for cathedrals, which had a series of ample corridors (called naves) separated by rows of columns. In Spain, many cathedrals had been built following this scheme, and Becerra adopted the basilical plan when designing Puebla’s cathedral. Relatedly, Alberti’s treatise included a model for designing a basilical building.
Façade of the Casa del Dean, 16th century, Puebla, Mexico (photo: Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank)
Becerra also had a hand in other important civic buildings, like the private residence of the Cathedral Chapter’s Dean, a cleric named Tomás de la Plaza. His residence, today known as Casa del Deán (The Dean’s House), is one of Puebla’s most relevant works of classical architecture from the 16th century.
Detail of the Templo de Santo Domingo, Puebla (photo: Gusvel, CC BY 3.0)
Important religious buildings in Puebla from the 16th and first half of the 17th centuries, such as colleges, convents, or parish churches, were often designed in the classical canon. The main façade of the Santo Domingo convent is a good example of the appreciation the religious orders in this city had for classicism. The façade is severe and purist in its classicism, noted in the lack of ornamentation and adherence to the rules of classical composition of elements such as columns and architraves. The material, a dark grey basaltic stone, adds to the sense of sobriety.
Main façade of the Templo de Santo Domingo
Architectural treatises in Puebla
A significant number of architectural treatises in Puebla’s historical libraries demonstrate how individuals learned about knowledge of classical architecture in Puebla. The Palafoxiana Library and the Lafragua Library were both established in the late 16th century and have volumes by Vitruvius, Alberti, and Serlio.
The power that renaissance architectural treatises had as disseminators of visual messages was nowhere as powerful as in the Americas, where European colonizers encountered unimaginable expanses of territory that they set out to conquer and colonize. The colonization process undertaken by the Spanish in New Spain and elsewhere, involved the shaping of the built environment along colonial ideals, and classical architecture, in that sense, played a crucial role in cities like Puebla.
Luis Lagarto, The Annunciation, 1610, watercolor on vellum, 25.5 x 20.4 cm (Museo Nacional de Arte)
Classicism in the visual arts
Luis Lagarto, Adoration of the Shepherds, 1610, gouache on parchment with gold leaf, 25.4 x 20.3 cm (Denver Art Museum)
The reception and popularization of the classical architectural language in Puebla is also observed in pictorial arts, such as paintings by Luis Lagarto. Born in Andalusia, Spain, Lagarto migrated to New Spain and was active in Mexico City and Puebla. He received a commission to illuminate the choir books for Puebla’s cathedral in 1600, spending more than a decade on this project. While he was in Puebla, he painted religious miniatures, including The Annunciation and Adoration of the Shepherds, both carried out sometime around 1610.
Both of these images display intricate architectural environments by the artist, who paid attention to carefully designed classical architectural backdrops. In The Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel meets the Virgin Mary, while above them, a window into heaven opens with God and a cohort of angels watching the scene. All of this drama unfolds in an intricate and elegant architectural space, in which marble Corinthian columns are topped by a finely decorated frieze. Lagarto’s attention to classical architecture in this work is outstanding, and his depiction of entablatures, Corinthian pilasters, columns, a tiled marble floor, and a technically accomplished perspective reveal an undeniable visual proficiency regarding architectural classicism. The tendency to employ classical architectural backdrops would continue throughout the 17th century.
Reframing our understanding of the renaissance
The importance of classical architecture to Puebla’s 16th- and 17th-century colonial history helps to reframe our understanding of the renaissance as it has been traditionally understood—namely, as a northern Italian phenomenon whitewashed by notions such as the flowering of philosophy, education, and artistic innovation via an emphasis on individual agency and creativity. In the context of the Spanish colonial Americas, as we have seen with the case of Puebla, renaissance ideas and forms were part of a colonial endeavor that aided colonizers in implementing a cultural program that asserted their values over Indigenous ones. The concept of classical architecture and urbanism in Puebla was part of a broader colonial enterprise that urges a revised, expanded, or altogether redefined understanding of the renaissance.
Virgin of Christopher Columbus, oil on panel, first half of the 16th century, 20 x 18 inches (Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid)
In the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, a small painting shows Saint Christopher presenting Christopher Columbus to the Virgin Mary and Christ child. Columbus wears a gold-braided waistcoat inscribed with the Spanish heraldic motto of “Plus Ultra” (“Further beyond”—a Latin phrase and the national motto of Spain) over an armored suit.[1] The Basilica Cathedral Santa María la Menor of Santo Domingo—recognizable by its double-arched doorway—dominates the background.
Detail of angels with the insignia of the Dominican Order (detail), Virgin of Christopher Columbus, oil on panel, first half of the 16th century, 20 x 18 inches (Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid)
Two angels float above the Virgin and carry the insignia of the Dominican Order, calling to mind the name of the city, Santo Domingo (Saint Dominic in English), the capital of the Caribbean island that Columbus named La española (eventually Hispaniola), named in honor of Spain, which had financed Columbus, and which Taíno peoples called Ayiti or Kiskeya. Today the island contains two nations, Dominican Republic and Haiti.
The association of Santo Domingo with the Dominican order relates to the foundation of the city on the eastern banks of the Ozama river (by Columbus’s brother, Bartolomé) on the feast day of Saint Dominic of Guzmán, who founded the Dominican Order in 1216. The day coincidentally happened to be Sunday (in Spanish, Domingo), and the name of Columbus’s father was Domenico (Domingo, in Italian)— sealing the choice of the name for the city.
One figure in the background of the painting might strike the viewer as out-of-place because he is dressed in a turban and tunic. Yet this “Moorish” dress was not uncommon in Spain, especially because Muslims had controlled most of the Iberian peninsula (today Spain and Portugal) for hundreds of years. What is less well known is that enslaved Black Moors (Muslim inhabitants of Iberia) had been in Hispaniola since at least 1550 despite a royal prohibition. A letter (dated 1550) from Santo Domingo officers to the crown asks the king to exempt the (at least) 100 enslaved Moors of Hispaniola from the 1543 royal prohibition because they performed various trades.[2] Under the watchful gaze of this turbaned figure, Columbus surrenders his helmet, gauntlets, and spear at the feet of the Virgin, offering her the first Christian city of the Americas.
This painting reveals the early European interest in picturing the so-called “New World” (many people were unable to travel to the Americas, but wanted to see what it looked like). The turbaned figure also stands as a reminder to peninsular viewers (or people living on the Iberian Peninsula) of threats to Christian dominance. The final Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula only fell to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs in 1492, followed by the expulsion of Muslims and Jews who refused conversion to Christianity. In the painting, the turbaned figure provides a justification for the colonization of the Americas.
A hammock in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Natural and General History of the Indies(Toledo: Ramon Petras, 1526), p. 34
It is possible the painter worked in Seville as part of the large picture-making industry dedicated to producing religious images (especially of the Virgin Mary) to aid in conversion in the Americas. The artist would not have seen Santo Domingo firsthand, but learned about it from images or written accounts. A letter Columbus sent announcing the news of the “discovery” included, in its different editions throughout Europe, several engravings depicting America and its inhabitants. Royal chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Natural and General History of the Indies also introduced Europeans to the fauna, flora, and peoples of Hispaniola, which he had observed in person. His book included the first illustrations of the pineapple, the hammock, the barbecue, and tobacco.
A Blueprint for Colonization
The European invasion and colonization of the Americas was launched in 1492 from Hispaniola. For sixteen years, Hispaniola was Spain’s only active colony in the hemisphere, making the lessons learned on the island an important part of the playbook for colonizing elsewhere in the Americas. In 1493, Columbus and his crew arrived after the second voyage ready to establish a trading post in the style of Portuguese feitorias (factories), which were fortified, coastal trading houses that the Portuguese set up in west Africa to monopolize trade in gold and enslaved peoples. They served as warehouses and customs agencies mediating exchange between local trading networks and European monarchs. The second voyage also brought Franciscan missionaries who would begin the process of conversion; by 1500 they had baptized 3,000 Indigenous people.
House of Columbus, La Isabela, Dominican Republic, 1494–98 (photo: Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz, CC BY-SA 4.0); right: reconstruction drawing of La Isabela, with the House of Columbus indicated with an arrow (photo: Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz, CC BY-SA 4.0)
La Isabela, the first European settlement of the Americas, was founded on January 6, 1494 in today’s Puerto Plata province (in northern Hispaniola), after the celebration of a mass during which Amerindians first saw a sculpture of the Virgin Mary in the context of Catholic liturgy. The experiment at La Isabela failed after four years because the all-male settlement suffered starvation, absences by Columbus who left to explore Cuba, indigenous resistance, and a mutiny led by Columbus’s former servant, Francisco Roldán.
A map of Santo Domingo show the city’s grid plan. The cathedral is the large building in the center of the grid. Giovanni Battista Boazio, View of Santo Domingo, 1589, hand-colored engraving, from Map and views illustrating Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian voyage, 1585–6, published in Leiden (Jay I. Kislak Collection Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress)
Before La Isabela failed, the Spanish monarchy had ordered the change of the site’s status from trade post to a fully imperial venture in a move to centralize power.[3] This change tells us that the Spanish monarchs wished to expand their empire. With a defined, imperial venture in mind, governor of the Indies Nicolás de Ovando arrived on the island with 2,500 colonists, and founded Santo Domingo proper in 1502 after moving it to the western banks of the Ozama river. He developed the city using a rectilinear grid known as a traza, which anchored church, elite residences, and government buildings around a main plaza, with streets meeting at right angles. This organization had several advantages including peripheral and internal surveillance, and possibilities for expansion. With its ideal proportions, the traza symbolized the idealized civility and order of classical Rome. The work of ancient Roman architect Vitruvius enjoyed a resurgence in fifteenth-century Europe, and Spaniards reproduced this classical architectural language in their own imperial pursuits. Before the Americas, they implemented the grid model to subjugate the Canary Islands, as well as in the military encampment of Santa Fe de Granada on the eve of the final battle to recapture Spain from Muslim control. Another source for urban planning in the early Spanish Americas was the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of Heavenly Jerusalem which offered the Spanish crown the opportunity to promote Santo Domingo as the heavenly city, thus raising its political and religious stature.
Cathedral of Santa María la Menor, Santo Domingo, 1519–1541 (photo: Martin Falbisoner, CC BY-SA 4.0)
The Cathedral Basilica of Santo Domingo was important to the city’s early urban development—it was the center of city life. Construction of the Cathedral began in 1514 (possibly 1523) and finished in the 1540s, well after the city’s residents had begun to emigrate to newly conquered territories. The coral limestone façade featured a pediment and portico—elements borrowed from classical architecture), and prominently displayed the shield of Habsburg Emperor Charles V. Ornamented tabernacles, flanking the double-arched entranceway, houses statues of the apostles, evoking the Spanish empire’s evangelizing mission. This classicizing language fits with other urban elements in the city, such as the traza (the grid structure).
Virgen de la Antigua in Santo Domingo Cathedral
Early colonial artworks found inside the Cathedral speak to the transatlantic crossings of popular Iberian religious images and devotions. In his book, Oviedo, the Royal chronicler, writes,
“a large image of our Lady of Antigua, today in the main church of this city in the altar next to the sacristy, copied from the image of Antigua in the main church of Seville.”[4]
According to Oviedo, the painting was placed in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo in 1523 after captain Francisco Vara (from Seville) found it floating in the Caribbean ocean, the only object retrieved from his vessel’s shipwreck.
Left: Painting from the left side of the main entrance: Virgen Nuestra Señora de la Antigua with two unknown donors, oil on panel, 275 cm x 174 cm, 1520–1523, Cathedral Basilica Santa Maria la Menor, Santo Domingo (photo: Li Tsin Soon, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); right: similar painting with Ferdinand and Isabel, Virgen de la Antigua with Isabel and Ferdinand, date unknown, presbytery of Cathedral Basilica Santa Maria la Menor, Santo Domingo (photo: Tyler Black, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This painting is likely one that hangs in the Santo Domingo Cathedral today, displayed on the left side of the main entrance. It features a standing Virgin, carrying the Christ child with her left arm and a flower in her right hand. Two angels hover above her head holding her crown, and two unidentified donors appear below.[5] Diagonally across from this painting, on the right side of the presbytery, another Virgen de la Antigua painting with similar iconography can be seen, except that the donors pictured in the lower segment are the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabel.[6]
The Virgen de la Antigua was a popular form of the Virgin Mary in Spain, and stories circulated of her miraculous intervention on behalf of Christian kingdoms during the Reconquest. In one of the decisive battles in the 13th century, the image of the Virgen de la Antigua allegedly appeared in a vision to Fernando III of Castile as a mural painting inside a mosque in Seville, signaling an imminent victory against Muslim forces. Her image eventually traveled to the Americas as part of Europe’s colonial expansion in the 16th century. Devotion to her inspired votive offerings thanking or petitioning the Virgin for a safe passage, such as we see in the two paintings in the Cathedral today. Devotees also visited the image in the cathedral to implore her protection against storms and catastrophes as people coped with the unpredictability of nature.
In this early period, a great deal of art was produced in Spain for shipment to Hispaniola. Much of it was religious, made for Christian liturgical and devotional purposes. Still, there would have also been secular portraiture, sumptuous textiles, and other movable objects (like furniture) that marked the owner’s social standing. While commercial painters in Seville produced many of the works that arrived during the early colonial period, some were made by more prominent artists and their workshops, such as Alejo Fernández and Juan Martínez Montañes. Much of this early art no longer survives unfortunately. Owners emigrated with their art, storms destroyed work, and the Francis Drake’s sacking of Santo Domingo in 1586 led to the disappearance of some early colonial art as well.
Reception of Images
Art that arrived in Hispaniola aboard the first Spanish fleets forced a reckoning between cultures that did not understand or use images in the same way. In one infamous encounter, Taínos seized an image of the Virgin from an oratory, buried it in a field, and urinated on it. Seeing the incident as an insult, Columbus’s brother ordered the natives burned alive. Catalonian Hieronymite friar Ramón Pané recounts this story in the opening of his ethnographic report, An Account of the Antiquities of the Indies (completed in 1498), to suggest Taíno idolatry.[7] For the Taíno however, the venerated image could fertilize the ground just like a zemi (sculptures of wood, stone, or clay, that sheltered deities or ancestral beings). Art historian Amara Solari suggests that Taíno believed that the Marian icon embodied precontact numinous (supernatural or holy) qualities, allowing them to transpose the zemi and Christian icon.
Radiocarbon testing dates the Pigorini zemi after Contact, between 1492–1524 C.E., rhinoceros horn, cotton, shell, glass beads, mirrors, gold, vegetable fiber, pigment, resin, wooden mount (Museo Nazionale Prehistorico ed Etnografico “Luigi Pigorini,” Rome, Italy; photo: Lorenzo Demasi)
False starts like these, the persecution of so-called idolatry, and the near genocide of the Taíno within the first fifty years of European arrival (due to diseases and cruel labor practices), doomed the potential development of transcultural aesthetics (the merging of cultural elements into a completely new iteration) during the early colonial period. Still, one surviving zemi (called the Pigorini zemi) hints at the ways different cultures and visual systems converged during the early colonial era. Its mix of African rhinoceros horn and European glass beads demonstrate the different cultures, artistic practices, and materials that convened in Hispaniola.
Diego de Valadés, “Friar Preaching to Native Converts,” 1579, copperplate engraving, within Rhetorica Christiana ad concionandi et orandi usum accommodate […] ex Indorum maximè deprompta sunt historiis. Perugia: Petrus Jacobus Petrutius, 1579.
Political, religious, and social indoctrination via Christian images was a strategy deployed by conquistadors and clerics since the early days of contact. Due to language barriers, images became important teaching aids in Spain’s missionary enterprise. An engraving by Diego de Valadés in Rhetorica Christiana (Christian Rhetoric) shows a Franciscan friar in New Spain preaching on a pulpit to a crowded assembly of natives. He points to the lienzos (painted cloths) with a stick, showing how images were useful for religious conversion.
Archaeological material can help us learn about the use of images and spaces for instruction and religious conversion in Hispaniola. A fragment of a small wooden sculpture of Christ found in San Rafael Cave in Santo Domingo is a type of religious prop employed in this exchange. Chapels or private oratories (small chapels for private worship) in the estates of encomenderoscould have also functioned as early conversion sites after the Laws of Burgos of 1512 ordered that Spaniards build churches within their haciendas and display images to instruct the Taíno.
Hispaniola was the first point of long-term contact between the cultures of Europe, America, and Africa. The visual and material culture, such as paintings of Marian miracles, helped people stake territorial and identity claims. More research is needed to bring to light the production and reception of art by Amerindians, Africans, and mixed-race peoples, as well as to fully illuminate the implications of early Hispaniola’s role in subsequent colonial schemes.
Source: Jennifer Baez, “Hispaniola’s early colonial art, an introduction ,” in Smarthistory, September 17, 2020, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/hispaniola-intro/.
Prints and Printmakers in Colonial New Spain
by Dr. Emily Floyd
Samuel Stradanus, Indulgence for donation of alms towards the building of a Church to the Virgin of Guadalupe (modern facsimile impression), 1608 (facsimile 1930–40), engraving, 43 x 28 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
One of the earliest representations of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe, today patroness of the Americas and an important symbol of Mexican national and religious identity, is an engraving printed in 1608. The engraving depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe at the top of the page, seemingly hovering above an altar. Candles and hanging lamps illuminate her while ex-votos shaped like body parts testify to her powers of intercession.
Samuel Stradanus, The Virgin of Guadalupe, detail of the Indulgence for donation of alms towards the building of a Church to the Virgin of Guadalupe (modern facsimile impression), 1608 (facsimile 1930–40), engraving, 43 x 28 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Samuel Stradanus, border scenes of miracles associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe, detail of the Indulgence for donation of alms towards the building of a Church to the Virgin of Guadalupe (modern facsimile impression), 1608 (facsimile 1930–40), engraving, 43 x 28 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
The borders of the print incorporate small scenes narrating miracles of the Virgin, each with its own minuscule descriptive text. Prints like this one, produced in multiples by inking an engraved copperplate and then running it through a roller press so that the ink transferred from its surface onto the paper sheet, allowed for wide diffusion of an image. They became important vehicles for the promotion of religious devotions, but also for the propagation of political propaganda and for the transmission of news and scientific knowledge.
A printed indulgence
The 1608 engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe was cut by Samuel Stradanus, one of the most important early Mexican engravers who was originally from northern Europe. He even signed it “Samuel Stradanus Excudit” (published by Samuel Stradanus). The print served as an indulgence certificate issued by Mexican Archbishop Juan Pérez de la Serna. The money raised from the sale of the indulgences was used to finance the construction of the new sanctuary of Tepeyac (where the Virgin of Guadalupe first miraculously appeared, just north of Mexico City), which was consecrated in 1622.
The printed indulgence provides testimony to the early material culture surrounding devotion to the Marian advocation. Purchasers of the indulgences received a printed image that they could keep for their own use, perhaps displaying it in their homes or place of work. Prints like this one might then become objects of prayer themselves, or even used to enact miraculous cures. The faithful lit candles before devotional prints like this one, pressed them to injured body parts, and carried them on their persons for protection.
Mexico City was the first and most important center for printing in Spanish colonial Latin America, publishing far more books and printed images than any other city in Spain’s American dominions. The first typographic press was established in Mexico City in 1539, and 73 engravers are known to have worked in Mexico City over the course of the colonial period in New Spain. During this period, prints served the needs of both the church and laity in the region, promoting state and Church orthodoxy but were also manipulated by printers to meet a devout market that did not always adhere to official conventions.
The Inquisition and Mexican prints
Religious orthodoxy was critical during this period of the Counter Reformation, and was enforced by the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Mexico City. Some Mexican Inquisition cases reveal the varied and complex ways in which inhabitants of the city engaged with these prints [1]. Many of the Inquisition cases involving prints centered on faulty inscriptions associated with those printed images. These cases reveal the complex ways in which religious prints in particular might be produced, circulated, and engaged with by viewers. For example, in 1572, Juan Ortiz, a blockcutter who produced carved woodblocks for impression, appeared before the Inquisition under suspicion of Lutheranism. He had cut a block of the Virgin of Rosary that then appeared printed alongside an inscription promising “perpetual grace” to its purchasers. The Inquisitors condemned the inscription and expelled Ortiz from the Americas, arguing he had added the text for financial rather than devotional reasons. Printed images that promised spiritual benefits to their owners demonstrate the intertwined nature of devotional and financial motives: prints claiming to have greater spiritual power might sell better on the market.
In another instance, in 1690, the Inquisition investigated prints available for sale in the town of Puebla depicting Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza and the nun Catalina de San Juan (known as the “china poblana”), both popular holy figures. Both Catalina de San Juan and Bishop Palafox were uncanonized and thus not officially recognized by the Catholic Church as sanctioned subjects of devotion. The prints violated the Church’s prohibitions against devotion to unapproved figures. They also demonstrate the power of popular piety and the ability of prints to promote this kind of devotion. In response to these prints, the inquisition released an edict reiterating the prior prohibitions on images of the two figures.
Rafael Ximeno y Planes, Portrait of Jerónimo Antonio Gil, late 18th or early 19th century, oil on canvas, 81 x 116 cm (MUNAL, Mexico City)
Mexican printmaking and the Academy of San Carlos
One of the key factors that distinguishes New Spanish printmaking from printmaking in other parts of the Spanish Americas is the 1783 foundation of the Royal Academy of the Three Noble Arts of San Carlos, the first art academy in the Americas. The Spanish engraver Jerónimo Antonio Gil came to New Spain in 1778 to serve as the chief engraver to the Royal Mint. He initially established an engraving school at the mint before eventually founding the Royal Academy of San Carlos, where he also taught engraving and trained students in the Neoclassical style, popular at the time in Europe. He would serve as the Academy’s director general until his death.
Gil and his academy introduced a new kind of artistic training and production to New Spain—one grounded in Enlightenment ideas of good taste and careful study of prototypes from Greco-Roman antiquity as well as of the life model. Engravings produced by academy artists employed a precise linear syntax to reproduce works of art made in other media, such as painting. Their works used linear perspective to convey buildings and illusionistic spaces, and demonstrate a strong knowledge of human anatomy and the use of light and dark to model forms. They also exhibit a new aesthetic of clean lines, reduction of Baroque ornament, and influence of Greco-Roman architecture and idealized representations of the human body. Gil’s influence can be seen in the engravings produced by his disciples as well as in the work of artists who emerged from the Academy [2].
Fernando Selma, Portrait of Jerónimo Antonio Gil, c. 1783–98, engraving, 30.3 x 21.2 cm (Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid)
Fernando Selma, inscription, detail of Portrait of Jerónimo Antonio Gil, engraving, 30.3 x 21.2 cm (Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid)
We have two portraits of Gil, a 1796 painting by Mexican artist Rafael Ximeno y Planes and a 1793 engraving by Fernando Selma (Gil’s son-in-law) after Tomás Suria. In both, Gil is recognized for his central role in founding the Academy and portrayed as a gentleman of the Enlightenment. Selma’s engraving shows Gil gazing forthrightly out at the viewer, and he wears a fashionable wig and coat.
The text below his portrait declares Gil the Director General of the Academy and gives the reason for the production of the portrait as “The Academy [presents this portrait] in recognition of his merit” (La Academia en consideracion â su merito). Prints of important personages were frequently produced to adorn texts in their honor or for distribution to the public. Gil himself engraved numerous portraits of Mexican luminaries.
José María Montes de Oca, title page for Vida de Felipe de Jesus protomartir de Japón y patrón de su patria México, 1801, engraving, 22.5 x 16 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
One of Gil’s students, José María Montes de Oca, merits special mention for a book he self-published in 1801 immediately after leaving the Academy. The book, Life of Saint Philip of Jesus, protomartyr of Japan and Patron of His Home Nation of Mexico (Vida de San Felipe de Jesus Protomartir del Japon y Patron de su PatriaMexico), is exceptional in the whole of colonial printmaking in that it consists entirely of full-page etched illustrations without typeset text. Furthermore, all thirty etchings were designed and executed by Montes de Oca himself.
José María Montes de Oca, inscription with Montes de Oca’s signature, detail on the title page for Vida de Felipe de Jesus protomartir de Japón y patrón de su patria México, 1801, engraving, 22.5 x 16 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Montes de Oca names himself as not only the artist but the “inventor” of the images, which narrate the life of Felipe de Jesús, a sixteenth-century martyr who had been born in Mexico but died in Japan. In naming himself “inventor,” Montes de Oca defined himself as the creator of the iconography and compositions, not simply the producer of the plates.
José María Montes de Oca, Felipe de Jesus with an eagle on a cactus, in Vida de Felipe de Jesus protomartir de Japón y patrón de su patria México, 1801, engraving, 22.5 x 16 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
In the best-known image from Montes de Oca’s text, Felipe de Jesus stands in glory on the back of an eagle that has perched, a snake in its beak and wings spread, on a nopal cactus, while allegorical representations of Mexico and Spain kneel before him. Felipe de Jesús opens his arms as if to embrace these allegorical figures from afar. Prints like Montes de Oca’s Felipe de Jesús series allowed for the repetition and broad circulation of images of potential saints, promoting familiarity with their remarkable deeds and admirable virtues and thus encouraging the development of devotion to them.
Why prints mattered
Printed images produced in colonial New Spain allowed for the circulation of local religious imagery and promotion of such diverse figures as the Virgin of Guadalupe and Felipe de Jesús, and the controversial Bishop Palafox and Catalina de San Juan. In the eighteenth century, with the arrival of Jéronimo Antonio Gil and the establishment of the Royal Academy of San Carlos, engraving became an important medium for promotion of new styles and modes of taste. Throughout the colonial period, this ephemeral, multiple, and reproductive medium allowed for the wide circulation of images and their corresponding ideas to a broad public, creating a shared religious and political culture.
Source: Dr. Emily Floyd, “Prints and Printmakers in Colonial New Spain,” in Smarthistory, June 2, 2020, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/prints-and-printmakers-in-colonial-new-spain/.
Elite secular art in New Spain
by Dr. Maya Jiménez
Folding Screen with the Siege of Belgrade (front) and Hunting Scene (reverse), c. 1697-1701, Mexico, oil on wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, 229.9 x 275.8 cm (Brooklyn Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Portraits, furniture, silver, textiles, folding screens, metal basins, devotional objects, and ceramics. These are among the many types of objects commissioned or purchased by elites in the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain. While the Church was the most important patron of the arts in New Spain, it was not the only patron of luxurious artworks. Colonial aristocrats, such as peninsulares (Spaniards born in Spain) or criollos (Spaniards born in the viceroyalties), worked as viceregal officials, merchants, or plantation owners. The artworks decorating their homes showcased their wealth and status in viceregal society. While these were initially imported from abroad, local artists eventually created them at home—as in the case of the biombo, a folding screen traditionally used in Asia.
Juan Correa, Folding screen showing the meeting of Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma II, c. 1675, oil and gilding, 199 x 556 cm (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Biombos
The biombo became a common feature of aristocratic households in colonial Mexico. An example of a seventeenth-century double-sided biombo by the renowned Afro-Mexican painter Juan Correa depicts a historical narrative on one side, and an allegorical one on the other. The Encounter of Cortés and Moctezuma II, painted across ten panels, depicts the fateful encounter between the Mexica (more commonly known as the Aztecs) and Spaniards. At right, Cortés enters on horseback, while Moctezuma sits under a canopy as his attendants carry him.
Juan Correa, Folding screen showing Moctezuma II on a litter (detail), c. 1675, oil and gilding, 199 x 556 cm (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Illustration of the the Toxcatl Massacre, from Diego Durán, The History of the Indies of New Spain, 1579 (Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid)
The rank of both men is communicated through their position in the composition, as well as through dress. Cortés wears rich fabrics and a feathered helmet, while Moctezuma II wears an elaborate crown and holds a scepter. Correa depicts both men as equals, despite the inherent inequality and brutality of the Spanish conquest. Different from scenes depicted in some sixteenth-century codices, like the Toxcatl Massacre from Diego Durán’s Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de la tierra firme (1579), Correa depicts a somewhat positive view of this encounter.
Juan Correa, Folding screen showing an allegory of the Four Continents, c. 1675, oil and gilding, 199 x 556 cm (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
On the other side of the biombo is a depiction of the allegorical representations of Africa, Asia, America, and Europe. Correa draws particular attention to the continents of Asia and Europe, placed prominently at center and flanked by Africa at right and America at left. In using the identifiable portraits of the Spanish King Charles II and his first wife, Marie Louise of Orleans, dressed with the French royal fleur-de-lis (to represent Europe), Correa singles out this continent from the other parts of the world.
Juan Correa, Folding screen with allegory of America (left) and Europe (right and center), c. 1675, oil and gilding, 199 x 556 cm (Museo Soumaya, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Charles II turns his back on America and points his toes towards the text at bottom, which reads “Europa.” This gesture alludes to how Charles II “has triumphed over America,” and as a result, he can now gaze confidently and “with desire toward Asia and Africa.” [1] If this is the case, then the biombo depicts somewhat contradictory stories. The Encounter of Cortés and MoctezumaII focuses on equality and autonomy, but The Four Parts of the World showcases Europe’s global aspirations, an image that is more in line with the imperialist behavior of the period—and indeed with the colonization of Mexico.
Talavera poblana vessel, 17th century, earthenware (Franz Mayer Museum, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Ceramics
Mexican nobility also decorated their homes with ceramics. These could be made locally or imported from Asia, Europe, or the viceroyalty of Peru. The importation of Chinese porcelain and Dutch delftware created a demand for blue-and-white ceramics, and a local tradition emerged in New Spain. The city of Puebla de los Ángeles, the second largest city of the viceroyalty, specialized in this type of ware, known as talavera poblana (Spanish for “poblano earthenware”). Talavera poblana creates this color combination through a technique known as tin glazing. The tin-covered surfaces of vessels take on a white glossy appearance when fired. The blue decorative patterns that make up the landscape and other imagery are also painted with metal oxides that turn blue when fired.
Covered jar (búcaro), ca. 1675–1700, earthenware, burnished, with white paint and silver leaf, 70.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
In Spain, and throughout Europe, aristocrats coveted another type of earthenware, known for its distinctive aroma and supposed medicinal qualities. These ceramic vessels, known as búcaros de Indias, originated in Mexico, and indeed one can be seen in Velázquez’s famous Las Meninas (on a tray being offered to the young infanta), a reflection of the transatlantic nature of the global art trade during Spanish colonialism.
Francisco Clapera, set of sixteen casta paintings, c. 1775, 51.1 x 39.6 cm (Denver Art Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Casta paintings
Spaniard and Indian Produce a Mestizo, attributed to Juan Rodríguez Juárez, c. 1715, oil on canvas (Breamore House, Hampshire, UK)
Local artistic production in the form of biombos, talavera poblana, enconchados, and casta paintings were also popular Spanish exports. Casta paintings consisted of multiple canvases that documented the phenomenon of racial mixing in New Spain, while at the same time ranking each casta (Spanish for “caste”) into a particular hierarchy.The purpose of these casta paintings is not entirely known. It is also unclear the extent to which they accurately depict colonial reality, but they nevertheless reveal an important insight into the crafting of identity through race in the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
Casta paintings tried to document and categorize what the eighteenth-century Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, identified as a complex phenomenon. He explained in 1770: “Two worlds God has placed in the hands of our Catholic Monarch, and the New does not resemble the Old, not in its climate, its customs, or its inhabitants. . . . In the Old Spain only a single caste of men is recognized, in the New many and different.” [2] Spanish colonizers felt the need to document this racial diversity in New Spain, and initiated the tradition of casta painting as a way to understand this phenomenon. This was in line with the Enlightenment’s penchant for cataloguing information and fondness for encyclopedic knowledge.
Miguel de Herrera, Portrait of a Lady, 1782, oil on canvas (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Portraits
Painted portraits became increasingly popular in New Spain, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Portraits such as Portrait of a Lady by Miguel de Herrera captured colonial aristocrats in the most favorable of conditions. Whether these paintings hung in private residences or public buildings their intent was to showcase to others the social standing, public service, family ancestry, or even the purity of the sitter (as in Portrait of a Lady). In emphasizing the delicate lace of her sleeves, the elaborate plumes and diamond ornaments on her hair, and the heavy jewelry that rests on her ears and around her neck, Herrera captures the elite status of the sitter. This is similar to how artists of casta paintings, such as Juan Rodríguez Juárez, communicate social rank through race, gender, dress, and accessories. The closed fan, which she holds prominently with her right hand, is not only a fashionable accessory, but also as an indicator of her virginity. It also points in the direction of her watch, a common symbol of mortality.
Miguel de Herrera, Portrait of a Lady (detail), 1782, oil on canvas (Museo Franz Mayer, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
While portraits shed light on the racial and social relations in colonial Mexico, Portrait of a Lady changes the context of portraiture entirely, not only because the painting functions independently (not as part of a series), but also because the woman is depicted as an individual rather than a type (as in casta paintings). Additionally, the portrait depicts the woman with a distinct sense of agency and autonomy, which is in direct opposition with the depiction of types in casta paintings. The painting was most likely commissioned by her and therefore exhibited in the privacy of her home. Casta paintings, on the other hand, served an entirely different purpose in Spain, where they were considered quasi-documentary proof of the exotic people, costumes, and fruits of the colonies.
Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe, c. 1800, oil on canvas (Banamex collection, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Nun portraits
A distinct and original genre of portraiture in New Spain are crowned nuns (monjas coronadas), which became recognizable manifestations of the viceroyalty’s tendency for exuberance in religious matters. These portraits were painted to commemorate nuns’ admissions into the convents (and in some cases, their deaths). The extravagant crowns that characterized these portraits represented the wearer’s historical importance within the context of their indissoluble marriage to God and the Church.
Escudo de Monja (detail) in the Crowned Nun Portrait of Sor María de Guadalupe, c. 1800, oil on canvas (Banamex collection, Mexico City; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
These portraits displayed another typically New Spanish nun accessory, the nun’s shield (escudo de monja), a kind of badge that was worn as part of their habit. These shields were round medallions portraying devotional images chosen for their affinity to the wearer. Following particular formulaic conventions, the most important painters of New Spain contributed in making these profession portraits a very original form of artistic production. These portraits were often commissioned by the nuns’ families, who would display them proudly in their elite homes.
Together, these portraits—whether of castas, aristocrats, or nuns—demonstrate the currency of social portraiture in New Spain, and the importance of capturing religious and material wealth, and establishing racial and gender hierarchies.
Anonymous, Albina and Spaniard Produce Return-Backwards, casta painting, 1770, oil on canvas, 46 x 55 cm (Banco Nacional de México, Mexico City)
In the foreground of a Mexican painting, a family perches on a rooftop. A woman gazes upwards at the heavens, while her son, whose dark skin contrasts with that of his mother, rests his hand on her shoulder. Her husband stands to her side peering out of a telescope at the landscape below, a scene of one of the most well-known urban spaces in the Spanish American world: Mexico City’s Alameda Central.
Francisco Clapera, De Alvina, y Español, Torna-atras (Albina and Spaniard Produce Return-Backwards), from set of sixteen casta paintings, c. 1775, 51.1 x 39.6 cm (Denver Art Museum; photo: Steven Zucker, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Alameda Central in a casta painting
This is a casta painting, a type of painting popular in 18th-century Mexico, typically produced in sets of sixteen. They depict mixed race couples and their offspring, seeking to classify the mixed races, or “castas” into socio-racial hierarchies. However, unlike most casta paintings, where the figures take up the majority of the composition, in this painting the family is subordinate in scale to the vast urban space that unfurls below. This is but one example of the many types of paintings depicting the famed public park that, while ostensibly open to all walks of life, was particularly celebrated by the city’s elite. By the late 18th century, guards were placed at its entrances to keep out people who were deemed unfit based on their manner of dress, race, and perceived social status. [1]
The casta painting reflects some of these hierarchies. The albina (identified as such from the title), a woman of one-eighth African and the rest Spanish blood, seems to beseech God for the fate of her family. Their status is in jeopardy upon the revelation of her Black African heritage, made visible by the appearance of her dark-skinned child, referred to in the cartouche as a tourna atras (literally, turn back).
Casta paintings reveal much about racial hierarchies in New Spain, and this one in particular relates to socio-racial hierarchies in an urban setting. While her husband surveys the park below, the family’s access to the elite social rituals that were enacted in the Alameda are in jeopardy in a creole society that clung to white supremacist categories heralded as markers of what they called limpieza de sangre—cleanliness of blood.
Biombo, View of the Palace of the Viceroy in Mexico City, c. 1676–1700, oil on canvas, 184 x 488 cm (Museo de América, Madrid)
Alameda portion (detail), Biombo, View of the Palace of the Viceroy in Mexico City, c. 1676–1700, oil on canvas, 184 x 488 cm (Museo de América, Madrid)
Alameda Central on a biombo
The Alameda Central was a place where, as English Dominican travel writer Thomas Gage described, elites came “…to see and be seen, to court and to be courted…” These elaborate social rituals are on display in another category of New Spanish painting, a biombo featuring a scene of the Alameda and Viceregal palace. This particular biombo collapses two separate civic spaces of the capital into a singular scene, despite their actual distance from each other. The Viceregal palace, which stretches the five panels on the right of the screen, was located in the center of Mexico City adjacent to the main square (or Zócalo). The Alameda, which occupies the left three panels, was on the outskirts of the city. Some scholars have suggested that there may be panels missing, but regardless the space has been collapsed in order to feature two important civic spaces as if they were in closer proximity to each other.
In the Alameda portion of the biombo, numerous figures are engaged in the social ritual of the paseo, or promenade, a social practice whereby elite members of society strolled through the park either on foot or horseback in order to see and be seen. Vendors often sold refreshments or trinkets, and the elites were served by servants or enslaved people.
At the far left beneath a golden Japanese-inspired cloud, four women walk beside a fountain. The two women in front wear guardainfante, a Spanish style hoop skirt. They appear to be Spaniards, or more likely creoles (Spaniards born in Mexico) who are trailed by two other women wearing much simpler dress as well as darker skin. These women are likely enslaved, and their presence in the paseo was a sign of the power and privilege of the creole women. Like the opulent dresses they wear, their human possessions are on display within the social rituals carried out in the Alameda.
Attributed to Nicolás Enríquez, View of the Alameda Park and the Convent of Corpus Christi (Vista del Paseo de La Alameda y el convento de Corpus Christi), c. 1724, oil on canvas, 206 x 146 cm (Palacio Real de Madrid)
A painting of the park for the king
Similar scenes of the paseo are on display in Nicolás Enríquez’s View of the Alameda Park and the Convent of Corpus Christi, painted in 1742. This is one of a pair of paintings commissioned by the Viceroy as a gift to the Spanish king. The other painting in the series features an interior view of the Corpus Christi convent, which was founded for nuns who were largely from noble Indigenous families.
The convent is also seen prominently in the Alameda painting—a large classicizing façade in the right background beyond the park. The inscription at bottom indicates that the viceroy founded the convent and renovated the adjacent Alameda Central by planting trees and erecting fountains, acts which he hoped would impress the Spanish monarch and garner support for further development of the city.
Enríquez offers an almost cartographic rendering of the Alameda and its environs. Following the ideals of French landscape design, the natural environment of the park is controlled and orderly. Tree-lined lawns are bisected by paved pathways that radiate out from centrally placed fountains. Overall the park is orderly and symmetrical, displaying carefully manicured landscape design. Human figures are dwarfed by the massive scale of the scene, rendered with just small strokes of the brush due to their diminutive size within the composition.
Much like the other scenes of the Alameda, the landscape is punctuated by its human inhabitants who are cast according to socio-racial hierarchies. At the far right near the bottom of the scene a woman carries a tray or basket atop her head. She appears to be a woman of African descent, communicated through the usage of nearly ebony paint for rendering her skin. She sells something, likely food, to a group of well dressed criollos, one a man in a red jacket and a Bourbon style tricornered hat. The Black woman stands in what appears to be tattered clothing, holding her wares on her head, while the creoles lounge, chat, and ponder their purchase. Even in such a tiny detail within the composition, it is clear that the artist intended to display racial difference and social hierarchies. The vision projected of the Alameda is one of a society designed to privilege those Spaniards in power.
Four figures (detail), attributed to Nicolás Enríquez, View of the Alameda Park and the Convent of Corpus Christi, c. 1724, oil on canvas, 206 x 146 cm (Palacio Real de Madrid)
A more modern scene
Today the Alameda still stands in Mexico City. It is the oldest public park in the Americas and continues to be an important public space in the life of the city. A mural painted in 1947 by Mexican artist Diego Rivera shows a more modern reconstruction of the Alameda Central.
Central figures (detail), Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park, 1947, fresco, 4.8 x 15 m (Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Mexico City)
Rivera’s mural is a surrealist reconstruction of Mexican history, drawing together figures from various epochs to gather once again in the storied Alameda Central. In the distance through the trees looms one of the park’s famous fountains, grounding the setting for the scene. Through portraying the various strata of Mexican society and history, Rivera highlights the role of the Alameda Central as a civic space in the defining of a new, modern nation in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.
Source: Dr. Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, “Scenes of the Alameda Central of Mexico City,” in Smarthistory, January 25, 2024, accessed July 13, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/scenes-of-alameda/.