3MAGALONI Colors Between Two Worlds PDF

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for Italian Renaissance Studies
28
Florence
Colors Between
Two Worlds
THE FLORENTI NE CODEX
OF BERNARDINO DE SAHAGN
Acts of a conference at
Villa I Tatti and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz,
12 13 June 2008
Organized by
Joseph Connors, Gerhard Wolf, Diana Magaloni,
with Clara Bargellini, Diana Magaloni, and Alessandra Russo
Edited by
Louis A. Waldman
Villa I Tatti
The Harvard University Center
for Italian Renaissance Studies
Kunsthistorisches Institut
in Florenz
Max-Planck-Institut
Contents
Joseph Connors and Gerhard Wolf
Foreword xi
Clara Bargellini
The Colors of the Virgin of Guadalupe 3
Ida Giovanna Rao
Mediceo Palatino 218220 of the Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana of Florence 27
Diana Magaloni Kerpel
Painters of the New World: The Process of
Making the Florentine Codex 47
Piero Baglioni, Rodorico Giorgi, Marcia Carolina Arroyo,
David Chelazzi, Francesca Ridi and Diana Magaloni Kerpel
On the Nature of the Pigments of the General History
of the Things of New Spain: The Florentine Codex 79
Berenice Alcntara Rojas
In Nepapan Xochitl: The Power of Flowers in the
Works of Sahagn
*
107
Salvador Reyes Equiguas
Plants and Colors in the Florentine Codex 135
Marina Garone Gravier
Sahagns Codex and Book Design in the Indigenous Context 157
Villa I Tatti
Publication of this volume has been made possible by
The Myron and Sheila Gilmore Publication Fund at I Tatti
The Robert Lehman Endowment Fund
The Jean-Franois Malle Scholarly Programs and Publications Fund
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Scholarly Programs and Publications
The Barbara and Craig Smyth Fund for Scholarly Programs and Publications
The Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Endowment Fund
The Malcolm Wiener Fund for Scholarly Programs and Publications
ISBN XXX XX XXX XXXX X
VIII
Lia Markey
Istoria della terra chiamata la nuova spagna: The History
and Reception of Sahagns Codex at the Medici Court 199
Sandra Zetina, Tatiana Falcn, Elsa Arroyo,
and Jose Luis Ruvalcaba
The Encoded Language of Herbs: Material Insights into the
De la CruzBadiano Codex 221
Elena Phipps
Textile Colors and Colorants in the Andes 257
Roco Bruquetas Galn
Local and Imported Colors: The Spanish Maritime Trade
and the Pigment Supply in New Spain
*
283
Louisa C. Matthew
The Pigment Trade in Europe during the Sixteenth Century 301
Roland Krischel
The Venetian Pigment Trade in the Sixteenth Century 317
Thomas Cummins
I Saw It with My Own Eyes:
The Three Illustrated Manuscripts of Colonial Peru 335
Gabriela Siracusano
Colors and Cultures in the Andes 367
Francesco Pellizzi
Afterword Colors Between Two Worlds:
The Codice Fiorentino of Bernardino de Sahagn 379
Bibliography 389
Photo Credits 437
Index 443
CONTENTS
Fig. 1. Virgin of Guadalupe, sixteenth century, tempera and oil on cloth.
Col. Insigne y Nacional Baslica de Santa Mara de Guadalupe, Mexico
City, Mexico.
In memory of Anne DHarnoncourt
For all its calm and gentle dignity, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a very
active painting (fig. 1). Apart from its life as a miraculous object, it brings
into focus basic questions about the making, qualities, and functions of
painting in New Spain. A look at some aspects of its complex history and
reception can offer important insights into the principal artistic concerns
represented in the Florentine Codex created in 15761577 by Bernardino
de Sahagn and his Amerindian collaborators, and now in the Biblioteca
Laurenziana.
1
The Florentine Codex has been relatively little studied by
art historians.
2
Yet, as all the papers in this volume demonstrate in dif-
ferent ways, upon close examination it emerges as a visually unique and
highly important work.
The Guadalupe painting was produced at least a couple of decades
before the codex, but for our purposes the two works can be thought of as
objects created within the same Indochristian cultural context. Due in part
to the paintings Marian subject and the religious functions it fulfilled, the
work came to play a very prominent role in the religious and social life of
Mexico City, and later, of New Spain as a whole. Whereas the codex was
* Besides the organizers and participants of the symposium, I wish to thank Jeanette
Peterson, and two colleagues who read and commented on this essay: Jorge Guadarrama and
Stafford Poole.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.
1. Diana Magaloni has established these dates from internal evidence in the manuscript
itself. See her essay in this volume.
2. See the essays in part IV of Klor de Alva, Nicholson, and Quiones Keber, The
Work of Bernardino de Sahagn, and contributions 6 10 in Schwaller, Sahagn at 500.
The Colors of the
Virgin of Guadalupe
*
CLARA BARGELLI NI
Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (unam)
CLARA BARGELLI NI 4 THE COLORS OF THE VI RGI N OF GUADALUPE 5
almost lost when the indigenous world of Mexico City collapsed around
the end of the sixteenth century, the painted representation of the Virgin
of Guadalupe made a new beginning. Within half a century, the image
became the subject of learned devotional texts and was frequently repro-
duced by artists. The afterlife of the Virgin of Guadalupe raises questions
that are central to many of the papers assembled for this volume: the iden-
tity and status of the artist, and the materials and methods of painting
especially in the ways these issues relate to the use of color. This essay
considers these two themes in order to frame and introduce the presen-
tations of the symposium, and also to suggest topics for future research
and discussion.
Today the original Mexican Guadalupe painting is located high up on
the sanctuary wall of the new church built for it in the 1970s, very close to
the site where the apparitions of the Virgin to a recently converted Amerin-
dian named Juan Diego are said to have occurred in 1531. The documented
history of the painting, however, begins only in 1555, the year when it was
shown in a chapel on more or less the same site, the hill of Tepeyac,
north of Mexico City.
3
A famous controversy over the image, between
Archbishop Alonso de Montfar (in Mexico 15541572) and the Francis-
cans, took place a year later.
4
On 6 September 1556, Montfar preached
in favor of the Tepeyac image. The Virgin was allegedly performing
miracles, her sanctuary was very popular, especially with Spanish colo-
nists, and the archbishop favored its promotion. Two days later, on Sep-
tember 8 (the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin), the provincial of the
Franciscan order in New Spain, Fray Francisco de Bustamante (in Mexico
since 1542), delivered a sermon vehemently denouncing the archbishops
promotion of the Virgin at Tepeyac as a miracle-working image, claim-
ing that its cult was liable to have detrimental effects on the faith of the
natives, whom the Franciscans had struggled hard and long to keep from
practicing idolatry.
3. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, paragraph 56; the translation of the Nhuatl
text is discussed on pp. 5355. Favrot Peterson, in Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe,
pp. 581583, agrees with and expands Reyes Garcas arguments.
4. OGorman, Destierro de sombras, pp. 81107. The documents of the controversy,
which are reports by witnesses of what Bustamente said, can be consulted in Torre Villar
and Navarro de Anda, Testimonios histricos guadalupanos, pp. 3672. They are also avail-
able at http://www.proyectoguadalupe.com/documentos/infor_1556.html (April 15, 2009).
Fray Francisco is reported as having identified the maker of the image
as a native artist, whom he called Marcos, indio pintor. This brings us
directly to the topic of the status of painters, particularly native painters.
Although the 1556 documents cite Marcos as the author of the Virgin of
Guadalupe only once by name, a painter (or painters) called Marcos turns
up in several sixteenth-century documents. A Marcos Cipac, also known
as Marcos Tlacuilol (the Nhuatl term for painter-scribe), who lived in the
Indian barrio of San Juan Moyotlan in the southwestern part of Mexico
City, is one of the thirty-six indigenous painters mentioned in the Anales
de Juan Bautista, a collection of facts and commentaries, mostly produced
between 1564 and 1569.
5
Marcos Cipac declared in 1565 that he was fifty-
two years old.
6
If this is correct, he would have been born in 1513, and
would have been about forty-three at the time of the 1556 controversy.
Three years before the dispute, in 1553, a Marcos Griego legalized own-
ership of a house he had just purchased in the barrio of Santa Mara
Cuepopan, or Tlaquechiuhcan.
7
In the document ratifying this transac-
tion, Marcos Griego, who identified himself as a painter, presented his
case to the Spanish official through an interpreter. He signed the agree-
ment with his mark, a cross flanked by two lions, apparently in reference
to the lion that is the symbol of the artists patron saint, Saint Mark. Griego
declared himself to be fifty-five years old in a document of 1572; thus he
would have been born around 1517, making him about thirty-nine at the
time of the Montfar and Bustamante sermons. Finally, we know of an
individual called Marcos de Aquino, for whom no birth date is recorded.
This third Marcos was cited as one of three famous indigenous artists
in New Spaincomparable to Apelles, Michelangelo, or Berruguete
in Bernal Daz del Castillos History, which was written between 1555
and 1568.
8

Since Joaqun Garca Icazbalceta first proposed the theory in 1883,
scholars have assumed that Marcos Cipac and Marcos de Aquino were one
5. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, pp. 4749, 205, believes he was one person,
variously referred to as Marcos Cipac, Marcos Tlacuilol, or simply Marcos.
6. Ibid., paragraph 352.
7. ngeles Jimnez, Apeles y tlacuilos, pp. 11533.
8. Daz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, vol. 1, p. 275, and vol. 2, p. 362. In referring
to Berruguete, Daz del Castillo likely meant Alonso, who had a more internationaland
recentfame than his father, Pedro.
and the same.
9
The subsequent discovery of the other MarcosGriego
complicated the situation by introducing a third surname, though it is still
possible that all three names refer to the same individual.
10
On the other
hand, the Anales consistently connect Marcos Cipac with the barrio of San
Juan, while Marcos Griego, at least in the year 1553, owned a house in the
barrio of Santa Mara. I doubt that this discrepancyin documents writ-
ten while the individuals in question were alivecan be attributed simply
to ignorance or confusion on the part of contemporaries. The Anales were
compiled in Cipacs barrio, San Juan, and that may explain why the text
names no fewer than twenty painters from San Juanmore than those in
any of the other three indigenous barrios of Mexico City. Only a single
painter, cited simply as Toribio, is described as living in Santa Mara.
11
If
they were not in fact the same person, we can suppose that Marcos Cipac
and Marcos Griego would have collaborated in one of the most impor-
tant art commissions executed by Amerindian artists in Mexico City, the
altarpiece for San Jos de los Naturales (finished by Christmas of 1564).
12

Marcos Cipac is thought to have had an important role in the San Jos de
los Naturales altarpiece, together with artists from all four barrios.
In any case, the Marcos cited by Bustamante in 1556 as author of
the Guadalupe painting probably studied with Fray Pedro de Gante at the
Franciscan school for natives set up at San Jos de los Naturales, where he
would have had access to European prints of compositions corresponding,
like the Guadalupe, to the early phase of Immaculate Conception iconogra-
phy.
13
Other sixteenth-century paintings produced in indigenous contexts
attest to the use of such European images as models. One example is the
mural of the Assumption of the Virgin at the Franciscan monastery of San
9. Garca Icazbalceta, Carta acerca del origen, consulted in Torre Villar and
Navarro de Anda, Testimonios histricos, p. 1107.
10. ngeles Jimnez, in Apeles y tlacuilos, pp. 126127, supposes so, and suggests
a link between the surname Griego (Spanish for Greek) and a desire to recall the Greek
Apelles. Griego, however, is also a Spanish surname, which complicates his identity. Favrot
Peterson, in Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe, p. 590, believed Marcos Cipac was the
same as Marcos Aquino; she did not know of Marcos Griego.
11. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, p. 47. The Marcos Griego documents identify
Pedro Cuautli, mentioned in the Anales, as also living in Santa Maria: ngeles Jimnez,
Apeles y tlacuilos, p. 129.
12. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, paragraphs 32729.
13. Numerous suggestions are cited by various authors. Some are compiled by Vargaslugo
in Juan Correa, volume 4, part 1, pp. 267271, and most recently by Favrot Peterson, in
Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe, pp. 590605.
Martn Huaquechula, with the revealing detail of the single angel beneath
the Virgins feet (fig. 2). The same iconography, with the same single
angel, appears on sixteenth-century featherwork miters, including the one
mentioned in the 1571 inventory of Ferdinando I de Medici (Museo degli
Argenti, Florence).
14

In technical terms, the three works discussed above embody three dif-
ferent relationships between indigenous and European artistic traditions.
Even though the painter of the Virgin of Guadalupe was Amerindian,
the work is painted on cloth, a technique with European precedents.
The Medici miter is an example of native artists adapting a traditional
native technique, featherwork, to Christian liturgical use. Mural paint-
ing, on the other hand, was a technique with a long tradition both in
Mesoamerica and in Europe. Thus at Huaquechula, although the site and
iconography are Christian, the hand could be either European or Amer-
indian, and the materials are probably a mixture of the two.
14. Discussed by Russo in The Arts in Latin America, pp. 164165.
Fig. 2. Virgin of the Assumption, sixteenth century, wall painting. Upper
cloister of the monastery of San Martn, Huaquechula, Puebla, Mexico.
These same three works serve as starting points from which to con-
sider important questions about the topic of color. Featherwork and mural
painting can be considered two extremes in the handling and viewing of
color. Justly equated by Europeans with mosaics, but more intricate than
even the most minute mosaic work, feather painting involves colors that
are brilliant yet subtle, constantly changing as the viewer handles the
object or changes position. A feather mosaic can be brown and flat at one
moment and pulsating with fluorescent colors the next, offering one of
the most exciting viewing experiences imaginable. Little wonder, then,
that the feather mosaics became prized export items. Furthermore, the
bearers of these colors, the feathers, evoke the flight and song of birds,
ever beautiful and yet ever changing, recalling that the confluence of
permanence and evanescence in art, and life, is one of the basic concerns
of Mesoamerican thought. Wall painting was another matter. At Francis-
can sites, in particular, most of the murals that have survived are nearly
monochromatic, and were intended to be seen from a distance. Some use
of color did exist, however, such as at Huaquechula, but we know little
about the pigments used, since there are as yet few technical studies. It
bears remembering that the Franciscans in Europe in the sixteenth cen-
tury also favored monochromatic decorations, as in the frescoes by Dono
Doni (15051575) in the cloister of Pope Sixtus V next to the basilica of
San Francesco at Assisi.
15

As for the painting on cloth of the Virgin of Guadalupe, its alleged
miraculous origin has prevented its being examined thoroughly with mod-
ern means.
16
Only the 1982 report by conservator Jos Sol Rosales and the
1996 commentary by Jorge Ral Guadarrama Guevara, former director of
the Museum of the Basilica of Guadalupe, have been published.
17
Rosales
and Guevara were permitted very little time to investigate the object and
had to rely on rather superficial observations, so their conclusions are
uncertain. However, Rosales saw four different types of tempera paint-
ing, one of which he believed to be aguazo, a technique that involved
applying pigment to a damp cloth surface and resulted in the color
15. Doni began work there in 1564: Prosperi Valenti Rodin, Limmagine di San
Francesco, pp. 176178.
16. See Favrot Peterson, Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe, pp. 573577, for an
account of the examinations carried out so far.
17. Ojeda Llanes, La tilma guadalupana, pp. 212219.
passing to the back of the support.
18
As for the pigments, he posited that,
with the exception of cochineal in the tunic, they are of mineral origin.
Guadarrama commented on the similarity of the palette to that of pre-
Hispanic painting and also noted the employment of aguazo.
19
Both men
insisted on the need for further technical studies. Yet, even though there
are gaps in our knowledge about it, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a work of
extraordinary importance as the only painting on cloth to have survived
from the sixteenth century in more or less original condition.
At first, of course, the painting was not unique. Indeed, one of the
main points made by Fray Francisco Bustamante in his conflict with the
archbishop was that there was nothing unusual about the Guadalupe
painting, since there were others like it.
20
It is easy to believe that this
would have been the case in 1556, because there were many Amerindian
painters in Mexico City then. By the same reasoning, we can infer that
the paintings author was probably not considered a very important fig-
ure during his own time. Bustamente mentions Marcos indio pintor
only once by name; elsewhere he refers to the paintings creator simply
as un indio. Intentionally or not, Bustamantes text might have implied
to the archbishop that such a painting could hardly be performing mira-
cles, since its author was merely un indioa message that his Spanish
audience was probably disposed to accept. In other words, shortly after
painting the Guadalupe, Marcos had already begun to disappear from
written history.
Even during Marcoss lifetime, major changes were taking place in
Mexico City that would obliterate his world, and that of other contempo-
rary indigenous painters, forever. Epidemics decimated the native popula-
tion. Those who survived in Mexico City suffered enormously over the
following decades from changes in the tribute structure and the organiza-
tion of work.
21
More and more painters were arriving from Europe. In 1557,
the year following the sermon that mentions Marcos, ordinances based on
Spanish precedents were promulgated:
22
Indians could be members of
18. Ojeda Llanes, La tilma guadalupana, pp. 212214.
19. Ibid., pp. 232234.
20. Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda, Testimonios histricos, p. 66.
21. These are central concerns in Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?.
22. On the sixteenth-century guild, still a much understudied topic, see Toussaint,
Pintura colonial, chap. 5; Ruiz Gomar, pp. 205211. Mues Orts, La libertad del pincel, pp.
185203.
the guild, if they were properly examined by European professionals. The
archbishop was intent on controlling the friars and implementing reforms
in accordance with the Council of Trent then in session,
23
and it is not
difficult to see in the new guild a mechanism designed to bring natives
into line with European practices, and to limit their ability to compete for
commissions. It was in this atmosphere of tragedy and repression that the
Florentine Codex was made and spirited off to Europe. Nevertheless, the
painting of the Guadalupe was preserved, and with it there survived some
memory of its creation by a native painter.
How was the Virgin of Guadalupe preserved? In part, it was a case of
rehabilitation after the Council of Trents reaffirmation of devotion to Mary
and of the devotional value of images generally. Like many other depic-
tions of Mary that were venerated in Europe, the Guadalupe painting was
preserved precisely because, by the late sixteenth century, it was a work of
great age: In addition to its status as a miracle-working image, it was a relic
of an irretrievable past. The notion of the image as being imbued with a
venerable antiquity was probably first evoked between the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries, and it soon became a commonplace.
Indeed, the fact that the painting had survived so many years was con-
tinually cited as proof of its miraculous nature.
The 1606 copy of the painting by the Basque artist Baltasar de Echave
Orio, now in a private collection (fig. 3), proves that the story told about
the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe had changed by the early sev-
enteenth century, thereby ensuring the survival of the original painting.
The Echave picture represents the image of the Virgin, but it is not a copy
of the original painting. Mary is in the same position and has the same
attributes, but she is not in the sky among clouds. She is on a piece of
cloth that is clearly distinguished from the canvas on which it is painted.
By 1606, then, the status of the image had changed: it was no longer
simply a painting that performed miracles, but one whose creation, osten-
sibly without the aid of human hands, was itself a miracle.
24
The parallel
23. Toussaint, Pintura colonial, chap. 5.
24. The painting was first published by Ortz Vaquero, Imgenes guadalupanas, pp.
2930. All the scholars who have written about it since have recognized its quality and out-
standing importance for the history of the Guadalupe painting: Vargaslugo, Juan Correa,
vol. 4, part 1, p. 271; Cuadriello, La propagacin, p. 258, Atribucin disputada, p. 239,
and in Cuadriello et al., El divino pintor, pp. 185187; Bargellini, Originality and Inven-
tion, pp. 8586.
between Echaves depiction and the story of Veronicas veil is unmistak-
able, and this painting demonstrates that the artist understood very well
what the issues were. He rendered the Virgins figure carefully, smoothly,
with clear outlines and details, and most importantly, he distinguished
her precisely defined form from the piece of rough cloth on which it
appears. In other words, through his handling of paint he distanced the
heavenly figure from the earthly cloth and made clear that the Virgin of
Guadalupe was not, like many others, a miraculously discovered painting,
but rather a unique and miraculously made painting.
To better understand the process by which the original Guadalupe
image became a relic embodying the actual presence of the Virgin, it is
helpful to compare it to Echaves painting in terms of color. As already
mentioned, we know little about the actual pigments of the original, and
Fig. 3. Baltasar de Echave Orio, Virgin of Guadalupe, 1606, oil on
canvas. Private collection, Mexico City, Mexico.
the same is true of the Echave copy, which is relatively inaccessible. Of
course, both the original and copy would have looked different in 1606.
Nevertheless, we know that in contrast to the original, which is in tem-
pera, Echaves painting is in oil, and the hues and overall tonalities are
significantly different in the two paintings, especially the blues. It is as if
Echave had been given the commission not only to include the miracle
story but also to renew the old image, while preserving its original gravity
and general ancient appearance, which was of the style or language of
the Indians, as the painter Miguel Cabrera would write in 1756.
25

Significantly, there appears to have been a change of mind among
the Franciscans in regard to the image. The Echave painting is prob-
ably identical with a portrait and copy of the miraculous one painted
by Balthazar de Chavez and described in 1697 as being in the church
of San Francisco in Mexico City.
26
The friars of San Francisco and the
patrons of Echaves painting seem to have wanted a painting that appro-
priated the original image venerated at Tepeyac, while at the same time
elevating it by association with a history of its miraculous origins, and
yet partly modernizing its appearance through the use of contemporary
European materials and techniques.
The process recalls the numerous images, especially of the Virgin,
that were being reframed, renewed, and copied in Europe around this
same time. Most important among them was the icon of Santa Maria
Maggiore in Rome, the Salus Populi Romani, an image especially vener-
ated by the Jesuits, who sent four copies of the icon to New Spain in 1576
for their newly established colleges there (fig. 4).
27
For the Franciscans in
Mexico City, it may have been significant that before his death in 1590
Pope Sixtus V, himself a Franciscan, had expressed his intention of build-
ing a new chapel for the Roman icon
28
(a project carried out by Pope Paul
V in the early seventeenth century).

True to form, the copies of the Santa
Maria Maggiore painting commissioned by the Jesuits soon acquired
miraculous status, and this may have inspired the Franciscans of Mexico
City to emulate their success by reinventing the Virgin of Guadalupe as a
25. Cabrera, Maravilla, p. 29.
26. Vetancurt, Chronica, p. 36, paragraph 50: retrato, y copia de la milagrosa.
27. Florencia and Oviedo, Zodiaco Mariano (1995), pp. 144146.
28. Ostrow, Art and Spirituality, pp. 127128. The shift in Franciscan reception of the
Guadalupe painting did not go unnoticed in the seventeenth century: see the comments by
Florencia, Estrella, chap. XII.
divinely created image. In any case, with the disappearance of much of the
native population of Mexico City by the end of the century, the hesitations
the friars had expressed about the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1556 also seem
to have vanished.
The very preservation of the first painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
seen within the indigenous tradition in which writing and painting were
Fig. 4. Anonymous Italian, (retouched 20th century), Salus Populi Romani,
c. 1575, oil on canvas. Jesuit Archive, Mexico City, Mexico.
one, meant that the memory of its creation could not be totally lost.
29

Yet the story of the images miraculous apparition erased whatever knowl-
edge might have been left concerning the precise identity of its origi-
nal creator, the Amerindian painter Marcos. Similarly, the story of the
miraculous apparition, as it developed in the early seventeenth century,
assigned a less visible role to the Indian; instead of an active painter, we
are presented with a humble and passive seer, Juan Diego. Though holy
and admirable, the Indian who has the vision of the Virgin is cast by the
legend as an obedient vehicle for a providential event meant to comfort and
uplift him. Historians tend to think that this story had some basis in native
oral traditions, probably from the period of the making of the Florentine
Codex or slightly later.
30
I would add that it is not surprising that such
a passive, receptive, and needy role be assigned to an Amerindian
and be assumed by Amerindians as wellduring the frightful, trau-
matic period of the late sixteenth century, when the ancient native world
was vanishing.
Many scholars agree that the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as it is
commonly told, was first put into writing in 1648 by Miguel Snchez,
31

and the first known representation of the actual narrative in painting,
signed and dated in 1656, is by Jos Jurez (fig. 5).
32
Jurezs painting
is preserved in greda (Soria), Spain, at the convent whose abbess was
Sor Mara de Jess (16021665), a mystic and author who was deeply
influential in New Spain, especially among the Franciscans, for her
interest in the conversion of indigenous peoples.
33
The central image
is enhanced by a painted frame and complemented by four episodes of
the narrative telling how the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego (upper left),
29. Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black, pp. 245249, for a summary of indigenous
ideas about the recording of history in painted images.
30. For example: Noguez, Documentos guadalupanos, pp. 185190; Poole, Our Lady
of Guadalupe, p. 220. Florencia made an eloquent apology for the value of tradition as well
as nontextual sources, including indigenous hieroglyphs, in establishing the truth of the
Guadalupe story: Estrella, fols. 43, 99. See also Brading, Mexican Phoenix, pp. 8895, who
discusses the possible relationship of the tradition to the College of the Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco.
31. Snchez, Imagen de la Virgen, consulted in Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda,
Testimonios histricos, pp. 152281. For a cogent and recent discussion, see Poole, Our Lady
of Guadalupe, chap. 7.
32. Sigaut Valenzuela, Jos Jurez, pp. 208214; Favrot Peterson, Painting a
New World, pp. 154159.
33. Donahue, Mary of greda, pp. 291314; and recently, Fernndez Gracia, Icono-
grafa de Sor Mara de greda, pp. 11011.
Fig. 5. Jos Jurez, Virgin of Guadalupe with Apparitions, 1656, oil on canvas.
Convent of M. M. Concepcionistas, greda, Soria, Spain.
then instructed him to pick flowers nearby (upper right), and to go to the
bishop to tell him of her desire for a church to be built at Tepeyac (lower
left). On opening his cloak (or tilma) before the bishop, the flowers fell
to the ground, revealing the image of the Virgin as she had appeared
to him (lower right). The inscriptions included in Jurezs 1656 painting
were evidently considered necessary in a work meant for a Spanish public
unfamiliar with the story.
The full apparition narrative, as expounded in writing and in painting
for audiences in New Spain, included as one of its central concerns the
problem of how exactly the original painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe
had been made. It was not sufficient to say that it was a miracle and to
show the events in sequence, as in the paintings sent to Spain. Miguel
Snchez, who was a learned cleric, presented the story as an allegory
of the salvation of New Spain, prefigured in the Immaculate Concep-
tion and revealed in the apparition of the Woman of the Apocalypse.
Theology aside, he also made generous use of the vocabulary found in
texts about painting, detailing the ways in which he himself became the
devout painter of this image in writing of her.
34
In recounting the story,
he placed emphasis on the discussion of the mechanisms of the paintings
production. He is eloquent on the role of the flowershe refers to them as
relicsthat the Virgin took from Juan Diego and gave back to him with
her own hands.
35
When the Indian opened his cloak, the bishop saw in it
a sacred grove, a miraculous spring season, an oasis of roses, lilies, carna-
tions, irises, broom, jasmine, and violets, and all of them, falling from the
cloth, left on it the painting of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
36
His
closing paragraphs insist on and expand metaphorically upon the flowers
that produced her lasting presence, and whose sweet odors chased away
demons.
37
The importance and variety of the flowers was a theme taken
up by many authors, such as Francisco de Florencia, who insisted on the
Virgins handling of a variety of flowers: She took them with her two
hands as if to register them, and having sanctified them by the precious
contact, she put them back and composed them in the cloak.
38
Becerra
Tanco, who mentions only roses, assigns the creation of the image to the
moment when the flowers passed from Marys hands to the cloak.
39

The importance of the flowers was also emphasized in painted repre-
sentations of the story. Juan Correa (16461716), who became famous for
his copies of the Guadalupe, was obviously familiar with the idea that the
flowers were the source of the colors for the painting. In a 1667 version of
the story (fig. 6),
40
he is careful to include flowers of various colors, espe-
cially in the final scene, where the blooms that have fallen to the ground
correspond exactly to the hues of the apparition on the Virgins mantle:
these three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) were generally recognized
among seventeenth-century painters as the source from which all the others
34. Snchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria, p. 197: Yo me constitu pintor devoto de
aquesta santa imagen escribindola.
35. Ibid., p. 187: reliquias en f lores. Marys touch converts the f lowers into relics
of herself.
36. Ibid., p. 190: Una santa f loresta, una primavera milagrosa, un vergel abreviado de
rosas, azucenas, claveles, lirios, retamas, jazmines y violetas, y que todas cayendo de la manta
dejaron pintada en ella a Mara Virgen Madre de Dios.
37. Ibid., p. 259.
38. Florencia, Estrella, fol. 13v.: Ella las tom con sus dos manos como que las regis-
traba y avindolas santificado con el precioso contacto dellas, las volvi a poner y componer
en la tilma.
39. Becerra Tanco, Origen milagroso, consulted in Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda,
Testimonios histricos, p. 319.
40. Favrot Peterson, in Los Siglos de Oro, pp. 306309.
could be created. As shown by Correa, it was by her handling of the flowers
and returning them to Juan Diegos cloak, as we see at the lower right, that
Mary made contact with the cloth. Correa further emphasizes the flow-
ers, varied in hue and kind, by depicting them as strewn upon the earth
by angels. Nearly forty years later, in 1704, Correa insisted more than ever
on the flowers in a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the four
apparition episodes (fig. 7).
41
In this version, the flowers surround all the
narrative scenes, seeming almost to smother the angels that fly among them.
One might suggest that all these floral displays are due to the intro-
duction into New Spain of Flemish paintings of sacred scenes and person-
ages within flower garlands. Elaborate and exquisite works such as those
painted by Rubens and Brueghel
42
did not reach the New World, so far
as we know, yet the genre was familiar to painters in New Spain, who
reproduced it.
43
Indeed, in Correas 1704 version, the flowers function as
framing devices, and European tulips can be seen among them. In this
case, it is reasonable to recall Flemish models. By contrast, this was not
the case in Correas earlier painting. In 1667, he did not include large
tulips or any other flower that would have been familiar only in Europe.
Nor are the flowers used to frame anything. They are an integral part of
the narrative, a narrative with roots, I suggest, in Amerindian sixteenth-
century painting practices and ideas, in which the making of pigments
and dyes with flowers and plants was the norm, and in which flowers
were an integral part of relating to the divine.
44
Dyes, in particular, are
mentioned in Francisco de Florencias account of the 1666 examination
of the original Guadalupe painting, during which the Jesuit author claims
to have begun a discussion among those who were examining the paint-
ing about which plants had produced the large spots of color that looked
like the juice squeezed from various flowers and their leaves visible on
the back of the painting.
45

41. Ibid.
42. Woollett and van Suchtelen, Rubens and Brueghel, pp. 116121.
43. A relatively early example is a Saint Joseph and Child within a garland of circa 1700,
though repainted and thus difficult to assess: Cuadriello, Catlogo, vol. 1, p. 273, number
20. One should remember the relationship of this genre to Counter-Reformation ideas, as
discussed by Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana.
44. See, especially, the essays by Alcntara and Magaloni in this volume.
45. Florencia, Estrella, fols. 139v140r: unos manchones de colores como del jugo
exprimido de varias f lores, y hojas dellas.
Other representations of the scene confirm that painters were con-
scious of the fundamental importance of the flowers in the making
of the image. In two eighteenth-century paintings, one signed by and
the other attributed to Jos de Ibarra (figs. 8, 9), we see two versions of
the miracle of the apparition presented. In both, Juan Diego is shown
standing and looking out at the viewer while opening his cloak, allow-
ing the flowers to fall and reveal the image. One version corresponds
to the most common textual form of the story, which emphasizes the
variety of flowers in order to elicit wonder, as well as to evoke the vari-
ous colors of the Virgins image (as Juan Correa had done in his early
paintings). The other version, instead, shows only roses in the cloak, an
element that had been common in European paintings of the Virgin
since the Middle Ages. In both variants of the Guadalupe narrative, the
flowers accompanying the vision are associated with transcendence. The
roses signify the flowering of grace, but the immanence of the colors of
the varied flowers in the image itself, and their essential contribution
to its formation and existence, call to mind the actual making of
the original image within a painting tradition that included indigenous
practices and materials.
Fig. 7. Juan Correa, Virgin of Guadalupe with Apparitions, 1704, oil on
canvas. Parish of San Nicols de Bari and Santa Mara la Blanca, Seville,
Spain.
Fig. 6. Juan Correa, Apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1667, oil on
canvas. Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, Valladolid, Spain.
Though the paintings of Guadalupe that we have just been discussing
were made by well-known criollo and casta
46
artists working in Mexico
City in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as we have seen, their
practice conserved an element of ancient painting traditions: the associa-
tion of flowers with pigments, dyes, and colors. Recent documentary dis-
coveries indicate that something else from the indigenous past survived far
into the seventeenth century: a strong association between native painters
and the depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Even though the individ-
ual Amerindian painter Marcos may have been forgotten, some notion of
the indigenous role in the original making of the image remained.
46. Criollos were Spaniards born in New Spain. Castas were individuals of mixed blood.
Fig. 8. Jos de Ibarra, Juan Diego Opening His Cloak with Flowers, 1743,
oil on canvas. Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City, Mexico.
Fig. 9. Jos de Ibarra(?), Juan Diego Opening His Cloak with Roses, c. 1743,
oil on canvas. Museo Regional de Quertaro, Quertaro, Mexico.
When the Italian Jesuit Juan Bautista Zappa sought to acquire a copy
of the painting after his arrival in New Spain in 1675, he was told to
go to the sanctuary of Guadalupe and look for the Indian painter who
possessed the gift for painting the Virgin of Guadalupe.
47
The account
relates that when the Indian who had this gift died, the native paint-
ers gathered at the church of Guadalupe. They all confessed and took
communion and then painted the Virgin as best they could. They then
decided among themselves who had made the most faithful copy and had
thus received the gift.
48

In Zappas time, the native painter with the gift was Luis de Tejeda,
and his copies were said to be more miraculous than any others. This
tradition was also reported by Francisco de Florencia in 1688. Although
the latter made no specific mention of an individual gift, he wrote that
it was believed that the copies of the Virgin of Guadalupe that are less
imperfect and most accurate are all by Indian painters.... And it is an
established opinion in Mexico City that only Indian painters have felic-
ity and talent in copying this holy image. He adds that he himself took
three copies to Europe in 1668, and in mentioning the very busy painter
who made them (who, as we now know, was Tejeda), notes that the artists
father had also been a worthy maker of the replicas.
49
Thus, the tradition
of the Indians possessing the gift may well go back to the sixteenth cen-
tury, dovetailing with the erasure of the painter Marcos, whose individual
identity was apparently transformed into a collective role.
Another episode of the Guadalupe story with important implications
for the history of art centers on the text entitled Maravilla americana
and on its author, Miguel Cabrera, the best-known painter of the mid-
eighteenth century in Mexico City. It is the only original treatise on the
art of paintinga phrase used on its title pageto have been produced
in New Spain, and it should not surprise us that the text focuses on the
painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the wonder and conjunction of
rare wonders of the New World. Cabrera himself made images of the
47. Vargaslugo, El indio que tena el don ... , pp. 203215.
48. Ibid., p. 205.
49. Florencia, Estrella, fol. 9999 v.: ... y las que hay menos imperfectas y cabales,
todas son pinceles de Indios. Quando yo sal de Mxico para Europa, haba uno que por famoso
copiador, en todo el ao no pintaba sino imgenes deste santuario.... Yo llev tres de la medida
de la original.... Su padre de este mismo fue tambin insigne trasuntador de aquesta imge-
nes.... Y ya es asentada opinin en Mxico, que solos pintores indios tienen felicidad y acierto
en copiar esta santa imagen.
CLARA BARGELLI NI 22
Guadalupe, in which, like earlier painters, he expressed the theme of
Gods authorship of the work. This was, of course, a topic that elevated
the painting profession to the greatest of heights.
50
In Cabreras version
of God painting the Virgin, the pigments on the palette are represented
by flowers.
The emphasis on the flowers in these works from the middle and
later eighteenth century may be related to the indigenous origins of the
Guadalupe image. One such painting of the narrative, in particular,
attributed to Joaqun Villegas (born 1713 and still active in 1753), gives
Juan Diego an unusually prominent role (fig. 10).
51
He provides the flow-
ers that make the miraculous apparition possible, but instead of looking at
the Virgin he turns his gaze toward Christ, with whom he is identified by
visual means and by the two speech-scrolls that attribute to both of them
verses from the Song of Songs. Jesus addresses the Virgin in words tradi-
tionally associated with the Immaculate Conception: Ecce tu pulchra
es, amica mea.
52
(Canticles [Song of Songs], 1:15). Juan Diegos scroll,
placed below the figure of Christ in a form reminiscent of a footstool,
declares, Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra
53
(Canticles, 2:12). In other
words, Juan Diego is presented as an essential actor in the creation of the
miraculous image, implying by extension that he is a part of the story of
salvation. A framed verse inscription, which Juan Diego holds up with his
left hand, reinforces the message, mentioning the flowers that God the
Father is using to paint the Virgin, and going on to say that the Indian
had provided the canvas.
54
The emphasis on the presence of the indigenous figure found in this
and other eighteenth-century paintings can perhaps be understood within
the context of the controversies surrounding the establishment of the
College of Canons at the Guadalupe sanctuary, which took place in 1751
50. See Cuadriello, Atribucin disputada, p. 241, and his treatment of this idea within
a discussion of the relationships between these paintings and contemporary sermons in El
Divino Pintor, pp. 189191. See also Bargellini,Originality and Invention.
51. Cuadriello, Catlogo, pp. 169173; Divino pintor, pp. 175178.
52.

Behold thou art fair, O my love, . (Douay-Rheims Bible translation, Canticles
[Song of Songs] 1:15).
53. The f lowers have appeared in our land, . (Douay-Rheims Bible, Canticles 2:12).
54. The inscription reads, Dios qual Pintor soberano gastar quiso lindas f lores, y a Mara
con mil primores copi, como de su mano: Lienso ministr el Indiano de tosco humilde
sayal en su capa y sin igual se ve con tanta hermosura, que indica ser tal pintura Obra
sobre Natural.
Fig. 10. Joaqun Villegas(?), God the Father Painting the Virgin of
Guadalupe, c. 1750, oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.
(but had been under consideration since 1709).
55
In a formal statement
opposing the college and directed to the archbishop on 12 May 1750,
the indigenous authorities claimed the miraculous image for themselves,
stating that it was due to us, because it appeared for the benefit of our
nation.
56
The struggle against the establishment of the college, though
ultimately unsuccessful, managed at least to provide formal protection for
the right of the Amerindians to continue their ceremonies and devotions
involving the image without hindrance.
My final observation returns to the comparison between the colors
found in the original Guadalupe painting and those employed in its many
replicas. Making allowances for the problems of reproduction, one gen-
eral disparity exists between the original Guadalupe and all the later ver-
sions: The mantle in the original is blue-green, and in the later paintings
it is decidedly blue. Cabrera is the only colonial authorindeed, the only
author, as far as I knowwho has written about this discrepancy. In two
of the eight sections of his text, he refers explicitly to the color of the
mantle. In section seven, he refutes all the objections he has heard about
the original painting, including the claim that the mantle was originally
blue but had faded to a greenish hue. Since, as we have seen, its survival
and miraculous incorruption (milagrosa incorrupcin) were frequently
adduced as proof of the images divine origins, as Cabrera notes at the
beginning of his text, the author insists that the blue-green must be the
original color: a painting made by God does not change color. In the
meticulous description of the Guadalupe painting he provides in section
eight, he says of the mantle, Its color is not blue, as it has been painted
[in the copies]; rather it is of a color that is not perfectly green or blue,
but of an agreeable medium between these two colors.
57
Cabrera refers to
the mystery of the composition of this blue-green and of the other colors
of the original Guadalupe in his introduction. He notes that he is unable
55. Lpez Sarrelangue, Una villa mexicana, pp. 83108.
56. ... nos toca por haberse aparecido para el remedio de nuestra nacin: Sandoval
Villegas, La devocin y culto de los indios a la Seora del Tepeyac, in Sigaut et al.,
Guadalupe arte y liturgia, vol. 1, p. 169.
57. Cabrera, Maravilla americana, p. 25: Su color no es azul, como se ha pintado; sino
de un color, que ni bien es perfectamente verde, ni azul, sino un agradable medio entre estos
dos colores.
to specify the material makeup of any of the colors or tell how they were
made because this knowledge is reserved to God alone.
58

In this more secular age, I wish I could be more informative on this
point than Miguel Cabrera. In fact, I wish I could state that the blue-
green color is the famous Maya blue, which is one of the most renowned
of Mesoamerican pigments. However, as already mentioned, the materials
of the Guadalupe painting have not been properly studied. Whatever its
physical makeup, however, it is notable that the hue of the mantle looks a
great deal like a color in the only other painting on cloth from a sixteenth-
century indigenous context to have survived in Mexico: the Assumption
of the Virgin in the Franciscan church at Tecaxic, near Toluca, west of
Mexico City. The Assumption is considered to be somewhat later than
the Guadalupe,
59
and the figure of the Virgin has been severely repainted.
Behind glass, in its shrine, it is also very difficult to photograph, but it
is reportedly in tempera. Despite the damage the painting has suffered,
some of the original hues are still visible in the lower section; they resem-
ble those in the Guadalupe painting, including the blue-green.
In conclusion, I would like to recall that the Italian Renaissance,
which is the broad art historical framework for the creation of the Virgin of
Guadalupe as well as the Florentine Codex, set standards not only for art
production in the early modern period, but also for the study of art practi-
cally down to our day. On the one hand, the established criteria and canons
made it difficult, until the still fairly recent past, to see qualities outside
their European limits. On the other, however, a profound new understand-
ing has been permeating art historical investigations: the notion that art is
a fundamental human activity and that the basis for approaching it, there-
fore, cannot be culturally limited. The symposium that generated this
volume and the contributions included here are the result of the convic-
tion that we can learn a great deal and renew our vision by looking more
widely, as well as more carefully. This is probably the best tribute we can
pay to the extraordinary Amerindian artists of the Florentine Codex and
their contemporaries.
58. Ibid., unnumbered page before the first section of text: especificar cual sea la mate-
ria de los colores que la componen; porque aunque son semejantes a los nuestros, el saber a
punto fijo si son o no o en el modo que estn practicados o se hizo esta pintura, lo juzgo reser-
vado al Autor de tanta maravilla.
59. Rodrguez Parra, Nuestra Seora, p. 46.
Fig. 1. Front cover, Med. Palat. 220.
Writing about Sahagns manuscript in the Biblioteca Laurenziana
(Fig. 1), Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, director of the Museo Nacional de
Antropologa e Historia de Mxico, stated, le codex mrite bien quon
sen occupe: mais ce sujet a t dja si tudi que je crains de rpter ce
que dautres et moi mme nous en avons dit.
1
That was in 1896. Today,
over a century later, I have even more reason to worry about sounding
repetitious, for Sahagns manuscript has been much studied in the inter-
vening years and the published results are well known.
However, methods of describing manuscripts have progressed in the
meantime. They are now much more in-depth, above all from the codi-
cological point of viewcodicology being a very recent discipline, dating
back no further than the 1950sand this has convinced me that the time
is right to propose a new analysis of the codex. Furthermore, even the
most careful and dedicated eyes risk missing something when examining
these unique, inexhaustible testimonies of our culture. No manuscripts,
not even those seen over and over again, are safe from this chance.
My intention here is to provide a description of the manuscripts struc-
ture, both external and internal, substantially following the guidelines of
the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane e per
1. Del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, 1896, p. 171; the article was subsequently translated
into Spanish in Anales del Museo Nacional de Arqueologa, Historia y Etnografa, vol. IV, 1926,
pp. 316320.
Mediceo Palatino 218220
of the Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana
of Florence
IDA GIOVANNA RAO
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana
I DA GIOVANNA RAO 28 MEDICEO PALATI NO 218220 29
le Informazioni Bibliografiche. I shall add a brief comment, focusing spe-
cifically on the elements that are entirely new or that need to be rectified.
2
FLORENCE, BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA,
MED. PALAT. 218220
Paper, 308310 210212 mm, saec. XVI (15761577).
number of folios : Med. Palat. 218, IV, 353, III'; Med. Palat. 219, II, 375,
II'; Med. Palat. 220, IV, 495. Blank folios: Med. Palat. 218, IIrIVr, 241v242v,
I'rII'v, III'v; Med. Palat. 219, IvIIv, 220r222v, I'rv, II'v; Med. Palat. 220,
IvIVv, 151v, 494v495r. Excised folios: Med. Palat. 218, between fols. IV1,
1213, 330331; Med. Palat. 219, between fols. 67, 371372; Med. Palat. 220,
between fols. 8485, 371372, 409410.
foli ation: The most recent numbering (which is used here) is in ink in the
lower right margin on the recto. The original system, also in ink and sometimes
rewritten, appears in the upper right margin on the recto; it starts anew at the
beginning of each of the twelve books and consistently omits folio numbers
for leaves containing argumenta, prologues, and summaries of the books, as
well as for leaves that are blank. Occasionally visible in the upper right margin
is another foliation for purpose of verification; this is owing to Angelo Maria
Bandini (17261803), prefect of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.
watermarks : two types,
3
with variations; similar to Briquet 5691 (Croix
latine) (Likhatscheff 1564), Plerin 7582 (Milan, 1570),
4
with the second type
predominating (fig. 2).
2. Cf. Norme per la descrizione uniforme, ed. Ceccopieri and Menna. I have chosen to
omit the general bibliography on the manuscript because of its overwhelming length, which
is due to the manuscripts fame as a veritable national treasure, in both text and illustrations,
of the Nahua culture and language. Suffice it to cite the numerous contributions by Miguel
Lon-Portilla, for which see the bibliography in this volume. In any case, listing the publica-
tions would not serve the purpose here because they would still need to be sorted and merged.
Therefore, in the section of the description treating manuscript and printed data, reference is
made only to the publications about the manuscripts cataloguing and publishing history, with
my observations on their soundness.
3. Dibble, Watermarks, pp. 2528, refers to three watermarks, all datable to around 1570.
After carefully checking in all three volumes, however, I was unable to find the third watermark.
4. Cf. Briquet, Les filigranes ds leur apparition, 1985, vol. II, pp. 335, 415.
collation: impossible to determine because of the extremely tight sewing.
5

catchwords : hardly any instances, probably because of the presence of the
precise, original foliation.
layout and decoration: The writing, below the top line, is arranged in two
columns. (The left, in Spanish, is a loose translation of that in the right column,
in Nhuatl.) Lines of justification and intercolumniation are in brown; there
are no through lines. Written space: 308 210 = 26[247]35 23[80(10)80]17
mm (Med. Palat. 219, fol. 249r). The number of written lines ranges from 29
to 51. The three volumes, copied by various hands, exhibit some autograph entries
by the author.
6
Other hands have made marginal or interlinear corrections in
minuscules ranging in size from 2 to 4 mm with only a few cursive features
5. Unfortunately, I do not think that even checking the position of the watermarks would
produce useful results, since they do not appear to be distributed methodically.
6. Cf. Med. Palat. 218, book IV, fol. 328r, for his signature (fray b[er]nardi[n]o de
sahagun). At least two other interlinear notes by Bernardino appear on Med. Palat. 219, book
VII, fol. 234r, and Med. Palat. 220, book X, fol. 72v.
Fig. 2. (Left) BML, Med. Palat. 218, fol. 241: Croix latine watermark
(Right) BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. II: Plerin watermark
(ct and st ligatures, macrons signifying missing nasals);
7
the ductus of this script
suggests a possible date of circa fifty years earlier, since it is the crystallization
of a type of writing from the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Titles are
in brown ink, as are the initials (1015 mm), the simplest outlined only, and
those that are more important filled in. A total of 2,468 images in pen and ink
and in color, interspersed throughout the text, document the narration in both
columns, even though nearly all are situated in the left column.
8

ex li bri s : two different stamps. One, oval, is of the Palatine Lorenese library:
35 30 mm, decorated at the sides with two wings and surmounted by two
crowns, with the legend Bibl(iotheca) Caes(area) Med(icea) Palat(ina);
stamped sometime between 1745 and 1765, i.e., after the Medici grand-ducal
nucleus joined that of the Lorenese at the time of Francesco Stefano di Lorena,
Grand Duke of Tuscany (17371765).
9
Found in Med. Palat. 218, fols. 1r, 353v;
Med. Palat. 219, fols. 1r, 375v; Med. Palat. 220, fols. 1r, 494r. The other stamp
is that of the R(eale) Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana with the Sabaudian coat
of arms of a cross surmounted by a crown (diameter 20 mm, saec. XIX [post-
1885]). Found in Med. Palat. 218, fols. Ir, IVr, 1r, 33r, 353v, I'r, III'r; Med. Palat.
219, fols. Ir, 1r, 33r; Med. Palat. 220, fols. Ir, 1r, 33r, 494v, 495v. There is also an
old shelf mark, in pencil, on the recto of the first f lyleaves of the three volumes,
in an eighteenth-century (post-1765) hand.
10
Composed of the numerals and
letters XXI. Anon(imo), this shelf mark presumably corresponds to an inter-
nal subdivision of the manuscript section of the Palatine Lorenese grand-ducal
library, perhaps relating to its transfer to the Medici library, which occurred on
21 June 1783, by order of Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena (17651790), since it is very
different from the shelf marks 743, later 711, that the codex had in the Cata-
logo ragionato e istorico de manoscritti della biblioteca imperiale Medicea
Lotaringia Palatina (17631765), compiled by the sottobibliotecario Giovanni
Gaspero Menabuoni (f l. 17631775). On folio IVv, a doxology reads Christus
vivit/Christus vincit/Christus regnat/Franciscus famulatur, probably a glorifi-
cation of God and Saint Francis for the end of the labor of compilation.
11

7. See the lengthy discussion in Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, pp. 2429.
8. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, pp. 1924.
9. Cf. Arduini, Documenti per una storia, pp. 276301.
10. This can be deduced, for instance, from the title inscription in Menabuonis
Catalogo X. Menab., which includes the phrase cominciato il d 24 agosto 1763 e finito il d
XXV novembre 1765 on fol. [3r] unnumbered, for which cf. ASBL, Pluteo 92, sup. 227
B
[24].
11. Cf. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 17.
cover: 315 220 mm; Spain, saec. XVI, second half. Brown leather over
pasteboard, blind-tooled (three concentric double frames, decorated with f loral
motifs; a rhombus with double lines, and similarly decorated, fills the center)
and gilt-tooled (the gilded ornamentation in each of the corners and around
and inside the rhombus consists of small f lowers, shells, acorns, birds, and
angels heads). The spine has five double bands in relief, with similar blind
and gilt tooling (small f lowers and six crowned leopards in the correspond-
ing panels, from which the title is missing). Headbands are glued, with the
edge sprayed red. As already indicated by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, this
is almost surely a second binding
12
certainly more ornate and precious than
the preceding binding of Franciscan origin, which probably consisted of simple
parchment with support straps of leather, more like those used in archives. The
new binding served to rearrange the work, formerly in four volumes, as clearly
noted by the author in book 9, into three, for reasons unfortunately no longer
ascertainable, unless to achieve a more uniform book block.
13
It is practically
identical with one of the various covers preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional
de Espaa, Madrid (fig. 3), that came from the collection of Manuel Rico y
Sinobas (Valladolid, 18191898), a scholar and bibliophile who also happened
to be an authority on bindings.
14
condi tion: The three volumes are in good condition today, even if a few
pages show traces of tannin or glue and signs of stains and mold, along with
damage caused by the iron gall ink. Their bindings were restored
15
(paper
12. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 173174, where he refers to two passages
clearly trimmed during the second binding at folios 177r and 240v of Med. Palat. 219. The
missing parts can be completed using the Toulouse codex, the only known coeval apograph
of Med. Palat. 218220, for which see below (and n. 26). Various trimmed titles in the upper
margins provide further proof. Del Paso y Troncoso also noted traces of the earlier binding
on folio 222r (between the end of book VI and the beginning of book VII) of Med. Palat. 219,
namely traces of glue where four parchment strips with writing had been attached, leaving an
offset in black ink, difficult to decipher but certainly on what presumably had been a f lyleaf,
given the large extent of the darkened area. Del Paso y Troncoso detected further traces on folio
152r of Med. Palat. 220, between the end of book X and the beginning of book XI. I personally
find these less convincing.
13. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. 307v, where in the Prologo to book IX it is made clear
that the first volume is to contain books IV; the second, book VI only; the third, books VIIX,
and the fourth, books XIXII.
14. Cf. Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa, Madrid, RS/69. The binding is reproduced both
on the cover and inside the catalogue published on the occasion of an exhibition in Rome at
the Biblioteca Vallicelliana; Legature spagnole, p. 77.
15. One should point out the contemporaneous attempts to correct f lawed passages by
rewriting them on pieces of paper glued over the passages, as, for example, in Med. Palat. 219,
lining, replacement of the three glued headbands, glazing of various leaves)
in 1960.
16
The volumes good state of preservation is probably due in part to
reduced wear on the original as a result of the existence of various reproduc-
tions (chromolithography of the images, 1905; photographs of the entire text,
1938; first microfilm of the entire work, 1955).
17

MED. PALAT. 218, FOLS. 1353; MED. PALAT. 219, FOLS. 1375;
MED. PALAT. 220, FOLS. 1495
Bernardino de Sahagn
(from Palat. 218, at fol. 1r: fray bernardino de saagun)
Doze libros de las cosas divinas o por mejor dezir idolatricas y humanas y natu-
rales desta nueva espaa (from Med. Palat. 218, at fol. 1r).
i nc. : Prologo. El medico no puede acertadamente aplicar (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 1r)
exp. : y traba/jar fielmente en esta nueva espaa (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)
i nc. : Al sincero lector. Quando esta obra se comeno (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)
expl. : en la nueva y vieja espaa (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)
i nc. : Sumario de los capitulos del primero libro/Capitulo primero que habla
(Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3v)
expl. : Capitulo treynta y siete de quando los muchachos mudan los di/entes.
Ibidem (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)
i nc. : Al lector/Para la intelligencia de las figuras (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)
expl. : esta junto a los pies (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)
i nc. : Libro primero, en que se trata de/los dioses que adoravan los natu/rales
desta tierra, que es la nue/va espaa|Inic ce amuxtli uncan motene/oa in te teub
in qujnmoteutiaia/in nican tlaca.
fol. 192rv, and Med. Palat. 220, fols. 50v, 158v, 389r, 389v.
16. Cf. BML, Registro dei restauratori, nr. 5 (19551963).
17. For the first chromolithographic reproduction, cf. Sahagn, Historia universal, 1905;
for the photographic reproduction, see ASBL, 1938/XVI, 66, carried out in 1938 by Lansing B.
Bloom of the University of New Mexico. The microfilm of the entire manuscript is available for
consultation in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze (hereafter, BML).
I DA GIOVANNA RAO 32
Capitulo primero, que habla/del principal dios que adoravan/y aqujen sacrifica-
van los mexica/nos llamado vitsilubuchtli|Inic ce capitulo yntechpa tlatoa/y noc
cenca tlapanuja teteuh yn/qujnmoteutiaia yoan yn qujntlama/njliaia yn ievecauh.
Este dios, llamado vitsilubuch/tli, fue otro hercules|Vitsilubuchtli an ma/ceoalli
an tlacatl catca (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 13r).
expl. : y todo lo davan a/Motecuzoma, todo cloro venja a su poder|valmocemaci
intenu/chtitlan injxqujch Haca/laqujli in teucujtlatl (Med. Palat. 220, fol. 494r)
(cf. Cdice Florentino, 1979).
observations : Med. Palat. 218, at fols. 37r41v, also contains, in the right
column, Sap., 13, 119; 14, 731; 12, 118; 15, 13; 16, 1316, translated into
Nhuatl in the left column.
manuscri pt bi bliography: ASF, Guardaroba medicea 132, fol. 484(?);
BNCF, II II 309, fol. 31v; ASBL, Pluteo 92, sup. 227
B
(Catalogo ragionato e
istorico de manoscritti della biblioteca imperiale Medicea Lotaringia Pala-
tina), fol. 121r.
pri nted bi bliography: Bandini, Bibliotheca Leopoldina Laurentiana,
coll. 454456; Civezza, Saggio di Bibliografia, p. 525; Brinton, Rig-Veda
Americanus; del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 171174; Sahagn, Floren-
tine Codex, 1956 and 19701982; Historia general, 1938 and 1946; Historia uni-
versal, 1905; Conquista de Mxico, 1978; Cdice Florentino, 1979 (reprint 1996),
1982, 2001; Seler Sachs, Lehman, and Krickberg, Einige Kapitel; Cline,
Missing and Variant Prologues, pp. 237251; Cacho, Manuscritos hispnicos,
pp. 403405.
The work contained in Med. Palat. 218220 lacks both the authors
name and the title. It is the only known illustrated copy of the twelve
books
18
in which the Spanish Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagn
(14991590) organized the remarkable quantity of material about Aztec-
18. Books IIII deal with the religion of the Aztecs (divinities, myths, feasts, sacrifices,
idolatry); books IV and V are about astrology and divination; book VI contains prayers and
solemn discourses that exemplify the forms of Nhuatl rhetoric; book VII treats of the sun,
moon, and the stars; book VIII deals with local history (nobles and governors); book IX is about
commerce (merchants and craftsmen working with gold and precious feathers); book X regards
Aztec society (vices and virtues of the people; diseases and remedies); book XI, the longest, is
a treatise of natural history; and book XII, finally, describes the Spanish conquest and the fall
of Tenochtitln.
MEDICEO PALATI NO 218220 33
culture that he started to gather in the 1540s.
19
Written in both Nhuatl
(by 1569) and Spanish (15691577), it is composed of outlines, various
drafts, successive revisions, and redactions.
20
Sahagns models are believed
to have been two famous, widely diffused encyclopedic treatises, the
Historia Naturalis of Pliny (2379),
21
and the De proprietatibus rerum of
Bartolomeo Anglico (1200s).
22
19. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, fol. 1r. His secular name may have been Bernardino de
Ribera, native of Sahagn (Len). From 1529 on, he worked as a missionary in Mexico, which
in 1521 had just been conquered by Hernn Corts (14851547).
20. They are the Cdices Matritenses, both in Madrid, one at the Real Biblioteca and the
other at the Real Academia de la Historia. Both were published in facsimile in Sahagn, Histo-
ria universal, 19061908, and later described in detail in Cdices Matritenses, 1964. The works
in question are the Primeros memoriales (15581559) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (com-
posed of Primer manuscrito de Tlatetolco, 15611562; Memoriales en tres columnas, 15631565;
Memoriales con escolios, 1565). The fate of both the manuscrito de 1569 (which is believed to
have included a reorganization of the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco, clearly referred to in the pro-
logo to the first book, see Med. Palat. 218, fol. 2v), and of the Sumario of 1570 is unknown.
The Breve compendio de los ritos idoltricos de Nueva Espaa of 1570 is conserved in the
Vatican Archives (IXVIII, 1816). Cf. Dibble, Sahagns Historia, in Sahagn, Florentine
Codex, 19701982, vol. I, pp. 923.
21. Cf. Garibay K., Historia de la literatura nhuatl, vol. II, pp. 6971.
22. Cf. Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, pp. 167168.
Fig. 3. (Above) BML, Med. Palat. 220, and (facing page) Biblioteca
Nacional de Espaa, Madrid, RS/69: Comparison of covers
Sometime between 1577 and 1578, Philip II of Spain (15271598)
decided to add Sahagns work to the index of prohibited books of the
Spanish Inquisition. As stated in the infamous cdula of 22 April 1577,
addressed to the viceroy of New Spain, Martn Enrquez,
23
the Histo-
ria universal de las cosas mas sealadas de esa Nueva Espaa concerned
arguments que toquen a supersticiones y manera de vivir que estos
indios tenan that should not have been written en niguna lengua,
porque as conviene al servicio de Dios nuestro seor.
The Florentine Codex (so-called because of its location)
24
origi-
nally must have included both the name of its author and the title
23. Quoted from Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 136. During these years,
Philip II had ordered the requisition of all of Sahagns writings. He was worried about trans-
mitting the memory of idolatrous cults, both in writing (in the vernacular) and in images, as
specified by the dictates of the Spanish Inquisition (14781834). This was in accord with the
Index librorum prohibitorum (15591966) of the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisi-
tion, one of the most important consequences of the Council of Trent (15451563). The Index,
first promulgated in 1559, established that translations of the biblical message into vernacular
languages could be read only with special permission by those who knew Latin, and not by
women. On the adventuresome stages of the works compilation, at times warmly supported,
at other times impeded and disturbed by the responsible religious and political authorities, cf.
especially Dibble, Florentine Codex, 1982, pp. 923; Pietro Corsi, Il Codice Fiorentino,
pp. 8086; Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn, pp. 724.
24. On the earliest use, and spread, of the designation Cdice Florentino, cf. Garca
Icazbalceta, Bibliografa mexicana, pp. 322387; Zavala, Francisco del Paso y Troncos, p. 6;
presumably written out in full and graphically elaborated, like the fron-
tispieces in contemporary printed booksas well as the internal subtitle.
Evidence for this is a trace of writing on the recto of what remains of a
page at the beginning of the book block, which was excised close to the
inside margin. Del Paso y Troncoso, who was the first to notice the writ-
ing in 1896, logically concluded that it was a part of the original title,
25

which happens to survive in the Toulouse codex,
26
a coeval descriptus
of the Castilian section of the Mediceo Palatino codex,
27
conserving
Bernardinos text in Spanish only and without illustrations.
In my examination of the excised page, I noticed that there were two
more traces of writing lower down on the page, below the one on the
upper part recorded by del Paso y Troncoso. The trace in the upper part
appeared to belong to the curl of the H of Historia, presumably the begin-
ning of the now-lost title. Support for this hypothesis comes from the title
inscription still visible on the first supplementary page of the Toulouse
manuscript, which was copied from the now partially illegible inscription
at the beginning of the codex proper:
28
Historia universal de las cosas de
la Nueva Espaa en doce libros y quatro volumenes en lengua espaola.
Compuesta y compilada Por el Muy Reverendo Padre Fray Bernardino de
Sahagun, de la orden de los Frayles menores de observancia.
29
The two
traces that I noticed lower down on the excised page could be, instead,
the remnants of the summary of the contents of the works first volume,
Dibble, Florentine Codex, 1982, p. 15 and notes 5556.
25. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 171, 174; cf. also Dibble, Florentine Codex,
1982, p. 15; Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 25, postulating also the presence of a
dedicatory page.
26. Fra Juan de San Antonio first noted the codex around 1732 among the books of the
Franciscan convent of Toulouse (Andorra). In 1793 it was found in Madrid by Diego Panes
y Avelln, who had it transcribed. Today it is in the possession of the Real Academia de la
Historia of Madrid (MS. A77; Coleccin de Muoz, 50. 9. 4812), for which cf. esp. Dibble,
Florentine Codex, 1982, pp. 2123; Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, pp. 1013; Marchetti,
Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 3 and n. 9.
For the opinion that it is a copy of the Florentine Codex made in Spain around the 1580s,
cf. Baudot, Fray rodrigo de Sequera, avocat du diable, pp. 4782. The Toulouse copy, com-
pared with a photographic reproduction of the Florentine Codex, is published in Sahagn,
Historia general, 1956.
27. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 172173; Cline and dOlwer, Sahagn
and His Works, pp. 196203; Dibble, Florentine Codex, 1982, p. 22; Martnez, El Cdice
Florentino, p. 13; Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 3, 7, 33.
28. Cf. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 18.
29. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, p. 172; Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,
pp. 10, 18.
likewise missing from the Florentine Codex but included in the Toulouse
codex, which begins (fol. 2v), (E)n este libro o primer (volu)men/ se con-
tienen cinco (libros)/ con sus appndices. El primero trata.
30
All this, as I said, refers to the recto. It has not been previously noticed
that there are also three traces of writing on the verso, probably testifying
to the presence of the first of the works two dedications to the minister
general of the Franciscans for Mexico, Fra Rodrigo de Sequera (fl. 1575
1585), who arrived 4 September 1575. Bernardino was indebted to him for
the final commission and for the means to finish the work of copying and
illustrating his encyclopedia of the Aztecs. The dedication survives in the
Toulouse manuscript, after the summary of the first volume.
31
While the hypotheses proposed above are well founded, the ques-
tion of why the first page was excised is more difficult to answer with any
degree of certainty. It is worthwhile to point out that similar actsfor
instance, tampering with a coat of armswere performed to obscure a
works original provenance, or its author and/or title when the work in
question was banned by religious or civil authorities. In our case, the two
possibilities could coexist.
When was the page excised? The answer seems fairly obvious: it must
have been done (leaving a strip extending circa 25 mm from the inside
margin) after the work had been bound for the second time. If it had been
excised during binding, the strip probably would have been glued to the
inside of the quire. The present binding lacks any indication of a title,
even on the spine of the three volumes.
32

The title that has found the most widespread acceptance
Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaaderives instead from the
first edition of Sahagns work, brought out in 18291830 by Carlos Maria
de Bustamante. However, the text printed was not that of Med. Palat.
30. Quoted from the transcription by Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 45.
31. Ibid., p. 4.
32. Until the critical edition is available, for the complex problems relating to the title
(from that most commonly used, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaa, to the most
recent one, Historia general [o universal] de las cosas de la Nueva Espaa of Lon-Porti-
lla), cf. esp. dOlwer, Historiadores, p. 169; Dibble, Florentine Codex, 1982, pp. 1516;
Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, pp. 1719; Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 31;
Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 12, and Lon-Portilla in Cdice Florentino, 2001, p. 124
and passim.
218220, but rather that of the Panes codex, an apograph of the above-
mentioned Toulouse manuscript.
33
There is no doubt that the transcription and illustration of the bilin-
gual copy of the Historia was begun after the arrival in Mexico in 1575 of
Fra Rodrigo de Sequera, Bernardinos supporter and patron, in the name
of Don Juan de Ovando, president of the Consejo de Indias (15241778),
as he himself informs us in the Prologo to the first book ... pero como
llego a esta tierra nostro R.
mo
P.
e
R.
o
de Sequera ... mando que estos libros
todos se Romanasen....
34
This same motive is behind the two dedica-
tions in the book.
35
We can be sure that the work was finished by 1577, since there are
references in the manuscript to events that took place in 1576. Moreover,
toward the end of book VI, Fra Bernardino writes ... que escrivio en la
lengua mexican este ao de mjll y quinjentos y setenta y siete.
36
We can
state even more precisely that it must have been completed by the summer
of 1577, because Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras wrote to Philip II
on 28 October of that year to assure the king that all of Sahagns works,
which he had ordered sequestered with the abovementioned inauspicious
cdula of 22 April 1577, would be sent as requested.
37
Further confirma-
tion is provided by the friars declaration of 26 March 1578, written in
response to the kings same order, that ... todas las cuales obras acab de
sacar en limpio este ao pasado, y las d a Fr. Rodrigo de Sequera....
38
33. Cf. Sahagn, Historia general, 19291930.
34. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, Prologo, fol. 1v.
35. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, where, as we saw, the dedication was presumably on the
verso of the excised page; and Med. Palat. 219, book VI, fol. 3v.
36. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. 219v.
37. Cf. Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 22.
38. Ibid., p. 23, for the full text of the crucial passage of Bernardinos letter to the king.
According to del Paso y Troncoso (tudes, pp. 173174) and Dibble (Florentine Codex,
p. 15 and n. 50), there were two original versions of Sahagns bilingual Historia. Del Paso y
Troncoso simply states that le manuscrit de Florence est un des deux originaux envoys
par Sahagun en Espagne without further details; Dibble, on the other hand, specifies that
one version, copied in 15761577, was carried back to Spain by the viceroy Martn Enrquez
(the so-called MS. Enrquez), the fate of which he claims is not known; the other, copied in
15781579, which was carried back to Spain by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera (the MS. Sequera),
is to be identified with the Florentine Codex. In a note, Dibble also quotes a passage from Fra
Bernardinos last revised version of the Spanish conquest, the Relacin de la conquista de Esta
Nueva Espaa, datable to 1585 and published by Carlos Maria de Bustamante (Mexico, D.F.,
1840), in which the Franciscan does in fact refer to two copies, about which he has no further
information. Martnez (El Cdice Florentino, p. 7) does not mention two copies, presenting
only the Florentine Codex, which he dates to 15781579. He maintains it came to Spain with
The work, therefore, was completed in the years 15761577, and pre-
sumably the copy conserved in the above-mentioned Toulouse manu-
script was made not long afterward. The Toulouse manuscript was, in
turn, the source for at least three apographs.
39

A little less than two centuries after its completion, Sahagns work
became a part of the Biblioteca Medicea Lotaringia Palatina.
In Florence, the work received its first stamps of provenance between
1745 and 1765. Hitherto unknown is that the earliest description of
the manuscript also dates from around this time. Giovanni Gaspero
Menabuoni described it in his Catalogo as follows:
N. 3 codici cartacei folio. coperti di pelle scura tutta lavorata e dorata
contenenti lIstoria del Messico in lingua spagnola colla lingua messicana
accanto. Si vedono in principio le immagini degli dei de quali si tratta
nellopera, che adoravano i messicani nel tempo della loro idolatria.
40

Even though the Biblioteca Medicea Lotaringia had opened its doors
to the public from 1765 to 1771preceded by the Magliabechiana in 1747
and the Marucelliana in 1752Bernardinos work remained shrouded in
silence until 1783, when Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo transferred it to
the Laurenziana, along with 248 other manuscripts.
These are the few documented, and therefore secure, dates of the
manuscripts iter up to the present day. But what had happened in that
Sequera, to whom it had been consigned when he left Mexico at the end of February 1580. Nor
does Marchetti (Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 24, 26, 2930, and n. 101) mention two cop-
ies. He correctly dates the Florentine Codex to 15761577, but believes it left Mexico in 1578
rather than with Sequera, based on a letter from Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras to Philip
II, dated 16 December 1578, in which he confirms that the manuscript had been shipped and
supposes it had already arrived. Marchetti critically analyzes the known text of Bernardinos
last works, which he maintains are highly uncertain. Lon-Portilla (Cdice Florentino, 2001,
pp. 125131) returns to the problem of the two copies, arguing that there is no proof they ever
existed.
39. These are the above-mentioned Panes codex (see above and n. 33) and the copy of
Felipe Bauz, the latter serving as the source for the partial edition (books IVI) of the Histo-
ria, contained in books V and VII of King, Antiquities of Mexico, 9 vols., London 18311848.
Sahagn, Histoire gnrale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, 1880, is a conf lation of the two
codices mentioned above. A third copy, known as Uguina, remains unpublished. It is preserved
in the New York Public Library; cf. Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 3 and n. 9.
40. Cf. ASBL, Pluteo 9,2 sup. 227
B
, fol. 121r.; the second sentence is added in the margin,
by a different, contemporaneous hand.
interval of circa two hundred years? How, and when, did Fra Bernardinos
work make the remarkable journey from New Spain to Florence?
It is now generally believed that before coming to Florence, the man-
uscript made an intermediary stop around 1580 in Spain. Fra Rodrigo de
Sequera had left Mexico at the end of January of that year,
41
presumably
taking along the manuscript dedicated to him, which, unbeknown to Fra
Bernardino, had been saved from Philip IIs requisition. While in Spain,
the manuscript would have received its present Plateresque binding, here
noted for the first time.
42
Subsequently, the first page was excised, although
it is not possible to say if this was done by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera or by
the recipient of the manuscript. From Spain, the manuscript would have
traveled to Florence. There are various hypotheses about when this might
have occurred, and the times proposed stretch from the end of the 1580s
to the first decades of the 1700s.
43
In the course of research for my paper on Med. Palat. 218220, I came
across an interesting document in the Archivio di Stato of Florence, an
41. Cf. dOlwer, Historiadores, p. 179; Baudot, Fray Rodrigo de Sequera, avocat du
diable, pp. 4782; Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 14; for the two different hypoth-
eses, see also above and n. 38.
42. It is reproduced without further observations in Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,
p. 14. We would like to take this opportunity to note that in response to my paper at the con-
ference, Carmen Hidalgo of the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de Espaa in Madrid has
undertaken to research the binding of Med. Palat. 218220.
43. According to one of the earliest hypotheses, the manuscript was consigned to Philip II
and then sent to Rome for papal approval. Pope Leo XI (16051606), a Medici, is named as a
possible intermediary with grand-ducal Florence.The manuscript would then have arrived in
Florence during the first decade of the seventeenth century. It may subsequently have been in
the custody of the grand-ducal librarian and bibliophile Antonio Magliabecchi (16331714).
Cf. Nuttal, Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, pp. 295326; Dibble, Florentine Codex, p. 16;
Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 7.
Marchetti (Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 2426, 31) claims instead that as soon as
Philip II received the manuscript, between the end of 1578 and the first months of 1579, he
donated it to the ruling grand duke, Francesco I (15411587), with whom he was on excel-
lent terms, as a gesture of thanks for the economic and military help that the grand duke was
offering for his campaign in Portugal. Philip would have sent it as a gift on the occasion of
Francescos marriage to Bianca Cappello (15481587), in other words, before 12 October 1579.
According to Marchetti, this would also explain the removal of the first page, since it contained
a dedication addressed to someone else, which could have afforded great embarrassment, even
if the manuscripts opulence and beauty made it a most regal gift. Note that Marchetti states
the dedication was on the recto, although according to my examinations, see above, it was on
the verso. Spagnesi (Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 14) does not accept Marchettis proposal
because of contradictions in the chronology. He is convinced that the manuscript was brought
to Spain by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera in 1580.
inventory from 1587, preserved in the Guardaroba medicea, listing the
belongings of Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici (15491609). Among
the items in the cardinals library in Rome were two codices, described
as follows:
44
Un libro di pitture dellIndie della camera venuto come sopra ad q. A,
p. 399. 1
Tre libri di (sic) quali sia, in consegna la camera, venuti come sopra
a 399.
As far as I was concerned, there was a very strong possibility that the
second entry referred to Med. Palat. 218220. The dots could signify a
repetition of the words in the first entry, or (thinking of our manuscripts
excised first page) they might signify the lack of both author and title. If
my identification were accepted, it would allow us to finally establish a
terminus ante quem for the works arrival in Rome, as well as a post quem
for its arrival in Florence, as part of Ferdinandos private library.
On 19 October 1587, Ferdinando renounced his ecclesiastical career
in order to succeed as grand duke. By the following year, 1588, the librar-
ian Domenico Mellini (fl. 15651606) had compiled an Index eorum
librorum qui privatim regalibus in aedibus Ferdinandi Medicaei S. R. E.
Cardinalis et Magni Ducis Etruriae tertii asservantur.
45
Naturally, I
immediately searched Mellinis index for the Tre libri di ... listed in
the Guardaroba, but I found no likely candidate for Med. Palat. 218220.
However, at n. 1138 in the list of Libri volgari scritti in penna was
a manuscript described as 1. De costumi de Mexicani libri 5 con una
aggiunta. traduzzione.
46
Here, again, was a description that immedi-
ately made me think of the first volume of Bernardinos work. However,
the fact that it was included with the vernacular books, that it was only
one volume, and that it was a translation all seemed to argue against its
44. ASF, Guardaroba medicea 132 (fol. Ir: 1587. Questo libro si chiama inventario generale
della Guardaroba del serenissimo cardinale granduca di Toscana don Ferdinando Medici, al
tempo della amministratione del s. Benedetto Fedini guardarobiere maggiore; segnato A con
coreggie, pag. di carte 500), fol. 484; in ASF, Guardaroba medicea 79, at fol. 203, only the
first item is cited (cf. also Perini, Contributo alla ricostruzione della biblioteca, pp. 571667).
45. BNCF, ms. II. II. 309 (formerly Magl. X. 13), fols. 1r41v.
46. BNCF, ms. II. II. 309, fols. 30r33r. The title is also found in the Inventario della
biblioteca granducale (c. 1610), in ASF, Guardaroba medicea 237ter, fols. 1r41v, published in
Perini, Contributo alla ricostruzione della biblioteca, pp. 588667.
being the Laurenziana codex. Nevertheless, Mellinis note raised a ques-
tion that I was unable to answer: what could this vernacular translation of
the costumi de Mexicani be?
Fortunately, the answer was not long in coming. At the conference,
Lia Markey, who was unaware of Mellinis index, communicated that
the Hispanic Society of New York possessed a manuscript, identified as
B1479, bound in red morocco with the Medici cardinalitial arms gilt-
tooled on the cover, which corresponded precisely to the description
in the 1588 index. To clinch it all, the first flyleaf was inscribed with
n 1138. Here, then, was the vernacular translation of the Spanish text of
Bernardinos first five books. The translation had evidently been ordered
by Ferdinando, who may even have intended to translate all the books,
in which case either the work was never completed, or it has been lost.
47
In light of my hypothesis regarding the Guardaroba entry of 1587,
together with Lia Markeys discovery of the translation of the first five
books, it seems likely that Fra Rodrigo de Sequera presented Sahagns
work to Cardinal Ferdinando, who, as is known, had close ties to the reli-
gious orders.
48
Unfortunately, Fra Rodrigos motives are no longer ascer-
tainable, but he may have donated the work to prevent its being found and
sequestered by Philip II. He would have been certain that he was offering
it to someone who could look after it in the best possible way and would
appreciate the works great innovation and cultural content.
Such was Ferdinando de Medicis enthusiasm and interest when he
received the work that he immediately ordered a vernacular translation,
at least of the first five books. These, listed in the inventory of his library,
mysteriously ended up in the United States. Caution may have prompted
him to keep the original three volumes hidden away from prying eyes,
since they are missing from both Mellinis 1588 index and the Inventario
della biblioteca granducale, which can be dated to circa 1610.
49
However, the existence of the manuscript in Ferdinandos library
at court is likely to have been well known, since it is presumably to
Bernardinos work that the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522
1605) refers, writing to the grand duke on 12 December 1589 about his
desire arricchire et ornare queste mie composizioni con qualchuna
47. Cf. the essay by Lia Markey in this volume, referring to another Medici inventory
from the 1580s that lists the vernacular version.
48. Cf. Pieraccini, La stirpe de Medici di Cafaggiolo, vol. II, pp. 283304.
49. Cf. Perini, Contributo alla ricostruzione della biblioteca, pp. 588667.
figura de peregrini (uccelli), tra quelle che accenn al dottore Mercuriale,
che tiene in quel suo ricchissimo libro di Spagna.
50
Bernardinos illus-
trated manuscript is also likely to have been the source of inspiration for the
Florentine painter Lodovico Buti (c. 1560after 1611) when, around 1589,
he frescoed the vaults in the grand-ducal armory, the last rooms at the
end of the first corridor of the present Uffizi Gallery.
51
But after enjoying a brief period of fame hard upon its arrival in
Florence in 1587, Bernardinos work apparently dropped into oblivion for
nearly two centuries. Not until Menabuoni included it in his Catalogo,
compiled between 1745 and 1765, was there any further mention of the
manuscript. Even after the volumes had been transferred to the Lauren-
ziana in 1783, it was another decade before Bernardinos work was made
known to the scholarly world. In 1793, the prefect of the library, Angelo
Maria Bandini, published his Catalogus,
52
in which he provided the first
thorough description of the manuscript:
Historia mexicana libri XII lingua hispanica et mexicana exaratis, tribus
voluminibus comprehensa, et innumeris figuris, rudi penicillo, in singulis
ferme paginis delineatis exornata, quae ad mores, vivendi rationem, religio-
nem, artes, naturae foetus illarum regionum attinet.
53
Nonetheless, Bernardinos work continued to languish in the library.
Another century had to pass before the first complete transcription of the
Florentine Codex was made by del Paso y Troncoso between 1892 and
50. Cf. Galluzzi, Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici, p. 214, where the letter is erroneously
dated 12 October 1579. The letter, conserved in ASF, Med. VII. 2. 4. 385, is published in Tosi,
Ulisse Aldrovandi e la Toscana, pp. 380381; cf. also Arrigoni, Le Selve di Giovanni Targioni
Tozzetti, p. 14, under Aldrovandi, Ulisse, where the month is corrected to December, but the
year has not been corrected to 1589.
51. Observed by Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici, Florence 1972, p. 19; cf.
Corti, Le piante medicinali del Codice Fiorentino, pp. 4768, who is of the same opinion; on
the probable date of Butis fresco, cf. also Meloni Trkulja, Buti, Ludovico, in Dizionario
biografico, vol. XV, pp. 607608.
52. Cf. Bandini, Bibliotheca Leopoldina Laurentiana, coll. 454456; approximately a
century later, the work is cited in da Civezza, Saggio di Bibliografia, p. 525 (cf. also Dibble,
Florentine Codex, p. 16 and n. 64, where he confuses the correct date, 1879, with 1789, thus
mistakenly presuming that Sahagns text was already known before Bandinis description).
53. Bandini, Bibliotheca Leopoldina Laurentiana, col. 454. The title Historia mexicana
reappears in Cacho, Manuscritos hispnicos, vol. II, pp. 403405.
1898.
54
Shortly afterward, it was printed and made available to a larger
public, even if progress to publish it in full was slow. Listed below are the
first important editions and/or translations, more or less complete, of vari-
ous parts of the text or of the images, which culminated in the facsimile
edition of 1979:
1. English translation by Daniel G. Brinton, 1890, of the Nhuatl text of the
twenty hymns to the gods, using the texts recorded in Med. Palat. 218220.
2. First chromolithograph reproduction of all illustrations, but without explana-
tory text, published in 1905, vol. V, edited by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso.
55
3. German translation from Nhuatl of selected chapters from the seven books
of the Historia,
56
by Eduard Seler, published in Seler Sachs, Lehman,
and Krickberg, Einige Kapitel.
4. Transcription by del Paso y Troncoso of books IVI, in Sahagn, Historia
general, 1938, edited by Joaqun Ramrez Cabaas. This edition was based
on Bustamantes text.
5. Transcription of four more books (VIIIX), likewise by del Paso y Troncoso
(XII by Nuttal),
57
in the edition of Miguel Acosta y Saignes in Sahagn,
Historia general, 1946, similarly based on Bustamantes text.
6. Comparison of Bustamantes text with the complete microfilm of Med.
Palat. 218220 in Sahagn, Historia general, 1956, edited by Angel M.
Garibay K.
58
54. Only the first six of the twelve books of his original complete transcription were depos-
ited in the Museo Nacional de Antropologa y Histora of Mexico City immediately after his
death in 1916. The other books (VIIXII) remained dispersed until 1940, when an antiquarian
in Mexico City offered to sell books VIIIX to the museum (cf. Dibble, Florentine Codex,
pp. 1719; Corti, Le piante medicinali del Codice Fiorentino, pp. 5657). The location of the
last three books (XXII) is still unknown.
55. The plan was to publish eight volumes, of which volumes IIV were to contain the text
of Med. Palat. 218220, which instead ended up reproduced in volume V, while volumes VI
VIII contain the unabridged edition of the Codices Matritenses (cf. Dibble, Florentine Codex,
p. 17). On the images, see Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting, pp. 173178.
56. Translated were chapters 129 of book I; chapters 2038 and Appendix 2 of book II;
chapters 114 and Appendices 19 of book III; chapter 29 of book VI; chapters 2637 of book
VIII; chapter 29 of book X; all of book XII.
57. Cf. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 99; cf. also ASBL, R/F 14, 1890, registration
of the Riproduzione di disegni per la signora Zelia Nuttal.
58. For further information about the use of the microfilm, cf. ibid., pp. 99100, 139.
7. Reproduction of the images in book XII (Med. Palat. 220) relating to the
conquest of Mexico in the text edited by Marta Dujovne, 1978.
8. English version (left column) of the Nhuatl text (right column) in
Sahagn, Florentine Codex, 19701982, edited by Arthur J. O. Anderson
and Charles E. Dibble.
9. Selected texts from the Florence codex and that of Toulouse, translated and
edited to show omissions and variants in the existing editions, in the article
Missing and Variant Prologues by Howard F. Cline, 1971.
10. Facsimile of the manuscript in Cdice Florentino, 1979.
By the time the Secretara de Gobernacin of the Mexican gov-
ernment produced the facsimile in 1979, the most arduous part of the
endeavor to make the Laurenziana codex known to the scholarly and edi-
torial world was over. But it had taken almost a century. Since then, an
edition of the Castilian text of Med. Palat. 218220 has been published,
59

as well as a new facsimile, this one in four volumes, true to the original
division of the manuscript.
60
The direction to move in now, thirty years after the publication of the
first facsimile of Med. Palat. 218220, is toward a much-needed critical
edition of Bernardino de Sahagns text. But that is another story, and one
very much on the minds of all scholars of the manuscript.
59. First unabridged version, for the general public, with an introduction, a section on
paleography, and notes, Lpez Austin and Garca Quintana, eds., Sahagn, Florentine Codex,
1982. I was unable to examine the edition of the Historia published on the occasion of the
fourth centenary of Fra Bernardinos death (Sahagn, Historia general, ed. Temprano) to ver-
ify whether or not it is based on Med. Palat. 218220.
60. Cdice Florentino, 2001, edited and with an introduction by Lon-Portilla (De la orali-
dad y los cdices a la Historia general), which had already appeared in 1999 for the fifth cen-
tenary of Bernardinos birth as De la oralidad y los cdices a la Historia general: Transvase y
estructuracin de los textos, pp. 65141.
Fig. 1. Florentine Codexs layout. Left column in Spanish, right column
in Nhuatl; framed, colored ink-drawings are generally in the Spanish
column. Florentine Codex, book 3, fol. 209v.
To Giovanna Rao and Piero Baglioni, in gratitude
From September to December 2006, I carried out research at the
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana on the original manuscript of the
Florentine Codex, also known as Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva
Espaa (15761577). The Florentine Codex is a twelve-volume encyclo-
pedia about the people and culture of Central Mexico compiled by Fray
Bernardino de Sahagn and a group of knowledgeable Nahua intellectu-
als in the wake of the Conquest. Following the standardized book layouts
established by the printing workshops of the time, the pages of the twelve
books that comprise the Florentine Codex were divided into two columns.
In this case, however, the script was handwritten in two languages: on
the right, the original text in Nhuatlthe language spoken in Central
Mexico before the arrival of the Europeansand on the left, Sahagns
abbreviated translation into Spanish. Some 2,686 magnificent illustra-
tions were made for these twelve books, most of them placed in the Span-
ish column, whose text was shorter (fig. 1).
1
The texts of the Florentine
* This work, like the Florentine Codex, is a collective enterprise and a bridge between
Europe and Mexico, so I want to express my gratitude to the team that made this dream come
true. This work was funded and realized thanks to the generous support of Piero Baglioni, who
established a project of collaboration between the chemistry department at the Universit di
Firenze and the Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas at the Universidad Nacional Autnoma
de Mxico (UNAM) for the study and development of conservation methods for works of art
made in pre-Hispanic and colonial Mexico. The scientific analysis of materials was done by
David Chelazzi, Roderico Giorgi, and Marcia Arroyo from the University of Florence; further
DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL
Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas,
Painters of the New World:
The Process of Making the
Florentine Codex
*
DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL 48 PAI NTERS OF THE NEW WORLD 49
Codex can be considered our most important historical source for recon-
structing the lost pre-Columbian past. But little attention has been given
to the images, to the extent that most modern editions of the Historia
general do not contain a single copy of the illuminated drawings. When
the drawings are mentioned as one of the elements of the work, they tend
to be described as being too Europeanized in style and therefore lacking
the originality and interest of the prose.
2

Thus, the main objective of my work was to understand both the cre-
ative process underlying the making of the more than two thousand amaz-
ing paintings and their relevance to our understanding of the culture of
the pre-Columbian world.
3
As days went by in the library, I felt compelled
to hold on to the books materiality and to give myself over to the process
of seeing the images again and again as a way to unveil the quality of the
codex as a work of art. How was it made? How many painters participated
in this project? What was the method used to organize the arduous task
of handwriting 1,200 folios in Nhuatl and Spanish and creating 2,686
beautifully colored drawings?
4
How were these bright, translucent colors
obtained? Were the materials all made following the indigenous tradition
analyses were performed by Giancarlo Lanterna at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, in Flor-
ence. Colorants and binding media were reproduced at the Escuela Nacional de Conservacin,
Restauracin y Museografa (ENCRyM) in Mexico City, thanks to Lilia Flix, Arturo Len,
and Lorena Romn. The work was possible thanks to the permission granted by the Biblio-
teca Medicea Laurenziana. Special thanks go to Franca Arduini, director of the library, and
to Giovanna Rao, curator of manuscripts. I sincerely thank Gerhard Wolf, Clara Bargellini,
and Joseph Connors, whose help and support were instrumental to accomplish this work. I
am deeply indebted to Liliana Giorgulli, director of the Escuela Nacional de Conservacin,
Restauracin y Museografa in Mexico City. I also express my appreciation to Pedro ngeles
Jimnez, Ernesto Pealoza, Alessandra Russo, Jaime Cuadriello, Berenice Alcntara, and Sal-
vador Reyes Equiguas, who have been generous in providing support and critical observations
to this project.
1. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 13.
2. Lockhart, We People Here, p. 13; Len-Portilla, Visin de los vencidos, and its
English translation, The Broken Spears; Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting;
Martnez, El Cdice Florentino; Quiones Keber, Illustrations of the Sahaguntine Cor-
pus; Gruzinski, Painting the Conquest; Carieri, Sortir du cadre, 8397.
3. This project was a consequence of my doctoral dissertation, Images of the Begin-
ning. There are several publications dealing with the significance of the Florentines images
as NahuaChristian picture writing: Magaloni, Images of the Beginning: The Painted Story
of the Conquest of Mexico in Sahaguns Florentine Codex; and Visualizing the Nahua/
Christian Dialogue. Escalante, The Painters of Sahagns Manuscripts; Peterson, The
Florentine Codex Imagery and the Colonial Tlacuilo.
4. This number comprises all the images and ornamental motives.
of painting or were there some European pigments? Was the choice of
materials itself significant?
During the time I spent observing and systematizing information in
a database, as all these questions emerged, two main inquiries developed
in my mind. The first was the need to better explain the nature and status
of these images (including their materiality), that is, to consider them not
as mere illustrations to the texts, but as self-contained visual narratives
that sometimes revealed and sometimes concealed a world of their own.
The second was the importance of better understanding precisely who
the Nahua artists were. I found that through the careful and systematic
observation of the images and through the analysis of their pigments,
I was able to come closer to understanding the process of making the
Florentine Codex and thus closer to the human beings who literally gave
their lives to the writing and painting of their legacy.
A COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE OF SURVIVAL
The process of compiling the information to create this indigenous ency-
clopedia took almost thirty years, but the process of making the Florentine
Codex was a race against death. Fray Bernardino established collabora-
tion with two groups of indigenous peoples: the wise old men, called the
principales, of a number of towns in Central Mexico, and the Christian-
ized indigenous nobility, whom Sahagn called grammarians, and who
were trained in Latin, Spanish, and Nhuatl at the College of Santa Cruz
Tlatelolco.
5
The principales answered questionnaires prepared by Sahagn
about their culture and religion, and recorded their answers as paintings,
for this was their way of writing before the Conquest. The grammarians
interpreted the paintings, expanded the answers, and transcribed them
into alphabetic Nhuatl. Using this earlier process, the documents known
as Primeros memoriales were created.
6
In 1569, Sahagn finished the work
of organizing this information into twelve books, and the grammarians
completed the Nhuatl text that would serve as the basis of the Florentine
5. Founded in 1536, the College of Santa Cruz Tlatelolco was the first institution of
higher education in the Americas. There, the children of the indigenous nobility were trained
in the seven liberal arts, in Christian theology, Latin grammar, and other facets of European
education. See Vargas Lugo, Claustro Franciscano de Tlatelolco, pp. 1521, and Burkhart,
Holy Wednesday, pp. 5573.
6. Baird, Drawings of Sahagns Primeros Memoriales, pp. 15.
Codex. These writings, however, were given by Sahagn to the Francis-
can authorities for review and were only given back in 1575, thanks to
the intervention of Fray Rodrigo de Sequera, the brand new commissary
general of the Franciscan order. Sequera gave Sahagn the necessary sup-
port to finish his task.
7

By 1576, Sahagn and the indigenous team of painters and writers
from the College of Santa Cruz Tlatelolco had already embarked on their
long-awaited opportunity to paint and write a work that would crystal-
lize their legacy. Unfortunately, in August of that year, Mexico City was
afflicted by an epidemic of biblical proportions, in which more than eighty
percent of the indigenous population of the Valley of Mexico died and the
College of Santa Cruz Tlatelolco was almost emptied of students.
8
The
apocalyptic context was so devastating that Sahagn himself interrupts
his translation into Spanish of a passage in book 11 and shifts into first
person to state,
In this year 1576 in the month of August, the Great Universal Pestilence
began. It has been three months since it started and many have died and
continue to die. I am now at Tlatelolco in Mexico City, and I can state that
since the plague started until today, the eighth of November, the number
of dead has increased dramatically; ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, seventy,
eighty die every day. In this pestilence, and in the others mentioned above,
many have died of hunger and of thirst, because it often happens that an
entire household becomes sick and there is no one who can attend to them
or even offer a simple jar of water.
9
It is certain that this plague struck many of the painters. The survivors
experienced an overwhelming grief at the loss of so many of their col-
leagues and loved ones, while fearing for their own lives, but they made
the decision to continue working at Santa Cruz Tlatelolco. Together with
7. Hernndez de Len-Portilla, La Historia General de Sahagn a la luz de las enci-
clopedias, pp. 4159. Bustamante Garca, Fray Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 4069; Dibble,
Sahagns Historia, pp. 915. Baudot, Fray Rodrigo de Sequera: Devils Advocate, pp.
119134.
8. Mendieta, Historia Eclesistica Indiana; Marr and Kiracofe, Was the Huey
Cocoliztli a Haemorrhagic Fever?, pp. 341362; Acuna-Soto et al., When half of the popu-
lation died, pp. 15; Few, Indian Autopsy and Epidemic Disease in Early Colonial Mexico,
pp. 153165.
9. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 1979, vol. 3, fol. 390r.
Fray Bernardino, who at this time was eighty years old and could barely
hold a pen, they faced death like brave warriors, with their brushes and
ink as their only weapons, as the world they painted lost its vital colors and
became black and white.
THE WORLD OF EVOKED COLORS
As we can deduce from Sahaguns text, in November of 1576 the team
was working on book 11, which is a natural history of New Spain made
by the people who originally lived there. Book 11 includes more images
than any other book in the codex. They are rendered with special care,
and the coloring shows the use of a diverse array of pigments. At this
period, however, amid the epidemics devastation, the painters seem to
have run out of pigments. Folio 330v, near the end of the book, is the last
one to have been rendered in color. From folio 331r onward, the painters
sought instead to capture and convey the essence of the plants, flowers,
and minerals of their land using only black ink. It is a tribute to their
skill as artists that they could express the colors of their subjects without
pigments, by means of the schematic and metaphoric qualities of the
Nhuatl language and pictographic writing. In folio 343r, placing a lady-
bug right in front of the blossom denotes the red shade of the flower
xilosuchitl (fig. 2a). On folio 356r, the precious stone quetzalitztli is both
named and depicted using hieroglyphic writing (fig. 2b). The long feather
above the stone denotes the particular shade of quetzal blue-green, and
stands for the first part of the name quetzalli. A black, polished obsidian
underneath represents the lustrous, shiny surface of the mineral and also
the second part of its name: iztli, obsidian. The tlapalteoxihuitl, or red
turquoise (fig. 3a), was painted in juxtaposition with a tomato, drawn in
a botanical manner, to denote tlapalli (red) and a xihuitl (turquoise).
Amber, called apozonalli, was rendered by the combination of two pic-
tograms: that of fire, to represent the yellowish color, and that of water,
which describes its transparency (fig. 3b).
In all these examples, the evocative counterpoint between the invis-
ible world of color and the image of that color in black and white renders
the lack of pigment irrelevant. Not only did the Nahua painters know
how to employ the schematic capacities of pictographic writing, but they
produced a visual, intertextual relationship among images and concepts
that activates the discursive capacity of these paintings. What kind of
knowledge about the significance of color were these painters trying to
express? Why was naming, denoting, and describing the hue and texture
of a color so important? With these questions we arrive at the second sec-
tion of this discussion: seeking to understand the identities of the artists.
THE PAINTERS
Each of the twelve books has a different number of paintings, with book
5 (The Omens) possessing the fewest images and book 11 (Natu-
ral History) including the largest number. My collaborators and I were
able to identify the hands of twenty-two different artists who appeared in
an apparently random manner throughout the twelve books. Following
Morellis methodology, already applied by notable contemporary scholars
to indigenous documents and mural paintings,
10
it was possible to identify
painters by analyzing a number of techniques: the ways in which they
rendered the profiles of the human figures; the placement and detail-
ing of the eyes; the general proportions of the human bodies; and the
manners in which clothing was painted.
11
We have identified four very

10. Baird, Drawings of Sahagns Primeros Memoriales; Boone, The Codex Magliabe-
chiano; Stone, In Place of Gods and Kings; Brittenham, The Cacaxtla Printing Tradition;
Trever, Infrared Imaging and Painterly Practice.
11. On attribution of artists hands, see Ginzburg, Morelli, Freud and Sherlock
Holmes, pp. 735; Wollheim, On Art and Mind, pp. 177201.
Fig. 2. Xilosuchitl (2a, left) and quetzalitztli (2b, right). Florentine Codex,
book 11, fols. 343v and 356v, respectively.
well-trained masters, whom we believe were responsible for planning the
work and who participated in the creation of the more significant and
complex images.
The first artist we have named, the Master of Both Traditions, is the
author of the images in all of book 7 and a great number of those in
books 3, 8, 11, and 12 (fig. 4). He is remarkable in his capacity to mas-
ter the formal conventions of both the pre-Hispanic painting tradition,
called tlacuilolli in Nhuatl, and Renaissance techniques. Using one or
the other of these traditions, his figures intentionally evoke a time and a
space, looking either into the indigenous past or the colonial present. He
is a master draftsman and colorist. The second key artist we have named
is the Master of the Three-Quarter Profiles. He is interested in creating
internal spaces, and all his human figures are small in proportions and
shown in three-quarter view (fig. 5). The third, called the Master of the
Long Noses, is responsible for most of books 6 and 10, including the first
depictions of indigenous social customs and poetic rhetoric (fig. 6). The
fourth leading artist is the Master of the Complex Skin Tones. His line
is immediately recognizable, recalling Italian Renaissance drawings and
engravings. He is very precise in depicting skin tones, employing complex
mixtures of red, yellow, green, and blue to create them (fig. 7).
Most of the images in the codex are drawn inside frames. These
frames can comprise sequences in order to establish narratives that relate
in a precise way to the Nhuatl and Spanish texts. The sequence, number,
and shape of the frames vary according to the book and thematic sections
within each book.
Fig. 3. Tlapalteoxihuitl (3a, left) and apozonalli (3b, right). Florentine Codex,
book 11, fols. 358r and 359r, respectively.
Each artist followed guidelines that were established to provide the
twelve books with a standardized color scheme and format. To com-
municate as clearly as possible, the painters used varying techniques
suited to each books individual theme. The images within a single book
were given a special color scheme that helps the viewer distinguish that
particular book from its counterparts. For instance, while book 10 was
Fig. 4. Master of Both Traditions. Florentine Codex, book 3 fol. 213r.
painted with very diluted, watery colors, books 7 and 8 exhibit bright and
saturated pigments, and book 6 contains black-and-white drawings that
resemble prints. These well-planned differences among books indicate
that the artists followed an organized plan and that the painters belonged
to a well-defined painting tradition.
THE COLORS OF THE EARTH AND SKY
The colors in the original Florentine Codex can be divided optically into
two opposite groups: the translucent dyes, which are luminous because
they allow the white of the paper to be seen, and the opaque, granular
colors that cover up the substrate. The analytical study we made of the
pigments in December 2006 showed that the transparent colors were for
the most part organic in nature and very different from those made in
any European tradition of painting (fig. 8). The opaque pigments were
natural minerals as well as artificial compounds such as Maya blue and
Maya green (fig. 9). However, we also identified the use of some Euro-
pean pigments, which are employed in a limited number of very specific
and significant images.
Fig. 5. Master of the Three-Quarter Profiles. Florentine Codex,
book 6, fol. 198v.
Both organic dyes and mineral pigments were central to the tlacuilolli
manuscript painting tradition.
12
Painted books were understood to be the
foundation of knowledge, metaphorically referred to as in tlilli in tlapalli,
or literally, black ink, red ink. (Tlapalli could also refer, more generally,
12. There are few studies on the analysis of the painting materials of pre-Hispanic and
early colonial indigenous codices. Gonzlez Tirado studied eight indigenous documents
from the Biblioteca del Museo de Antropologa in Mexico City in Analysis of Pigments in
Eight Mexican Codices; Haude, Identification of colorants on maps, pp. 240270. Sci-
entists from the Mobile Laboratory (MOLAB) in Perugia have studied the pigments of the
Codice Cospi at the Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna; Zetina et al., in The Encoded
Language of Herbs, in this volume, have studied the early colonial document Codex Martn
de la Cruz, also known as the Codex Badiano, and the pre-Hispanic Codex Colombino, both
at the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologa e Historia. Rodgers Albro and Albro talk about
pigments in their Examination of the Huejotzingo Codex, pp. 97115. Widermann
et al., Thermal and Raman Spectroscopic Analysis, pp. 5663. In 1961, the pre-Hispanic
Codex Becker I at the Museum fr Volkerkunde at Vienna was analyzed by Nowotny and von
Humboldt in Codices Becker I/II, 1964. Condensed information about the materials possibly
used in the ancient Mexican manuscripts can be found in Cervera Xicotencatl and Lpez
Ortz, Identificacin de Materiales Constitutivos. Very recently, a study of an important
Peruvian colonial manuscript, Martn de Muras Historia General del Piru, has been made
by scientists from the Getty Research Institute; see the work by Phipps in this volume, that of
Thomas Cummins, and also Phipps, Turner, and Trentelman, Color, Textiles, and Artistic
Production, pp. 125146.
Fig. 6. Master of Long Noses. Florentine Codex, book 6, fol. 66v.
to all the colors.) Thus, in Nhuatl, the word and concept of knowl-
edge is conceptually the actual stuff of painting: the black lines with
which drawings were made and the colors that filled them up.
13
Our work
revealed compellingly how these artists drew on this tradition of in tlilli
in tlapalli. Their conscious selection of materials and techniques, no less
important in their eyes than the choice of words and images, adds yet
another layer of symbolic and historic meaning to the Florentine Codex.
COLORING WITH FLOWERS
The painters in book 11 of the Florentine Codex left us a brief but signifi-
cant discussion of their painting materials. Chapter 11 provides us with
13. Len-Portilla, La Filosofa Nhuatl, p. 67. The author translates in tlilli in tlapalli
as escritura y sabidura, that is, writing and wisdom.
Fig. 7. Master of the Complex Skin Tones. Florentine Codex, book 4
fol. 273v.
Fig. 8. Transparent organic colorants. Florentine Codex, book 1, fol. 35r.
information about the flowers, weeds, seeds, fungi, insects, and miner-
als from which the colors were obtained. It is remarkable that in all of
the drawings representing the production of tlapalli show a painter at
work. Through these images and texts, the artists depicted the tradition
of painting and writing in New Spain; we see their tlacuilolli, their mate-
rials and tools, as well as the locations where they worked, and, astonish-
ingly enough, they might have depicted themselves as artists, for each
painter shown in the codex is rendered as an individual, as can be seen
in the images that describe the making of colorants and pigments, shown
below. The texts describing the raw materials from which the colors were
obtained are very brief, but there is a marked effort on the part of the
Nahua authors to mention each of the colors used in their tlacuilolli and
the materials used to make them. Through these descriptions, we were
Fig. 9. Opaque mineral and artificial pigments. Detail of the pigments
Maya blue and Maya green. These were artificial pigments made by fixing
an organic colorant on the transparent clay palygorskite. This clay came
from the Maya geographic area in the peninsula of Yucatan and Guatemala.
Florentine Codex, book 9., fol. 370r.
able to reconstruct the techniques used to make the pigments and their
binders, producing a series of reference samples.
THE EXPERIENCE OF RECONSTRUCTING
THE PAINTING TECHNIQUE
Lilia Felix and Arturo Len at the National School for Conservation,
Restoration, and Museography in Mexico City have worked with these
Fig. 10. Lilia Flix and Arturo Len from ENCRyM, making a red colorant
from cochineal.
materials for over twenty years (fig. 10).
14
Together, we were able to recon-
struct the techniques of pigment production using most of the materials
mentioned by the painters of the Florentine Codex.
15
These experiments
showed that in order to make these colors bright and stable, the crafts-
men had to follow strict procedures, as all of these dyes are fairly sensitive
to changes in pH and are not so easily stabilized. For instance, to make
reds out of cochineal (nocheztli in Nhuatl, grana fina in Spanish), the
insects have to be boiled for more than an hour (fig. 11).
16
The colorant is
extracted and dried and made into tortillas, after which it has to be stabi-
lized with orchid gum (tzacutli in Nhuatl), and then dissolved in either
a basic or an acidic medium in order to obtain a blood red or orange-
red.
17
The Spanish translation by Sahagn states that the grana fina was
such a precious colorant that it was exported throughout the world to
regions as far away as China and Turkey. This red colorant was called
tlaquauac tlapalli in Nhuatl, and it was sold in the market, ready to be
used in the shape of a tablet called a panecillo in Spanish and tlatlaxcalolli
in Nhuatl.
18

A brilliant red color called huitzquiahuitl, made using brazilwood
chips, was used by the Nahua painters in the Florentine Codex. The
chips had to be fermented in water for years. The Nahua also used this
colorant to produce black ink for writing, when mixed with an iron-
based clay.
19
To produce blue from indigo, they needed another complex
14. The project of reconstructing the painting technique was possible thanks to Lilia
Flix, Arturo Len, and Lorena Romn at the National School for Conservation, Restoration,
and Museography (ENCRyM) in Mexico City. The research is an ongoing venture, and many
more colors mentioned in the Florentine Codex still need to be made.
15. The codexs brief but highly significant treatise on how to make the colors to paint
starts at fol. 368r, with the grana or nocheztli, and ends in fol. 373r.
16. Coccus cacti and Dactylopius coccus. The female insects of these species produce the
colorant.
17. See Baglioni et al., On the Nature of the Pigments , in this volume. The
tzacutli, or orchid gum, as a binder is mentioned in the Florentine Codex, MS. Med. Pal. 220,
book 11, fol. 372v. Caroluza Gonzlez and Lorena Roman have studied the importance of
this glue at the National School for Conservation, Restoration, and Museography, where they
have found it has a high quality as a conservation material for paper and cloth (ENCRyM,
20052008). Another study of it has been carried out by Berdan, Technology of Ancient Meso-
american Mosaics.
18. Florentine Codex, Ms. Med. Pal. 220, Book 11, fol. 368v.
19. Ibid., fol. 370r.
process (fig. 12).
20
The leaves were soaked in water for a day. The green
liquid obtained was then poured into another bowl and agitated until it
became thick and blue. The blue paste was boiled for an hour, resulting
in a solid blue. Then these solid particles had to become soluble again so
they could serve as pigments, the whole process taking at least a year. The
Spanish text summarizes all this complex process as follows:
There is a plant in these lands that is called xiuhquihuitl; they grind it to
extract its juice, and then pour it into clay vases so that it becomes solid.
20. The indigo plant that grows in the American continent is Indigofera suffruticosa, while
the indigo plant that was used in Europe but came from the Middle East is Indigofera tinctoria.
Fig. 11. The manufacturing of organic red from cochineal. Notice the
artist using this pigment. Florentine Codex, book 11, fol. 368v.
With this color they dye blues [that are] dark and resplendent. It is a very
precious color.
21
21. Florentine Codex, MS. Med. Pal., book 11, fol. 371r. Hay una hierba en estas tier-
ras que se llama xiuhquihuitl; majan esta hierba y esprmenla el zumo y chanlo en unos
vasos. All se seca o se quaja; con este color se tie lo azul oscuro y resplandeciente. Es color
preciado. The English translation above is mine.
Fig. 12. The production of blue from indigo. Notice that the artist using
this pigment. Florentine Codex, book 11, fol. 372v.
In the Nhuatl texts, indigo was called tlacehuilli. Only the green
color of the water of the first extraction of indigo was mentioned there,
but the process of manufacturing the color was the same.
22

Francisco Hernndez (15151587), the naturalist whom Phillip II sent
to New Spain, described the process of making blue pigment from indigo
in detail: the leaves were soaked in very clean water and macerated;
then the liquid was poured into ollas, or pots, until the sediments became
solid. Hernndez stated that the blue colorant was called mohuitli or
tlacehuilli.
23
In our teams experiments in producing the yellow from zacatlaxcalli,
we found out that the weed had to be mashed and made into tortillas
because it was extremely sticky.
24
Yellow hues could only be acquired by
mixing the dye with an acidic solution. Otherwise, different shades of
22. Tlacehuilli means something that has become coldcosa enfriada in Spanish.
Lpez Lujn, Chiari, and Lpez Austin, Lnea y color en Tenochtitlan, p. 23.
23. Hernndez, Obras completas, vol. 3, pp. 112113.
24. Zacatlaxcalli is a weed called dodder in English and classified as Cuscuta tinctoria.
Fig. 13. The production of yellow and brown from zacatlaxcalli. Notice
the artist employing the pigment. Florentine Codex, book 11, fol. 369v. brown would result (fig. 13). Hernndez described how painters used this
color in the shape of tortillas made by macerating the weed in water and
mixing the yellow liquid with alum and nitro (nitre, or saltpeter). The
pigment from this procedure, according to Hernndez, was a reddish
yellow.
25
Practical experience in making these colors revealed two important
technical facts: first, one can easily understand why the painters were
not able to produce more colorants when the great epidemic hit Mexico
City in 1576 and their pigments ran out while painting the last sections
of book 11. The painting technique was rich, complex, and fascinating,
but it depended on the existence of a functioning social, economic, and
ecological system. Second, these organic dyes were surely used not only
for their chromatic quality, but must have had an intrinsic value and
significance. As Berenice Alcntara has accurately described in her
work,
26
the Nahua regarded flowers as the crystallization of powerful,
25. Hernndez, Historia de las Plantas, vol. 2, p. 394.
26. Alcntara, In Neppapan Xochitl: The Power of Flowers in the Works of Sahagn,
in this volume.
Fig. 14. The red pigment (tlahuitl in Nhuatl), identified in our study as
the mineral hematite, is shown as being obtained from a cave, while the
white tizatl, identified as gypsum, is taken from the bottom of a lake. Both
locations are related to the Nahua underworld. Florentine Codex, book 11,
fol. 372r.
divine entities related to the upper world. They conceived of the universe
as a living entity, always regenerating itself by means of the interactions
of two opposing forces: that of the sky, where the sun dwelled; and that of
the watery, dark underworld in the entrails of the earth, where the moon,
the stars, and the seashells lived.
27
Thus, if colors were made from flowers,
those colors had the creative force of the upper world. The images, then,
were made to exist by the power of those specific colors, those tlapalli,
which had both a living force and a chromatic value.
PAINTING WITH MINERALS
The minerals used as pigments were also described in book 11. The draw-
ings and descriptions of the red iron oxide (called tlahuitl in Nhuatl)
28

and of a white mineral pigment (called tizatl)
29
relate these minerals to
a cave and to the bottom of a lake. Both these locations are important
sites to access the creative underworld of Nahua mythology (fig. 14).
30

In the images of the Florentine Codex, mineral pigments seem to have
been employed in very specific and meaningful ways. For instance, in
book 7 there is a beautiful image of the moon (fig. 15). According to
our X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis, the rabbit inside was painted with
manganese brown, and traces of red cinnabar or vermilion, and the inner
circle of the moon where the rabbit stands was painted with gypsum. The
painter colored the rabbit and the moon with pigments obtained from a
mineral ore found in the entrails of the earth and underneath the water
of the lake, as described above. These colors were not obtained from a
27. Lpez Austin, Cuerpo humano e ideologa, pp. 5575. Len-Portilla, La Filosofa
Nhuatl, pp. 154163.
28. Florentine Codex, MS. Med. Pal. 220, fol. 372r. The Spanish text translates tlahuitl as
bermelln, or vermilion. Molinas Nhuatl dictionary translates it as almagre, or red ocher. All
these names refer to an iron-oxide earth pigment. Molina, Vocabulario.
29. The Nahua text explicitly describes tizatl as like a white mud. A liquid pigment,
it needs to be dried in fire before it can be used. Florentine Codex, MS. Med. Pal. 220, fol.
372r. There are two other names for white mineral pigments: tetizatl, which is obtained from
a calcitic rock, and chimaltizatl, which comes from another rock that breaks into laminae, or
thin plates, from which comes its name, chimalli, shield. Lpez Lujn, Chiari, and Lpez
Austin, Lnea y color en Tenochtitlan, p. 21.
30. A study on the symbolism of minerals has been done by Salas, Ramrez, and Noguez,
The Sacred in Mesoamerican materials, pp. 4447. For the symbolism of the mountain, see
Broda, Calendrics and Ritual Landscape at Teotihuacn, pp. 397432, and The Sacred
Landscape, pp. 74120.
flower, an insect, or any living organism. The choice was based not only
on the beauty of the pigments color, but in their mineral, and thus earthy,
watery nature.
31
In Nahua cosmology the moon, in opposition to the sun,
belongs to the realm of the humid and dark underworld; therefore, the
31. The moon, in Nahua mythology, acquired a rabbit on her face at the eve of the
creation of the Fifth Sun, which marked the beginning of the Aztec Era. According to the
legend, the moon was created from the apotheosis of a prince who hesitated in sacrificing
himself to fire to be transformed into the sun; as a punishment, the gods set him in the sky but
slapped the face of this false sun with a rabbit, and thus made its luminosity diminish. The
actual sun was then created by the sacrifice of a brave but sick warrior who didnt falter in front
of the great pyre. Cdice Chimalpopoca, pp. 3040.
Fig. 15. Nahua moon with rabbit. Florentine Codex, book 7, fol. 228v. The
analyses of pigments showed that the rabbit was colored with a mixture
of mineral pigments and the moon was whitened with gypsum. All these
pigments are related symbolically to the moons underworld nature.
pigment was meant to represent the moons earthy identity, to evoke its
essence. In fact, as Michel Graulich has pointed out, the moon is part of
both the celestial nocturnal water and the Earth Monster.
32
The polarity
between mineral pigments as representatives of the humid, dark, tectonic
underworld, and the light essence of the upper world, as represented by
the organic dyes made out of flowers and other living organisms, is essen-
tial in understanding the tlacuilolli technique in the Florentine Codex.
This same principle seems to be present in the colors used to paint the
Codex de la CruzBadiano, since pigments obtained from minerals were
only applied to paint the roots of the botanical representations of plants.
33

The roots are inside the earth and belong to the realm of the dark and
humid underworld.

It is also meaningful that in their reconstruction of
the colors used to paint the great building of Tenochtitlan, called the
Templo Mayor, Leonardo Lpez Lujn, Giacomo Chiari, and Alfredo
Lpez Austin found that colors were used to recreate the basic polarity of
the rainy and the dry seasons, and the opposition between fire and water.
These oppositions translated into a color-coded Templo Mayor that was
divided into two regions, the north and south.
34

Throughout the twelve books there are important polarities in the use
of color: luminous versus dark, and very noticeably, the choices of special
pigments to paint certain images. The most basic choices were mineral
versus organic or European versus tlacuilolli. I will give a brief description
of some of these choices.
THE COLORING OF TIME
Book 4, The Soothsayers, describes the 260-day divinatory calendar,
or tonalpohualli. This calendar ruled almost all aspects of human life on
earth. It was composed by twenty day-signs, such as Rabbit, Water, Flint,
Alligator, and so on, that intermeshed with a rotating cycle of numbers
from one to thirteen.
35

In book 4, as in most of the pre-Hispanic divinatory almanacs, the
thirteen numeric signs representing dates were indicated by a series of
32. Graulich, Myths of Ancient Mexico, p. 60.
33. Zetina et al., in this volume.
34. Lpez Lujn, Chiari, and Lpez Austin, Lnea y color en Tenochtitlan, pp.
2930.
35. Soustelle, El universo de los Aztecas, p. 148.
dots.
36
In the Florentine Codex, there are several ways to color these dots.
When day-signs are presented in a consecutive series, the dots represent-
ing numbers are painted in diverse colors, such as green, red, yellow, and
black. In all these examples, however, the red pigment is a deep carmine
that is organic in nature, most likely cochineal. When day-signs and
numerals are represented in a single frame, the round numerals are, for
the most part, painted with cochineal (fig. 16). However, there is one sig-
nificant exception. The two dots comprising the date Ome Tochtli (Two
Rabbit) were painted with a bright orange hue that is fairly easy to distin-
guish from the rest of the dot series. We were able to identify this shade of
red as the European pigment minium, or red lead (fig. 17).
37
Why is Two
Rabbit colored with a different red pigment from any of the other days in
the calendar count? That is, why are these two the only numerals painted
with a European pigment? A possible answer to this question is that
Two Rabbit is described in the text as the day on which drunken people
were born and the cihuateteo, or women who died in childbirth, came
down to earth. It is well known that in ancient Nahua customs, there
were strict regulations against alcohol and other enervating substances.
Drunkenness was punishable, except for elders and for certain festivi-
ties prescribed in the calendar. In the wake of the Conquest, though,
neither the Crown nor the Church imposed such restrictions. On the
contrary, Spaniards promoted drinking as a profitable business, and the
indigenous population found solace by drinking large amounts of pulque,
a fermented drink from the juice of various agave plants.
38
The Florentine
Codex describes in a systematic, detailed manner all the ways in which
alcohol affects a drunkard. For instance, a drunkard might just go to sleep
because of the power of wine. Another can weep as though his tears are
hailstones showering down. Yet another will only talk and others will
neglect everything with jest. Other drunkards become very suspicious,
the liquor giving rise to hatred, fury, and murder. Women can no longer
be rational and wine can curse them. The Nhuatl text concludes, Thus
36. In most calendrical notations, numerals are a series of linear groupings of disks
painted with a color. There are many disks painted in red, but there are other colors used for
the numbers and a clear pattern has not yet been established. See Boone, Cycles of Time and
Meaning, p. 38.
37. In fact, red lead or minium (Pb
3
O
4
) is described as an orange mineral. It was a favorite
pigment of the Byzantine, Persian, and medieval Christian manuscript illuminators. Gettens
and Stout, Painting Materials, p. 152.
38. Corcuera, Del amor al temor, and El fraile, el indio y el pulque.
DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL 70 PAI NTERS OF THE NEW WORLD
is his rabbit. Thus was his day sign; in this way did the wine gods manifest
themselves on him.
39
This long description is actually referring to the
period during which the codex was being painted, not to make allega-
tions about the pre-Conquest past that Fray Bernardino wanted to docu-
ment. In this fashion minium, a new pigment brought by the Spaniards,
is applied here to signify that this particular date of Two Rabbit had been
affected by a new reality. In fact, as Guilhem Olivier has demonstrated, in
Nahua mythology, drunkenness as a transgression is often associated with
the ending of an era and the beginning of a new time.
40
Minium as a red
pigment is equivalent to cochineal; however, in their different materiality,
minium signals the transformed standing of this date in New Spain.
39. Florentine Codex, Dibble and Anderson, book 4, pp. 1517.
40. Olivier, La ebriedad en los mitos del Mxico antiguo, pp. 101122.
Fig. 16. Dates in book 4 of the Florentine Codex are colored mostly in red
made with cochineal, like this figure from folio 270r, Ten Eagle. The
red made with cochineal has a bloodlike hue and is transparent, like all
organic colorants.
71
THE USE OF MAYA BLUE AND EMERALD GREEN
These colors have a long tradition in Mesoamerica. Maya blue was made
by fixing indigo dye in a rare white clay called palygorskite, found in the
Mayan areas of the peninsula of Yucatan and Guatemala. The emerald
green is a mixture of blue and yellow dyes fixed in the same clay (see
fig. 9). As mentioned above, in the brief treatise on colors in book 11
of the Florentine Codex, the painters mentioned a dark blue obtained
from indigo that they called tlacehuilli or mahuitli (see fig. 12), another
blue obtained from the flower matlalli, and a blue-green pigment called
texotli that is also related to indigo.
41
Texotli could be the Nhuatl name
for Maya blue, and it must have come to Mexico City by commercial
41. Florentine Codex, MS. Med Pal. 220; Florentine Codex, Dibble and Anderson, book
11, p. 242.
Fig. 17. The date Ome Tochtli, Two Rabbit. Florentine Codex, book 4 , fol.
252r. The two circles representing the numeral two of the sign rabbit are
colored with the European pigment minium (Pb
3
O
4
, or red lead). This is a
meaningful exception because the rest of the 240 signs in the tonalpohualli,
or divinatory calendar, were colored with the red colorant cochineal, which
is pre-Hispanic.
routes from the south of Mexico.
42
What is remarkable is that in the Flo-
rentine Codex, it is possible to find a dark ultramarine blue, many shades
of grayish blue, a bright sky blue, and the green-blue known as Maya blue.
All the different names referring to the raw materials from which col-
ors were obtained point to a complex technology in the manufacture of
blue pigments.
In book 8, The Kings and Lords, Maya blue is related to royalty, for
it was used to color the capes of the ancient kings. In book 9, dedicated to
merchants, Maya blue and the emerald Maya green were the basic tones
to paint the rich landscape of the southern lands where the Nahua mer-
chants traded their costly quetzal feathers, cacao, jade objects, and very
likely both blue and green pigments with which the artists were coloring
those scenes. In book 7, Maya blue is used in the background for the
sun, the moon, and the stars (see fig. 15). Maya blue and green are colors
related to royalty, preciousness, the southern lands, and commerce; they
are probably like lapis lazuli was for the European painting tradition, a
color of prestige used to paint symbolically important concepts and prized
objects (see fig. 9).
BLACK-AND-WHITE RHETORIC
Another interesting example of symbolic colorants is in the whole of book
6, Rhetoric and Moral Philosophy, which was illustrated using only
shades of black, gray, and white. Up until today, scholars have wondered
if the absence of color was symptomatic of haste in the process of making
the document.
43
Actually, the case is exactly the opposite. This book was
the most admired and cherished by Sahagn. It is the only one that has a
dedicatory page, written in Latin, to Father Rodrigo Sequera, who was the
commissary general of the Franciscans at the time and the man who gave
Sahagn the financial and moral support to write his Historia. Why is this
prized book devoid of color? A quotation from Erasmus of Rotterdam, a
well-read author among the Franciscans, may be the answer. In his Dia-
logues on the Proper Pronunciation of Latin and Greek, he wrote a passage
where he praises Albrecht Drer as an extraordinary artist and compares
42. Littmann, Maya Blue, pp. 4155. Chiari, Giustetto, and Ricchiardi, Crystal
Structure Refinements of Palygorskite, pp. 227237. Arnold and Arnold, Attapulgite and
Maya Blue, pp. 2329.
43. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, p. 42.
him with the ancient Greek painter Apelles. Erasmus states that even
though Apelles was a prince of his art, he was still assisted by colors,
while Drer expressed himself in monochromes. These things, writes
Erasmus, he places before the eye in the most pertinent linesblack
ones, yet so that if you should spread on pigments you injure the work.
44

Thus, it seems that Sahagn regarded these black-and-white images as
more authoritative than the colored paintings of the rest of the books.
Paradoxically, these monochrome images bring to life the Huehuetlah-
tolli, the respected words of the Old Ones. These words represent the
wisdom of the ancient pre-Hispanic tradition and yet, the images that
are supposed to represent them are the most radically different from the
conventional tlacuilolli, where colors had an important place. The color-
ing with different shades of black, gray, and white here is thus transform-
ing the respected words of the ancients into something equivalent to the
printed Bibles and books of the European Renaissance (fig. 18).
THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW
The rainbow with all its colors is literally a symbol that unites both worlds:
the indigenous America and Europe.
45
In fact, it was called in Nhuatl
ayauhcoamalotl, a word composed of ayauitl, mist or fog, and coama-
lotl, literally, the colors of the rainbow. Gabriel Espinoza, in his thor-
ough analysis of the symbolism attached to the rainbow in pre-Hispanic
Central Mexico, points out that the rainbow represented the polarity
of the hot, bright, solar upper world, as expressed by its colors, and the
humid, dark, heavy underworld, thus ayauitl, of mist or fog.
46
In that
regard, the rainbow was a symbol of creation. Both the image and the
materials with which the rainbow in the Florentine Codex is made are
very eloquent. First, as Serge Guzinsky has pointed out, in this illustra-
tion the painter has entered a new territory of abstract drawing in which
44. Citation taken from Dackerman, Painted Prints, p. 14.
45. In the Florentine Codex, book 12 is the history of the Conquest of Mexico as seen by
the Mexica and Tlatelolca, inhabitants of the twin cities Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco,
and who fought the war against the Spanish. Notably, the frontispiece of book 12 is an image
that frames the scene of the meeting of both peoples and worlds under a rainbow. To learn
more about the relationship between the image of the rainbow and the indigenous interpreta-
tion of the Conquest as the initiation of a new world era, see Diana Magaloni, Images of the
Beginning. See also Siracusano, in this volume.
46. Espinoza, La serpiente de luz, el arcoiris, pp. 320325.
DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL 74
the rainbow is the sole subject of the picture.
47
In a sense, the rainbow has
become an icon of sorts. Second, the nature of the colorants in the arch of
light and water are tokens of both worlds, the indigenous and European,
and also of the creative polarity that makes them become something new.
This photograph was taken from the original codex and the colors are
very accurate (fig. 19). As you can see, the lowest band of the arch of
color starts with a dark red. This color is an iron-based mineral pigment
applied over a substrate of gypsum. Both of these materials are minerals
related to the watery underworld, as I have presented above. This red is
then followed by an organic yellow, which is difficult to identify but is
47. Gruzinsky, Painting the Conquest, pp. 202.
Fig. 18. Black-and-white ink drawing imitating woodcuts. Florentine Codex,
book 6, fol. 174r.
PAI NTERS OF THE NEW WORLD 75
Fig. 19. Ayaucoamalotl, rainbow. Florentine Codex, book 7, fol. 238v.
This rainbow was colored using European and pre-Hispanic pigments to
symbolize the beginning of a new era in Mesoamerica. It was also colored
with both organic colorants, which represent the power of the sun, and
mineral pigments representing the nature of the earth and the underworld.
Together, these materials symbolize creation.
conceptually related to the flower pigments representing light. Then, the
orange that follows is the European mineral minium, followed by Maya
blue and Maya green. The upper arch is strangely colored with another
lighter hue of orangey red. This color is again minium, the red lead oxide
brought by the Spaniards. The combined pigments work together to
convey the idea of creation and of the union of two different traditions
and peoples in New Spain: the ancient indigenous culture and the newly
dominant European civilization. In this central image of the rainbow, the
DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL 76
painters of the Florentine Codex used their mastery of materials and tech-
niques, both pre-Hispanic and European, to express their understand-
ing of their moment in history: the end of one era and the beginning of
another. Thus the colors convey the transition between two worlds.
Today, five centuries after the creation of the Florentine Codex,
through the use of our most advanced technology, we have begun to shed
light not only on the materials and techniques of the painters but also on
the artists themselves. We have begun to understand how they expressed
themselves and how they viewed the new world that was forming around
them. Their mastery of the traditional and European techniques gave
them the capacity to express their understanding of the new world,
not only in words and drawings but also through their use of pigments
and colors.
Fig. 1. Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer, HYPERION 3000
(two pictures on left), and X-ray f luorescence (XRF) spectrometer, ARTAX
(two pictures on right), provided by the Bruker Company, Germany.
INTRODUCTION
The General History of the Things of New Spain, also known as the
Florentine Codex, was compiled, with the aid of native informants, by
Fray Bernardino de Sahagn in Mexico between 1576 and 1577. The
manuscript, conserved at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Flor-
ence, is divided into twelve books and is written both in Nhuatl and
Spanish. Its encyclopedic coverage of native Nahua customs makes it one
of our most valuable sources for the study of ancient indigenous and early
colonial cultures of the Valley of Mexico.
1
Department of Chemistry and CSGI, Universit di Firenze
Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (UNAM)
* The authors wish to thank the Bruker Company of Germany for giving us the opportu-
nity to use very sophisticated and innovative instruments to analyze the codex. In particular,
we express our gratitude to Giovanni Bizzaro, Lorenzo Marchesini, Pierangelo Morini, and
Armin Gross for their cooperation in this project. We would also like to acknowledge Franca
Arduini, the director of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, and conservator Ida Giovanna
Rao for their invaluable cooperation.
Corresponding author: Piero Baglioni. E-mail: piero.baglioni@unifi.it; phone: +39-055-
457-3033; fax: +39-055-457-3032.
1. Sahagn, Florentine Codex, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, 15761577.
Sahagn, Florentine Codex, trans. Dibble and Anderson, 1959. See also two reviews of the
On the Nature of the Pigments
of the General History
of the Things of New Spain:
The Florentine Codex
PIERO BAGLIONI
*
RODORICO GIORGI

MARCI A CAROLI NA ARROYO

DAVID CHELAZZI

FRANCESCA RIDI

DI ANA MAGALONI KERPEL

PI ERO BAGLIONI ET AL. 80 THE PIGMENTS OF THE FLORENTI NE CODEX 81
This study is a contribution to the knowledge of materials and tech-
niques used by Sahagn and his collaborators. We report here the main
results of the first investigations ever performed directly on the pages
and painted drawings of the Florentine Codex. These were achieved by
using sophisticated instrumentation recently developed in the research
and development laboratories of the Bruker Company of Germany, and
kindly made available to us by that firm. We analyzed a selection of draw-
ings and colors in a noninvasive way, mainly using X-ray fluorescence
(XRF),
2
and microreflectance Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spec-
troscopy (fig. 1).
3
The colors analyzed were 102 samples in forty-eight
painted drawings: seven from book 1, one from book 2, six from book 4,
ten from book 7, seven from book 8, one from book 9, thirteen from book
11, and three from book 12.
X-ray fluorescence analysis was chosen to detect the inorganic pig-
ments, usually salts of high-atomic-number metals. In our case, we use
XRF to identify elements with atomic weights equal to or greater than
that of magnesium (!12). The instrumentation used is a portable micro-
XRF spectrometer (an ARTAX system by Bruker) specifically designed to
meet the requirements for a spectroscopic analysis of unique and valuable
objects in situ, i.e. in archaeometry and in the examination of artworks.
This system performs a simultaneous multi-element analysis ranging from
sodium (11) to uranium (92) elements, with a spatial resolution down to 70
microns (m), allowing at the same time the identification and semiquan-
titative analysis of the chemical elements. The energy transferred to the
sample is usually so small that the analysis can be regarded as nondestruc-
tive. The other technique used in this study, FT-IR, is a technique allow-
ing the identification of specific chemical bonds within the molecular
architecture of materials, regardless of their organic or inorganic nature.
4

The comparison of the spectra with a reference infrared spectra database
allowed us to discriminate among different materials, even when overlap-
ping signals from different molecular species were present. As explained

Dibble and Anderson translation: Nicholson (review), Florentine Codex, pp. 13251327;
Glass (review), Florentine Codex, pp. 282283.
2. Szkefalvi-Nagy et al., Non-destructive XRF analysis of paintings, pp. 5359.
3. Bitossi et al., Spectroscopic techniques in cultural heritage conservation,
pp. 187228.
4. Derrick, Stulik, and Landry, Infrared Spectroscopy in Conservation Science.
in the following, a set of pigments were prepared following the recipes
reported in the codex, and were applied over paper to have more specific
reference spectra to compare with the pigments used in the Florentine
Codex. These were analyzed and the results compared with the interna-
tional infrared spectra database.
5
In this project, the spectra have been acquired in microreflectance
mode, using a HYPERION 3000 infrared microscope (Bruker Optics)
capable of single-point measurements, line maps, area maps, and imaging
(see fig. 1). In this configuration, the pages of the codex were put under
the microscope to choose the area to be analyzed.
6
All the examined
colors were analyzed in several areas to have more representative results.
Book 11 of the Florentine Codex is the most truly encyclopedic,
fact-crammed book of the entire work, and constitutes a most valuable
Mesoamerican ethnobotanical and ethnozoological source. The elev-
enth chapter gives names and descriptions for colorants traditionally used
by the Nahua scribes, as well as how the pigments were made and how
the resulting colors appearances could be improved.
7
Following these
descriptions, it was possible to identify the botanical sources of some of
these colorants and subsequently, we could reconstruct them to be added
to the database. Book 11 also provides precise and complete description
of color preparation techniques for paints and dyes,
8
and is the text most
cited by historians and scientists in regard to the usage of colorants and
pigments in Mesoamerican areas.
The study of the color recipes reported in book 11, combined with
information gained from other sources, guided the preparation of thirty
reference color samples. This work was performed at the Escuela Nacional
de Conservacin, Restauracin y Museografa, INAH. By mixing appro-
priate amounts of organic dyes (extracted from natural sources), binding
media, and other additives, and by employing trough pH modifications,
many tones of the colorants were obtained and applied over simple paper
samples made of pure cellulose without sizing (Whatman
filter paper
5. The international Infrared and Raman Users Group (IRUG), spectral database edition
2000; http://www.irug.org.
6. Bruker Optics, HYPERION series FT-IR microscope; http://www.brukeroptics.com/
hyperion.html.
7. Sahagn, Florentine Codex, book 11, fol. 372v.
8. Haude, Identification and Classification of Colorants; Identification of Colorants
on Maps, pp. 240270.
for chemical use) to reproduce the colors of the drawings. Investigations
performed on them and a comparison of the colors appearance and the
spectra patterns helped us to identify the materials used. The selection of
the colors to be analyzed was mainly made by Diana Magaloni, accord-
ing to her consideration of findings from preliminary observations of the
Florentine Codex drawings under the optical microscope.
Until now, direct information about the pigments used by Sahagn
and his numerous collaborators to paint the illustrations in the Florentine
Codex was missing. Several questions had risen among historians and art
historians, for example, about meanings that the authors of the codex may
have attributed to the usage of colors belonging to the Mesoamerican
tradition, or about the commercial network existing at that time to obtain
the materials used for the paintings. Most of this information is now avail-
able, thanks to the scientific examinations reported in this article and
performed in the framework of a cooperation among such different aca-
demic institutions as the Center for Colloids and Nanoscience (CSGI) at
the Universit di Firenze, the Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas at the
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, the Villa i Tatti (Florence)
of Harvard University, and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.
NAHUA PAINTING TECHNIQUES
The Nahua authors of the Florentine Codex provide important informa-
tion on the painting techniques in book 11, chapter 11. Their descriptions
not only mention the raw materials used to elaborate the organic dyes
from flowers, herbs, and insects, as well as pigments from minerals, but
also describe the prepared painting materials. Most colors were manu-
factured as tortilla-like cakestlatlaxcalolli in Nhuatl, or panecillos
(small breads) in Spanish. That is, paints were prepared to be stored and
perhaps sold in the marketplace as solid, circular tablets, much as solid
tablets of watercolors are prepared today. Some descriptions point to these
colored tortilla-like cakes being given this shape by mixing the colorants
or pigments with orchid gum, tzacutli in Nhuatl. The orchid gum would
serve not only to hold the tablet together but also, when diluted in water,
as the binder between the paints and their supports. It must be noted
that orchid gum is mentioned only in the Spanish column of the original
manuscript. This might be because Sahagn tends to describe what the
Nahua authors take as matters of fact that are needless to mention.
In book 9 of the Florentine Codex, the Nahua authors describe the
preparation of tzacutli in the context of feather artwork. There they say
that the orchid bulbs have to be cut, dried in the sun, and then mashed.
The mucilage obtained is then dried as a powder and used as glue.9 From
our experiments with this orchid gum, we can deduce that the mucilage
obtained by mashing the bulbs could be prepared in two ways: when man-
ufactured for use as glue in feather artwork, the tzacutli was left to dry and
then stored as a powder. When the glue was needed, the powder was dis-
solved in water. However, when used as a binder for painting, it was likely
prepared as a liquid to be mixed directly with the colorants and pigments,
and then dried. In this manner, the organic dyes would have been fixed
in the orchid mucilage, making a very stable orchid-based lake pigment.
In fact, this finding of ours is supported by the descriptions of Fran-
cisco Hernndez in his Historia de las plantas de la Nueva Espaa. He
states that from the tzacutli, Indians prepare a very tenacious gluten: it
is used mostly by the painters in order to bind their colors and make them
permanent so that the figures will not be erased.
10

In this study, we used two different orchid species mentioned in the
historical sources and already studied by the Mexican botanist Urbina:
11

the Bletia campanulata and Laelia autumnalis. Conservator Lorena
Roman and artists Lilia Flix and Arturo Len at the National School of
Conservation, Restoration, and Museology in Mexico City, with whom
we are developing a joint project to study the tzacutli from the vantage
point of its chemical properties, prepared these two orchids.
THE COLORS OF FRAY BERNARDINO DE SAHAGN
In this chapter, a selection of the analysis performed on the codex is
presented; figure 2 shows thumbnails of the fifteen pages under study.
Several red tones were analyzed to determine differences and analogies
in color composition and painting techniques. Among these samples,
six are described in this section because all of them showed different
appearances. Some were suspected to be from the same pigment (or dye),
9. Sahagn, Florentine Codex, book 9, fols. 371r374r.
10. Hernndez, Historia de las plantas de la Nueva Espaa, vol. 2, books 3 and 4, pp.
336337. The spelling of tzacutli is from Hernndez, and is the same spelling used in the Flo-
rentine Codex. It can also be spelled tzacuhtli or tzauhtli.
11. Martnez-Corts, Pegamentos, gomas y resinas en el Mxico Prehispnico, pp. 1920.
Fig. 2. The set of drawings submitted to analysis and described in this
contribution.
L1-006-011v
L7-343-238r
L12-1151-447v
L8-358-253r
L4-166-252r L1-014-018v
L11-776-227v
L4-222-329r
L7-339-233r L7-341-236r
L1-015-022r
L11-750-214v
L11-799-240r
L1-024-035r
simply diluted to have a lighter color; for others, a different chemical com-
position was hypothesized. The reference starting point of our examina-
tions was Sahagns description in book 11 of the procedures used in
New Spain for the preparation of red colors. In folio 368 verso, a red color
made from insects is described thus:
Gusanos que crecen en las tunas y tienen sangre muy colorada, es la grana
fina. Hacen grandes tratos de grana en esta tierra llega hasta China y
Turqua, casi por todo el mundo es preciada y tenida en mucho.
[Some worms that grow on the prickly pear cactus and have very red blood
are called grana. They (the Indians) are good merchants of this product.
In these days it arrives even in China and Turkey; through almost all the
world it is much known and valued.]
Again,
La grana purificada y hecha en panecitos llaman tlaquauac tlapalli, grana
recia o fina, venden en los tianguis echa pancecillos para que la compren
los tintoreros del tochmitl y los pintores.
[The grana, purified and made into small bread shapes, is called
tlaquauac tlapalli, i.e. fine grana. It is sold in the market in this form to
painters and to dyers of rabbit skin.]
In this description, Sahagn clearly notes the usage of grana fina (i.e.
cochineal) to dye hides and to paint surfaces. The term pintores suggests
that this pigment might also have been used to color the drawings of the
codex. Other reds are described in book 11 (folio 370, recto and verso);
for example, annatto red,
12
and huitzcuahuitl, obtained from a reddish
wood (Hematoxylum campechianum, also called logwood, or the palo
de Campeche tree), as well as tezoatl, which was derived from a hotland
12. Regarding annatto red, Hay un color colorado blanquecino que se llama achiotl.
Este hace en tierras calientes, es f lor que le muele, vendese en los tianguis, es medicinal
mezclanlo con ungento amarillo que se llama axi para poner sobre sarna. [There is a whitish
red colorant that is called achiotl. It is made in hot lands. It is a f lower that is ground/mashed.
They sell it in the markets; it is medicinal they mix it with a yellow unguent called axi to
put it on mange/ scabies.]
shrub and was mixed with alum to obtain un color colorado fino. All
of these were described as commonly used to dye animal skins (or furs)
or as a medicine (i.e. annatto). The only inorganic orange-red pigment
described in book 11 is tlahuitl (or vermilion), which was largely used by
Mesoamericans.
The red magenta color from book 1, labeled as L1-006-011v (file
name 006 from book 1, page 11 verso) was investigated under the optical
microscope. Its appearance suggested that cochineal dye was probably
used. X-ray fluorescence did not show any meaningful signal from met-
als, which supported the lack of inorganic pigments in this drawing. Each
absorption peak in the infrared range analyzed through microreflectance
FT-IR spectroscopy was assigned to paper cellulose, and no additional
absorptions were detected. Analysis performed on the reference samples
showed that cochineal did not give any meaningful signal to determine
its presence. In fact, red magenta L1-006-011v was similar to the red prep-
aration reported in figure 3, number 1 (in the darker area). In book 1,
another red sample, labeled as L1-015-022r (file name 15 from book 1,
page 22 recto), analyzed by XRF and FT-IR, presents spectra perfectly
matching those of sample L1-006-011v. In this case, the color is paler and
with a pinkish tonality, more similar to the bright part of reference sample
Table 1. X-ray f luorescence (XRF) spectroscopy analysis on red-based pigments.
(Numbers reported are particle counts.)

Element
L1-006-011v
Red
L1-014-018v
Red
L7-343-238r
Red
L7-339-233r
Violet
L8-358-253v
Orange
L4-166-252r
Orange

Paper
Si 1,379 2,462 1,004 1840 1,258
Al 295 128
Cl 2,555 1,642 4,514 3,224
S 2,629 12,290 82,563 584
K 10,728 16,574 42,809 5,744 22,963 16,340 6,483
Ca 30,283 62,873 66,752 694,004 21,891 23,459 29,680
Ti 441 875
Mn 2,545 6,241 2,301 2,863
Fe 24,221 18,333 68,259 58,428 53,737 43,560 15,541
Cu 3,049 1,949
Pb 4,573 7,215 1,182,229 786,345
Zn 1,849
Fig. 3. Facing page: The set of model color samples, prepared according to
traditional manufacturing procedures; their compositions appear in table 2.
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
Table 2. Chemical composition of reference model samples of colorants, prepared
according to bibliographical sources and traditional manufacturing procedures
1 Cochinilla Laelia autumnalis 5%
2 Cochinilla Laelia autumnalis 5% Ca(OH)
2
(pH=13) and iron (traces)
3 Cochinilla Alum 20% Laelia autumnalis 5%
4 Cochinilla Laelia autumnalis 5% Ca(OH)
2
(pH=13)
5 Cochinilla Alum 20%
6 Cochinilla Laelia autumnalis 5% Xoconoxtle (pH=3.5)
7 Cochinilla(*) Alum 20%
8 Cochinilla Laelia autumnalis 5% Iron (traces)
9 Cochinilla Pulque Guava
10 Cochinilla Alum 20% Pulque (pH=3.5)
11 Palo de Campeche Alum 20%
12 Palo de Campeche Laelia autumnalis 5% Alum 20%
13 Palo de Campeche Laelia autumnalis 5%
14 Palo de Campeche Laelia autumnalis 5% Copper sulfate
15 Palo de Campeche Bletia campanulata 5%
16 Palo de Campeche Pulque (pH=3.5)
17 Palo de Campeche Bletia Campanulata 5% Ca(OH)
2
(pH=13)
18 Palo de Campeche Ca(OH)
2
(pH=13)
19 Palo de Campeche Tequesquite (pH=9)
20 Zacatlaxcali Alum 20%
21 Zacatlaxcali Alum 20% Laelia autumnalis 5%
22 Zacatlaxcali Laelia autumnalis 5%
23 Zacatlaxcali Laelia autumnalis 5% Copper sulfate 3%
24 Zacatlaxcali Bletia campanulata 5%
25 Zacatlaxcali Bletia campanulata 5% Pulque (pH=3.5)
26 Zacatlaxcali Bletia campanulata 5% Ca(OH)
2
(pH=13)
27 Zacatlaxcali Laelia autumnalis 5% Tannic acid
28 Indigo Laelia autumnalis 5%
29 Indigo Laelia autumnalis 5% Alum 20%
30 Indigo Laelia autumnalis 5% Palygorskite
(*) Sample 7 differed from sample 5 in the application procedure and the amount of applied colorant.
1 in figure 3; the same organic dye, cochineal, was probably used. One
more red color with a different tonality, labeled as L1-014-018v, showed
an identical FT-IR pattern, but XRF analysis showed a larger calcium
content (table 1).
The appearance of the red is similar to the color in preparation num-
ber 6 (fig. 3 and table 2), which was obtained by using lime water (i.e.
saturated calcium hydroxide solution).
Four of the six red colors described in this section were made with
the same dye (likely cochineal), and different tones were obtained with
the variation of dye content and pH changes. The color preparation tech-
niques used for the codex may be identified by performing visual and
microscopy analysis of the set of reference materials prepared according
to the traditional recipes.
However, one should note that is possible to obtain several other red
tones by using reddish palo de Campeche wood (also known as brazil-
wood). In book 11, Sahagn only reported the use of this dye to paint
rabbit skins, but this does not preclude its use on paper. Palo is a Meso-
american timber tree and its wood yields a red dye called hematoxylin,
which oxidizes to hematein to give a brilliant red color. Some of the colors
in drawings analyzed in the codex look like the model reference colors
in figure 3 that were obtained from palo de Campeche wood. (See table
2 and fig. 3.) In particular, the colors from drawings L1-014-018v (red)
and L1-024-035r (pale ochre) have tonalities slightly different from those
obtained with cochineal and quite similar to some of the colors obtained
with palo. Cochineal dye is mainly composed of carminic acid (a red glu-
cosidal hydroxyanthrapurin) that is produced by an insect (Dactylopius
coccus) to deter predation by other insects. The colorant is extracted from
the insects body and eggs. Figure 4 illustrates the chemical structures of
the dye molecules. It is clear that FT-IR analysis does not allow an easy
identification of the two molecules because they have basically the same
functional groups and all of them strongly interfere with absorption by
the papers cellulose.
Figure 3 shows that some red tones are quite similar but are obtained
by using different dyes. This is the case of samples 1 and 16, samples 6
and 18, and samples 9 and 12, respectively. The observations of these ref-
erence colors under an ultraviolet (UV) fluorescence microscope showed
significant differences between the responses of the two colors to UV
irradiation. The first two columns in figure 5 clearly showed that under
visible light (magnification 100), cochineal dye and palo appear almost
identical. Under UV irradiation, the fluorescence responses of the two
can be easily distinguished by filtration at 430 nm because their appear-
ances are totally different, allowing immediate identification of the colo-
rants. This approach is not invasive and could also be used for direct
analysis of the codex to obtain more definitive results in identification of
the organic colorants.
Most of the reds in the codex are from organic constituents. Visual
inspection of several other drawings, which were not submitted to direct
spectroscopic analysis, revealed many morphological similarities with the
examined organic red (fig. 5). However, Sahagn and his collaborators
also used certain inorganic red pigments.
Fig. 4. Molecular structures of red colorants in cochineal and Palo de
Campeche dyes.
Carminic acid
Hematoxylin
Hematein
Fig. 5. Images of reference colors observed under a microscope in visible
light mode (first and second columns) and in ultraviolet f luorescence
mode, using a filter at 430 nm (third and fourth columns).
The red colorant from the rainbow drawing labeled as L7-343-238r
showed a more complex composition (fig. 6). X-ray fluorescence analysis
revealed the presence of a good amount of sulfur and a larger amount of
calcium, as well as signals from other metals, including manganese, iron,
and copper (see table 1). In this case, the chemical analysis indicated
the use of an inorganic pigment, i.e. hematite. The presence of sulfur is
shown by XRF, and the FT-IR profile also suggested the copresence of
gypsum. We can safely conclude that hematite was applied over a gypsum
ground.
Another interesting application of an inorganic red colorant is evident
in one of the flowers depicted in folio 329 (L4-222-329r, flower number
4 in the third line). Red spots applied on the orange flower were made
by using cinnabar, as shown by XRF. It is also remarkable that the FT-IR
spectrum (not reported here) showed specific features that unambigu-
ously allowed us to discriminate between this color from the hematite and
the one from cochineal dye.
Cochineal was also used to make the violet paint. As reported in book
11 (folio 372v),
mezclando grana colorada que se llama tlapalli, con alumbre que viene
de Meztitlan y un poco de tzacuhtli, hacen un color morado que se llama
Camopalli, con que hacen las sombras los pintores.
[By mixing the cochineal, called tlapalli, with alum that comes from Mez-
titlan and a little tzacuhtli, they make a purple color called camopalli, with
which the painters make shadows.]
Analysis on the violet color used in the drawing L7-339-233r showed
exactly the same results of the red cochineal colors already described.
(See table 2 and figure 3, sample 3.)
A vivid orange was used to color some drawings. Two examples were
analyzed: the tips of the flames in the drawing from L8-358-253r and the
orange spots in the drawing from L4-166-252r. In both, lead was identi-
fied through XRF and therefore, minium pigment (Pb
3
O
4
) was used. The
S
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1
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FT-IR spectra also showed specific shapes that can unambiguously be
attributed to the minium pigment.
The best-known Mesoamerican color is undoubtedly the Maya
blue. Maya blue is obtained by fixing indigo dye, which is extracted
from the leaves of ail herbs (Indigofera suffruticosa) over palygorskite
(otherwise called attapulgite). The chemical composition of this clay
(Mg
2
Al
2
[OH]
2
Si
4
O
10
.
2
H
2
O) made its determination by XRF easy because
of the silicon, aluminum, and magnesium content. Hydroxyl groups, too,
that are present in the crystal structure of the clay can be easily detected
because of their absorption under infrared radiation, due to the stretching
of the oxygenhydrogen (OH) bonds.
It is helpful to note that Sahagn only described two blue colors. The
first (folio 369v) is called matlalli. Se hace de flores azules, color es muy
preciado y muy apacible de ver, llmase cadenillo en espaol. [They
make it from blue flowers. The color is highly prized and very pleasant
to see, and is called cadenillo in Spanish.] The second color description
(folio 371r) concerned the extraction procedure of dye from Indigofera
suffruticosa:
Hay una hierba en estas tierras que se llama xiuhquihuitl, majan esta hierba
y esprmenla el zumo, y chanlo en unos vasos. All se seca o se quaja, con
este color se tie lo azul oscuro y resplandeciente. Es color preciado.
[There is an herb in these lands that is called xiuhquihuitl; they crush it
and extract its juice, and place it in cups. There it dries. With this color
they dye things a dark, resplendent blue. It is a very precious color.]
In this last description, Sahagn is describing the extraction of indigo
dye. However, there is no mention of the use of clays to fix the dye,
according to what is widely known about Maya blue.
13
Another blue, cited
in book 11 but not accurately described, was obtained from the flowers
of the same plant from which matlalli was extracted; this blue is known
as texotli and Torres has identified the plant as Commelina celestis, com-
monly known in English as the dayflower.
13. Ovarlez et al., Indigo chemisorption in sepiolite, pp. 12431248. Snchez del
Ro et al., Microanalysis study of Maya blue pigment, pp. 16191625.
Selected blue areas were examined to see if indigo dye or Maya blue
(indigo supported by palygorskite) was used throughout the codex.
The tonalities ranged from a brilliant blue to darker hues. Two
examples of very similar colors are from the rainbow in L7-343-238r and
from the blue sky in L7-338-228v. A lighter blue color with grayish tonal-
ity from the seawater appears in drawing L11-750-214v, and two darker
colors from the water depicted in L11-776-227v and the armor of L12-
1151-447v were also analyzed.
Analysis performed through XRF on the selected drawings shows sig-
nificant differences in clay content (table 3). In the case of the blue sky
sample, a typical Maya blue is evident. In the other cases, the changes in
tonality are probably accountable to the smaller amounts of palygorskite.
Fig. 6. Rainbow in the drawing on folio L7-343-238r. Blue, green, orange,
yellow, and red colors were analyzed by means of XRF and FT-IR analysis.
Fig. 7. FT-IR spectra of two blue colorants with the same tonality from
books 11 and 12.
the sky. Less intense signals were evidenced in the seawater of drawing
L11-750-214v. On the other hand, the blue color in drawing L11-776-227v
was probably made with indigo but without palygorskite (as evidenced by
XRF). The tonality of this color is much similar to the blue of the armor
in drawing L12-1151-447v; in that case, palygorskite was used, as clearly
shown by FT-IR (fig. 7).
Scrutiny of the reference color palette samples prepared according
to the recipes in book 11 showed that indigo has a dark tone that does
not change significantly with the small amount of palygorskite described.
(Neither does the tone that might slightly depend on the amount of orchid
gum used as a binder.) Similar dark blue colors can be obtained with a
small amount of clay or wholly without clay. On the other hand, brilliant
blue colors can only be obtained by using high amounts of palygorskite to
give the classic Maya blue tone.
Arie Wallert, in his paper presented in Cancun in 1994, emphasized
that not necessarily all the painters materials are described in written
Fig. 8. Molecular structures of yellow colorants in zacatlaxcalli (carotenoid)
and xochipalli (flavonoid) dyes.
Lutein (carotenoid)
Beta () carotene (carotenoid)
Basic f lavonoid structure
The analysis of the darker blue of water (book 11, drawing L11-776-227v)
is also reported in the table; in this case, silicon is almost absent.
Microreflectance FT-IR spectra perfectly matched the XRF findings.
The main peaks at 3,616 and 3,550 cm
-1
can be ascribed to the OH
stretching mode of aluminum-coordinated hydroxyls, and to coordi-
nated and zeolitic water in palygorskite, with a contribution of the OH
stretching mode in aluminum-magnesium-hydroxyl (Al-Mg-OH).
14
These
spectral features are very clear in the blue of the painted rainbow and of
14. Suarez and Garcia-Romero, FTIR spectroscopic study of palygorskite,
pp. 154163.
sources, and that the sources should be read and interpreted with care.
15

This is the case of the blue colors in the codex. In fact, most of them were
obtained by using clays to support the indigo dye, with different hues
resulting from changes in the amount of palygorskite. However, in book
11 there is no mention of this procedure.
Sahagn and his associates described two yellow pigments in book 11.
In folio 369r, the author reports that
15. Wallert, On some natural organic yellow colorants in Aztec codices, pp. 653662.
Fig. 9. Drawing L8-358-253r. Orange, green, ochre, yellow-brown (woman
skin), and brown (man skin) colors were examined by means of XRF
and FT-IR analysis.
Al color amarillo fino le llaman Xuchipalli, que quiere decir, tintura de
f lores amarillas, este color amarillo traen y crian en tierras calientes.
[They call the fine yellow color xochipalli, which is to say, dye from yellow
f lowers. This color is brought here and grows in hot lands.]
On the verso side of the folio, zacatlaxcalli dye is described thus:
A un color amarillo claro llaman Zacatlaxcalli, que quiere decir pan de
hierba porque se a masa de unas hierbas amarillas muy delgadas, venden
en los tianguis, son como tortillas amarillas, usan las tortillas para teir de
amarillo o para hacer color amarillo para pintar.
[There is a clear yellow color called zacatlaxcalli, which is to say herb
bread because they mix it from some very slender yellow herbs; they sell it
in the markets, like yellow tortillas, and they use the tortillas to dye yellows
or to make yellow color for painting.]
In his paper, Wallert provided plentiful information about the chem-
istry of these dyes (fig. 8). Zacatlaxcalli is a carotenoid dye giving a strong
yellow, sometimes shifting to orange, obtained from the stems of various
species of Dodder (Cuscuta). Xochipalli, the yellow mentioned previ-
ously, is extracted from flowers of the homonymous plant, known in Eng-
lish as orange cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus), and is mainly a flavonoid-
based color.
X-ray fluorescence analysis performed on the yellow star in drawing
L7-341-236r showed high amounts of potassium and sulfur. Energy-disper-
sive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis that was performed by CSGI (Universit
di Firenze) on the model reference samples demonstrated that samples
containing zacatlaxcalli, associated with alum, showed a similar pattern,
with high potassium and sulfur content. On the other hand, FT-IR did
not seem very useful in examining those same specimens because all the
signals from zacatlaxcalli overlap with those of paper. Unfortunately, this
study did not include xochipalli as a reference material. The hypothesis
was that the artists used zacatlaxcalli, but additional examinations should
be performed to confirm this assumption and exclude the presence of
xochipalli.
Organic yellow was used throughout the codex, alone or combined
with other pigments. The drawing labeled L8-358-253r showed rich com-
el color amarillo zacatlazcali mezclan con azul claro que se llama texotli y
con tzacuhtli, hacen un color verde oscuro que se llama yiapalli.
[they mix the zacatlaxcalli yellow with a clear blue called texotli and with
tzacuhtli (orchid gum); they call this dark green yiapalli.]
A lighter green is made simply by adding a greater amount of yellow:
Mezclando color azul claro, que llaman texotli, con amarillo de zacatlax-
calli, echando ms parte de amarillo, hacen color verde claro fino que se
llama quiltic.
[Mixing clear blue, called texotli, with yellow from zacatlaxcalli, (and) add-
ing more yellow to the mix, they make a fine light green that is called quiltic.]
Table 3. X-ray f luorescence (XRF) spectroscopy analysis on blue pigments.
(Numbers reported are particle counts.)

Element
L7-338-228v
Blue Sky
L7-343-238r
Rainbow
L11-750-214v
Seawater
L11-776-227v
Water
Mg 321 173
Al 3,773 1,152 519
Si 44,570 14,033 7,003 826
S 1,449 2,646 738 1,040
Cl 1,236 1,640 2,996 2,144
K 32,340 13,252 10,394 7,301
Ca 69,308 42,490 42,291 39,400
Ti 7,477 2,130
Mn 13,065 4,342 4,248 1,769
Fe 171,374 43,777 27,023 13,792
Pb 20,552
Table 4. X-ray f luorescence (XRF) spectroscopy analysis on selected yellow and
green pigments. (Numbers reported are particle counts.)

Element
L7-341-236r
Star
L8-358-253r
Man Skin
L8-358-253r
Woman Skin
L8-358-253r
Green
L8-358-253r
Ochre
L7-343-238r
Green
Al 800 1,158 1,422 762 690
Si 1,060 2,355 1,072 5,922 1,538 8,483
S 34,524 3,065 10,920 20,415 7,346 71,883
Cl 944 2,945 1,737 2,855 2,243
K 71,003 20,790 56,959 9,785 15,709 6,855
Ca 51,043 42,143 46,763 147,817 98,256 572,993
Ti 2,003 1,407 864
Mn 1,270 3,112 2,003 3,188 5,700 3,903
Fe 11,609 23,392 31,828 36,048 873,101 25,974
As 33,404 25,865 28,448
Sr 803
Hg 2,383
Pb 14,359 1,444 31,303
Cu 2,155
Zn 3,135
Ba 9,935
binations of yellow tones obtained by using zacatlaxcalli and inorganic
pigments, too (fig. 9). The yellow tone of woman skin (in the first char-
acter from the top) differed from the brown skin of the man (the charac-
ter with the naked shoulder). Both colors showed significant amounts of
aluminum, potassium, and sulfur, as in the preparation of zacatlaxcalli
yellow with alum. The woman skin showed larger amounts of iron and
manganese (the latter probably as an iron oxide impurity).
The ochre color used to paint the roof of the building in the same
drawing has a similar tonality to the man skin. In this case, XRF evi-
denced a large amount of iron and surprisingly, arsenic and sulfur. Alu-
minum was not present. In this case, arsenic sulfide, or orpiment, a well-
known inorganic yellow color, was probably combined with iron oxide to
get a brown ochre tone. Orpiment was also used to make the green color
of the feathers in the same drawing, and was found in the green of the
rainbow in L7-343-238r, as well. Green colors, according to the descrip-
tions in book 11, folio 372v, were created using the yellow dye from the
zacatlaxcalli plant. This is reported twice: a dark green was produced when
Investigations performed through FT-IR on certain green colors from
the codex (L11-799-240r, L7-343-238r, L1-024-035r, L8-358-253r), showed
signals from clays. Therefore, we can conclude that Maya blue was used
in mixture with yellow.
THE CONSERVATION STATUS
OF THE FLORENTINE CODEX
In addition to the chemical characterization of pigments and colorants
used by Sahagn and his colleagues, this study allowed the determina-
tion of the conservation status of the manuscript through careful scrutiny
of the inks and paper under an optical microscope. Direct and specific
measurements were made in order to characterize the integrity of the cel-
lulose fibers in the paper. It is well known that the mechanical properties
of paper (i.e. resistance to folding and tensile strength) depend on the
degree of polymerization (DP) of its cellulose.
16
This parameter quantifies
the length of the cellulose polymer, which is comprised of thousands
of glucose units bonded together to form a linear chain. Therefore, the
integrity of the molecules can be expressed in DP units. The degradation
16. Orr et al. Degradation of Cotton Fibers and Yarns by Heat and Moisture, pp.
399406.
Fig. 10. Heat f low versus temperature curves obtained through
differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) on mucilage films from orchid
bulbs. Glass-transition temperatures are reported.
of paper is mainly caused by acidity, which at room temperature catalyzes
the depolymerization of cellulose through a hydrolysis mechanism.
17

Acidity originates from several factors in the papermaking technique,
but also from environmental pollution. For this reason, it is very diffi-
cult to remove the causes of an increase in acidity. Oxidation of cellu-
lose is another important contribution to degradation, the main agent
being the iron-gall ink used in handwritten manuscripts.
18
The Floren-
tine Codex shows clear degradation effects from ink. X-ray fluorescence
analysis evinced the presence of iron spread over the whole pages, due to
ion migration. In an acidic environment, iron catalyzes the oxidation of
paper, and in some cases within the codex, where the amount of ink is
greater (i.e. in the capital letter at the beginning of each chapter), paper
perforation phenomena are visible. To determine the acidity (or pH level)
of the paper, its degree of polymerization, and its amount of oxidized cel-
lulose all require invasive and destructive measurements that are impos-
sible to use on the Florentine Codex. However, the advanced deterioration
of the paper from the inks and the characteristic smell of acidic paper sug-
gest that an accurate characterization of the codexs pages should be done
to identify the best procedures to use to deacidify them and stop the ink
corrosion process, which is accelerated by paper acidity. In this context,
a preventive deacidification should be considered to arrest the current
processes of decay and prevent further damage. In order to attain optimal
conservation conditions, we recommend a paper pH of around 77.5 to
preserve the manuscript and inhibit the mentioned degradation mecha-
nisms. Such a pH can be safely achieved through nonaqueous deacidifi-
cation, using calcium or magnesium hydroxide nanoparticles.
19
Despite these observations, the painted drawings themselves, with
special emphasis on the colorants, are in a very good conservation sta-
tus. This point is interesting and stimulates certain hypotheses. It is well
known that most of the colors were applied using gum extracted from
orchid bulbs,
20
likely Bletia campanulata and Laelia autumnalis orchids,
17. Whitmore and Bogaard, The Effect of Oxidation on Paper, pp. 2645.
18. Neevel and Mensch, The behaviour of iron and sulphuric acid during iron-gall ink
corrosion, pp. 528533.
19. Giorgi et al., Nanotechnologies for conservation of Cultural Heritage, pp. 8198
8203; Nanoparticles of Mg(OH)
2
: Synthesis and application to paper conservation, pp. 8495
8501.
20. Gonzlez Tirado, The Tzauhtli Glue.
which were also used to prepare some of the model reference materials
presented in table 2.
Pena, Capella, and Gonzlez determined the chemical composition
of the mucilage from orchid bulbs, revealing that its principal compo-
nents are sugars: mono- and oligosaccharides (the latter mainly di- and
trisaccharides).
21
These findings prompted us to formulate some hypoth-
eses about the role that these saccharides might have in the preservation
of the colorants.
It is widely recognized that sugars presenting high glass-transition
temperatures
22
in particular trehalose (disaccharyde), maltotriose (tri-
saccharide), and maltohexaose (hexasaccharide)act as bioprotective
agents for living organisms exposed to extreme environmental conditions
such as low temperatures and low water content.
23
Differential scanning
calorimetry (DSC) is a technique particularly useful to characterize the
thermal behavior of materials, and in the present study was used to detect
the presence of possible glass transitions associated with sugars. Saccha-
rides and polysaccharides present glass-transition temperatures that are
particularly high (>100C), showing a shoulder on their thermal anal-
ysis spectra similar to those reported in figure 10 for the two orchids.
This property is related to their ability to bind water, decreasing the pres-
ence of free water. For this reason saccharides act as a bioprotective for
paper, since the lack of free water removes a primary agent involved in
the papers degradation mechanisms. Plants living in a dry environment
can retain water to live, and living organisms exposed to very low tem-
peratures inhibit freezing mainly because the water they contain, which
is bound to the glassy structures of the plants saccharides, cannot dif-
fuse at all and the transport properties related to water mobility are pre-
vented. Similar mechanisms could explain the preservation of colorants
in the manuscript. Strong interactions between the sugars and water may
explain the lack of alterations of the delicate dye molecules used in the
codexa result of their being encapsulated and therefore protected from
21. Pena, Capella, and Gonzlez, Characterization and Identification of the Muci-
lage, pp. 713717.
22. Glass-transition temperature is the temperature at which a glass-forming liquid
changes to an amorphous or glassy solid.
23. Green and Austen Angell, Phase Relations and Vitrification, pp. 28802882;
Furuki, Effect of molecular structure on thermodynamic properties of carbohydrates, pp.
441450.
the diffuse presence of iron ions and the acidity of the degraded manu-
scripts paper. The chemical break-down reactions are slowed because
of the frozen state of their water molecules. Orchids also protect the
paper from degradation, since the acidic catalytic reaction arising from
the mobility of protons in water is strongly reduced when orchid mucilage
binds the water in a glassy state, causing very poor proton mobility.
We therefore speculate that the very good conservation of some colors
of the Florentine Codex drawings is related to the presence of saccharides
in the orchid bulb extracts, which act as protective agents to the colors.
Additional work is necessary to provide clearer evidence in support of our
hypothesis.
CONCLUSIONS
For the first time, the origins of the colorants in the Florentine Codex have
been studied. We found that the descriptions of the pigments used in the
codex and shown in book 11 correspond to most of the colorants found
in the images investigated. However, the blue colorants were obtained
by using a procedure that was probably considered so obvious that it was
not mentioned in the descriptions in book 11. The codex shows incipient
deterioration, mainly due to the iron from the ink used in the writing,
which, over the years, has diffused throughout the pages. Despite the
probable acidic characteristics acquired by the paper of the pages, the
pigments used for the drawings are in a very good state of conservation.
This is probably due to the presence of orchid extracts within the paints,
as suggested in book 11. A better knowledge of the acidity and the likely
presence of orchid extracts requires direct sampling from the paper.
A deacidification procedure is recommended in order to bequeath
this important work of art more securely to future generations.
In Nepapan Xochitl:
The Power of Flowers in the
Works of Sahagn
*
The Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espaa, a work that came
to us in its most complete version as the Florentine Codex, is one of many
writings that Fray Bernardino de Sahagn conceived as a collaboration
with his religious order and his king in their joint duty of facing the
Devil in the New World.
1
With the Historia, Sahagn tried to show
other preachers the reaches of idolatry among the Nahua, and with his
doctrinal writings he tried to provide a cure for what he believed was
a terrible sickness. The Historia was the seine, or red barredera,
created to separate and register all the words of the Nhuatl language
and their intimate significations; the doctrinal texts were the proof that
those manners of speech could be used in the translation of the Christian
message. The Historia was the account of the value, or quilate (literally,
carat), of the Mexican people; the doctrinal works were the bet on that
quilate as the cornerstone of a renewed Christian society.
* This paper, deeply inspired by Louise Burkharts works, is at the same time a small
review of a previous study about the significance of f lowers in Sahagns writings (especially
in the Psalmodia Christiana) and the starting point of further research concerning the f lower
world in the doctrinal art and literature of sixteenth-century Mexico.
1. In addition to the Florentine Codex, we can highlight, among these writings, frag-
ments of preparatory versions of the Historia general held today in the Codices matritenses, the
Sermones de dominicas y de sanctos (a large compilation of sermons for Sundays), the Postilla
(a translation and explanation of the Gospels and Epistles for Sundays), the Colloquios (a doc-
trinal dialogue between two groups: the first twelve Franciscans who arrived in New Spain and
some priests of the ancient Aztec religion), and the Psalmodia Christiana (a collection of songs
to be performed by the Nahua on holidays, according to their ancient song-dance tradition, and
the only such work published in Sahagns times).
BERENICE ALCNTARA ROJAS
Instituto de Investigaciones Histricas
Fig. 1. Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espaa, book 11, chapter 7,
paragraph 9, dedicated to descriptions of f lowering trees. Facsimile edition
by the Secretaria de Gobernacin, Repblica Mexicana, of MS. Med. Palat.
218220, vol. 3, fol. 187v188r, from the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.
BERENICE ALCNTARA ROJ AS 108 THE POWER OF FLOWERS 109
However, in the works of Sahagn there appear other interests and
meanings besides those imagined by Fray Bernardino, because all of these
writings were born from the complex and still misunderstood collaboration
of several persons, with their efforts, skills, and creative processes. First,
the Historia general was the result of a process of compiling information
that went through several stages between 1536 and 1569, and between
Tlatelolco, Tepepulco, and Mexico City. The communicative interactions
between Sahagn and the Nahua elders he decided to interrogate were
always mediated by a group of literate Nahua, proud heirs of the legacy
of their own people and proficient participants in the cultural tradition
inculcated into them by the Franciscans fathers at the College of the
Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco.
2
Second, all the works of Sahagn were the
outcome of long, simultaneous, and very intricate processes of creation
in which the information obtained for the Historia was reelaborated, and
in which was composed a large corpus of lengthy doctrinal texts. Here
again, close to Sahagn stood the same literate Nahua, composing and
reviewing the Nhuatl texts for the Historia and the doctrinal works,
as well as the professional scribes who placed in good letter the final
versions of all these writings, the tlacuilo (or native painters) who added
beautiful paintings to the Primeros memoriales around 1558 (today in the
Cdices matritenses) and to the Florentine Codex around 15751577, and
the Nahua printers assistants who prepared the Psalmodia Christiana for
publication in Pedro Ochartes workshop in 1583. Therefore, the works of
Sahagn must be seen and studied as a major collective and intercultural
enterprise.
In this paper, I will review some of the contexts in which flowers
appear in works of Sahagn, as an attempt to show the interconnections
among these works, and that inside all of them are hidden the voices, not
always concordant, of the different men responsible for their creation.
* * *
Flowers, or to be more specific, the blossoms of certain plants, were
very significant for the ancient Nahua, and consequently, they had a
2. As Federico Navarrete has pointed out, the interactions among all these men must not
always have been easy, even if all of them shared the interest in working together. Navarrete,
La sociedad indgena en la obra de Sahagn, pp. 97116.
Fig. 2. Black-ink line-drawings of plant profiles. Facsimile ed., MS. Med.
Palat. 218220, vol. 3, fol. 193v.
line-drawings of profiles of entire plants (fig. 2); b) emphasis on depicting
generic aspects of the flowers (fig. 3); and c) schematic depiction of the
flowers in their different stages of development (fig. 4).
4
The familiarity of these painters with the botanic conventions of
representation is not surprising because in the scriptorium of the college
of Tlatelolco had been painted, two decades earlier, the medicinal
herbarium known as the Codice de la CruzBadiano (fig. 5). Besides,
it is quite possible that some of the painters who collaborated in the
Florentine Codex had also participated in the nature compendium of
Francisco Hernndez, Philip IIs protomedic, as well as in the garden
4. One must not forget that in some of these drawings, the painters added pictographic
resources to indicate the colors of the f lowers, as Diana Magaloni points out in her work in
this volume.
place in the great encyclopedia designed by Sahagn. In particular, in
book eleven of the Historia general, the eighth through tenth paragraphs
of chapter seven are dedicated to descriptions of flowers and flowering
trees (fig. 1). These sections were composed according to the model of
the Renaissance herbarium.
3
Hence, the information presented followed
this order: Nhuatl name of the species, its synonyms, its morphological
characteristics, its habitat, its properties, and some of its uses. In the same
way, the native painters who illustrated these flowers adopted the botanic
conventions of their time to create images that assisted recognition of the
species in the real world, applying different techniques: a) black-ink
3. Pablo Escalante has identified some structural and formal links between book 11 of
the Florentine Codex and the Hortus sanitatis of Johann von Cube, as well as the De Materia
Medica of Dioscorides, particularly the 1566 Castilian edition of the Dioscorides by Andres
Laguna, commissioned by Philip II. Escalante, The Painters of Sahagns Manuscripts,
pp. 175176.
Fig. 3. Black-ink line-drawing emphasizing generic aspects of f lower. MS.
Med. Palat. 218220, book 11, fol. 190r. Fig. 4. Schematic depiction of f lowers in different stages of development.
Facsimile ed., MS. Med. Palat. 218220, book 11, fol. 186v.
signs of the divinatory calendar (fig. 9), in book two in many ornamental
motives framing the texts and images in which the ancient deities were
condemned, and in book eleven as the sources of medicinal treatments
and pigments. They also appear, as Magaloni and Baglionis team has
discovered, as the actual sources of the colorants with which many images
of the Florentine Codex were made. More importantly, throughout all
these occurrences and contexts, flowers appear in the Florentine Codex
as the primary materials of apparel and insignia worn and held by nobles,
frescoes of the lower cloister of the Augustinian monastery at Malinalco
(fig. 6).
5
However, I do not attempt to go further in the analysis of these
botanic conventions. Instead, I want to explore some fragments of the
complex net of signification surrounding two flowers whose images in the
Codex break entirely with naturalistic depiction. I refer to the images of
the cacahuaxochitl (Lat., Quararibea funebris) and the izquixochitl (Lat.,
Boureira huanita) located in the Historia general, book eleven, chapter
seven, paragraph nine (figs. 7, 8). To do so, I will make a journey into the
flowers of two different works associated with Sahagn.
In addition to the sections of book eleven already mentioned, flowers
appear in book four of the Florentine Codex as one of the twenty day-
5. Favrot Peterson, Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco, pp. 5256.
Fig. 5. Cacahuaxochitl. De la Cruz-Badiano Codex, fol. 53v, from de la
Cruz, Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, 1991.
Fig. 6. Xiloxochitl. Malinalco (Estado de Mxico), monastery, lower cloister.
Fig. 7. Cacahuaxochitl. MS. Med. Palat. 218220, vol. 3, fol. 188v.
Fig. 8. Izquixochitl. Facsimile ed., MS. Med. Palat. 218220, vol. 3, fol. 189r.
rulers, warriors, priests, god-impersonators, singers, and many other
Nahua during the song-dance rituals that took place in almost all of the
ancient religious festivities (figs. 10, 11).
Such song-dance attire was so important that there were artists and
ritual specialists involved in its invention: the women who made the
clothing; the amanteca, or feather artists, who gave form to the feather
garments; and the xochichiuhque, or flower makers, who were the
professionals in charge of cutting, handling, and interlacing flowers
and otherwise turning them into ritual settings, bouquets, mosaics, and
garlands. These specialists also performed the service of offering their
flowery creations to the participants of song-dance rituals and other
festivities. A description of this flower art appears in book eleven, chapter
seven, paragraph eleven (fig. 12), just after the depiction of the flowers
themselves, in a manner similar to the presentation and description of
the painted art. In this case we find, side by side, images illustrating the
principal stages of this craftwork along with a first-person statement in
Nhuatl:
I offer flowers. I plant flowers. I assemble flowers [...] I pick the different
flowers. I remove f lowers. I seek f lowers [...]
I make f lowers. I make f lower necklaces, f lower garlands, paper of f lowers,
bouquets, f lower shields, hand f lowers [...]
I smell them. I cause one to smell something [...]
I provide one with f lowers. I make f lowers, or I give them to someone who
will observe a feast day [....]
6
This floral work was as highly valued in the sixteenth century as it
had been in pre-Conquest times, as we can see in the images from the
Florentine Codex in which a sixteenth-century flower maker offers his
work to a Nahua noble (fig. 13). The practice of adorning sacred spaces,
images, and ritual participants with flowers was never forbidden.
7
Instead,
it was encouraged within Catholic contexts, and even today this work
remains as an essential ritual specialization among Nahua peoples (fig.
14).
Turning back to the song-dance rituals of pre-Conquest times, one
must point out the very different natures of the rituals: some involved
multitudes, and others were the privilege of a few; some occurred as the
climax of major annual public festivities, while others were for the simple
leisure of the elite. However, all of them were offered to the gods as an
act of reciprocity and during all of them, the complex settings, elaborate
apparel, choreography, repetitive sounds, intricate song texts, flowers, and
feathers combined to make possible, via interrelated symbolical codes,
the communion with other realms of reality, the manifestation of the
divine through the human, the reconfiguration of time-space, and the
reestablishment of social and political hierarchies. The song-dance
rituals were a multifaceted phenomenon in which the power of flora was
exploited to lead the sacred through the face of the earth, as evident in the
6. Florentine Codex (facsimile ed., 1979), book 11, chap. 7, paragraph 11, fols. 198v199r.
Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.
7. This was so, even if the practice seemed suspiciously related to idolatry for some priests,
like the Dominican father Diego Duran: [Before,] they used to hold f lowers in their hands as
they do today in some solemnities, particularly in the feasts of the Ascension and of the Holy
Ghost around May, and in some others that correspond to their ancient ones. I see this and
I remain silent, because no one notices it; then, I also hold my f lower staff, as everyone else,
even if I consider our great ignorance; thus there could be evil in it. Duran, Historia de las
Indias, vol. 2, p. 51.
Fig. 9. One Flower day-sign. Facsimile ed., MS. Med. Palat. 218220,
vol. 2, fol. 19r.
following fragment of the chant for the feast of Atamalcualiztli preserved
in the Primeros memoriales, and in book two of the Florentine Codex:
My heart is a f lower bursting into blossom []
Our mother has arrived,
The goddess has arrived,
The goddess Tlazolteotl has come.
Cinteotl was born in Tamoanchan,
In the place where the f lowers stand erect []
Now the sun will rise,
The dawn will arise.
Let all the various quechol birds sip nectar at the place where the f lowers
stand erect []
Let there be rejoicing by the f lowering tree various quechol birds.
Hear the quechol bird,
Our god speaks,
Hear it,
His quechol bird speaks.
Are they perhaps our dead who play the f lutes?
Is he perhaps the one who will be chased with the blowgun?
Only with my f lowers shall I fan the wind.
With the tonacaxochitl,
With the izquixochitl, at the place where the f lowers stand erect [....]
8
8. Florentine Codex (facsimile ed., 1979), appendix of book 2, fol. 142. Among other frag-
ments in which the connection of f lowers with the song-dance ritual is apparent, I present this
quotation about the One Flower feast:
Also it was said that when One Flower set in, then everywhere began [a dance], spread
all around; always there was dancing, always there continued, and was always held, a dance, a
procession. But only Moctezuma in his own heart knew [...] for how many days he established
his dance.
Fig. 11. Impersonator of Huitzilopochtli adorned with f lowers. Facsimile
ed., MS. Med. Palat. 218220, vol. 1, fol. 60v.
Fig. 10. Merchants offering f lowers for song-dance rituals. Facsimile ed.,
MS. Med. Palat. 218220, vol. 2, fol. 30v.
Atamalcualiztli (the eating of water tamales) was a festival dedicated
to Cinteotl, the maize god, and was celebrated by the Nahua of the Valley
of Mexico every eight years. For this feast, the Nahua prepared plain
tamales by simply steaming them, which allowed the sacred maize to
rest instead of suffering the usual rigors of the nixtamalization process.
9

Among other solemnities, they performed a ritual in which all the gods
And in this way it might be known that the dance had been arranged: two poles with f low-
ers were set up; they remained at the palace, at the place of the tlatoani. Thus was made known
that this was the feast of the f lower, that there would be f lowery enjoyment, f lowery rejoicing.
Florentine Codex (facsimile ed., 1979), book 4, chap. 7, fols. 18v19r
9. Nixtamalization is the process of soaking maize or corn fermentation in hot, limed
water to soften it and remove the outer husk as preparation for grinding it and making tortillas.
Fig. 13. Flower maker giving adornments to a noble. MS. Med. Palat. 218
220, vol. 3, fol. 199r.
danced via their ixiptla, or impersonators, coming down to earth in the
guise of hummingbirds, butterflies, honeybees, and other flying creatures
to suck the nectar of the tree in which grew the flowers of different kinds
(fig. 15). The ritual actions of Atamalcualiztli recreated, as some scholars
have pointed out, a mythical time-space known as Tamoanchanthe
place of the flowering tree or the place where the flowers stand erect.
10

Tamoanchan was one Nahua manifestation of what has been called the
flower world, a conceptual unit shared by many peoples from the Uto-
Aztecan family. The flower world was the upper realm of reality, a place
full of light, heath, fire, war, singing, and dancinga world in which forces
10. See Lpez Austin, Tamoanchan y Tlalocan, and Graulich, Mitos y rituales.
Fig. 12. Xochichiuhque or f lower makers. Facsimile ed., MS. Med. Palat.
218220, vol. 3, fol. 198v.
house of the sun), where one of the souls of men who died in war and
of women who died in childbirth went to help the sun in his daily battle
against darkness.
13
This precinct was sometimes described as a desert of
13. In pre-Conquest times, according to Lpez Austin, the Nahua distinguished at least
three souls, or entidades anmicas, as main components of the human being: the tonalli, the
ihiyotl, and the teyolia; each of them was connected with diverse forces of the cosmos. After
ones death, these souls separated and experienced different destinies. Only the teyolia made
the voyage into the underworld, the upperworld, or the waterworld, according to divine choice
and the circumstances of demise. See Lpez Austin, Cuerpo humano e ideologa, vol. 2, Las
concepciones de los antiguos nahuas, chaps. 5 and 6.
Fig. 15. Atamalcualiztli feast. Cdice Matritense del Palacio Real de
Madrid, fol. 254r, from Sahagn, Primeros memoriales, facsimile ed., 1993.
and powers manifested themselves among humankind through colored
flowers and other brightly colored and iridescent natural phenomena.
11

For the Nahua, this flower world was a place of origin, the place
where the gods were created and where they generated the movement and
combination of forces that made earthly life possible.
12
At the same time,
this flower world was a time-space of destiny. In the Historia general, we
find a report of the existence of a place known as Tonatiuh Ichan (the
11. Hill, The Flower-world of Old Uto-Aztecan, pp. 117144.
12. Lpez Austin, Tamoanchan y Tlalocan, chap. II.
Fig. 14. Mayordomos (ritual custodians) attired with f lower adornments.
Alta Puebla, Santa Cruz feast, 2007.
were described as the place of the different kinds of flowers (nepapan
xochitl). One of the most frequent Nahua epithets referring to the upper
world, as it can be seen in many chants of ancient tradition:
Let there be song with f lowers, let it be said, oh my younger brothers!
The inebriating f lowers have arrived right here.
Comes the intoxicating poyomahtli f lower, comes swelling.
Let the f lowers arrive right here.
Only the rejoicing f lowers disperse away, shake away.
They are indeed the different kinds of f lowers.
The drum resounds. Let there be dancing.
15
Nevertheless, the richest and most overwhelming expression of this
flower world does not appear in the Historia general, but in various
15. Ma xochicuicoya ma ihtoa nichuana ayyahue teyhuinti xochitl aoyano yehcoc
ye nica poyomaxahuallan timaliuhtihuitz ayyo. / Ma xochitl oyecoc ye nican ayyahue an
tlaahuixochitla moyahuaya motzetzeloa anca o yehatl in nepapan xochitl ayio. an comoni
huehuetl ma ya nehtotilo et. Bierhorst, Cantares Mexicanos, p. 226.
heath and war, and others as a flowery realm where warriors experienced
transfiguration into birds with iridescent feathers:
And when they had been there for four years, then they transformed into
precious birds, hummingbirds, xochitototl birds, totocoztli birds [], chalky
butterf lies [], who went sucking [nectar] everywhere. And also they came
here to the earth; they came to suck from the different kinds of f lowers:
the equimitl, or the tzonpanquahuitl, the xiloxochitl, the tlacoxiloxochitl.
14
We can recognize this realm as the same locus where Cinteotl was
born according to the chant for Atamalculiztli, because both of them
14. Florentine Codex (facsimile ed., 1979), book 3, appendix, fol. 29r.
Fig. 17. Cacaloxochitl (Lat., Plumeria rubra).
Fig. 18. Cacaloxochitl.
Fig. 16. Flowery heaven. Malinalco monastery, vault of lower cloister.
May our hearts bloom with the red tecomaxochitl, with the eloxochitl!
Red tecomaxochitl lie dawning with roses there on the mountaintop.
A great marvel happened there to Gods loved one, to our father Saint
Francis!
17
On the Day of Saint Bernardine
Let us honor the cypress tree of quetzal feathers,
The silk cotton tree of trogon feathers, which our lord God caused to
sprout: he, Saint Francis.
Throughout the world [its] branches, [its] shadows, shade all the children
of the Holy Church.
And in its shade, in its leaf, we people of New Spain are happy here. We
rejoice.
17. Ibid., p. 98. I take here Burkharts translation, with only the change of f lower names,
which I prefer to maintain in their original Nhuatl forms.
sixteenth-century Christian doctrinal writings, among which are found
the Nhuatl songs of Sahagns Psalmodia Christiana, as Louise Burkhart
has indicated.
16
On the Day of the Stigmata of Blessed Francis
The various kinds of f lowers lie giving off much fragrance.
In eloxochitl, in cacahuaxochitl, in mecaxochitl, lie extended over all the
land. Alleluia!
The cacahuaxochitl, the colored izquixochitl, spread about sparking, lie
blossoming. Alleluia! Alleluia!
They stand bending with quetzal feather dew, there on the mountaintop,
in the place called Mount La Verna.
May your hearts be filled, you children!
16. Burkhart, Flowery Heaven, pp. 89109.
Fig. 19. Xiloxochitl (Lat., Pseudobombax ellipticum). Fig. 20. Xiloxochitl. MS. Med. Palat. 218220, book 11, fol. 191v.
They spread about giving off warmth. They lie extended over all the land,
scented and fragrant.
20
The creation of this flowery garden, where Saint Francis unites with
Jesus Christ and where the saint appears sometimes as a precious tree
and others as the xochimanqui, or flower offerer designated by God, is
a testimony of the convergence and interpenetration of several ideas
and representations of heaven whose origins can be traced to different
cultures and continents. First, this flowery garden is heir of the long
process that led, in Western Christianity, to the superposition of various
20. Burkhart, Flowery Heaven, pp. 9899. Burkharts translation, with only the
change of f lower names, which I prefer to maintain in their original Nhuatl forms.
All the various f lowers of heaven waft [their scent] to it.
All the diverse precious stones of heaven grow as its fruits.
The yolloxochitl, the teuizquixochitl, the cacahuaxochitl, the eloxochitl,
the tecomaxochitl, the red omixochitl, all are arched there, scented,
scattered wide.
18
On the Day of the Virgin Saint Clare
May she be marveled at, may she be praised, the maidenly elder sister of
our lord Jesus Christ! Various f lowers lie together, lie gathered there!
The very fragrant and wonderful f lowery green water spreads about,
f lowing wondrously over them, spreads about gushing.
It stands, going about in all directions.
Our lords walled garden is watered with it.
There our lord appointed his precious Saint Francis. He is his gardener,
his f lorist!
19

Our lords walled garden is walled all with precious stones, and it is
encrusted with gold!
His enclosed garden has an entrance in only one place. Its door is of
pearl.
The stewards who are on guard there are arraying for war.
The f lowers that lie growing there are the sunshine of our lord Jesus
Christ.
He loves them dearly, he tends them carefully, especially the heavenly
f lower, his precious Saint Clare!
There our lords f lowery mountain lies visible, lies giving off warmth, lies
dawning. Its fragrance, its emanation, its scent lies reaching far, lies
spreading over all the land.
The red omixochitl, the jade yexochitl, the red rose, the red tecomaxochitl,
lie blossoming preciously, lie f laming, lie waving, lie dripping with
golden dew.
The rose, the dark red one, the pale one, the red ihuixochitl, the
teucuitlaxochitl, lie bending with quetzal feather dew.
18. Sahagn, Psalmodia Christiana, p. 155156. This is Andersons translation, with only
the change of f lower names, which I prefer to maintain in their original Nhuatl forms.
19. Ixuchipixcatzi, ixuchimacantzi (his f lower keeper, his f lower offerer).
Fig. 21. Huacalxochitl (Lat., Philodendron mexicanum). De la Cruz
Badiano Codex, fol. 18v.
altered states of consciousness, making possible a communication with
supernatural powers and realms. Among these flowers we can count the
cacaloxochitl (Lat., Plumeria rubra; figs. 17, 18); the yolloxochitl (Talauma
mexicana); the eloxochitl (Magnolia schiedanae); the tecomaxochitl
(Solandra maxima); the xiloxochitl (Pseudobombax ellipticum; figs. 19,
20); and the huacalxochitl, (Philodendron mexicanum, fig. 21). Of course,
too, there are the cacahuaxochitl (Quararibea funebris; fig. 22), and the
izquixochitl (Beureria huanita; fig. 23), those two flowers whose images
I pointed out at the beginning of this paper. The cacahuaxochitl and the
izquixochitl stand out, too, as the only white flowers of this group, and as
those whose names most frequently appear together as a diphrase in the
corpus of cantares as an immediate reference to the flower world.
21
Coming back to the images of the cacahuaxochitl and the izquixochitl
in the Florentine Codex, one may suggest that the tlacuilo who drew them
chose to outline them so differently because the two flowers, as a pair,
were a paradigmatic symbol of the upper realm, that flowery garden that
was an entity full of both convergent and contradictory meanings for the
Christian Nahua of the sixteenth century. In the case of the cacahuaxochitl
(see fig. 7), the Nahua painter selected the tree archetypea tree that
sinks its roots into the depths of the earth and projects its branches to the
sky. It is a tree full of insects and butterflies sipping nectar from its flowers,
just like the descending gods of the Atamalcualiztli feast, and the dead
warriors of the House of the Sun. Yet this tree, which stands sheltering
these two flower makers, also evokes a very complex Christian imagery
concerning the origins of human kind, the transition from a pagan past to
a Christian present, and the possibility of everlasting redemption.
22

In the case of the izquixochitl (see fig. 8), the tlacuilo chose the
figure of a four-cornered garden, enclosing four trees and four rivers. It
is a garden that is at the same time the flower world of the Nahua and
the Christian paradise, in which rabbits and deer roam as a sign of its
heavenly condition, and in accordance with native cosmic geometrics.
23

However, of these two paradigmatic images, the flower world appears just
21. Sautron, In izquixochitl in cacahuaxochitl, pp. 243264.
22. Russo, El renacimiento vegetal, pp. 539.
23. The words rabbit and deer constitute a diphrase in Nhuatl, referring to
the periphery and its instability, and also to the sun and the moon (the latter in its
erratic character). See Burkhart, Moral Deviance, pp. 107139; and Lpez Aus-
tin, Los dichos, pp. 4953.
notions about paradise, among them the Garden of Eden of Genesis, the
New Jerusalem of the book of Revelations, and the Hortus conclusus of
the Song of Songs or Canticles, this last an important flowery symbol of
Marys purity and of the redemptive character of the Catholic Church.
Second, this flower garden was possible thanks to a conjunction that
occurred in New Spain, within different doctrinal arts, of that square and
flowery conception of Paradise (with its roots in the Old Testament) and
certain native conceptions of the universe as a four-cornered place whose
upper realm was a flowery space full of light, song-dance, and birdlike
transfiguration of the dignified dead (fig. 16).
As I try to show here, it is the sixteenth-century Christian Nhuatl
songs (preserved today mostly in the Psalmodia Christiana and the
Cantares mexicanos) that reveal the nature of the flower world in all its
potentiality, Christian and Amerindian, for the Nahua. It is also thanks to
these cantares that we can accurately reconstruct the repertory of flowers
that the Nahua associated with this high and incandescent plain of reality.
The flora of the flower world did not include all the blossoming species
known by the Nahua but a certain set of them to which they refer, in
general terms, as the flowers of different kinds, or in nepapan xochitl.
These different kinds of flowers share common attributes. They are flowers
of the hot lands, growing in the tops of trees, and blossoming in the dry
season. They reproduce the luminous colors of the sunlight spectrum and
possess, above any other characteristic, the quality of producing sweet
fragrances with the capacity to affect the human nervous system and create
Fig. 22. Cacahuaxochitl (Lat., Cuararibea funebris).
Fig. 23. Ixquixochitl (Lat., Beureria huanita).
BERENICE ALCNTARA ROJ AS 132
a few times in the Florentine Codex. Instead, it appears where it more
properly belongs within the conceptual framework of Sahagns works
in the cantares, the song-dance texts created by Sahagn and his Nahua
aides to celebrate the glory of the blessed ones.
Many times I have asked myself what this flower garden really was
for those men who participated in its creation. One possible answer I
have found is that it functioned, between Sahagn and his Nahua
collaborators, as a commonality (or locus communis) that allowed them to
join two different cores of ideas and representations of the heavenly. From
these two sets of concepts they used all the elements that they considered
equivalents or that they forced to be equivalents: heaven as a place of
light, as a garden full of trees and flowers, as a home of sacred warriors, as
a place of singing and music, and of course, as a space of joy. More than a
final conclusion, these lines are an invitation to approach more closely this
colorful and scented flower world kept in many Indo-Christian works, to
start decoding it in its details because these works contain, in every trace,
and sometimes behind the most superficial coincidences, the voices of
those men who made them possible, each one with different ideas, points
of view, and aspirations, but all capable of uniting and reinventing two
cultural traditions in such dissimilar ways, as diverse as the flowers of
different kinds.
Although there are valuable studies on the use of plants in the elaboration
of dyes by the Nahua as a result of ethnographic reports and archaeologi-
cal and historical research, there remain aspects of the issue still to be
resolved. In particular, we lack a precise understanding of Nahua con-
cepts of plant nomenclature, especially in regard to the practice of nam-
ing plants according to their color, and the cosmogonic implications of
such names. This paper analyzes the names of some of the plants that
served in the production of dyestuffs, and their possible symbolic implica-
tions. In this analysis, language itself becomes a primary tool for assessing
the criteria used by the Nahua in classifying and ordering their natural
environment, and specifically the vegetable kingdom.
It is well known that in the Nahua conception of the universe, space
was arranged on two axes: a vertical that was made up of three levels, and a
horizontal divided into four regions and containing a central point, where
man was located. On the vertical axis, the lower level, or underworld,
was named Mictlan; the middle one, or surface of the earth, Tlalticpac;
and the uppermost, made up of thirteen celestial strata, the Ilhuicame.
The horizontal plane defined the cosmic regions that were equivalent,
in certain ways, to our four cardinal points: mictlampa (north), huiztlan
(south), tonatiuh ixco (east), and icalaquian tonatiuh (west). On each of
the horizontal vertices there was a tree; each had its roots in Mictlan and
grew through Tlalticpac, where man lived, with its fronds reaching Ilhui-
came. Together, these trees held up the heavens and formed the cosmic
axes.
Each region of the horizontal plane was characterized by a type of
tree and a color, as we can see in the first sheet of the Tonalamatl de
Plants and Colors
in the
Florentine Codex
SALVADOR REYES EQUIGUAS
Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliogrficas,
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico
Fig. 1. Tonalamatl de los pochtecas (the Fejrvry-Mayer Codex), folio 1.
Leaf from the Nahua 260-day divinatory calendar, depicting the horizontal
plane of the Aztec cosmos with its center and four regions, each associated
with a type of tree, a color, and a pair of gods. The codex is located in the
National Museums Liverpool, England, cat. 12014.
SALVADOR REYES EQUIGUAS 136 PLANTS AND COLORS I N THE FLORENTI NE CODEX 137
los pochtecas, also called the Fejrvry-Mayer Codex (fig. 1).
1
In another
manuscript, the Tudela Codex, we can see variants of these trees: quet-
zalmizquitl (Parkinsonia aculeata, or feathered cactus), quetzalpochotl
(Sabino precioso, or bald cypress), quetzalhuehuetl (Sabino precioso, or
Mexican swamp cypress), and quetzalhuexotl (Salix L. Salicaceae, or
weeping willow). A color corresponded to each of the four cardinal direc-
tions, and in some cultures a fifth color was assigned to the center. The
specific correspondence between color and cosmic region varied among
the Mesoamerican peoples. For some, white corresponded to the center;
for others, it related to the south. The colors associated with the cosmic
regions were red or yellow for the east; black, red, or yellow for the north;
white or blue for the west; and red or blue for the south. Each region had
associations not only with a tree and a color but with a pair of gods, also
depicted in figure 1.
This chromatic and vegetal arrangement has important consequences
for the criteria of plant classification used among various Mesoamerican
peoples. For example, Alfredo Barrera found that the Yucatan Mayans
also used color as a criterion in classifying plant types and that the col-
ors used were only five, corresponding to those assigned to the cardinal
points and to the center: chak (red); ek (black); yaax (green); kan (yel-
low); and sak (white). They used no other color to classify plants.
2

This observation has been corroborated among the Nahua peoples.
Even today the diverse Nahua groups persist in classifying maize into
five color-specific terms, corresponding to those of pre-Hispanic antiq-
uity: white maize (iztactlaolli), yellow (coztictlaolli), blue (xiuhtlaolli), red
(tlayaolli), and black (yauhtlaolli). The same is true of plants of the genus
Amaranthus (Nhuatl, huauhtli; Mexican Spanish, alegria) (fig. 2). We
find a number of variants of the name huauhtli, corresponding to the
colors red (tlapalhuauhtli), dull or grayish brown (nexhuautli), green-blue
(texohuauhtli), black (tlilhuauhtli), and yellow (xochihuauhtli). While
maize is the most convincing example of plant classification by color, no
doubt other significant plants for the Nahua, such as beans and chili pep-
pers, were categorized in a like manner.
The Nahua employed at least two systems of taxonomy for plants. The
first was based on the description of morphological attributes; the other
1. See Len-Portilla, Tonalmatl de los pochtecas, pp. 912.
2. Barrera Vzquez, Taxonoma maya, pp. 2966.
corresponded to the cultural uses assigned to these plants.
3
Thus the
same plant could have more than one nameone founded on its physical
attributes and the other on its Nahua uses. In this way, the etymology of
Nahua names can reveal the classification criteria on which those names
are based (figs. 3a, b).
The names of plants in Nhuatl are made up of two or more ety-
mological roots, where a lexeme corresponds to a plant genus and the
3. Estrada Lugo, El Cdice florentino, passim.
Fig. 2. Amaranthus (Nhuatl, huauhtli), a plant whose variants are
named by adding color words to the root: tlapalhuauhtli, nexhuauhtli, and
xochihuauhtli.
In the system of classification by uses, we find diverse nominal roots
that, instead of describing the morphological characteristics of the plants,
indicate the utility given them by the Nahua. One such root is pahtli,
which is added to the names of plants used in the treatment of various
diseases. The root zapotl groups together sweet edible fruits; xocotl, sour
fruits; and quilitl, young edible plants.
4
As already mentioned, one of the criteria used to specify a certain
plant is by adding the color, as for the maize cintli: we have cozticcintli,
quappachcintli, tlatlauhcacintli, and yauhcintli: yellow, tawny, red, and
dark maize, respectively.
Given this information, many questions arise concerning the connec-
tion between colors and plants. How should we understand plant names
with etymological roots relating to coloras descriptions of physical attri-
butes or as indicators of the tints that could be obtained from the plants?
To propose an answer to these questions, its necessary to take
some considerations into account. The first is that, according to Daniel
Dehouves detailed study Nombrar los colores en Nhuatl (siglos xvi
xx), color nomenclature can be of two types: descriptive or symbolic.
5

In the first case, the name of an object can give rise to the designation
of a color, which is very similar to what occurs in Spanish and English
with the color rose, or in English with the word orange, among other
examples. In the second nomenclature system, the color can form part of
a symbolic language that is full of metaphor and could signify much more
than just a chromatic attribute. For example, red could be related to heat
or the east (the dawn region), and blue-green to vegetation and water, and
therefore refer to fertility and sustenance.
In this work I intend to gather, based on the Florentine Codex, the
names of plants used as tints and those whose names include chromatic
attributes, and to analyze their etymology to try to understand the criteria
used in the classification of plants based on color, and also to comment on
the possible consequences of this phenomenon. The fundamental tools
for this analysis are the CastilianNhuatl vocabulary and grammar elabo-
rated by missionaries in order to accomplish their mission of evangelization
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among those who stood
out were the Franciscans Alonso de Molina (1513/15141579) and Andres
4. See Ortiz de Montellano, Existi un sistema de clasificacin botnica?, p. 56.
5. Dehouve, Nombrar los colores en Nhuatl, p. 3859.
Figs. 3a, b. (Left, 3a) Chart of Nahua plant classifications based on similar
morphology; (right, 3b) Nahua plant classifications based on uses.
other component to a genus variant. Thus we have, according to morpho-
logical classification, the roots quiahuitl (tree), xihuitl (herb), and xochitl
(flower), to which a prefix can be added to specify the type of tree, herb,
or flower. For example, we have oceloxochitl, flor de ocelote (ocelot
flower), mecaxochitl, flor de mecate (rope flower), xiloxochitl flor de
jilote (jilote flower), and many other varieties.
de Olmos (c. 14851571), and the Jesuit Antonio del Rincn (15661601).
To all this we could add the curious work of a Spanish merchant, Pedro
de Arenas, who, in order to practice his trade and to exchange goods with
the Indians, wrote the Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y
mexicana sometime before 1611. It is worth mentioning that the works of
these and other authors have been gathered in an electronic publication
named cen (available at http:www.sup-infor.com).
We will begin with the plants whose names include etymological
roots from the cosmogonic colors in Nahua thought: red, black, green-
blue, yellow, and white. For what we call red, Nahuatl counted on the
term chiltic, which can be interpreted as similar to a chili (chilli, plus the
adjective ending -tic). With this root we encounter names of plants like
chichihuauhtli and chichiquiltic, which can be interpreted as amaranth
red, like a chili and red like chili leaves. Another term, in some ways
synonymous with chiltic, is tlatlauhqui, from the root tlahuitl (red ochre,
a clay with ferrous oxide), with a duplication of the root word tla that
can denote the intensity of the color, plus the adjective ending -qui. It is
very probable that both endings denoted distinct tones of red. Yet another
word in the texts that denotes a type of red is tlapalli, which includes the
root palli, tint, in combination with another nominal root that I havent
been able to determine precisely. In a paragraph in chapter eleven of the
eleventh book of the Florentine Codex, we read that the term color is a
translation of the Nhuatl word tlapalli. Literally, the Nhuatl text says,
Tlapalli: Icentoca in ixquich nepapan tlapalli, chipavac, qualli iectli, maviztic.
[Tlapalli: It is the name of all the diverse colors; {the color is} clear, good,
beautiful, precious, marvelous.]
In his text, Molina agrees that tlapalli is color: color para pintar o
cosa teida (color for painting or dyestuffs), grana color afinado (the
color of refined cochineal), and a very interesting definition, sangre de
parentesco (kindred blood).
6
This last idea relates the term tlapalli to
that which is red (blood), an idea that is reinforced with a construction
6. Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana. This and the following refer-
ences to the Arenas, Olmos, and Rincn dictionaries were consulted in the electronic publica-
tion available at http://www.sup-infor.com.
141
Table 1-1. Nhuatl Plant Names with a Color Root Meaning Red
Red=Tlapal/Tlatlauh/Chichiltic
Nominal roots
Botanic classification
1. Family
2. Genus
Tlatlacuezonan ?
Tlapalcamotli ?
Tlapalcintli
1. Leguminosae
2. Eysenhardtia
Tlapalezquauitl
1. Euphorbiaceae
2. Jatropha
Tlapaliuixochitl ?
Tlapalizquixochitl
1. Baraginaceae
2. Bourreria
Tlapalli ?
Tlapaloauhtli ?
Tlapalomixochitl ?
Tlapaluacalxochitl ?
Tlapatal
1. Solanaceae
2. Datura
Tlapatli ?
Tlatlalpaltic ?
Tlatlapanaltic
Tlatlapantli
1. Scrophulariaceae
2. Escobedia
Tlapalatlacuezonan ?
Tlatlauhcacintli ?
Tlatlauhcapatli
1. Geraniaeae
2. Geranium
Tlatlauhquixihuitl ?
Tlatlauhqui
1. Bombacaceae, 2. Ceiba
1. Geraniaceae, 2. Geranium
Tlatlauhquipatli
1. Geraniaceae, 2. Geranium
1. Acanthaceae, 2. Justicia
Tlatlaquitezontzapotl
1. Sapotaceae
2. Lcuma
Chichihuacuauhtli 1. Amaranthus
Chichiquiltic ?
already conceived in colonial times and which Molina himself registered:
tlapal vino, vino tinto (red wine). In this form, tlapalli would be the des-
ignation for the thing colored, in the sense that it possesses color, and that
color in its most excellent form would be red. This perception of red as
the paradigmatic color coincides with the Castilian perception, in which
colorado may refer equally to something that is colored or to something
that is red.
7
From the word tlapalli arises the Mexicanism tlapalera,
denoting an establishment that sells paint, in the sense of dyes. In this
form, the roots chiltic, tlatlauhqui, and tlapalli are used to emphasize the
reddish characteristics of some plants.
With regard to the range of dark colors, among which of course black
stands out, we find associated with the names of plants the nominal root
tlilli, a word that certain dictionaries relate to the tinting uses of carbon.
The eleventh book of the Florentine Codex mentions that tlilli is obtained
from pine soot.
Similarly, we have such words as tlilpotonqui, tlilliozotl, tlilticchien,
tlilticlamiaualli, and tlilxochitl. Molina defines tlilli as tinta (ink/tint), or
tinta para escribir (ink/tint for writing). Arenas,
8
Olmos,
9
and Rincn
10

7. Diccionario de la lengua espaola, available at http://www.rae.es/rae.html.
8. Arenas, Vocabulario manual de las lenguas castellana y mexicana, p. 11.
9. Olmos, Arte de la lengua mexicana.
10. Rincn, Arte mexicana.
also define it as tinta, and only Guerra specifies that tlilli refers to la
tinta negra (black ink). Just as tlapalli relates to that which has the most
excellent color, which is to say red, tlilli relates to the black ink they gen-
erally wrote with in early colonial times. To demonstrate a metaphori-
cal usage, in Nhuatl there existed the idiomatic phrase tlapalli tlilli
nictlalia, which Molina interpreted as dar buen exemplo (to give a
good example). Note that the two colors, red and black (tlapalli and tlilli,
respectively), together connote a model of human behavior, by a slight
extension of which the phrase signifies to give a good example. To this
we can add the expression tlilli in tlapallithe black ink, red ink dif-
rasismo, or diphrasis, that suggests the idea of wisdom and knowledge.
11

Below I will take up this topic again.
With regard to the green-blue tones, it is natural to feel that these col-
ors would be associated with description of the vegetal world. The terms
matlalli and xoxuhqui denoted greenish blues. Of matlalli Sahagn tells
us,
A la color azul fina llaman matlalli, que quiere decir azul: este color se
hace de f lores azules, color es muy preciado, y muy apacible de ver, llamase
tambien cardenillo, en la lengua espaola.
[The fine color blue they call matlalli, which is to say blue: They make this
color from blue f lowers; the color is very precious and very pleasant to see;
it is also called verdigris in the Spanish language.]
12
For his part, Molina asserts the term matlalli as color verde oscuro
(dark green color). The Nhuatl text of the Florentine Codex tells us that
the word matlalli does not come from any other term and that it is the
name of an herbs flower, whose color is that of tender, edible green plants.
By this we can infer that the name of the color is the same as that of the
plant. According to Sahagn, in Spanish it is called cardenillo (verdigris).
Plants whose names include the root matlalli include matlalxihuitl, mat-
lalquahuitl, and matlalxochitl, which may be interpreted as blue herb,
blue tree and blue flower, respectively. These names do not refer to
11. A difrasismo, or diphrasis, is a coupling of two metaphoric words or phrases to produce
a new meaning by the association of ideas.
12. Sahagn, Historia general, Book 11, fol. 217, p. 369v.
Table 1-2. Nhuatl Plant Names with a Color Root Meaning Black
Black=Tlil-li (nominal root)
Nominal roots
1. Family
2. Genus
Tlilpotonqui (Ocopiaztli) ?
Tlilliozotl ?
Tlilticchien
1. Labiatae
2. Salvia
Tlitictlamiaualli ?
Tlilxochitl
1. Orchidacea, 2. Epidendrum
1. Vanilla (Anderson)
Tlilpotonqui (ocopiaztli) ?
Note: The names of plants are taken from the Florentine Codex; otherwise, the author of the
source is specified. Full citations appear in the bibliography at the end of the text.
groups of bluish trees, plants, or flowers but only to one specific tree,
one flower, and one herb. Of the matlalquahuitl, we know that the name
refers to the well-known guayacn (Lignum vitae, or ironwood) tree, and
that it was used from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries in the treat-
ment of syphilis.
13

Concerning the term xoxuhqui, Molina indicates that it is equivalent
to a cosa verde no madura (immature green thing) and also azul color
de cielo (the blue color of the sky). Among plant names that include
the root of this term are coaxoxouhqui, xoxocauhqui, xoxotlacotl, and
xoxotlilton. The first, coaxoxouhqui, contains the root coatl, serpent.
Xoxocauhqui is described by Molina as enmohecido, enmohecido cosa
(moldy, moldy thing). Xoxotlacotl contains the suffix -tlacotl, or rod.
Xoxotlilton is made up of two roots that allude to colors, on one hand
xoxo-uhqui and on the other tlil-li, with a diminutive ending, -ton, that
13. See, for instance, Crdenas and Monardes.
together express a blue-green with a darkish tone. None of these words
were recorded in the vocabularies utilized in the present text, nor do we
count on proposals for their botanical identifications.
Another term, iztac, correlates with white, and comes from the
nominal root izta-tl, or salt, with an adjective ending to indicate that
which is like . Many plants contain this root in their names, but it
doesnt necessarily refer to the possible whiteness of their flowers or fruits.
Among these names we may find some that are relatively simple, like
iztacquauil, iztaquilitl, iztaquiltic, iztacamotli, iztacpatli, and iztacetl,
which can be understood as white tree, white tender vegetable, simi-
lar to a white tender vegetable, white medicine, and white beans,
respectively. Other plant names that include the root in question are
more complicated, like iztaczazalic, which incorporates zazalic, alluding
to the sticky gum of a plant; iztacxoxocoyoli, which contains part of the
root xoxo-uhqui (green-blue), and coyol-li, which Molina records as cas-
cabel (small bell/rattle), cuna de nio (babys cradle), and anzuelo
(fish hook), referring perhaps to the form of these objects. One interesting
word is iztacchichiquauitl, since it contains the root for white, followed by
the root chichi-c, which in this case refers to the bitter taste of the plant,
plus quauitl, tree. Therefore we may understand this word as bitter
white tree. Similarly, iztaciuxochitl combines iztac (white) with cihui-tl
(feather) and xochitl (flower) to make white feather flower; iztacpalanca-
patli is literally white medicine for swelling. Finally, iztacaxixpatli is the
name of a medicinal plant for urinary diseases (from iztac [white], axix
[urine], and pahtli [medicinal plant]).
Coztic, a root meaning yellow, is incorporated into names of the fol-
lowing plants: cocoztic (which may suggest something that is very yel-
low, as indicated by the repeated syllable co-); cozauhquixochitl (yellow
flower), coznochnopalli (yellow prickly pear nopal), coztomatl (yellow
tomato), cozquicpatli, and cozticcintli (neither of which last two terms is
simple to translate).
We can see in this preliminary compilation that some names of plants
contain nominal roots deriving from other elements of nature in order to
allude to a chromatic characteristic; thus chili, ochre, mold, and soot are
references that describe certain plants rather than indicate that such tints
were extracted from them.
In order to show that a tint was obtained from a certain plant, the
Nahua used the word palli, which according to Molina means barro
negro para teir ropa (black clay for dyeing clothes).
Table 1-3. Nhuatl Plant Names with a Color Root Meaning Blue-Green
Blue-green=Matlalli or Xoxuhqui (nominal roots)
Nominal roots
1. Family
2. Genus
Matlalli (cardenillo; verdigris)
1. Commelinaceae, 2. Commelina
(Cervera, Lpez, and Roquero)
1. Tradescantia
Matlalxihuitl
1. Commelinaceae, 2. Commelina
(Cervera, Lpez, and Roquero)
2. Tradescantia
Matlalquahuitl (Hernndez) ?
Matlalxochitl (Clavijero) ?
Coaxoxouhqui
(Xoxouhcapatli, Ololiuhqui)
?
Xoxocauhqui (enmohecido;
moldy) (Molina)
?
Xoxotlacotl (Clavijero) ?
Xoxotlilton (Clavijero) ?
Note: The names of the plants are taken from the Florentine Codex; otherwise, the author of
the source is specified. Full citations appear in the bibliography at the end of the text.
Note that within the body of sources, none of the words such as tlil-
palli, chichipalli, cozpalli, nexpalli, or matlalpalli appear, which suggests
that conceptually, certain nominal color roots may have precluded the
word palli (tint).
Diverse authors have searched for references to plants having tint uses
whose names dont necessarily include a root meaning either a color or
ink. Perhaps the most exhaustive compilation we can count on is the one
produced by Estrada Lugo, from which the following data was obtained:
Its important to clarify that this compilation merits paying greater
attention to the Nhuatl section of the Florentine Codex, since the com-
pilation is based on Sahagns Spanish paraphrases.
The Nhuatl text in the Florentine Codex is emphatic in pointing out
that the colors are made from the plants recorded in chapter 11, in the
Table 1-4. Nhuatl Plant Names with a Color Root Meaning White
White=Izta (nominal root)
Nominal roots:
1. Family
2. Genus
Iztacaxixpatli
1. Poligonaceae
2. Polygonum
Iztaccacalic
(Iztaczazalic)
?
Iztaccamotli
(Poxcauhcamotli)
?
Iztacchichiquauitl
1. Garryaceae
2. Garrya
Iztaciuixochitl ?
Iztacpalancapatli ?
Iztacpatli ?
Iztacquauitl ?
Iztaquilitl
1. Portulacaceae
2. Portulaca
Iztaquiltic
1. Chenopodiaceae
2. Suaeda
Iztacxoxocoyoli ?
Iztacetl
1. Leguminosae
2. Phaselus
Note: The names of the plants are taken from the Florentine Codex.
Table 1-5. Nhuatl Plant Names with a Color Root Meaning Yellow
Yellow=Coztic (nominal root)
Nominal roots:
1. Family
2. Genus
Cocoztic
1. Ranunculaceae
2. Thalictrum
Cozauhquixochitl
(Cozauhquiyeixochitl)
?
Coznochnopalli
1. Cactaceae
2. Opuntia
Cozquicpatli ?
Cozticcintli ?
Coztomatl
1. Solanaceae
2. Physalis
Note: The names of the plants are taken from the Florentine Codex.
sense that the tints are produced with them. The Nhuatl reads, Inic
ce parrapho itechpa tlatoa, in isquich tlapalli in quenjn mochioa. (The
elaboration of all the colors is mentioned in the first paragraph.) The
colors listed in the eleventh chapter can be classified according to their
origins, these being vegetable, mineral, or animal:
In a preliminary manner, the list presents some interpretations from
the Nhuatl text, which clarifies etymological roots that derive from
names of tints and, on occasion, the ways different ingredients are mixed
to obtain particular colors.
Of xochipalli, the text tells us that the name comes from words mean-
ing flower and color. The tint produced from this flower is a light yellow.
The name of the color comes from the root xochitl, one of the designa-
tions for the color yellow.
As for matlalli, the Nhuatl text says that the name does not come
from another term, but denotes the herbs flower, which has the color
of young edible plants. The name of the color is the same as that of the
plant.
The name cacatlaxcalli derives from zacatl (grass) and tlaxcalli (torti-
lla). The plant is similar to grass and the colorant is formed into a tortilla
shape. The color of the tint is yellow, very yellow. In this case the name
of the color is coztic.
Table 3. Plants Found Mentioned in the Florentine Codex as Colorants
(according to Estrada Lugo and Simon)
Name
Location in the codex
(vol., chap., para.)
Colors and Colorants as
Described in Text
Quauhpachtli,
Tillandsia usneoides,
Usnea sp.
XI, chap. 11, 3, p. 373
Leonado, violeta claro (tawny, light
violet) (Simon, Diccionario de la len-
gua Nhuatl)
Ahuaquauitl (aguacate
or avocado),
Persea
II, chap. 33; X, chap. 22;
XI, chap. 1, 1; chap. 6,
2, 3

Tezuatl,
Tezoatl,
Melastomataceae,
Conostegia,
Miconia
XI, chap. 11, 2
Arbusto que crece en tierra caliente y
cuyas hojas hervidas con alumbre y con
tlaiatl servan para hacer un color muy
fina (Shrub that grows in hot lands
and whose leaves, boiled with alum and
tlaiatl, served to make a very fine color)
(Simon)
Tlaceuilli or xiuhquilitl,
Leguminosae,
Calliandra, Indigofera
XI, chap. 7, 2
Hierba pastel; planta verde que las
mujeres utilizaban para teirse los cabel-
los (Herb paste; green plant that women
utilized to dye their hair) (Simon).
Tlapalli XI, chap. 11, 3
Color, pintura, teido, coloreado
(Color, paint, dyeing, coloring)
(Simon)
Tliliozotl XI, chap. 11, 2

Uitzquauitl,
Leguminosae,
Caesalpinia,
Haematoxylon
XI, chap. 6, 3;
chap. 11, 2, 3
Arbusto que crece en la provincia de
Michoacn y su madera serva para
hacer un tinte rojo llamado brasil por los
espaoles. Ciertas partes de ese arbolillo
eran usadas para combatir las fiebres.
(Shrub that grows in the province of
Michoacn and its wood was used to
make red ink called brasil by the Span-
iards. Certain parts of this bush were
used to fight fevers.) (Simon)
Xochipalli XI, chap. 11, 1
Hierba cuya hoja se parece a la
artemisa y sirve para teir las telas de
color amarillo rojizo (Herb whose
leaves look like sagebrush and serve in
dyeing cloth a reddish yellow).
Zacatlaxcalli, Cacatlax-
calli, Convolvulaceae,
Cassytha
XI, chap. 7, 1

Note: The names of the plants were noted in the Florentine Codex by either Estrada Lugo or
Simen.
Table 2. Nhuatl Plant Names with the Nominal Root -Palli (Tint)
Tzatzapalli (espigas de maz or maize spikes
Acuitlacpalli
Xochipalli (tinte de f lores amarillas or yellow f lower tint); (naranjado color or orange
colorMolina)
Iyappalli (Iya-uh-tli) (verde oscuro or dark green)
Quilpalli (cardenillo or verdigris; entre azul y verde or between blue and green)
Yappalli (cosa negra or black thingMolina)
Tlapalli (?)
Xiuhpalli (Simon)
Note: The names of the plants are taken from the Florentine Codex; otherwise, the source is
specified.
The word achiotl derives from no other name. The color obtained
from the fruit of this plant is red (tlatlauhqui).
The name huitzquauitl derives from huitztli (thorn) and quauhuitl
(tree). The dark color produced from the wood (literally, from its flesh)
is called ixtlitl, a term applied to the color black. If the colorant is mixed
with tlalxocotl (a substance of mineral origin), we get a red color (chich-
iltic).
Of nacazcolotl, the text says that it is the fruit of a large tree. The
name comes from nacaztli (ear) and colotl (scorpion), alluding perhaps to
the appearance of the fruit being similar to that of a small ear or scorpion.
In Molinas vocabulary, one reads that nacazcolotl means agallas para
hacer tinta (gallnuts to make tint). Complementing the content of the
Nhuatl text, we have Sahagns paraphrasis:
Ay en esta tierra un fructo de un rbol que se cria en tierras calientes,
el cual fructo no es de comer, llamase ese fructo nacazcoltol, usase ese
fruto para con l y con aquella tierra que se llama tlaliyac y con cascaras
de granadas y con goma que llaman mizquicopalli de muy buena tinta
para escribir.
[In this land there is a fruit of a tree that grows in the hotlands, which
fruit is not to be eaten. It is called nacazcoltol and it is used with that soil
called tlaliyac, and with pomegranate peels and a gum they call mizquico-
palli, in order to make a very good ink for writing.]
From nacazcolotl one obtains the colorant cuichtli; in other words,
soot. It is worth clarifying that this was used for writing; the text resorts
to Spanish in the expression letrachioaloni to denote that the tint es la
que hace la letra (is the one that makes letters). It is very possible that
this statement indicates that the Florentine Codex itself was written with
this ink. In fact, in one illustrated sheet of the book, we see how a Nahua
collects the materials from the tree in order to elaborate the colorant. It
appears that the materials collected from the tree were, as Molina says,
gallnuts or protruberances from the bark, and not fruit.The illustration
contained in the Florentine Codex invites the supposition that nacazco-
lotl might be a Corticola fungus. Note that the nacazcolotl is cooked and
then used for writing (fig. 4).
Of tezuatl, the text says it is a bush (quauhxihuitl) that is blended with
cochineal in order to dye tochomitl, a yarn made of rabbit hair.
Tlaceulli, the text says, is a grass that is crushed in order to extract its
juice, from which one can obtain a greenish (xoxotlani) blue (mouitic).
In regard to the colorant texotli, the text tells us that the name does
not come from any other root word, and that the resulting color is like
a green, comparable to that produced by mixing texotli with xoxoctic
(another green). There is no mention of its origin. These interpretations
of the text demonstrate that many of the names of colorants come from
the names of those substances from which they originated. This occurs
with tlilli and matlalli, among others.
It is worth examining other words derived from the same sources,
and whose names are related to colors. In the following cases, the words
do not describe the plants tint uses, but rather their morphology. I will
begin with tlacuilolquahuitl, the scribe-painters tree, which is portrayed
in the eleventh book. The text states that the huehue and teponaztli, two
pre-Hispanic percussion instruments, were made from this tree, as well
as colonial string instruments, in Nhuatl called mecahuehuetl, which
may correspond to a baroque vihuela (an early form of guitar) or a harp.
The text says, su palabra es bella, buena, deseable (its word is beauti-
ful, good, desirable), without defining whether this refers to the sound
of the instrument or to the tree. This was not necessarily important after
all because instruments are the flesh of the trees themselves, accord-
ing to Nahua perception. If its use had no connection with colors, then
where does the name scribe-painters tree come from? The answer has
to do with its appearance, since its bark looks painted, as one reads in the
Nhuatl, cuicuiltic, motlililania, motlatlamachia (painted with black
and red lines). It is worth reflecting on the fact that precisely the diphra-
sis in tlilli in tlapalliblack ink, red inksignifies wisdom, knowledge,
and artistic expression. We find that the glyph of this diphrasis is associ-
ated with the tlacuilo artist-scribes (fig. 5), and is depicted within virgules
as a chant of Macuilxochitl, Nahua god of the arts, in the Borbonic Codex
(fig. 6). We can see here that colors acquire very profound symbolic values
that are worthy of a more detailed interpretation. The Florentine Codex
does not illustrate the tlacuiloquahuitl in the section dedicated to trees,
and it does not appear in the color section because it seems that no tint
was obtained from that tree.
From what has been said up to now we can infer that the names of
plants can include root words of color names that indicate their uses or
morphology. When the name of the color appears as a prefix, then it
refers to the color of the plant.
An example of the morphological value of colors is the classification
of maize and alegria already mentioned, which corresponds to the cos-
mic colors, even though not all plants contain the full range of those five
colors. For example, tlilxochitl, black flower, refers to the vanilla orchid,
which when dried out acquires its aromatic properties and its dark color.
A similar case occurs with tlalpoyomatli and tlalizquixochitl, two odorifer-
ous red flowers. Among these examples, the blue, white, and yellow vari-
ants do not exist.
Considering plants used as colorants, it is worth mentioning that in
the list shown in table 2, the suffix palli, which would denote use as a
tint, is not found in their names as we would expect. This is because the
names of the colors there come directly from the names of the plants
Table 4. Colorants/Pigments and Their Origins According to Chapter 11 of the
Florentine Codex
Vegetable Mineral Animal Indefinite
Xochipalli
Matlali
acatlaxcalli
Achiotl or achiotetl
Uitzquauitl
Nacazcolotl
Tezuatl
Tlaceuilli
Tlilli
Tecozauitl
Tlaliiac
Tlalxocotl*
Tetlilli or tezcatetlilli
Tlauitl
Tiatl
Tetiatl
Chimaltiatl
Nocheztli
Tlatlaxcalolli
Tlapalnextli**
Tlaquauac Tlapalli
Texotli
* Xocotl proviene del sabor agrio de esa tierra, que es como tepetate. (Xocotl comes from
the sour f lavor of this soil, which is similar to tepetate.)
** Mezcla de cal y cochinilla (blend of lime and cochineal)
from which they are obtained. In other words, palli is not a category of
Nahua classification of plants according to use.
However, the end of the eleventh chapter of the Florentine Codex
mentions the manner in which the following colors are prepared, includ-
ing plant name etymologies:
The name iiapalli comes from yauhtli, an odoriferous, sacred plant
and also from yayauhqui (dark) and tlapalli (color). However, the text
doesnt mention whether the plant referred to is the origin of the tint or
whether the color obtained is similar to that of the plant.
Camopalli is made from mixing nocheztli and tlalxocotl, which is
to say, a blend of organic and inorganic. This case is revealing in that
the name of the tint is not referring to the fact that the tuber is used to
elaborate the tint, but rather to its color being like that of the sweet potato,
very close to purple.
The name quiltic comes from quilitl (generic for young, edible green
plants), and like them is a little green, a little yellow. Quiltic is made by
blending texotli and zacatlaxcalli. As in the previous case, the name does
not come from any particular plant but rather from the generic color of
young green vegetables.
The name quappachtli is from quauitl (tree) and pachtli (a Spanish
moss or epiphyte from the Bromeliaceae family, genus Tillandsia, which
grows on the quauhtepoztli [literally, tree that is hard as metal]). In this
case, the text does not mention how the tint was produced. It was very
probably a brownish or bluish gray-green, the color of the moss.
From such examples as these we can deduce that palli does not
describe specific plants but rather the tints produced from them, which
may have the same colors as their respective plants.
Fig. 4. A Nahua gathering gallnuts from a tree to make nacazcolotl, a tint
used to make cuichtli, the ink with which the Florentine Codex itself was
likely written.
Figs. 5a, b. Two glyphs illustrating the diphrasis in tlilli in tlapalli (literally,
black ink, red ink)an expression associated with the Nahua tlacuilo and
signifying wisdom, knowledge, and artistic expression. (Left, 5a): Mendoza
Codex, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, lam. LXXI. (Right, 5b): Codex
Telleriano-Remensis, fol. 30r. Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale de
France, Paris.
Although these conclusions are of preliminary character, they can be
of use as a guide for a more precise future analysis that includes a broader
range of textual sources.
Regarding the preceding, we may conclude that
1. The names of colors can be added to plant names as prefixes to indicate a
morphological characteristic, to specify the way in which a natural reality
can be perceived in coherence within a cosmogonic system.
2. The names of colors can be taken directly from the names of certain plants.
In other words, the vegetable noun is adjectivized, leading to concept
words that can be interpreted in the manner of young green vegetable-like
color, matlalli-like color, and so on.
3. The vegetable world is used as a referring agent to chromatically classify
the whole environment perceived by the Nahua.
4. Palli, color, is added to the botanic nomenclature as a suffix, denoting a
use as a colorant.
5. The Nahua names of plants can include etymologies that allude to a cul-
tural value bestowed by society, thereby forming part of a complex sym-
bolic language.
Fig. 6. Glyph depicting Macuilxochitl, Nahua god of the arts, chanting
the phrase in tlilli in tlapalli (within virgules). Borbonic Codex, fig. 28.
Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale, Paris.
Fig. 1
Sahagns Codex and Book Design
in the Indigenous Context
*
MARI NA GARONE GRAVI ER
To Valentina in her third year of life
* I am indebted to Clara Bargellini and Diana Magaloni or giing me the oppor-
tunity and honor o orming part o a team rom dierse areas o expertise that has
approached a work o the artistic, historic, and cultural magnitude o the Florentine
Codex. I would also like to express my gratitude to Clara Bargellini or her ongoing
support, to Diana Magaloni or giing me peace in pain, to Alejandra Guerrero or her
generous help, and to 1omas Granados or his ongoing solidarity.
WRITTEN CULTURE AND BOOK DESIGN
AS THE FOCUS OF STUDY IN ART HISTORY
One of the first drawbacks in dealing with the visuality of a text is that, in
speaking of a written work, people tend to think almost exclusively of its
literary or historical value, aspects that would seem to negate the docu-
ments graphic value. This separation between ground and form has been
inherent to the conception of written communication; writing has been
understood as a mere transcription of sound, in which the signs employed
and their spatial distribution seem to serve no significant function in the
configuration of a text.
The notion that calligraphy is ornamental or contingent and that
editorial design is a cosmetic or implemental action may be attributed
partially to the fact that in the process of producing a book, both aspects
are the final ones. However, these perspectives do not take into account
that both language and the text itself acquire a visual presence within the
framework of design and writing so that neither is something external,
but rather something intrinsic to the work. In the production of a manu-
script, decisions are made among forms of presentation of the words and
the means of spatial distribution of the words on the page (Fig. 1). These
MARI NA GARONE GRAVI ER 158 SAHAGN S CODEX AND BOOK DESIGN 159
THE NATIVE PEOPLE AND BOOK CULTURE:
SCRIBES AND PRINTERS
Indigenous Calligraphy in Religious Context
During the viceregal period, indigenous scribes worked in two clearly dif-
ferentiated areas: one religious and the other administrative. In the case
of religious writing, native people were the support staff for chroniclers
and missionaries, sources of information on their cultures, and copyists
of their traditions. Writing soon became a means of bicultural commu-
nication and it was extremely useful for the friars that some indigenous
people were trained, especially in calligraphy. Brother Toribio de Bena-
vente, known as Motolinia, refers to the native peoples superb capacity
for imitating all sorts of written models, when he states,
they were taught to write in little time, because they wrote in a few days,
then they imitated the material that their teachers gave them, and if the
teacher changed to another form of writing, which is a very common thing
that different men have different ways of forming letters, then they also
changed the letter and made it in the way that their teacher gave it to
them.
1

However, apparently they also attempted to imitate the shape and
arrangement of printed texts. The same missionary described how an
indigenous scribe copied a bull:
and he did it so naturally that the letter that he made seemed to be the
same, because the first line was in large letters, and below he wrote the
signature just the same, and a Jesus with an image of Our Lady, all the
same that it seemed there was no difference from the shape of the other
letter, and as a noteworthy and important thing, he did it in proper Castil-
ian Spanish.
2
1. !"#$%, Los misioneros ranciscanos de Mxico.` lrom this reerence, we
know that the calligraphy o the riars proided models o reerence or the indigenous
people. Benaente also mentions signs that announced religious estials, in large let-
ters measuring two palmos |palms|, which hung in church towers, like monumental
Roman inscriptions. &'(")'(*', Historia de los indios de la Nueva Espaa, chap. XII.
2. Benavente, Historia de los indios de la Nueva Espaa, chap. XII.
visual decisions are some of the aesthetic guidelines that may be studied
to gain a deeper insight into the nature of the document.
A factor contributing to the breach between content and language
is the body of rules governing the arrangement of writing. Transformed
through time, these rules have also taken on particular characteristics for
each language and each literary genre, and to a large extent, they are not
a natural by-product of the spoken language. Language and writing are
related on a basic lexical and syntactic level, but the actual development
of both levels requires the consideration of contextual and pragmatic fac-
tors, which may also transcend pure language and be associated with edi-
torial production or with the author-scribe-reader relationship. Therefore,
one should keep in mind not only phenomena concerning linguistic and
historical aspects in texts, but also material facts, artifacts resulting from
the process of design.
Based on these considerations, we should understand that the Codice
Fiorentino (Florentine Codex), in addition to being a historical and his-
toric text, is a visual space that makes it possible to evaluate how the indig-
enous people of Mexico appropriated and used the guidelines of written
communication: the page format, the layout of the text field, the charac-
teristics of the calligraphy, and the interaction of the text with the images
and ornaments. Now then, how were these characteristics chosen? And
what were the patterns and models that the scribes used as referents when
it came time to do the graphic layout of a work? These are questions that
I will attempt to answer based primarily on a graphic description of the
document itself.
The following discussion offers a panorama of the education that the
indigenous population received in New Spain in calligraphy and typog-
raphy. Then attention will focus on the Colegio de la Santa Cruz in Tla-
telolco and particularly on the formation of its library, whose volumes
were without doubt one of the principal sources used by scribes. Finally,
I will examine how the scriptorium there functioned before moving on
to a description of the design, calligraphy, and ornamentation of the
Florentine Codex.
This calligraphic education took place in schools established by the
friars for the native population. At the beginning of 1527, Fray Pedro de
Gante founded the Colegio de San Jos de los Naturales. This founda-
tion arose from the need to educate an indigenous elite in Christian val-
ues and to produce images for worship. For visual and manual educa-
tion, they had models of painting, sculpture, prints, and printed books
from Flanders, Spain, and Italy. This made it possible for the indigenous
people to begin to become familiar with the use of Latin characters and
diverse styles of lettering: humanist, gothic, Greek, and musical notation.
Therefore, it would seem logical to think that if there was a school that
trained indigenous scribes in different aspects of calligraphy, there would
have been a certain propensity for the standardization of written models.
The writing produced at that time adopted the characteristics of
European books in different formats: loose sheets and small prints with
religious images, leading to the virtual abandonment of the traditional
pre-Hispanic screen-fold, or amoxtli [book], format. Despite its scarcity
in New Spain, the scribes used European paper, and in a smaller propor-
tion, traditional indigenous paper.
3
Among the tools and materials used
for sixteenth-century manuscript production were brush, pencil, and quill
pen, with mineral, plant, and animal pigments.
4
Indigenous Calligraphy in Administrative Context
Administrative writing was the other major area where indigenous scribes
worked. The role of these scribes of diverse ethnic backgrounds within
their own communities was of extreme importance because they served
as a bridge between the native groups and the Spaniards. This work
encompassed population censuses, delimitation of lands and drawing of
maps, inheritance litigation, description of genealogies and lineages, and
tribute collection, to mention some of the main textual genres. In that
written production, it was not unusual to see the simultaneous use of
alphabetic glosses and pre-Hispanic pictograms until well into the eigh-
teenth century.
5
3. Indigenous papers included those manufactured from bark and agave.
4. On this point I recommend reading the text by Arellano Hoffmann, El escriba
mesoamericano y sus utensilios de trabajo, pp. 219256.
5. The pre-Hispanic system of writing was used to refer to places, in other words as
toponyms, as well as a substitute and complement to the numeric and calendric system of
Scribes and notaries trained their own amanuenses, but teaching was
restricted in those cases to the cursive styles of lettering such as procesal
[a flowing Spanish script], its joined version (procesal encadenada), and
chancery. Although testimonies exist in diverse languages, the majority
of the documents produced were in Nhuatl, which served as a lingua
franca in New Spain.
Native Printers
6
In addition to education in reading and writing, the indigenous popula-
tion was given more specific training in book matters, in typographic
printing, engraving, and binding.
7
Technical education and craftsman-
ship were taught mainly in Franciscan schools, although it is also possible
to find references from other religious orders, such as one that mentions
the Indians who have an unusual ingenuity for all of these trades when
speaking of the publication of printed works in Otom and Nhuatl at the
Jesuit school in Tepotzotln.
8
At the same time, it is important to mention
that in the vast majority of wordbooks in indigenous languages produced
during the sixteenth century, terms related specifically to the world of
books were given, e.g., translations for writing, printing, illumination, and
binding, in addition to terms for objects and materials pertaining to the
graphic arts. That suggests that there was the need for clear, precise com-
munication on these subjects between Europeans and indigenous speak-
ers of Nhuatl, Mixtec, Otom, Tarascan, and Zapotec.
9

European tradition.
6. Diverse authors have dealt to a greater or lesser extent with the subject of indigenous
printers in Mexico. Garca Icazbalceta presents some references in his Bibliografa mexi-
cana del siglo XVI. See also Gran Porra in El mbito socio-laboral de las imprentas
novohispanas, and finally, Jimnez Hernndez provides interesting references in Coleccin
de Lenguas Indgenas.
7. Although we will not refer to religious materials, it is necessary to note that the native
people did more than print books for the friars and execute devotional prints, as shown by a
1582 decree on vendible trades. This document refers to the production of playing cards in
New Spain, and lists different categories of production and costs. It details the payment of
three tomines for twelve dozen sets of playing cards for the Indians who print them and
paste them. Document consulted in the Archivo Histrico Nacional de Espaa: Diversos-
colecciones 25, no. 56.
8. Carta del provincial de la orden Antonio de Mendoza a Claudio Aquaviva, noviembre
de 1585, Tepotzotln, in Zubillaga, Monumenta Mexicana, vol. 5, doc. 213, pp. 702722.
9. I have discussed this subject in a paper, Diseadores de la lengua propia: Calgrafos
y tipgrafos indgenas en la Nueva Espaa, presented at the Primer Coloquio Internacional
Even though explicit references to indigenous manual skills in print-
ing occur later, dating to the beginning of the seventeenth century, they
are brought to bear because they refer specifically to the school estab-
lished in Tlatelolco. The prologue of the Sermonario en lengua mexicana
of Fray Juan Bautista (Mexico, Diego Lpez Dvalos, 1606) reads, Diego
Adriano, native of this City of Tlatilulco, was expert in Latin, and so
skilled that he learned to typeset, and he typeset in the printing press in
any language, as ably as any other Master no matter how deft he might be
in this art.
10
Later, the same friar mentioned other names:
Of no less importance has been the help and ongoing communication of
Agustn de la Fuente, also a native of Santiago de Tlatilulco, and a teacher
at the Colegio de la Santa Cruz. Who wished to see the collection of
sermons that he wrote printed, has learned to typeset and to typeset admi-
rably, and so he has almost everything typeset at the press: which has been
of much help, so that it be well corrected, and not have any errata of impor-
tance.
Mendieta commented with regard to the native people at that Fran-
ciscan school that, although there was opposition to teaching Latin to the
indigenous population,
11
training was necessary because
with these Latin schools they learned their language perfectly through the
skill of those who knew it well, and with their help, in the same language
they translated the doctrines and treatises that have been necessary for
teaching all the Indians and with their help the printers have printed them,
which otherwise they could not have done.
12

Some documents from the Inquisition also mention native people
learning typography. For example, there is the Flemish printer Cornelio
Lenguas y Culturas Coloniales, 3 September 2008, Instituto de Investigaciones Filolgicas,
Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico, Mexico City.
10. The friar was referring to Latin, Spanish, and Nhuatl, although the notion should
not be dismissed that he might also have been referring to some other indigenous language
Otom, for example.
11. Jernimo Lpez wrote to Emperor Charles V that having taught the Indians to read
and write had been as harmful as the devil (20 October 1541). See Toribio Medina, Historia
de la imprenta, vol. I, prologue by Feliu Cruz.
12. Mendieta, Historia eclesistica indiana, book 4, chap. XV, pp. 7880.
Adrin Csar, who addressed a letter to the judges of the Inquisition to
denounce the ill treatment he received from Fray Juan Bautista, guard-
ian of the Colegio de Tlatelolco, where he was sent to serve his prison
sentence. Csar stated that
[the guardian] attempts to explain and teach my art to the Indians, so that
they rob me and I want you to know because once they have learned [it],
and once the terms of my sentence are fulfilled (when God is served), I will
not be able to earn a living with what is my said trade, because of [what]
said Indians will have learned about it and it will be of no use [to me], and
since Your Honor has always treated me with mercy and charity, it is unfair,
Your Honor being served, that I be treated with such harm.
13
The Colegio de Tlatelolco
The appointment of Fray Juan de Zumrraga as bishop of Mexico in 1527
brought about a shift in indigenous education and in the means it was
carried out. Three years after his arrival, he informed the Crown of the
advances made in this area, and during his stay on the Iberian Peninsula
from 1532 to 1534, he requested the establishment of a seminary to train
an indigenous clergyan establishment that would need a library, a print-
ing press, and a paper factory.
14
In 1535 the appointment of Antonio de
Mendoza, first viceroy of New Spain, contributed favorably to financing
the work to establish the seminary. However, the printing press and the
paper mill never materialized, except partially in 1539 when Juan Pablos,
an emissary sent by the Sevillan printer Juan Cromberger, set up shop in
the Mexican capital with printing equipment.
15
As indicated by the covers
and colophons of the first printed works in Mexico, Zumrraga was one of
the print shops principal clients; in the same year that Pablos arrived, the
bishop ordered and paid for a variety of works.
The Colegio de Tlatelolco opened its doors in 1534. In January 1536,
Zumrraga, Sebastin Ramrez de Fuenleal, Garca de Cisneros, Ber-
13. The letter is undated, but it might have been written in 1602. Archivo General de la
Nacin, Inquisicin, vols. 65, nos. 5, 252 A.5, 236 A.18.
14. These subjects have been discussed by Jos Toribio Medina, Jos Mara Kobayashi,
and Joaqun Garca Icazbalceta.
15. 1he relationship between Zumarraga and the Crombergers has been studied
by +,-..-( in Los Cromberger.
nardino de Sahagn, Arnaldo de Basacio, Gabriel Alonso de Herrera, and
Pedro de Rivera y Villaln attended Viceroy Antonio de Mendozas for-
mal inauguration of the school. The three-year program comprised read-
ing, spelling, music, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, and theology. Arnaldo
de Basacio and Juan de Gaona were among the teachers and in 1540,
Bernardino de Sahagn, Andrs de Olmos, Juan Focher, and Francisco
de Bustamante joined the school.
Ten years after its foundation, the school faced serious political chal-
lenges, especially concerning the training of indigenous clergy, a project
that was completely abolished after the First Mexican Council (1555). In
the wake of these difficulties, some of the most advanced native students,
such as Miguel de Cuautitln and Juan Badiano, died in the 1545 epi-
demic, which led to the transfer of Sahagn and Gaona.
A few years later, the school redirected its work to researching indig-
enous culture and linguistics. Bernardino de Sahagn, Juan de Gaona,
and Alonso de Molina played a major role in this shift. Texts by Gante,
Rangel, Benavente, and Gilberti, as well as those by Sahagn, Gaona, and
Molina, produced in several indigenous languages, enriched the holdings
of the library at Tlatelolco.
16
Among the indigenous students who col-
laborated in the bibliographic production were Antonio Valeriano from
Azcapotzalco, Hernando de Ribas from Texcoco, Martn Exidio, Mar-
tn Jacobita, Bernardo Jernimo, Antonio Ramrez, Jos de Castaeda,
Gregorio de Medina, Mateo Snchez, Bonifaz Maximiliano and Diego
de Grado, both from Tlatelolco, Mateo Severiano from Xochimilco, and
Pedro Juan Antonio, who traveled to Spain in 1568 to continue his stud-
ies in Salamanca. Beginning in 1572, the indigenous collaborators were
Alonso de Verjerano from Cuautitln, Agustn de la Fuente, Martn Jaco-
bita, Severino Bernab Velsquez, Andrs Leonardo, and San Buenaven-
tura, among others.
After several transfers and other posts, Bernardino de Sahagn
returned to Tlatelolco in 1572 as a supervisor. At that same time, and in
response to a royal decree that authorized the gathering of information
for a history of the Indians of the American continent, with the help of
several native informants he prepared the Historia general de las cosas de
la Nueva Espaa [General History of the Things of New Spain]. Although
the school suffered new losses from the epidemic of 1576, Sahagn
16. #/0"-1" +3,"*', Los franciscanos y la imprenta en Mxico en el siglo XVI.
continued to supervise the teaching of reading and writing to children, in
addition to his work of an ethnographic nature.
Those studies were temporarily suspended with Sahagns demise in
1590. Nevertheless, Fray Pedro de Oroz continued with the work of the
linguistic project, and guardian Juan Bautista, a native of New Spain,
resumed the general studies later. Just as other padres had done before
him, Bautista worked alongside indigenous Mexicans: Antonio Valeriano,
Agustn de la Fuente, Pedro de Gante, Diego Adriano, Juan Bernardo
from Huejotzingo, Esteban Bravo from Texcoco, and Francisco Contreras
Bautista from Cuernavaca. Fray Juan Bautista continued as guardian of
the Colegio until his death in 1613.
At the end of the sixteenth century, linguistic and ethnographic
work continued in the school: Jacobo de Mendoza Tlaltenzin, Alfonso
Izehuezcatocatzin, and Pablo Nazareno were informants of Fernando
Alvarado Tezozomoc, Juan Bautista, Alonso Zorita, and Fernando de Alva
Ixtlilxchitl. However, higher education came to a halt with the death of
Antonio Valeriano. As a number of studies have noted, the Colegio Impe-
rial de la Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco was abandoned and in ruins by the
mid-seventeenth century.
The Library in the Colegio de Tlatelolco
Printed books played an unquestionably important role in the educa-
tion and acculturation of indigenous groups in the Americas. Prior to
the foundation of the Colegio de Tlatelolco, there were other projects
for the education of indigenous groups: spelling and reading classes that
Pedro de Gante, Juan de Tecto, and Juan de Ahora undertook in Texcoco
around 1523; the Colegio de San Francisco in Mexico City for higher-
level studies during the same period; and the Colegio de San Jos de los
Naturales mentioned earlier. However, at all of these centers of learning,
native students had but a restricted access to books; not only was book
importation regulated, but also the very reading of these works.
17

From the founding of the Colegio de Tlatelolco, the library began to
be formed. Fray Juan de Zumrraga himself donated the first works to
17. As for the rules issued by the First and Second Mexican Councils, in which the use
and access to books by the indigenous population was determined, see Concilio Mexicano
Primero (1555), chapters I and XXIII in Concilios Provinciales Mexicanos.
the institution, and later it acquired others.
18
Classic texts (Aristotle, Plu-
tarch, Virgil, Juvenal, and Prudentius), holy scriptures, catechisms, doc-
trines, grammars, and wordbooks formed part of the library. The books
came from Spain, although not all of them were printed on the Iberian
Peninsula, for there were also books from Flemish, Italian, French, and
German printers, as well as printed works and manuscripts produced in
Mexico.
19

The first inventory was conducted in 1572. Mayordomo [steward]
Tom Lpez prepared an informative list that indicates that at the time,
the school had sixty-five students, a rector, a reader, and two repetidores,
and that the library had sixty-one volumes. In 1574, as a result of thefts
and irregularities committed by mayordomos Lpez and Gaspar de
Baares, Diego Ruz was entrusted with taking a new inventory. Seventy-
four volumes were counted as a result, with a notable disparity in titles
as compared with the previous listing. The new inventory included tools
and presses used in binding, a skill that was taught at the school.
20
These
inventories took place at the same time as the Inquisition hearings exam-
ining different authors and printers, such as those held in regard to typog-
rapher Pedro Ocharte and printmaker Juan Ortz.
21
A third inventory was
carried out in 1582, at the orders of the viceroy count of Corua, and
was overseen by mayordomo Pedro Cuadrado, who recorded sixty-one
volumes. The succession of missing volumes resulted in the designation
of a salary for a bookkeeper, or librarian, in 1585.
22
Books in the Library of the Colegio de Tlatelolco
Michael Mathes reconstructed the original holdings of the library at the
Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Santiago de Tlatelolco, based on the iden-
18. Regarding the acquisition of books at Tlatelolco, there are some pieces of information:
in 1567, a psaltery was purchased for thirty pesos; a year later, a Flos Sanctorum for fourteen
pesos; and in 1572, two wordbooks in the Mexican language by Molina were bought for a total
of sixteen pesos. Gonzalbo, Historia de la lectura en Mxico, p. 40.
19. Mathes, Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, p. 9.
20. The second inventory was signed by Fathers Molina and Sahagn. Garca Icazbal-
ceta, Nueva coleccin de documentos : Cdice Mendieta, doc. V.
21. The processes may be consulted in Fernndez del Castillo, Libros y libreros del
siglo XVI.
22. Cdice Mendieta in +",14" -1"#&"01'*", Nueva coleccin de documentos para la
historia de Mxico.
tification of the establishments marcas de fuego used to indicate owner-
ship, on autographs of brothers who were writers, and on other signs of
ownership that he checked against the inventories mentioned earlier. By
doing this, he located three hundred seventy-seven volumes, in addition
to several Mexican printed works published before 1604. These latter he
believed must have formed part of the library because the majority were
written by members of the Franciscan order, and some of the works were
directly related to the history of the school. Even though the inventories
did not include manuscripts, it is fairly certain that they once formed part
of the collection because commentaries in the catalogue of indigenous
language manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nacional de Mxico mention
several documents directly connected with the school during the six-
teenth century.
23

The Origin and Chronology of Books from the
Colegio de Tlatelolco
In geographic terms of that time, the countries of origin for the biblio-
graphic materials in Tlatelolco included France, Italy, Spain, Flanders,
Switzerland, Germany, and Mexico. One hundred two books, which rep-
resent a third of the collection, were from France alone. As for the cities
of origin, one can recognize the great sixteenth-century European cen-
ters of book production: Lyon and Paris; Venice; Salamanca and Alcal
de Henares; Antwerp; Basel; and Cologne. In figure 2, the numbers of
copies found in Tlatelolco are indicated according to their city of origin,
indicated in blue; the numbers of copies consulted for this research are
shown in purple.
24

In the chronology tracing the production of bibliographic materi-
als at Tlatelolco, it is possible to cite some milestones. There is a small
group of incunabula, or works published before 1500, most of which came
from Zumrragas personal library.
25
From 1527 (the date of Zumrragas
23. The primary sources noted in this essay or included in the bibliography include the
manuscripts consulted based on this catalogue.
24. The books consulted are in the Biblioteca Nacional de Mxico, the Biblioteca Cer-
vantina at the Instituto Tecnolgico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), and the
Biblioteca Palafoxiana in Puebla.
25. This group had ten books. The bishops books consulted for this research are listed in
the bibliography.
appointment as bishop of Mexico) until 1539 (the date of the arrival of the
printing press in the Americas), there is a group of almost forty titles that
clearly contributed to the establishments academic activities.
Three peak production dates at Tlatelolco were recorded during the
decades surrounding 1555, 1565, and 1585, respectively, partly as the
result of requests made by the three Mexican councils for specific printed
works. Thus we can ascertain that in the library there were incunabula,
post-incunabula (books produced between 1500 and 1530), and books
from three moments in the second half of the sixteenth century that were
directly connected with events taking place in the Catholic church in
Mexico.
Subject Matter of Books from the Colegio de Santiago
de Tlatelolco
Among the works in the library, it is possible to identify two major groups
of subject matter: a) texts of a completely religious nature (books on theol-
ogy, sermons, the Bible, rules, statutes, works about doctors of the church,
canonical law, missals, manuals, catechisms, and liturgy), and b) secular
literature, including classics, science, grammar, philosophy, history, and
geography. The ratio of these two groups was three to one, which sheds
light on the schools project to train indigenous clergy.
The Scriptorium in the Colegio de Tlatelolco
In speaking of the scriptorium in the Colegio de Tlatelolco, Miguel Len-
Portilla states that other works were produced there in addition to the Flo-
rentine Codex.
26
The Huehuetlatolli, or discourses of the ancient Nahua
to their sons, were compiled by Fray Bernardino beginning in 1547, and
later formed part of the sixth book of the Historia general de las cosas de
la Nueva Espaa.
27
In 1548, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza requested that
the scriptorium of the Colegio de Tlatelolco copy a map of Mexico City.
Apparently the tlacuilos [scribes] who served as teachers, the indigenous
students, and perhaps also Sahagn himself or other friars devoted their
energies to this task.
28
The large-scale map presented Renaissance and
Mesoamerican cartographic traditions.
Another work, the Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis, written
by Nahua physician Martn de la Cruz and translated into Latin by Juan
Badiano, is an herbarium in which plants from Mexico are represented
with their Nhuatl names and the description of their pharmacologi-
cal properties.
29
This book, often referred to as the De la Cruz-Badiano
Codex, was dedicated in 1552 to Francisco de Mendoza, the viceroys son.
The document spent many years in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,
from which it was returned to Mexico by Pope John Paul II in 1990; it is
currently in the library of the Museo Nacional de Antropologa.
Finally, the Cdice Tlatelolco offers a chronicle of several events, such
as the indigenous uprising known as the Mixtn War. This manuscript,
painted on bark paper, is also held in the library of the Museo Nacional
de Antropologa.
30
In addition to these noteworthy documents, numerous
other manuscripts are preserved there, mostly of religious subject matter.
26. The scriptorium bore some resemblance to what in Nhuatl was known as the Tlah-
cuiloyan, or place where one writes and paints, in other words, where books were produced.
Miguel Len-Portilla, Cdices: Los antiguos libros del Nuevo Mundo, p. 104.
27. Florentine Codex, book 2, Ms. Med. Palat. 218, fol. 215r.
28. Today this map is in the Library of the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Len-Por-
tilla, Cdices: Los antiguos libros del Nuevo Mundo.
29. See #'*-(" '* "05, 1he Lncoded Language o lerbs,` in this olume.
30. Len-Portilla, Cdices: Los antiguos libros del Nuevo Mundo, p. 106.
Number of Books
Books Examined
Fig. 2.
Beyond the historic, ethnographic, and linguistic value of these texts,
I would like to point out that the production of varied sorts of documents
suggests that the scribes of the Colegio were specifically trained in the
layout and visual configuration of texts. In the process of book making,
scribes kept in mind and carefully observed the precepts that regulated
the exercise of their profession and that contributed to their own aesthetic
sensibility. Today we no longer know the keys for the different communica-
tive codes employed, so we must turn to an in-depth analysis of the books
themselves to extract them. We know the scribes faithfully respected cer-
tain mathematical and geometric principles that did not necessarily imply
scientific knowledge, but that made it possible to apply certain formulas
for drawing diagrams.
31

The copyist had to determine the dimensions of the paired, or bifoli-
ate, pages and to design the page model that was going to guide his work.
To determine the final format of the text, which could vary between a
perfect square and a more or less elongated rectangle, the scribe decided
among different systems of rules and proportions. The diagramming was
done with compasses and rulers, and different linear scales were used.
Some of the European systems more commonly used in the design
of manuscripts were the golden rectangle, the Pythagorean rectangle,
and proportional rectangles.
32
However, these were not the only systems
capable of offering harmonious proportions. The relations and rules men-
tioned not only served to determine the format of the book based on the
size of the sheet of paper, but they were also used to determine the size
of the writing fields. The dimensions of the margins, the spaces between
columns, the line spacing, and the sizes of the surfaces for ornamenta-
tion, initials, and other details in the manuscripts were some of the ele-
ments that were ordered with measurement systems.
The amanuenses could apply the rules following their personal tastes,
someone elses advice, or local tradition, a factor that could hold great
weight. In the decision concerning the visual organization of the text, the
content of the work and the purpose for which it was intended both had a
bearing. Studying these factors offers greater insight into the ideas regard-
ing the proportions and spatial organization underlying writing among
indigenous scribes. As explained by paleographer Elisa Ruz, the book
31. ,/-#, Hacia una semiologa de la escritura.
32. Ruiz (ibid.) describes the figures on p. 201: figs. VII.4VII.6.
is one of the objects of material culture that best affords aesthetic experi-
ence, by responding to both practical and artistic ends, and by being at
the same time a tool and bearer of culture.
However, in analyzing the factors that came together in the design of
the Florentine Codex, the influence of the printed book should also be
taken into account. By the sixteenth century, there was already standard-
ization in the processes of editorial production, in part as a result of the
use of movable type and handmade paper. Paper from the period of the
primitive printing press came mainly in two sizes: a large folio, or regalis
(about 70 50 cm), and a smaller folio, or comunis (usually 50 30 cm).
33

The arrangement of the pages, in a single column or continuous line or
else in a double column, was the consequence of an arbitrary decision on
the part of the printer. We can, however, suppose that the presentation of
the original text, at the beginning the manuscript and then the printed
version, materially had a bearing on what would be established for a cer-
tain genre of works, a custom that a printer would not later risk abandon-
ing for fear of the clienteles rejection. As an example of this phenomenon,
Gutenberg printed the Bible in forty-two lines in two columns per page,
although with a larger type of letter, it would have been perfectly legible
on a page with a single, continuous line of text. Perhaps as a result of the
influence of that model, the majority of printed texts of the missal type
were designed in two columns.
34
This is of interest here, given that the
Florentine Codex continues the tradition of the two-column folio format.
THE VERSIONS OF THE FLORENTINE CODEX DESIGN
Before describing the design, calligraphy, and ornamentation of the Flo-
rentine Codex, it is important to know the steps that Sahagn followed in
gathering the information and in preparing the different drafts of the text.
Those preliminary steps of the manuscript will provide some clues on
how the final presentation of the work came about. This will also make it
33. 6"'&0',, Introduccin al estudio de los incunables, p. 3.
34. In the iteenth century, the missal type` reerred simply to a large-scale let-
ter orm used since the beginning o printing or this genre o bibles and liturgical
books. 1he irst printers in Strasbourg seem to hae had a special preerence or print-
ing in a single column. On the other hand, rom the beginning, legal texts with their
commentaries were almost always printed in two columns in both Germany and Italy.
6"'&0',, Introduccin al estudio de los incunables, p. 113.
possible to verify that the layout of the manuscript was the product of mul-
tiple authors, including Fray Bernardino and the different calligraphers
and artists who collaborated with him. For a greater understanding of the
process, information has been gleaned from Sahagns own writings and
several later studies on the work from the fields of philology, linguistics,
history, and anthropology.
35
Sahagns First Texts in the Nhuatl Language
Fray Bernardino de Sahagns first years of activity were spent in Tlalma-
nalco (15301532). In 1535 he was guardian of the monastery of Xochi-
milco, and between 1536 and 1540 he was a Latin teacher at the Colegio
de Tlatelolco.
Apparently Fray Bernardinos first works in Nhuatl were produced
in Tlatelolco in 1540.
36
These texts were written with the help of Agustn
de la Fuente, an indigenous man from Tlatelolco, who according to Fray
Juan Bautista, all his life he has not devoted himself to anything other
than to write for padres Fray Bernardino de Sahagn and Fray Pedro de
Oroz.
37

Garca Icazbalceta recounts that between 1540 and 1545, Sahagn
was in the monastery of Huejotzingo and other places in Puebla. In 1545,
the year of the plague, Fray Bernardino was again back at Tlatelolco,
where he began the first enquiries that would lead to the Florentine Codex.
35. 1he works consulted were %"6"+7(, Historia general, acsimile ed., 2002,
ol. 1, pp. 3-51, 0'8(9!$,*-00", lray Bernardino de Sahagn y la inencin de la
antropologa,` pp. 9-29, ,$:',$ +"0)3(, lray Bernardino de Sahagn y la listoria
general,` pp. 29-41, and 6',(3(;'# ;' 0'8(9!$,*-00", La listoria general de
Sahagn a la luz de las enciclopedias,` pp. 41-61 ,both in the same olume,, "(;',9
%$( and ;-&&0', Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, pp. 3-41, +",14" -1"#&"01'*",
Bibliografa mexicana del siglo XVI, pp. 32-38.
36. Sguense unos sermones de dominicas y de santos en lengua mexicana. No tra-
ducidos de sermonario alguno sino compuesto nueamente a la medida de la capacidad
de los indios: brees en materia y en lenguaje congruo, enusto y llano, acil de enten-
der para todos los que oyeren, altos y bajos, principales |senores caciques| y macehuales
|gente del pueblo|, hombres y mujeres. Compusironse el ano de 1540.` MS. 85, ol. 1r,
Ldward L. Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. Quote taken rom 0'8(9!$,*-9
00", lray Bernardino de Sahagn y la inencin de la antropologa,` p. 13.
37. Bautista, Sermonario en lengua mexicana, preliminary pages.
First Stage
In 1558, Sahagn prepared a draft or report of all the subjects to be dealt
with in his text and he was transferred to Tepepulco, in the former domain
of Texcoco-Aculhuacan, for two years.
38
As the friar states in the prologue
to the second book, at that time he was accompanied by four students and
three scribes who are mentioned by name.
39
These Primeros memoriales
or Memoriales de Tepepulco were recorded in the Nhuatl language with
alphabetic glosses; texts were added below some of the pre-Hispanic style
paintings that were provided by informants from Texcoco.
40
Generally
speaking, the Primeros memoriales are organized in two columns: the left
with Nhuatl text and the right with images.
Second Stage
In 1561, back in Tlatelolco, Sahagn continued his work.
41
From his own
description, we may infer that there was rewriting and revision of his
38. During the 1550s, Sahagn was in 1ula ,1550 and 155,, he was the definidor
provincial ,1552, and inspector o the district known as the Custodia del Santo Langelio
in Michoacan ,1558,.
39. 1he principal and wisest one was Antonio Valeriano, a natie o Azcapot-
zalco, another, a little less so, was Alonso Vegerano, a natie o Quauhtitlan. Another
was Martn Jacobita, o whom I made mention aboe, another was Pedro de San Bue-
naentura, a natie o Quauhtitlan. All were expert in three languages: Latin, Spanish,
and Indian. 1he scribes who copied all the works in a good hand are Diego de Grado,
natie o the district o La Concepcin in 1latilulco, Boniacio Maximiliano, natie
o the district o San Martn in 1latilulco, Mateo Seerino, natie o Xochimilco.`
%"6"+7(, Historia general, acsimile ed., 2002, ol. 1, p. 31, Lnglish rom "(;',%$(
and ;-&&0', Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, p. 55.
40. Accounts of the Conquest gathered in 1553 from witnesses in Tlatelolco, which later
formed part of book 12, were added to the texts from Tepepulco. By 1558 there were two bodies
of texts, which then went on to form part of books 6 and 12 of the Historia general. Francisco el
Paso y Troncoso dubbed it Primeros memoriales. Hernndez de Len-Portilla, La Historia
general de Sahagn a la luz de las enciclopedias. Len-Portilla states that these memorials
had 544 images. Fray Bernardino de Sahagn y la invencin de la antropologa, p. 17. Fray
Sahagn states, They gave me all the matters we discussed in pictures, for that was the writ-
ing they employed in ancient times. And the grammarians explained them in their language,
writing the explanation at the bottom of the painting. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile
ed., 2002, vol. 1, pp. 7778; English from Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introduc-
tory Volume, p. 54.
41. Taking all my writings I went to dwell in Santiago de Tlatilulco, where, gathering the
leaders, I presented the matter of my writings to them, and requested that they assign me some
capable leaders with whom to examine and discuss the writings which I brought recorded from
Tepepulco. The governor with his councilmen assigned me as many as eight or ten leaders,
work, with the participation of students, although he does not indicate
whether they were the those from the earlier stage. The friar did, how-
ever, mention a different number of collaborators from those from the
previous stage.
One fact that should be taken into account at the end of the differ-
ent calligraphic versions of the work is Sahagns own comment that all
was re-written in a poor hand, because it was written in great haste.
42
In
another part of the work, the author also mentioned native participants,
both in translation and in writing, when he stated that they had good
spelling and fine penmanship.
43
In Tlatelolco, the one who helped
Sahagn the most was Martn Jacobita, one of his former followers and a
rector of the school in Tlatelolco. The second stage of the work was car-
ried out in one year, and Charles Dibble identified this phase as the first
Tlatelolco manuscript.
44

According to Len-Portilla, the Tlatelolco version is a compilation
parallel to the Texcocan version, but now from the Tlatelolco perspective.
The manuscripts have multiple annotations and contain three different
literary genres: the canonical one from the ancient tradition, responses
to questionnaires, and spontaneous statements from informants. During
that stay in Tlatelolco, Fray Bernardino also revised his Sermones by add-
ing glosses and commentaries, and he also prepared the Coloquios
45
and
Doctrina cristiana, taking advantage of old papers, with the help of elders
and his students.
The materials derived from Tepepulco and Tlatelolco, in other words,
the first and second stages of compilation, are known as the Cdices
Matritenses. Today they are held in the Biblioteca del Palacio Real and in
the Real Academia de Historia, both in Madrid.
selected from among all, very capable in their language and in their ancient customs. Clois-
tered in the College with them and with four or five students of the College, all trilingual, for
a year or more, all I brought written from Tepepulco was amended, explained and expanded.
Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002, vol. 1, p. 78; English from Anderson and
Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, p. 54.
42. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002, vol. 1, p. 78; English from Anderson
and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, p. 54.
43. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002, vol. 1, book 10, p. 83.
44. Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, p. 13.
45. According to Joseina Garca Quintanilla, these were done in 1564. +",14"
</-(*"(-00", Lstudio introductorio,` in %"6"+7(= Historia General, acsimile ed.,
2002, ol. 1, p. 44.
According to Ascensin Hernndez de Len-Portilla, among the folios
in the first and second stage are inserted others that Sahagn and his team
wrote in the monastery of San Francisco in Mexico City, in other words,
information from the third stage. In turn, Josefina Garca Quintana com-
ments that the Cdices Matritenses, also known as the Segundos memo-
riales, lack images and are composed only in Nhuatl, while she concurs
with Hernndez in saying that these papers are mixed with folios from a
later stage corresponding to the Memoriales a tres columnas [Memorials
in three columns] or Memoriales con escolios [Memorials with glosses].
Third Stage
In 1565, Sahagn was transferred to the monastery of San Francisco in
Mexico City, where he worked alone reordering, correcting, and organizing
the work.
46
At this time, he also wrote some of the prologues and appen-
dixes to the works.
47
According to Hernndez, the work, now divided into
twelve books, was written on folios of good-quality paper and organized
in three columns, following a structure close to that of the Alexandrine
Greek philological tradition, but in this version he left out the paintings.
The configuration of the pages remained as follows: in the middle, the
only completed column, was the text in Nhuatl; the left column was
for the Spanish text; and the right was for glosses or linguistic annota-
tions. The undertaking was difficult and costly, and most of the pages
were left with only one column completed, but a manuscript notebook
on the celestial bodies that has come down to us has all three columns,
so Francisco del Paso y Troncoso dubbed this version Memoriales en tres
columnas,
48
which forms the bulk of the Cdices Matritenses.
46. Having acted as mentioned in Tlatilulco, I came to dwell, with all my writings, in
San Francisco de Mxico, where for three years, alone, I examined and re-examined all my
writings. And I again amended them and divided them into Books, into twelve Books, and each
Book by chapters, and some Books by chapters and paragraphs. When I cite I used the same
spelling than original, this is a cite of Sahn, Tlatilulco must keep as it, also the repetition for
the same reason. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002, vol. 1, p. 78; English from
Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, pp. 5455.
47. Garca Quintanilla, Estudio introductorio, p. 43.
48. Dibble distinguishes between two stages: that o the Memoriales a tres columnas
,c. 1563-1565, and that o the Memoriales con escolios ,c. 1565,, in which the latter was
a reised ersion o the ormer. "(;',%$( and ;-&&0', Florentine Codex: Introductory
Volume, p. 13.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagn, with his team, began to work again in
the scriptorium of the Colegio de Tlatelolco. Concerning the work of
those years, Ascencin Hernndez de Len-Portilla comments that they
were getting fine paper, colored inks, books of prints, candles, and even
simple magnifying glasses to exploit daylight to its fullest. Despite the
plague of 1576, in 1577 the new version of the Historia general de las cosas
de la Nueva Espaa was ready.
53
However, there is no mention anywhere
of the names of the amanuenses who participated in this final version.
This may be partially explained once the calligraphy of the different ver-
sions of the text is compared to see the continuities and discontinuities
among the indigenous participants. The final version of the work with
illustrations returned to the idea of the Primeros memoriales, but by this
time the graphic nature of the illustrations had undergone a process of
ethnic mixing. In the words of Hernndez de Len-Portilla, the images
served in this version as a linguistic sign, and according to Miguel Len-
Portilla, the illustrations constitute a reading or interpretation of what
the indigenous text expresses, and they were used to allow the reader to
approach the statements with greater ease.
54

The Florentine Codex: Description of the Layout,
Calligraphy, and Ornamentation
From the bibliographic viewpoint, the Florentine Codex is a bilingual
manuscript organized into twelve amply illustrated books. Jos Luis Mar-
tnez Rodrguez recorded 2,468 illustrations on 1,212 folios.
55
As for the
artists, Diana Magaloni has analyzed the compositional elements of each
image and the outlines (strength of the line, mobility, and precision), and
on these bases she has detected twenty painters, organized as four masters
and sixteen apprentices.
As mentioned at the beginning of the essay, for the study of the
graphic design of the Florentine Codex, consideration was given to three
vol. 1, prologue to book 2; English from Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introduc-
tory Volume, pp. 56.
53. 6',(3(;'# ;' 0'8(9!$,*-00", La listoria general de Sahagn a la luz de
las enciclopedias,` p. 50.
54. Len-Portilla, M., Fray Bernardino de Sahagn y la invencin de la antropologa,
p. 23.
55. Martnez Rodrguez, El Cdice florentino y la Historia general de Sahagn.
As for what was written by Sahagn himself, at least two versions were
written in San Francisco because in addition to his own annotations,
there was an initial blank version of the work in which not only scribes
but also grammarians transcribed text.
49
Furthermore, Romero Galvn
points out that in that stage, native scribes helped Sahagn because by
that time he had already begun to suffer from an ailment that made his
hands tremble.
50

Impasse and Fourth Stage: the Florentine Codex
Sahagn completed the main part of the work in 1569 and all that
remained was to add the version in Spanish and the glosses. However,
after his massive efforts in San Francisco from 1570 to 1575, he did not
work on the texts.
51
When the codex was presented to the Franciscan
chapter in 1570, some of his colleagues within the order regarded the use
of scribes as going against the vow of poverty, so Sahagn was prohibited
from turning to them for help, an obstacle compounded by the revision
and dispersal of the papers. That and the lack of support for his work led
the friar to request the preparation of a summary of its content, which he
sent to the president of the Consejo de Indias in 1575. In that same year,
he sent a similar compendium to the pope. The following year, after the
arrival of Rodrigo de Sequera as comisario of the order, Sahagn was
given support for the final version of the work and the translation into
Spanish.
52

49. After this, Father Fray Miguel de Navarro being Provincial and Father Fray Diego
de Mendoza being guardian of the convent, with their support, all twelve Books were put in
final form in a clear hand. And the Apostilla and the Cantares were amended and a clear copy
made. A grammar of the Mexican language, with a vocabulary as appendix, was also prepared.
The Mexicans amended and added many things to the twelve Books when they made a clear
copy. Thus, the first sieve through which my works were sifted was the people of Tepepulco;
the second, the people of Tlatilulco; the third, the people of Mexico. And in all of these scru-
tinies there were grammarians from the College. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed.,
2002, vol. 1, p. 7879; English from Anderson and Dibble, Florentine Codex: Introductory
Volume, pp. 5455.
50. ,$:',$ +"0)3(, lray Bernardino de Sahagn y la listoria general,` p. 34.
51. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002, vol. 1, p. 8; Anderson and Dibble,
Florentine Codex: Introductory Volume, pp. 5556.
52. Father Sequera ordered said author to translate them into Spanish. And he
provided everything necessary to write them anew, the Mexican language in one column and
Spanish in the other, to send them to Spain. Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002,
he determined that the paper was the usual type employed in Mexico in
the 1570s.
System of Measurements and Proportions
in the Layout of the Florentine Codex
The subject of colonial measurements is broad and complex as a result
of the confluence of pre-Hispanic and European systems that coexisted
throughout the viceregal period.
59
However, based on the equivalence of
colonial measurements converted into the decimal metric system carried
out by Baron von Humboldt in 1803, it was possible to deduce that the
units of measurement in the layout of the Florentine Codex were the pul-
gada and the lnea.
60
Although there is slight variation in measurements
throughout the twelve books, the standard text field measures 7 10 pul-
gadas; the width of the column of text measures 12 lneas, and the gutter,
where the page is folded, is 1 lnea. The relationship of margins is as fol-
lows: the inner margin, 3 lneas; upper margin, 4 lneas; outer margin,
2 lneas; and the lower margin, 4 lneas.
It is highly likely that all the margins suffered some variation dur-
ing the process of rebinding the codex. Nevertheless, the margin most
affected would have been the outer one, as according to the larger propor-
tion used in former times, it would have been the same size as or even
larger than the inner margin.
Page Layout
The pages in the work are designed as mirror images, which is to say, the
composition displays axial symmetry, in which the spine of the book is
1600 for the former, and from 1510 to 1600 for the latter. Anderson and Dibble, Florentine
Codex: Introductory Volume, pp. 2528.
59. For a general panorama of the measurements from European tradition used in New
Spain, see Con la vara que midas las medidas antiguas en Mxico, in Vera, A peso el
kilo. For indigenous measurement systems, see Castillo Ferreras, Unidades nahuas de
medida, pp. 195223, and Matas Alfonso, Medidas indgenas de longitud.
60. The equivalence of colonial measurements with the decimal metric system are as
follows (all conversions expressed in millimeters): 1 vara de Burgos = 839.16; 1 media = 419.58;
1 tercia = 279.72; 1 cuarta = 209.79; 1 sesma = 139.86; 1 pulgada = 23.31; 1 lnea = 1.943; 1
punto = 0.162. I thank mathematician Toms Granados Salinas for his support in undertaking
the calculations and the conversion tables, as well as the members of the list of H-Mxico for
their bibliographic suggestions.
aspects: editorial layout, calligraphy, and ornamentation. As for the edito-
rial layoutthat is, the textual models and the design of the pages of each
bookthe informational sections, format, and layout of the pages and the
relationship of the text with the images and ornaments were examined.
As for the calligraphy, models of scripts used were identified, and changes
in writing in the books and the sequence in which this took place were
analyzed. Finally, with regard to the ornamentation, an accounting was
carried out, the locations were recorded in relation to the text, and a pre-
liminary classification was prepared.
EDITORIAL DESIGN: PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
Format of the Work and Page Layout
In books there has always been a certain relationship between the format
and the content of the work; thus, for example, literary texts were pre-
sented in small sizes and history in large formats. Volumes for personal
use, such as books of hours or works of piety, were produced in smaller
sizes (octavo and sextodecimo), and those intended for study and consul-
tation were usually folios.
56
Taking this information into account, it can
be said that the Florentine Codex is in a folio format, measuring 21 30.6
cm; the proportion of the page retains a harmonious relationship of 2:3, a
ratio that is common in humanistic books for consultation.
Evidently the paper supply played a major role when it came to
determining the size of books. As Mara del Carmen Hidalgo Brinquis
explains, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Spain suffered
from a setback in paper production and the majority of what was used
in the Iberian Peninsula and in the viceroyalties overseas was acquired
from the major paper centers in France (Angoulme, Prigord, Auvergne,
Lyon), Italy (Genoa, Venice, Fabriano, Padua, Bologna), and Flanders.
57

As for the paper used in the Florentine Codex, Charles Dibble has
identified watermarks that he compared with marks found on other docu-
ments in the Archivo General de la Nacin in Mexico City.
58
As a result,
56. As for the typology of formats according to genres, see Pedraza, Clemente, and
Reyes, El libro antiguo, pp. 2127.
57. Carmen Hidalgo Brinquis, La fabricacin del papel en Espaa e Hispanoamrica.
58. Dibble found two watermarks: Heart-Cross and Caballero-with-Staff, with six vari-
ants each, and he indicated the sequence in which they appear in some books. The period of
use of those marks, according to the works of Briquet, Lamadrid, and Mena, is from 1540 to
that occupy a complete field, such as those in books 1, 4, and 7, the aver-
age height of the illustrations is 6 to 8 cm, or between one third and one
fourth of the writing field. In general, the images are the width of the text
column, except for some ornaments used to complete a line of text, which
occupy half or a third of a column.
Number of Lines of Text per Page
There are no perceptible indications in the layout of lines to support the
text. This might be because the titles and section headings were written
in larger-sized letters. However, the average numbers of lines per page
and per language found in the twelve books are thirty-five for the Spanish
and twenty-eight for the Nhuatl. Curiously, the data of the Spanish coin-
cides with the premtica [law] of 1503 of the Spanish crown. To impose
order on the untidy calligraphy of official correspondence, Queen Isabel
decreed that the ideal number of lines per document should be thirty-
five, with fifteen words per line.
63
Therefore, and given that the copies of
63. Nueva Recopilacin libro IV, ttulo XXV [dedicado todo l a De los escriuanos de
Concejo y publicos, y del numero, y Notarios Eclesiasticos] ley 12: Que pone la orden que los
the axis. The margins increase clockwise, beginning with the spine, until
reaching the bottom of the book. With the exceptions of the cover, the
prologue, and the summaries, which are in one column, the other pages
are organized in two columns of equal dimensions. Although the rules of
the layout are not clear in all cases, it is possible to find the pencil line
in the text fields on some pages, especially the odd-number pages (those
on the right side, or recto). These marks are noticeable beginning with
folio 137 of book 2 and throughout book 3. In addition, dots mark the
layout of the columns, for example, on folios 18 and 29 of book 4. The
text field uses one eleventh of the total height of the page, a proportion that
corresponds to Villard de Honnecourts early-thirteenth-century canon of
ideal page layout in designing books.
If one examines the area of the page occupied by the text field, it is
possible to identify three layouts: a) those that occupy slightly more than
60 percent of the page; b) those that occupy between 65 and 69 percent
of the page (which is the most common); and c) those that occupy more
than 72 percent.
61
These variations might be an indicator that at least
three different hands diagrammed the twelve books.
The measurements of one page from each book were recorded to
determine the variation in layout throughout the work. As figure 2 shows,
the relationships between height and width measurements of the text
field, the width of the column, and the space between columns are fairly
stable, displaying only slight variation in book 10.
There is a considerable variation in measurements in the margins of
the twelve books, which may be the result of their later rebinding and the
resultant cutting of pages. However, if one overlooks the outer margin
(which is the one that displays the most irregular pattern), in all cases
except for book 10, there is a closer coincidence of measurements with
the normal canon.
62

Relationship of the Text to Images and Ornaments
Most of the illustrations and ornaments in the Florentine Codex are in
the left-hand column, in the Spanish text. Although there are images
61. The distribution of the books among the three types of text field is as follows: text field
type a) book 10; type b) books 14, 79, 1112; and type c) books 5 and 6.
62. On average, the inner margin measures 1.4 cm, the upper one 2.3 cm, the outer one
2.5 cm, and the lower one 2.8 cm.
Fig. 3. Relationships of page elements in the Florentine Codex.
Box width
Box height
Column width
Gutter
Y axis = cm
X axis = book numbers in
Florentine Codex
Two Examples of Page Layout Models: Title Pages and Calendar
In all cases, the text of the title page is composed in the shape of a wine-
glass, a common organization of title pages from the incunabulum period
until the first half of the sixteenth century. Of the design, we can note as
curiosities that both books 11 and 12 display the first line of text in capital
letters and in a different size for each following line, like printed works
from the sixteenth century, and that book 12 is the only one that has an
illustration on the cover alluding to the text.
On the other hand, the calendar in book 2 follows the customary
model in French printed works, which had been applied in Doctrina
christiana en lengua mexicana by Fray Pedro de Gante in 1553, and in
the Tesoro espiritual en lengua de Mechuacan by Fray Maturino Gilberto,
produced by the same printer in Mexico City, Juan Pablos, in 1558.
67

Finally, the pages are numbered, but there are no indications that
the text contains reclamos, or catchwords, which suggests that each of the
books was written continuously.
68
In other words, sections of the text were
not split up to be written simultaneously by different scribes.
Calligraphy: Some Preliminary Observations
Although precise information is lacking on the writing manuals in circu-
lation in New Spain during the sixteenth century, we know that several
had already been produced in Europe during that century.
69
For the pur-
poses of this work, I will only mention the best-known Italian and Spanish
treatises prior to the date of the production of the Florentine Codex.
70
In
Italy appeared the tracts of Fanti (1514), Arrighi (with several editions,
the first of which was from 1524), Tagliente (1524), Verini (1526), Carpi
67. Copies were consulted in the Biblioteca Cervantina of the Tecnolgico de Monterrey,
Coleccin Salvador Ugarte, 497 215 G211 1553 and 475 G466 1558.
68. Catchwords are letters or a word beneath the last line in the lower right-hand corner
of a page that anticipate the first word of the next page.
69. Tovar de Teresa mentions in Un rescate de la fantasa that the treatises of Vespasian
and Palatino were in the library of the calligrapher Luis Lagarto. However, we should recall
that this artist came to New Spain in 1585, which is to say, after the Florentine Codex was
produced. Despite an examination of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century shipping lists for
books that Fernndez del Castillo and Rueda have left for us, and which Gonzlez Snchez has
commented upon, it has not been possible to find references to writing manuals.
70. A more complete list of writing manuals is available in the books by David Becker and
Joyce Irene Whalley cited in the bibliography.
the Florentine Codex were made to be sent to authorities in Spain, it is
not farfetched to think that such considerations would have been taken
into account.
Informational Sections in the Work
The informational sections of the Florentine Codex are the title page,
64

prologue, letter to the reader, summary, beginning of the chapter, and
body of the text. Other sections that also appear in some books are dedica-
tions, calendars, and appendixes. All of the books except for the first have
a title page, in general with text organized in the form of a cul de lampe
[a flaring trapezoid shape].
65
All except for book 12 have a prologue; and
only books 1, 6, and 12 have summaries. The books with a letter to the
reader are 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, and 12. The only one that has a dedication is
book 6, and books 1 to 5 have appendixes. The books that have the largest
number of sections are 2, 7, and 11.
In book design, generally, each of the informational sections is pre-
sented on a specific page, even or odd, according to the sequence of
appearance and the length of the information contained. Thus, normally
the covers and the beginnings of sections (summaries, body text, appen-
dixes, etc.) appear on odd pages, that is, on the right side. However, in
this manuscript, there are some sections that begin on even pages, which
I believe was to avoid wasting paper.
66

escriuanos han de tener en tomar las escrituras por registro que las partes otorgaren, y darlas
signadas, in Bono Huerta, Historia del derecho notarial espaol. I am grateful to Ana Mar-
tnez Pereira of the Universidad de Oporto and Enrique Villalba of the Universidad Carlos III
de Madrid for this reference.
64. We might call them title pages, although based on the type and amount of infor-
mation, they might instead be half-title pages. The half-title page, as the name indicates, is
before the title page and it provides only partial information. It can also include an element of
illustration. In printed books, the half-title page appeared between the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, coinciding with the baroque period.
65. The title page of the first book was deliberately cut, as verified by examination of the
original.
66. This is the case for the appendix to book 3, the summary of book 8, and the beginning
of the body text in book 11.
rounded humanist letters, became a variant of humanistic cursive
writing (fig. 5).
Number of Scribes Identified and Their Participation by Book
Pending a much more detailed study and analysis, I have identified seven
different calligraphic hands throughout the twelve books. Calligrapher
1 participated in eleven books; calligraphers 2 and 3 in six books each;
calligrapher 4 in five; calligraphers 5 and 6 in four books each; and callig-
rapher 7 appears only once. The following figure maps out the presence
of each of these calligraphers within the books. However, we should keep
in mind that some calligraphers participated several times in the same
book (fig. 5).
73
73. The procedure followed to identify the calligraphers was to examine the features sug-
gesting identity in different letters, measuring the angles of the letters produced, and con-
trasing the pages. However, these results are preliminary.
(1535), Palatino (1540), Ruano (1554), Vespasiano (1554), Cresci (1560),
and Hercolani (1571); in Spain, those of Juan de Iciar (whose first edition
is from 1548) and of Pedro de Madariaga (1565). Pending a more exhaus-
tive review and comparison of these with the calligraphic forms in the
Florentine Codex, we can say that these were the possible formal sources
for written models that the scribes of Tlatelolco had at their disposal. The
comparative study of these sources and the manuscripts will allow us to
trace the phylogeny of chancery script in New Spain.
The styles of letters that have been identified in the Florentine
Codex are capital script and humanist script in their round and chancery
variants.
71
a) Capital, uppercase, or majuscule script. This comes from the monu-
mental epigraphy of the Roman period and was consolidated at the
time of Emperor Augustus. The ductus is deliberate, which is to say,
it is not a rapid or cursive script.
72
It employs a system of two lines
with proportions that produce the triangle, rectangle, and circle. Both
quadrate (squared) and rustic letters are distinguishable among these
book capitals. The quadrate capitals are formed from a square mod-
ule but are drawn calligraphically. We also find rustic capitals, whose
principal distinction from the quadrate type is that they are neither
as vertical nor as symmetrical. The rustic capital is the prototype of
normal roman script.
b) Humanist script. Within this group one may distinguish the writ-
ing from the classic humanistic period (from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century) and from the late humanistic period (from the six-
teenth to the first half of the eighteenth century). In the first group
are the rounded-letter scripts, also known as formed, lowercase cur-
sive, chancery, mercantile, and notary scripts. The first type has both
upper- and lowercase letters, with a fairly vertical axis of composi-
tion and some calligraphic traits. For its part, the chancery script is
a simplification of the gothic script characteristic of Italian chancer-
ies, which during the fifteenth century, and thanks to the influx of
71. I have used the classification of Riesco, Introduccin a la paleografa y la diplomtica
general, pp. 3348.
72. Ductus refers to the individual manner of writinghow the pen was held, the order
and direction of strokes, and the speed and care taken in the formation of the letters. See
Brown, A Guide to Western Historic Scripts.
Capital Humanistic
Quadrate Rounded
Rustic Chancery
Fig. 4. Script styles in the Florentine Codex.
b) The Nhuatl was mainly written by scribes 2 and 3, who also wrote
texts in Spanish.
c) The clearly trilingual scribes were numbers 1 and 6.
d) In my opinion, scribe 7 might not have been indigenous, since he
participated only in the Spanish and his calligraphy is in the chan-
cery style, with more regular proportions as well as more ornamental
strokes, which might indicate longer practice.
e) Independent of the ductus of each scribe, there are some books and
sections that are more cursive than others, which could indicate dif-
ferent speeds of production (fig. 6).
Proportions of Scripts
The height of the script is generally 4 mm, with a separation between
lines of 5 mm. In few cases is the spatial arrangement of the text disrupted
with respect to the writing field, and rarely is there writing that falls below
the horizontal line. There are very few corrections, crossed-out words, or
Identities of the Scribes
In the prologue to the second book, Sahagn mentions four main gram-
marians and three amanuenses who wrote out the texts.
74
It is important
to clarify, however, that when he cited them, he was referring to the first
stage of compiling information, the one in Tepepulco, which was nine-
teen years before the production of the Florentine Codex. It is also impor-
tant to recall the repeated plagues that the capital suffered during this
time, which led to the deaths of numerous indigenous people, including
students at Tlatelolco. This makes it difficult to attribute a specific iden-
tity to Fray Bernardinos native collaborators during the last stage of the
work. Regardless of the interventions detected, we can make some com-
mentaries concerning the hierarchy of those collaborators in the realiza-
tion of the work.
a) The Spanish text had a principal scribe, whom I refer to as scribe 1,
and in a secondary roles were scribes 4 and 3.
74. Len-Portilla, Fray Bernardino de Sahagn y la invencin de la antropologa,
p. 31.
language
bk.
1
bk.
2
bk.
3
bk.
4
bk.
5
bk.
6
bk.
7
bk.
8
bk.
9
bk.
10
bk.
11
bk.
12
Spanish 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
7 4 4 6 4 4 4
5 5 3 3 3
2
Nhuatl 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2 6 3 3 3 3 3
3 6 4 5 4
5
Latin 1 6
Scribe 1 Scribe 2 Scribe 3 Scribe 4
Scribe 5 Scribe 6 Scribe 7
Fig. 5. The Scribes of the Florentine Codex: Participation by language and
book number.
Fig. 6. Individual Calligraphic Styles of the Scribes of the Florentine
Codex.
handwritten addendum, given that the calligraphy does not correspond
to any of the others present in the work and is noticeably shaky. On the
other hand, the drawing of a hand appears in book 6, fol. 204v, between
the definitions of defiance and indignity.
76

Initials
In the Florentine Codex, we encounter a number of capitals and initials.
The first-level initials occupy up to four lines of text, while those of the
second level occupy only two. The structure of these letters is the usual
one for the Latin alphabet from epigraphic inscriptions; nevertheless,
there are some signs with slightly unorthodox designs.
77
The only framed
initials, which are those that most faithfully follow those from printed
books, are at the beginning of the text in book 1. At the start of book 5
there is a capitular gua, like those that appear in printed works; this is an
initial capital on a smaller scale with space around it, allowing the addition
of more elaborate ornamentation around it later. In the case of several
initials, terminals or serifs suggest the influence of printing types.
78
An
example of this influence appears in the Sermonario en lengua mexicana
by Fray Juan de la Anunciacin (Mexico City, Antonio Ricardo, 1577),
which employs a considerable number of initials without ornamentation
that I believe to have been cut in New Spain and that display a certain
resemblance to the initials in the manuscript under discussion. Finally, if
the treatment of initials from the Florentine Codex is compared with that
of other manuscripts connected with the scriptorium in the Colegio de
Tlatelolco, what stands out is the simplicity of the designs, not only in the
calligraphic model, but also in the chromatic handling.
76. The mark appears at the end of the next paragraph: this letter means. He does not
pay heed to his mother or his father as if he did not have them. And as a metaphor it is said,
of those who do not obey or pay reverence to those who govern the people or republic. The
meaning of the sign is unclear.
77. These unusual designs are found in Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002,
book 2, fols. 141v and 143, and book 6, fols. 146v and 170v.
78. This is particularly evident in the facsimile edition of the codex, book 2, fols. 142v
and 143; in book 3, fols. 47, 27v, 29 and 38v; and in the large number of initials in books 4,
6, and 1012.
repainted characters; in other words, the scribes were not beginners and
they already had a command of their written language, although this does
not mean that in all cases they would have achieved characteristics that
today might be associated with beautiful calligraphic work. The volume
that has the largest amount of corrections and inserted text is book 11.
Cursiveness and Ligature in the Script
In general terms, although each scribe had his own particular ductus,
the angles of the script in the codex range from 52 degrees (slanted, swift
script) to 90 degrees (straight script with less ligature; in other words,
slower writing). In the Nhuatl there is ligature in the digraphs ch, tl,
and tz and in the word endings -mi and -ui, for which the i or long j is
used. In the Spanish, ligature appears in ct and st. Some scribes joined
more letters, writing more quickly, but in general, the calligraphy of the
Florentine Codex presents relatively separate letters. On this point, it is
worth mentioning an argument put forth by Federico Gmez de Orozco
about the writing of isolated letters in the codices of the Techialoyan
group.
75
According to that scholar, given that before the Conquest the
native people wrote via drawings, in discrete and complete units, in the
same way, they copied the letters of our alphabet one by one and not with
the fluidity in the handling of a pen that could be achieved by an expert
scribe. In addition to this argument, there is the impact of printed and
typographic models on calligraphy to consider, because in those models,
letters are isolated units.
Written System
In the Florentine Codex, there are few elements alien to the written sys-
tem, that is, other graphic elements that are not letters or numbers. Para-
graph marks are used to indicate the titles, chapters, and paragraphs, but
their use is not homogeneous. Crosses in book 10 serve to connect chapter
twenty-seven of the summary with the same section on folio 70v. The
phrase Relacin del autor digna de ser anotada [Account of the author
worthy of being written down] appears at that mark. This is Sahagns
75. Gmez de Orozco, La decoracin en los manuscritos hispano-mexicanos primiti-
vos, pp. 4852.
Given that the ornaments are found mainly in the column of Span-
ish text, they might have been made by the scribe in charge of this lan-
guage and not necessarily the artist who did the illustrations in the same
book. In a word, it appears that in some cases, the scribes at Tlatelolco
conceived of the ornaments as part of the system of writing and not as
elements of illustration. To confirm this idea, it would be necessary to do
a comparative study of the execution of the iconographic system with the
writing and a test of the materials in both sections of the codex.
Ornamentation: Some Preliminary Observations
For our purposes, ornaments as those images that, although figurative, are
not predominantly narrative or explicative in intent, nor do they attempt
to provide informational content from the text.
81
In this context, the orna-
ments were used to delimit areas of information, to separate sections of
text, and to decorate.
Count and Location of Ornaments
The most abundantly decorated books of the Florentine Codex are books
10 and 11, and the least are books 6 and 4. At the same time, it is possible
to note that the ornaments are for the most part located in the column of
Spanish text.
Ornamental Types
There are twenty-six different ornamental motifs that may be organized
into the following subgroups: a) plant or floral bands or strips; b) orna-
ments with human figures, animals, or objects; c) typographic-style orna-
ments; and d) complements to images. In each book, different combina-
tions of models are used; furthermore, the least ornamented book employs
two different types, as does book 10, and there are some with more than
twelve types, such as books 7 and 12.
believe there were at least two types of sequences. See Zetina, Falcn, Arroyo, and Ruval-
caba, The Encoded Language of Herbs.
81. The theoretical treatment of the subject of ornament is beyond the scope of this essay;
however, the conceptional framework posited by Daz Cayeros in Ornamentacin y Ceremo-
nia has been taken into consideration.
Proportions between Spanish and Nhuatl Text
The proportions of the Spanish and Nhuatl text are not the same, which
may be the result of several factors. In the first place, the length of words
in the two languages differs because Nhuatl, as an agglutinant language,
is longer than Spanish. On the other hand, the Nhuatl was not always
translated literally into Spanish; that is to say, there was not a complete
transliteration. However, in several cases, the Spanish text had longer
explanations. In the work, it is possible to find three types of propor-
tional relations between the two languages: a) books that have less text in
Nhuatl than in Spanish, so the former occupies 70 percent of the space
of the latter; b) those that display a proportion of 90 percent, a fairly even
relationship between the two, and c) those that are in the middle, with a
variation between 75 and 82 percent.
79

Sequence of Production of Writing and Illustration
The sequence of production of writing and illustration is one of the most
difficult points to clarify. Nevertheless, based on close observation, at least
two possibilities seem likely. In book 2, there are several pages with only
the Nhuatl text and some illustrations, which suggests that the order of
expression for the diverse informational elements was first the Nhuatl
text, then the images and the translation into Spanish, and finally the
ornamentation. However, in book 11, the edges of some illustrations are
not interrupted, to avoid covering the ascenders and descenders of the
Spanish text. In this case, the sequence of production could have been
first the Nhuatl text and the translation into Spanish, then the images,
and finally the ornamentation. This same sequence would have been fol-
lowed in book 10, since the edges of some images do not form a com-
plete rectangle; instead they are adapted to the remaining space left after
completion of the text. It is unclear whether the sequence is the same in
the work as a whole, but it is at least possible to find the two sequences
described here.
80
79. These relations are expressed as follows: a) books 1 and 9; b) books 4 and 1; c) the rest
of the books.
80. The group that studied the De la Cruz-Badiano Codex reached similar conclusions
concerning the borders of the images. However, they claim that writing and illustration were
carried out simultaneously on that document, while in the case of the Florentine Codex, I
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(fig. 7).
82

The ornamental styles I have defined as typographic are those that
are most reminiscent of woodcuts from printed books. The types found
might vaguely evoke the Italian, French, or Flemish printing tradition,
which is not at all unusual if one recalls that there were books from these
sources in the schools library (see fig. 6).
83
Color, Volumetry, Symmetry, and Format of Ornaments
With regard to the handling of color, there are ornaments that are highly
colored (green, yellow, red, black, and blue), bichrome (red and black
colors traditionally used in printing), shaded (with thin, parallel lines of
azure or faded grays), and outlined in black. Volume in designs is shown
in several ways: by line-shading, azured, or stippled grounds. As for sym-
metry, some ornaments display axialhorizontal and verticalsymme-
try, while others seems to be fragments of bands or borders with motifs in
series, displaying modular repetition. For the most part, the format of the
ornaments is rectangular (with or without a frame), although there are
some of squarer proportions. Despite there being stepped frets and small
decorative borders one centimeter in height and larger decorations of up
to six centimeters, the usual size was one-eighth the height of the writing
field.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The indigenous people of Mexico adopted the alphabetic technology in
a swift and progressive manner, and soon it became a true means of self-
expression. The features of local identities remained in the texts, both in
the subject matter and in the means and techniques of representation that
were combined with European conventions, producing a new visuality
distinctive of the Americas. Studying the Florentine Codex and the other
documents produced in Tlatelolco makes it possible to embark upon a
sort of archaeology of Latin-American writing and of Indo-American
82. a) books 14, 68, 1112; b) books 1, 5, 9, and 10; c) books 6, 911; d) books 24, 10;
and e) books 25, 10, and 12 of Sahagn, Historia general, facsimile ed., 2002.
83. Meynell and Morison, Printers Flowers and Arabesques, pp. 131; p. 9, nos. 12
and 13; p. 16, no. 20; p. 20, no. 25.
It is interesting to note that in book 1, which is dedicated to the pre-
Hispanic gods, there is an exclusive presence of floral motifs, which
according to Diana Magaloni adheres to characteristic ornamentation
styles of the pre-Hispanic period. Similarly, only in book 12 are there
more Europeanized ornaments, which in a certain manner accord with
the subject of that section. However, we cannot say that throughout the
work, all ornamentation relates to the subjects of the respective texts
(fig. 6).
The ornament types most commonly used in the work are a) exuber-
ant, stylized plant bands; b) stylized plant bands; c) plant bands with
Paganino, Libro primo de Rechami,
Venice, 1529
Florentine Codex, Book 10

Exemplario di lavoro, Venice, 1546 Florentine Codex, Book 2
Lyon f leurons (rosettes),
16th century
Florentine Codex, Books 10, 4, and 2
(from left to right)
Fig. 9. Reference ornaments, compared with ornaments of the Florentine
Codex.
CODA: IMPRESSIONS FROM SEEING
THE FLORENTINE CODEX IN PERSON
The precision of certain tones has made me rediscover the innate magi-
cal charm of pigmentation. The line of the surfaces and the shapesangles,
volutes, straight lines of Cyclopean excellencefixed its dazzling mica nee-
dle on the pupil.
Discante, by Jorge Ortega
The experience of seeing the codex left me exhausted. I never imag-
ined that looking at a book could consume so much energy. Although it is
obvious that editorial work is the epitome of collective undertaking, seeing
this work gave me such a strong sense of that process that I could not help
but feel deeply moved.
I was happy to have been able to confirm that my gaze as a designer
had not erred in the appreciation of some elements that I had no way of
knowing in advance. Specifically, I am referring to the lack of the title page
of the first volume, which as Dr. Rao explained, was cut, and to the fact that
part of the design of the text fields had been made with dots, information
that I was also able to confirm through direct examination of the pages.
This initial approach to the graphic design of a work is far from over;
much more specific and detailed study is still needed. Nevertheless, I feel
a sense of satisfaction that my work has shed light on areas that need to be
studied in the future for a better understanding of how this manuscript and
others directly connected to it were materially produced in New Spain.
The final determination of the sequence of participation of scribes, the
composition of the signatures of the books and the paper used in them,
the relationship between ornamentation and text, and the comparison of
the characteristics of the layout of this work with prior documents prepared
by Sahagn and his collaborators with other editorial products from the
Colegio de Tlatelolco are indispensable elements for future study to shed
greater light on how the scriptorium functioned. This will afford us not
only a better understanding of the status of those scribe-painters, but will
also also bring us closer to the vision of written culture residing in this
mestizo work.
text design in the new continent, since both the alphabet and publishing
gained new vitality in the hands of the native population. After under-
going the processes of appropriation and re-signification, the alphabet
became Indianized and the indigenous people could use it with greater
flexibility and confidence in the production of their own narratives.
From what has just been presented, it is possible to say that in the
scriptorium of Tlatelolco there was a group of amanuenses with a broad
humanistic, linguistic, and artistic background. Among them existed a
great organization that allowed them to participate actively in different
stages and aspects of the works that they undertook, following a model of
mutual collaboration.
The scribes were well versed in the use of different calligraphic mod-
els, as well as in the diverse European traditions of writing and printing
texts. This can be seen in the mode of iconographic, calligraphic, and
ornamental representation in the work.
The Florentine Codex is the final stage of a long and complex publica-
tion process in which the information gathered by Sahagn changed in
structure and presentation several times. Broadly speaking, the stages iden-
tified begin with the friars initial enquiries in Tepepulco (1558), plus those
in Tlatelolco (1561), and the two drafts prepared while he was at San Fran-
cisco in Mexico City (1565). In these earlier versions, the text in Nhuatl
was set up with or without images, in two or three columns. However, no
decision was made until the final version to show a certain number and
type of image, combining pre-Hispanic and European traditions of repre-
sentation, because the 544 drawings of the first version ended up totaling
2,468 illustrations in the final one, of which 477 are ornamental motifs.
In summary, we can say that:
a) there were seven scribes for the texts, two of whom were trilingual,
so some of the calligraphers could have been grammarians, and they
were not mere copyists of Sahagns texts;
b) as a result of the initial and ornamental models found, it is possible
that the scribes used Venetian and Lyonese printed sources for inspira-
tion; and
c) although there are some variations, the design of the books is fairly
stable throughout the entire collection, and the pulgada and lnea were
used as units of measurement in its execution.
Fig. 1. Ludovico Buti, ceiling of the former Armeria (room 21) of the
Uffizi, 1588. Fresco. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
Thanks to the pioneering research of Detlef Heikamp, we know that
Sahagns General History of the Things of New Spain came to Florence
sometime in or before 1588, when Medici court artist Ludovico Buti cop-
ied some of the images from the codex in his fresco on the ceiling of one
of the rooms of the Armeria in the Uffizi (fig. 1).
1
Heikamp pointed out
the connection between the conquest of Mexico battle scene in the ceil-
ing and various warriors portrayed in the codex (fig. 2). These images of
Mexican warriors with their conical hats and long spears are unlike any
other European representations of the New World and can derive only
from images in the codex. Even more convincing is the close affinity
between one specific figure from the codex and an Amerindian warrior
Buti painted within the grotesque work in the ceiling (figs. 3a, b). The
* I thank Clara Bargellini, Joseph Connors, Diana Magaloni Kerpel, Alessandra Russo,
and Gerhard Wolf for their support with this research. In addition to the wonderful participants
and audience at the Colors convegno, I am also grateful to the members of the Western Medi-
terranean Culture Workshop at the University of Chicago, and particularly Elissa Weaver, for
their responses to an early version of this paper. The assistance of librarians Giovanna Rao at
the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence and John ONeill at the Hispanic Society in
New York were invaluable to this study, as were the editing skills and comments of Lisa Neal
Tice and Katherine Poole. I also thank Franca Petrucci Nardelli for sharing her thoughts on
the codexs binding, and Edward Goldberg for his helpful comments on this study.
1. Detlef Heikamp was the first scholar to recognize the connection between the fres-
coes and the codex in Mexico and the Medici, pp. 1920.
Istoria della terra chiamata
la nuova spagna:
The History and Reception of
Sahagns Codex at the
Medici Court
LI A MARKEY
University of Pennsylvania
LI A MARKEY 200 SAHAGN S CODEX AT THE MEDICI COURT 201
Italian artist not only copied the costume, headdress, and weapons of
the figure, but also the warriors stance, with only slight changes in the
angle of the spear and in details of the dress. Clearly this Medici court
artist had access to the Florentine Codex in 1588, when he painted these
frescoes, yet apart from this visual evidence, little has been discovered
about the circumstances of the codexs arrival in Florence. Studies by
Arthur J. O. Anderson, Detlef Heikamp, Jess Bustamante Garca, John
Frederick Schwaller, and Giovanni Marchetti have considered the prov-
enance of the manuscript, but no study has been devoted solely to its
history and reception at the Medici court.
2
This paper presents some new
hypotheses about how and when the codex came to Florence through an
assessment of Medici inventories and correspondence, an examination
of a previously unstudied but related manuscript at the Hispanic Society
of America, and an analysis of some of the physical attributes of the Flo-
rentine Codex. I argue that Ferdinando de Medici acquired the codex as
2. Anderson, Variations on a Sahaguntine Theme, pp. 323; Heikamp, Mexico and
the Medici, p. 20; Marchetti, Hacia la edicin critica de la Historia de Sahagn, pp.
505540; Bustamante Garca, Fray Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 342; Schwaller, Tracking
the Sahagn Legacy, pp. 265273.
a cardinal in Rome, had part of it translated and copied, and then later
moved it to Florence when he became grand duke in 1587. The evidence
presented here for the history of the codex now enables us to pose new
questions about the reception of the text in Florence and to reflect on its
possible impact on the culture of the Medici court at the time of Ferdi-
nando de Medici.
SAHAGNS HISTORIA BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
The Florentine Codex represents the culmination of Sahagns
research and writing in New Spain from roughly 1555 to 1577. Prefig-
uring the work of modern ethnographers, the Spanish Franciscan friar
and missionary interviewed natives about their ancestral past, translated
Nhuatl histories, and collaborated with native artists and scribes.
3
His
experience resulted in the creation of several memoriales, letters, and
3. On Sahagn as an anthropologist, see Lon-Portilla, Bernardino de Sahagn: First
Anthropologist, and Klor de Alva, Sahagn and the Birth of Modern Ethnography.
Fig. 2. Ludovico Buti, detail from the Conquest of Mexico in the ceiling
of the former Armeria (room 21) of the Uffizi, 1588. Fresco. Galleria degli
Uffizi, Florence.
Figs. 3a, b. (Left) Detail from the Florentine Codex, Florence, Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat. 220, book 12, fol. 60v. (Right)
Ludovico Buti, detail of a Native American in the ceiling of the former
Armeria (room 21) of the Uffizi, 1588. Fresco. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
longer texts documenting sixteenth-century New Spain, which were sub-
sequently compiled to create the universal encyclopedic history in the
codex. For several years in the 1570s, Sahagns work was brought to a
halt because the Franciscan provincial in Mexico told him that he could
not receive funding for his writing, and also because many of his texts had
been seized for evaluation by the Inquisition. Then, in 1575, a new Fran-
ciscan commissary general named Father Rodrigo de Sequera arrived in
Mexico. Sahagn ultimately dedicated the codex to Sequera, who fos-
tered his writing and suggested that the text be presented in both Nhuatl
and Spanish. According to Sahagn, Sequera was instructed to send his
history to Spain because the president of the Council of the Indies, Don
Juan de Ovando, wished to read the text.
4
Unfortunately, Ovando died in
1575, shortly after Sequera reached Mexico. In 1576 a terrible pestilence
struck the country, likely killing many of the native scribes and artists
with whom Sahagn was working. To make matters worse, in April of
1577 King Philip II ordered that Sahagns manuscripts be seized, and
prohibited him from doing any further work.
5
Philips letter of instruction
reads,
you must proceed with much care and diligence to seize those books, with-
out any original or copy remaining, and to send them carefully guarded
at the first opportunity to our Council of the Indies, so that they may be
examined there. Do not allow any person to write things having to do with
the superstitions and the way of life of the natives, in any language.
6
At least one other decree calling for the confiscation of Sahagns text
followed in the next year.
7
Yet Sahagn appeared to have had no knowledge
of the ban on his work, and continued production of the manuscript. He
4. On Ovandos interest in Sahagns manuscript, see Poole, Juan de Ovando, pp. 142
144.
5. Best on the history of the confiscation are Bustamante Garca, Fray Bernardino
de Sahagn, pp. 334341; Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, pp. 493504; Browne,
Sahagn and the Transition to Modernity, pp. 2636.
6. The 1577 document regarding the confiscation, Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla,
Patronato, 275, R. 79, is published in its entirety in Fernndez del Castillo, Libros y libre-
ros en el siglo XVI, p. 513. This translation of an excerpt of the letter is published in Baudot,
Utopia and History in Mexico, p. 500.
7. See Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, pp. 493504; Archivo General de Indias,
Sevilla, Patronato, 15, R.5.
even wrote to the king about the significance of his writings, telling him
of other drafts. We can assume that Sequera, Sahagns sponsor, brought
the codex to Spain sometime between 1578 and 1584, when it is believed
that he returned to Spain. Sahagns letters from the last years of his life
indicate that, sadly, he never knew what became of his great manuscript.
BECOMING THE FLORENTINE CODEX
There are several theories regarding how Sahagns codex became the
Florentine Codex. Some sources speculate that the codex was given
to Grand Duke Francesco de Medici as a gift for his 1578 wedding to
Bianca Cappello.
8
However, there seems to be no evidence to support this
possibility, and the manuscript hardly seems an appropriate wedding gift
for a duke who lived under the tutelage of Philip II. In addition, the grand
dukes correspondence with Bolognese scientist Ulisse Aldrovandi seems
to indicate that he never owned any such document from New Spain.
When, in a 1586 letter, Aldrovandi asked Francesco if he would be able to
acquire copies of images from a certain book of drawings of Indian flora
and fauna (probably Francisco Hernndezs renowned work on the sub-
ject), Francesco responded that it would not be possible to obtain these
copies, indicating that he was well aware of the ban on such texts in Spain
and the difficulty of gaining access to them.
9
If Francesco had possession
of the Florentine Codex, he would most likely have shown it to Aldrovandi
or had images or text from it copied for him, as he had pledged he always
would.
10
Francesco commissioned the painter Jacopo Ligozzi to docu-
8. This possibility is first proposed in the catalogue by Ciano, I Medici e lEuropea 1532
1609, p. 214, and then repeated in Marchetti, Hacia la edicin critica, p. 529. See also
Bustamante Garcia, Fray Bernardino de Sahagn, p. 342.
9. Aldrovandi writes on 1 April 1586, Monsignor Segha, Vescovo di Piasenza, mi disse
che aveva veduto appresso la maest del Re Filippo un libro di varie piante, animali et altre
cose indiane nove dipinto; cosa veramente regale, perci se piacesse a Vostra Altezza serenis-
sima per il signor suo Ambasciatore di Spagna trarne ritratto di qualche figura degna, penso
che non le potriano forsi esser dispari. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (ASF), Mediceo del Prin-
cipato 780, c. 711r. Francesco then responds on 7 April 1586, In Spagna sarebbe difficilissimo
il poter cavare ritratto di piante o animali di quell libro del Re, et fra le altre difficolt si stenta
a trovarvi chi sappia di tale arte. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 269, cc. 18r18v. These letters
are published in Tosi, Ulisse Aldrovandi e la Toscana, pp. 294296.
10. Aldrovandi himself explained that Francesco always gave him duplicates of draw-
ings he had commissioned and shared information with him. See Frati, La vita di Ulisse
Aldrovandi, pp. 2526.
ment plants and animals from the New World in watercolors and often
had copies made of them for Aldrovandi. Within this corpus of works on
paper both in Florence and Bologna, there are no images related to the
Florentine Codex.
In addition to the lack of imagery, there is no archival evidence for
Francescos possession of the codex. No reference to the codex has been
found in any of the letters or documents in the large Aldrovandi archive.
The preface to the recent facsimile edition of the codex makes reference
to a 1579 letter in which Aldrovandi mentions a very rich book from
Spain in Francescos collection.
11
Unfortunately, this letter only exists
in a later copy, and its 1579 date and the fact that it describes the book
as being from Spain makes this a rather improbable reference to the Flo-
rentine Codex. Furthermore, the codex is not listed in the inventory of
Francescos casino, the place where he probably stored his Ligozzi draw-
ings and precious books, and where he would certainly have housed such
a manuscript.
12
It is possible that Francesco acquired the codex just before
his death in 1587 and that he kept it a secret. However, significant evi-
dence points to his brother Ferdinando as the owner of the text.
During his twenty-five years as a cardinal from 1563 to 1588, Fer-
dinando de Medici became an influential figure in Rome.
13
He held
many prestigious offices, including Protectorate of the Faith in Spain,
Protectorate of the Franciscan Minor Observants, and Protectorate of the
Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria and of the Kingdom of Ethiopia.
These international designations enabled Ferdinando to forge relations
with religious and political leaders from around the world and inspired
11. See the preface to the recent facsimile of the codex: Sahagn, Historia universal,
Florence 1995, p. iv. This hypothesis is based on a seventeenth-century copy of a 1579 letter
written by Ulisse Aldrovandi to Francesco, in which he cites a book from Spain that is now
located at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze (BNCF), Targioni Tozzetti 189, VIII, 223 bis.
The copy of this letter reads,
al guidizio dognuno magnanima impresa questa io in gran di primo pensiero,
fatica et vigilia intorno allIstoria universale degli uccelli, son sforato movermi hora a suppli-
carla con humilt che VAS piacesse arrichire et ornare queste mie composizioni con qualcuna
figura de peregrini, e tra quelle che accenn al Dottore Mercuriale che tiene in quell suo ric-
chissimo libro di Spagna.
12. I found no reference to the codex or any books from or about the New World in the
15881589 casino inventory from just after Francescos death. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 136.
13. For Ferdinandos biography and artistic patronage, see Saltini, Istoria del Gran
Duca Ferdinando, pp. 371401; Silli, Una Corte alla fine del 500; Butters, Le cardinal
Ferdinand de Mdicis, pp. 170196, and Ferdinando de Medici and the Art of the Possible,
pp. 6775; Calonaci, Ferdinando dei Medici, pp. 635690; Hochmann, Villa Medici.
him to interact with and learn about other cultures. For example, as Pro-
tectorate of the Patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, he helped organize
studies of Asian and Middle Eastern languages at universities and helped
to establish the Stamperia Orientale, a publishing house that printed
bibles and other texts in Arabic.
14
As head of the Spanish faction at the
papal court in Rome, Ferdinando developed a strong connection with the
court in Madrid. He sent religious gifts and arranged for indulgences in
order to strengthen this tie.
15
These religious and cultural relations were
critical for maintaining the power of the Medici in foreign affairs and
certainly aided Ferdinando in acquiring collectible objects from around
the world. Ferdinando owned a large quantity of goods from the New
World, including featherwork objects, hammocks, and books. He was also
engaged in publishing a missionary text, Padre Giovanni Pietro Maffeis
Historiarum Indicarum, a history of the evangelization of both Asia and
the Americas.
16
Therefore, the bilingual Florentine Codex written by a
Franciscan missionary certainly would have been of great interest to the
young cardinal who was Protectorate of the Franciscan order and who
sought to translate religious texts and publish books on the conversion of
the New World.
17

A letter recently found by the Medici Archive Project in the Archivio
di Stato di Firenze provides further insight into Ferdinandos activities
as a cardinal and his interest in texts about the New World. In this letter
of 1599, one of Ferdinandos agents in Valencia wrote to a Medici secre-
tary in Florence, explaining that some years ago Ferdinando had given
Pope Sixtus V a copy of a handwritten book about the notable things in
the Indies.
18
Although this letter was written in 1599, when Ferdinando
14. For the most recent analysis of the Stamperia Orientale, see the forthcoming article
by Mario Casari, Eleven Good Reasons for Learning Arabic in Late-Renaissance Italy.
15. Mulcahy, Philip II of Spain, p. 85.
16. A letter of 29 December 1588 to Ferdinando from Vincenzo di Andrea Alamanni,
his ambassador in Spain, explains that Philip II received his copy of Maffeis book and com-
plimented the duke for publishing it. I thank the Medici Archive Project for this reference;
Medici Archive Project ID no. 8466: ASF, Mediceo del Principato 4919, c. 631.
17. Schwaller, in Tracking the Sahagn Legacy, also speculates that Ferdinando
acquired the codex and that it would have interested him greatly, based on his position as a
cardinal in Rome. However, Schwaller argues that Ferdinando was given the codex as a wed-
ding gift for his marriage to Christine of Lorraine in 1589, although he provides little evidence
for this hypothesis.
18. ASF, Mediceo del Principato 4087, c. 64: lui per gratitudine diede SA un libro
penna delle cose notabili delle Indie che fu caso a SA si che ne diede una copia Sisto
The Hispanic Society manuscripts cover, with Cardinal Ferdinandos
coat of arms (fig. 4), comprised of the Medici palle with the cardinals hat,
is an obvious indication that this manuscript copy of Sahagns text was
commissioned by or for Ferdinando. The watermark on the paper further
confirms the origin and date of the manuscript as Roman, after 1580.
22

Furthermore, the inventory number inside the first page of the manu-
script (fig. 5), n. 1138, is the same number that is found in two Medici
inventories of books from the late 1580s. An alphabetical book inventory
from the late 1580s describes the manuscript as Istoria della terra chia-
mata la nuova spagna fog pena no. 1138 (fig. 6).
23
Giovanna Rao also has
found the Hispanic Society manuscript cited in another Medici inventory
from 1588.
24
This inventory, written by Ferdinandos librarian Domenico
Mellini, lists the same inventory number, n. 1138, along with the title
De costumi de Mexicani libri 5, con una aggiunta and then traduzz-
ione. The front page of the Hispanic Society manuscript also includes
these same words, d costumi de Mexicani lib. 5, making clear that
this translated edition, written in a legible late-sixteenth-century hand,
was in Ferdinandos collection in 1588.
Finally, there is further evidence to indicate that the Hispanic Society
manuscript is a copy after the Florentine Codex and not after the Tolosa
Manuscript. Like the Florentine Codex, the Hispanic Society manuscript
lacks the dedication to Father Sequera, which was included in the Tolosa
Manuscript in Madrid. It is obvious that this dedication page has been cut
from the first page of the Florentine text. Perhaps this was done before it was
given to Ferdinando or perhaps Ferdinando got rid of the dedication page
himself. In any case, the dedication was not copied into Ferdinandos
translated edition. From the manuscript at the Hispanic Society, along
with its connection to the Medici book inventories and its relation to the
Florentine Codex, we can conclude that Ferdinando owned the Florentine
22. The watermark of a bird within a circle matches Briquet no. 12209, which is described
as having a similar variation produced in Rome in 1580. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire
Historique, vol. 3, p. 613.
23. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 235 Ter, unpaginated; Maria Vaccari dates this inventory
to 15871588 and believes that it was drawn up on the occasion of Ferdinandos move to Flor-
ence: La guardaroba medicea, p. 231.
24. I thank Giovanna Rao for alerting me to this inventory, entitled Index eorum libro-
rum qui privatim regalibus in aedibus Ferdinandi Medicaei S. R. E. Cardinalis et Magni Ducis
Etruriae tertiiasservantur (BNCF, II. II, 309).
was grand duke, it refers to the period during Sixtus Vs pontificate when
Ferdinando was a cardinal living in Rome, between 1585 and 1587. That
time span coincides with the one in which Sequera might have brought
Sahagns manuscript to Europe, and in which Sixtus V was demonstrat-
ing his own interest in the New World. As Alessandra Russo discussed in
her paper for the Colors Between Two Worlds convegno (1214 June
2008), Sixtus V owned and admired a feather painting of Saint Fran-
cis from New Spain. As a Franciscan who treasured these objects from
the Americas, he would have certainly been interested in the writings
of Sahagn, who wrote about featherwork.
19
Unfortunately, there is no
evidence to indicate whether or not Ferdinando actually gave the pope
this copy of a book about New Spain, nor is it clear whether Sahagns
manuscript is the subject of this correspondence. Ferdinandos action
described in the letter, however, does prove that manuscripts from the
Indies were being copied and circulated in Italy and confirms that he
owned an important book about the New World.
Despite the ban on the text, copies of Sahagns codex were produced
in Europe, and it appears that Ferdinando himself had it reproduced. One
copy or derivation of the Florentine Codex, with neither images nor the
Nhuatl text, is now located in Madrid, and is known as the Manuscrito
de Tolosa as a result of being housed until the twentieth century in a Fran-
ciscan monastery in Tolosa.
20
It is generally believed that the manuscript
in Madrid is a copy of the Florentine Codex that was produced in Spain
when Father Rodrigo de Sequera still had possession of the original.
Another little-known manuscript at the Hispanic Society of America in
New York is an Italian translation of the first five books (the first volume)
of the codex, once in Ferdinandos collection.
21

Quinto.... This letter was found by the Medici Archive Project but is not currently located
on its online database. It is dated 18 March 1599 and is from Giulio Battaglini in Valencia to
Lorenzo Usimbardi in Florence.
19. On Pope Sixtus Vs cultural politics and artistic patronage, see Madonna, Roma di
Sisto V, and Fagiolo and Madonna, Sisto V. Sixtus V sponsored the publication of Castore
Durantes Herbario Nuovo, which included a catalogue of plants from the New World. See
Costabile, Dinamiche produttive e mercato editoriale, pp. 489, 492.
20. Madrid, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia, MS 9-4812, a-77.
21. Hispanic Society of America, New York, MS B1479. Until now, the manuscript in the
Hispanic Society has only been cited in Cline, ed., Handbook of Middle American Indians,
vol. 13, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, part 2, p. 206, and vol. 15, Guide to Ethnohistorical
Sources, part 4, p. 453.
Codex in Rome, had it copied, and moved it to Florence when he became
grand duke.
Ferdinandos inventories indicate that he actually owned several hand-
written books from the Indies. For instance, the 1587 inventory of his belong-
ings in Rome lists several books dellIndie.
25
Because the language of
inventories is vague, it is difficult to know precisely whether these books are
from the East Indies (Asia) or West Indies (the Americas). However, Medici
inventories often specify whether the goods are from Cina dellIndie
(Asia) or dell India (South Asia or India). These books dellIndie are
25. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 132, c. 484.
likely from New Spain, and are classified as being in pen and listed under
the heading books of various types in Latin and the vulgar printed and
written in pen.
26
They are named among history books, religious books,
works by Machiavelli, and other miscellaneous titles. On one page of the
inventory, three books covered in a blue leather from the Indies are
listed, and then a few entries below the citation reads, a book of pictures
from the Indies.
27
Then the next line states merely, Three books.
26. The heading on the page is entitled Libri di piu sorte latini e volgari stampati e scritti
in penna.
27. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 132, c. 484: Tre libri coperti di corame turchino dellIndie
di SAS equali vennero a firenze indiritti a m parugio choma al quanto.... Un libro di pitture
Fig. 5. First page of manuscript B1479, Hispanic Society of America, New York. Fig. 4. Cover of manuscript B1479, Hispanic Society of America, New York.
(fig. 7).
28
This citation could refer to Sahagns manuscript, since the
codex likely came to Ferdinando in the three volumes we see today.
Recent evaluation of the binding of the codex by Franca Petrucci
Nardelli has indicated that the text, previously thought to have been
bound in four volumes, was originally bound in three volumes in Spain
after its arrival in Europe. Due to the organization of the chapters and
the fact that Sahagn refers to his history as being in four volumes, it had
dellIndie.... This same work, described as Un libro di pitture dell indie mandato a firenze
a quella guardaroba a di 26 di novembre 1587 is also listed in the inventory of the transfer of
Ferdinandos goods to Florence (ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 79, c. 203). It is inventoried only
with religious books such as missals, a text about the order of the Knights of Saint Stephen,
and Pope Leo Xs ceremony book. Perhaps the books placement among these religious titles
indicates that it is the codex written by the Franciscan missionary in New Spain.
28. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 132, c. 484: Tre libri quali sia in consegnia la camera
venuti co sopra ad q A p 399n.
always been assumed that the current binding was a later rebinding.
29

However, the cover strikingly resembles other books produced in Spain
in the late sixteenth century. A manuscript from the Morgan Library
(fig. 8) believed to have been bound in Spain in the 1590s includes the
same parrot stamp as the codex, a detail not found on any other European
bindings.
30
Another sixteenth-century Spanish example has the same dia-
mond design as the codex and shares the same decorative borders, with
29. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso is the first to speculate that the codex was originally
organized into four volumes rather than three: Sobre el cdice Mexicano del P. Sahagn,
pp. 316320.
30. New York, Morgan Library, M. 924. On the manuscript, see Needham, Twelve Cen-
turies of Bookbinding, p. 308, n. 100. Franca Petrucci Nardelli informed me via personal cor-
Fig. 6. Detail of page from a 1588 Medici inventory listing Hispanic
Society manuscript; ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 235 ter, unpaginated.
Fig. 7. Detail of page from 1588 Medici inventory listing several books
from the New World. ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 132, c. 484.
Fig. 8. Cover of manuscript 924, c. 1590s. Courtesy of the Morgan Library
and Museum, New York.
foliage and heads in profile.
31
Given this visual evidence, it is likely that
the manuscript was bound in Spain and given to Ferdinando in these
three volumes, and it is thus possible that the three books listed in the
1587 inventory refer to the three volumes of the Florentine Codex.
The letter from the Medici agent in Spain regarding Ferdinando and
the copy of the book from the Indies for the pope, considered along with
the Hispanic Society manuscript, the Medici inventories, and an analysis
of the codexs binding, all function as evidence indicating that Cardinal
Ferdinando acquired the codex, had it translated and copied for himself
(and perhaps also for the pope), and then brought it to Florence with his
other goods when he became grand duke in 1587, following his brother
Francescos death. However, one question still remains: how exactly did
Ferdinando acquire the text? The most likely explanation is that a col-
league of Sequera or Sequera himself must have recognized Ferdinando
as a worthy recipient and caretaker of such an important manuscript and
given it to the then-cardinal. After all, Ferdinando held the title of Protec-
tor of the Franciscan Minor Observants, and Sahagn was a Franciscan
friar. Ferdinandos publication of the writings of another Franciscan, the
missionary father Giovanni Pietro Maffei, demonstrates his interest in
promoting Franciscan writing, particularly about the New World.
Other Roman cardinals had been recipients of Mexican codices in the
past, demonstrating that it was a frequent occurrence for religious men
to collect and preserve these documents from New Spain. For instance,
Ferdinandos own Medici predecessor, Cardinal Giulio de Medici, who
later became Pope Clement VII in 1523, received the Mixtec Codex
Vindobonensis Mexicanus I, today located in the National Library in
Vienna.
32
Another codex, today in the Vatican Library, was likely owned by
a cardinal and produced in Rome during the same years as Ferdinandos
Italian translation of Sahagns manuscript. Entitled Codex Vaticanus A
and also known as Codex Vaticanus 3738, it is an Italian translation with
commentary and illustrations of a manuscript produced by Pedro de los
Ris, a Dominican friar who lived in Mexico in the mid-sixteenth cen-
respondence (May 2008) that the Morgan Library manuscript was likely bound in Spain rather
than Mexico, as Needhams catalogue proposes.
31. Ruiz de Elvira Serra, Legature spagnole della Biblioteca Nazionale di Madrid, n. 83.
32. On the provenance of the Codex Vindobonenesis, see Toorian, Some Light in the
Dark Century, pp. 2629, and Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus, pp. 8797.
tury.
33
Finally, as Sandra Zetina and her group explain in their paper
in this volume, Cardinal Francesco Barberini acquired another Mexican
manuscript, the Badianus Codex, in Rome in the early seventeenth cen-
tury. The Accademia dei Lincei, a scientific society in Rome that pub-
lished Hernandezs natural history, certainly studied the Badianus, and
Cassiano del Pozzo, a prominent member of the Accademia and secretary
to Cardinal Barberini, commissioned an illustrated copy of it.
34
These
examples show that codices like Sahagns made their way to Rome and
were studied and copied by members of the papal court throughout the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Despite such involvement of the Italian literati with Mexican manu-
scripts, Ferdinando could not openly advertise that he owned Sahagns
work. In contrast to Maffeis book on the conversion of people around
the world, Sahagns book was written and illustrated with the help of
natives of New Spain, and was comprised of information about the reli-
gious beliefs and traditions of the natives, information that was regarded
as blasphemous by King Philip. Ferdinando would not have wanted Phil-
ips court to know about the books he kept at his own court, and therefore
might have kept quiet about owning the codex.
FERDINANDOS CODEX IN ROME AND FLORENCE
Besides his interest in the religious information conveyed in the codex
and in the Franciscan friars role as author, Ferdinando would have been
fascinated by various other aspects of Sahagns manuscript. The enormous
text includes records of artistic endeavors in New Spain, such as the pro-
duction of featherwork; of raw materials indigenous to Mexico, such as
cochineal and plants; and of the conquest of Mexico. These are all sub-
jects or materials that are represented in Ferdinandos collection and artis-
tic commissions.
As briefly mentioned above, Cardinal Ferdinando owned a large num-
ber of featherwork items, including miters, paintings, and shields, and he
requested feather items from ambassadors in Spain during his early years
33. Best on the history of the Vaticanus A is Quiones Keber, Collecting Cultures,
pp. 229242.
34. On the reception of the Badianus Codex within the circle of the Accademia dei Lin-
cei, see Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx, pp. 263264.
as cardinal.
35
Although today only one feather miter still exists from Fer-
dinandos collection, we know that by the time he moved to Florence in
1588, he owned at least a dozen feather objects.
36
The cardinal could read
about the construction of these feather items in the codex, which remains
our most detailed source of information about featherwork production in
sixteenth-century New Spain.
Grand Duke Ferdinando, like his father and brother before him, was
involved in the importation of cochineal, the rare red pigment made
from insects that breed on succulent plants in Mexico, discussed in more
detail in various papers in this volume, especially those concentrating on
colorants. Perhaps New Spains largest export in the sixteenth century,
cochineal was certainly a major Florentine import from that territory, via
Spain. Documents tracking all the goods entering the port of Livorno
in the late sixteenth century reveal a vast amount of cucciniglia that was
distributed to noble families in Florence.
37
It is believed that Mexican
cochineal was used to dye threads used in the production of the tapestries
for the Sala dei Duecento for the Palazzo Vecchio as early as the mid-
Cinquecento.
38
Perhaps it was also used in Florentine painting, as it was
in Venetian painting in the late sixteenth century. The Florentine Codex
would have afforded the grand duke the most thorough description of this
important pigment and its origins (fig. 9).
The descriptions of the animals and plants in the codex similarly would
have informed Ferdinando and the Medici court of the nature of New
Spain. The Medici were great enthusiasts for exotic plants, and particularly
flora from the New World. For instance, as early as the 1540s Ferdinandos
mother and father, Duke Cosimo and Duchess Eleonora da Toledo, were
35. See Butters, Arte Coloniale Messicana, pp. 222225; ASF, MP 5121, vol. 1, cc.
6466, copia di un memorandum che il cardinale Ferdinado invi a Giovan Battista Uguc-
cioni un quadro di mezzo braccio di pittura di penne che vengono dal Per.
36. The extant feather miter is in the Museo degli Argenti in the Pitti Palace in Florence
today. The following pages of Ferdinandos inventories list featherwork items: ASF, Guarda-
roba Medicea 79, c. 49, c. 212, and ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 132, c. 128, c. 242, c. 271, c.
294, c. 482.
37. I have found no systematic study of the goods entering the port of Livorno in the late
sixteenth century. Further research on the importation of cochineal at the port of Livorno is
essential in order to determine its role in Florences economy in the late sixteenth century.
See Braudel and Romano, Navires et merchandises, pp. CXXVCXXVIII. Examples of some
of the documents that list the amount of cochineal entering the port of Livorno at the end of
sixteenth century include ASF, MP 695; ASF, MP 5037; ASF, MP 2080.
38. Gli arazzi della Sala di Ducento, p. 101.
growing maize in their garden at the Villa Castello.
39
Grand Duke Fran-
cescos interest in New World flora is clear from the works he commissioned
from Jacopo Ligozzi. In the early seventeenth century, Grand Duke Ferdi-
nando hired Ligozzis son, Francesco, to create copies of all of the animals
of the Indies that Ligozzi documented in works on paper for Francesco
de Medici.
40
Artists such as Ligozzi and his son, who were engaged in the
39. See for instance: ASF, Mediceo del Principato 1170a, insert II, fol. 249: La Sigra
Duchessa mi ha comandato che io scriva alla SV che lei faccia seminari quell grano indiano,
il quale ho dato al coneto che lo cosegni alla SV. This document, dated 21 November 1545,
written by Medici court secretary Giovanni Francesco Lottini to Medici court secretary Pier
Francesco Riccio, was found and transcribed by the Medici Archive Project and is listed as
DocID 6233.
40. The receipt for payment to Francesco Ligozzi for ten drawings of animals from the
Indies is cited in Barocchi and Bertel, Collezionismo Mediceo e storia artistica, vol. 1, p.
Fig. 9. Detail from the Florentine Codex representing the production of
cochineal, Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat.
220, book 11, fol. 217.
America.
42
In 1608 Ferdinando sent an expedition to Brazil, in the hope,
albeit unsuccessful, of forging commercial ties there.
43

As the opening of this essay explained, Medici court artist Ludovico
Buti certainly studied the Florentine Codex when he painted images of the
New World on the ceiling of the Uffizis Armeria in 1588. This room dis-
played arms and armor from around the world and was decorated just in
time to impress the dignitaries arriving for Ferdinandos wedding to Chris-
tine of Lorraine. The ceiling celebrates significant religious battles of the
world, while reminding the viewer of Ferdinandos various roles as cardinal
protector of various regions. The fresco in the center of the ceiling (fig.
10), depicting a procession of a Native American ruler, does not recall any
images from the codex and is quite different from the other battle scenes
in the frescoes. For this central image, Buti must have consulted European
printed images of the New World from costume books and histories, partic-
ularly those dealing with Peru.
44
Butis view does not include cannibalism
or brutality, as was common in other sixteenth-century European images of
the New World. Instead, this roundel in the very center of the ceiling con-
veys a celebratory impression of the Americas that recalls the joyful people
and abundant land described in the codex. The painting even suggests that
its artist and patron admired and perhaps identified with the natives of the
New World. After all, the Medici, like the natives of New Spain and Peru,
were also living under the reign of Philip II. This celebratory, utopian scene
of the New World depicting the native chief being carried by his men may
have been intended as an allegory of Ferdinandos new role as grand duke.
The central image within the frescoes in this Medici Armeria, overtly
glorifying the New World, would seem to demonstrate the positive impact
that Sahagns manuscript had at the Medici court.
42. On della Renas long letter to Ferdinando regarding South America, entitled
Descrizione della America o vero Indie Occidentali al Ser.mo Gran Duca di Toscana, see
Guarnieri, Il Principato Mediceo nella scienza del mare, pp. 352380. The manuscript is
BNCF, Magliabecchiana XXIV, 53, cc. 433445.
43. The best sources on the topic include Mangiarotti, La politica economica di Fer-
dinando I de Medici, pp. 1735; Ciano, I Medici e lEuropea 15321609, pp. 161171; Hei-
kamp, Mexico and the Medici, p. 18; Guarnieri, Il Principato Mediceo nella scienza del mare,
pp. 62120, and Unaudace impresa marittima; Uzielli, Cenni storici sulle imprese scientifiche,
pp. 3638.
44. I thank Tom Cummins for bringing to my attention La Conquista del Peru (Seville
1534), which includes an image on its frontispiece that was certainly used as a source for the
procession of a native ruler in the central roundel.
documentation of plants and animals from the New World, would probably
have been given access to the codex to learn more about the specimens they
were illustrating.
Sahagns manuscript surely inspired Ferdinando to learn more about
the New World. Throughout his reign, the grand duke sought out knowl-
edge of the Americas, inviting Francesco Carletti, a Florentine merchant
who had traveled to Mexico during his voyage around the world, to live at
the court and record his experiences.
41
A Medici court agent in Spain,
Orazio della Rena, provided Ferdinando with information about South
401; ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 184, c.14.
41. The scholarly literature on Carletti is too vast to list here. The most recent publication
of his text is Carletti, Ragionamenti del mio viaggio intorno al mondo, 1987. His manuscript,
entitled Ragionamenti sopra le cose da lui vedute ne suoi viaggi si delle Indie Occidentali
e Orientali come daltri paesi, is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF),
Palatino 9.7.1.14.
Fig. 10. Ludovico Buti. Detail from the center of the ceiling of the
former Armeria (room 21) of the Uffizi, 1588. Fresco. Galleria degli Uffizi,
Florence.
LI A MARKEY 218
Thanks to various inventories and letters, as well as the Hispanic Soci-
ety manuscript and Butis ceiling frescoes, we can be quite certain that
the codex came to Florence around 1588 and that Ferdinando acquired
it in Rome, when he was a cardinal. As we have seen, the codex certainly
inspired Ferdinando, who had the first volume translated into Italian and
who, with its help, was able to learn more about the artistic and natural
treasures of Mexico. Moreover, the codex demonstrably influenced at least
one Medici court artist, who copied its images in a frescoed ceiling in the
Uffizi. It is now clear that the codex, carefully preserved by Ferdinando I,
had a significant impact on the cultural life of his court, where it provided
the prince and his artists with an important source of information about the
magnificence of New Spain, and in return, the Medici court functioned as
a relatively safe haven to preserve this colorful history of Mexico.
Fig. 1. Detail of a tlatocnochtli (prickly pear) fruits, leaves, and f lowers.
Folio 49v of Martn de la Cruz and Juan Badiano, Libellus de medicinalibus
Indorum herbis (De la CruzBadiano Codex), 1552. Bound, illuminated
manuscript, 15.2 20.6 2 cm, 142 pages. Biblioteca Nacional de
Antropologa e Historia, Mexico City.
All the facts we possess about the origins of the De la CruzBadiano
Codex are contained on its first and last folios. It was finished on the feast
day of Saint Mary Magdalene, 22 July 1552, at the Colegio Imperial de
Santa Cruz Tlatelolco. In the second line of the opening sentence, Martn
de la Cruz, an Indian doctor who did not receive proper education, but
was an expert by means of trial and experience (nullius rationibus doctus,
sed solis experimentum edoctus), explains that he had been commissioned
by Francisco de Mendoza, son of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, to write
a text regarding medicinal herbs, which would be presented to the king.
On the last folios of the book, an Indian of Xochimilco, Juan Badiano,
identifies himself as an interpres, a translator or interpreter, of Nhuatl
and Latin, and collegii praelector, one who reads to others and comments
upon the works.
1
The document was found at the Vatican Library, as
part of the Barberini Collection, and because of the ex libris it preserves,
we know it belonged to Diego de Cortavila, a seventeenth-century royal
apothecary. The last owner of the codex was Cardinal Francesco Barberini.
He was a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and responsible for the
publication of the Tesoro messicano, a book of natural history of New Spain
To come
1. Latin terms verified using Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, online (as of 14 June
2010) at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0059.
The Encoded Language of Herbs:
Material Insights into the
De la CruzBadiano Codex
SANDRA ZETI NA

TATI ANA FALCN
,
ELSA ARROYO
JOSE LUIS RUVALCABA
SANDRA ZETI NA ET AL. 222 THE ENCODED LANGUAGE OF HERBS 223
by Francisco Hernndez (c. 15151587), edited by the Neapolitan doctor
Nardo Antonio Recchi (fig. 1).
2

The information provided by the De la CruzBadiano Codex is
enough to navigate between the implications of the events provoked
by the book and the actors involved in its genesis. The manuscript has
crossed the Atlantic twicein the sixteenth century and in the twenti-
ethand in both has been viewed as a Mexican contribution to the
universal knowledge of the natural world.
3
Even though the passages from Martn de la Cruz and Juan Badiano
are written in the first person, we do not have sufficient evidence to state
that either of them was responsible for the production of the book. The
questions that guide the following paper are: How did the manuscript
come into being? How many specialists were involved in its completion?
What were the roles played by Martn de la Cruz; the translator, Juan
Badiano; and others involved in creating the illustrations and the final
text? Can we detect any interactions between painters and scribes within
the codex (fig. 2)?
The approach taken here to these questions is an archaeological one,
based on an analysis of the object as a result of a complex cultural event.
In searching for the particular materials and tools used in the books cre-
ation and attempting to figure out the sequence of the procedures used,
we have paid special attention to the process by which the images were
developed and their relation to the text, as well as to the general concep-
tion of the book as a cultural artifact.
The material analysis consisted of a thorough and systematic inspec-
tion of all the folios of the document, performed by an interdisciplinary
team made up by conservators, historians, photographers, and scientists.
4

We were aided by amplifying lenses, ultraviolet illumination, infrared
2. del Mar Rey Bueno, Juntas de herbolarios, p. 258.
3. Around 1929, two specialists at the Vatican Library independently discovered the De la
CruzBadiano Codex. Pope John Paul II presented it to the Mexican president Carlos Salinas
de Gortari in 1990. It is now preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologa e Historia in
Mexico City. The most recent facsimile of the manuscript was published in 1996: de la Cruz,
Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis, manuscrito azteca de 1552, segn traduccin Latina
de Juan Badiano.
4. Those involved in the research were staff members from the Laboratorio de Diag-
nstico de Obras de Arte and the Instituto de Fsica at the Universidad Nacional Autnoma
de Mxico (UNAM), and the Biblioteca Nacional de Antropologa e Historia of the Instituto
Nacional de Antropologa e Historia (INAH). Eumelia Hernndez produced the photographic
register. Carolusa Gonzlez Tirado and Marimin Lpez Cceres from the Biblioteca Nacional
reflectography, and X-ray fluorescence (XRF). A study without destruc-
tive sampling, our project was complemented by the interpretation of his-
torical sources; preparation of dyes, colorants, lakes, and pigments as ref-
erence standards; and the creation of a database to compile and compare
the Nhuatl nomenclature of plants and their pictorial features.
The existence of the De la CruzBadiano manuscript implies the
meeting of two cultures. The representational strategies employed show
important characteristics of the Nahua tradition, yet the language used
Latinand the form of the objecta codexclearly evince a close rela-
tionship with Western thoughts and practices. We must bear in mind
that Francisco de Mendoza commissioned the book only twenty years
after the Conquest. This man was interested, on a grand scale, in com-
mercialization of native medicinal species. He had already cultivated a
number of plants, such as ginger
5
and certain Chinese roots (e.g., Smilax
pseudochina, the bamboo vine, one of the species commonly used to treat
the morbus gallicus, or French diseasethat is, syphilis).
6
It has been
presumed that Mendoza took the manuscript to Spain during the short
reign of Infanta Doa Juana, Charles Vs daughter, who governed the
kingdom from 1554 to 1559 due to her fathers illness. Doa Juana and
Francisco de Mendoza established economic agreements, and Mendoza
was designated General Administrator of Mines of New Spain, with per-
mission to commercialize the import and export of medicinal plants.
7
In
this context, the De la CruzBadiano Codex acquires a broader signifi-
de Antropologa e Historia contributed research into the codexs binding and helped with the
X-ray f luorescence analysis.
5. del Mar Rey Bueno, Juntas de herbolarios, p. 256, and document number 2,
Memorial del Marqus de Falces sobre las condiciones en Mxico (1567). [DC QUESTION:
Is the Memorial del Marqus document number 2 within the Juntas de herbolarios? If not,
of what book/volume is it document number 2? If you mean its the second document youre
referring to in this note, the phrase is unnecessary and misleading.] According to Lewis Hanke
[?], Francisco de Mendoza and Bernardino del Castillo cultivated ginger to sell in Mexico and
to send to the Spanish Crown: Hanke, Los virreyes espaoles en Amrica, p. 181.
6. A study of Prez Ibez explains that the disease was generated in New Spain through
interactions among indigenous Americans and Europeans. The morbus gallicus had commonly
been identified as syphilis, but also with other poxes or bubonic diseases[?], which were treated
with guayaco and mercury. See Prez Ibez, Galli vocant istvm morbvm morbvm eius Cvivs
est, pp. 267280. On the use of ginger to treat the morbus gallicus, see Fresquet Febrer and
Lpez Piero, eds., El mestizaje cultural y la medicina novohipana del siglo XVI, pp. 7190.
[DC note: I dont believe syphilis is considered a bubonic disease per se, although it certainly
manifests itself in pox. (??)]
7. del Mar Rey Bueno, Juntas de herbolarios, p. 256257.
cance that points in two directions: first, to the general economic inter-
est of the Spanish Crown to discover and exploit the richness of the new
territory, and second, as evidence of the spirit of modern man, interested
in science and business at the same time. The Austrian court, to which
Juana was linked by her marriage to a Hapsburg[?], favored the patron-
age of scientific research and the publication of new editions of natural
histories and medieval herbals.
Many herbaria that copied medieval manuscripts were printed in the
second half of the fifteenth century. One such example is the Herbarius
latinus, printed in Mainz by Peter Schffer, circa 1484 (fig. 3). This book
has many similarities to the De la CruzBadiano Codex in the way that
the page layout is configured. It leaves the upper half of the page for
illustrations and the lower for text, divides the spaces with the insertion of
subtitles, and represents the specimens in a flat and symmetrical manner
instead of in a naturalistic one. These prints offered botanical knowledge
and allowed the readers to promote, revise, and edit the classic texts free
of notes or tergiversations from medieval times. Revised editions of Pliny
and Dioscorides were printed during the first half of the sixteenth centu-
ry.
8
The first illustrated edition of Pliny was published in 1513, its format
following the new Renaissance style of Venetian printsthat is, using
double columns for the texts and casing the images with a double-lined
frame.
At the same time that the scribes and illustrators in Tlatelolco were
composing the De la CruzBadiano Codex, the physician Andrs Laguna
de Segovia[?] was making the first translation of Dioscorides from Latin
into Spanish.
9
This new, revised edition was illuminated with profuse
and naturalistic images of flora, drawn from real specimens. Alongside
the drastic change in the mode of representing the plants, the Laguna
edition still maintains the use of red margins to frame the text box. It is
remarkable that these contemporary books, the Badiano and Lagunas
Dioscorides, followed the same format for the margins and the text box,
and that both books were dedicated to the same monarch. It is important
to emphasize that alongside the edition for the general public, Laguna
also produced a special copy, printed on vellum and illuminated with
minium in the margins, for Prince Felipe (fig. 4).
10

The British medievalist Debra Hassig has related the structure of
the De la CruzBadiano Codex to those of the medieval herbaria typi-
cally used as medical guidebooks.
11
These manuscripts united notes from
the classics such as De materia medica by Dioscorides, De simplicibus
by Galen, and Historia naturalis by Pliny. The Badiano manuscript, for
example, contains a quotation from Pliny in folio 19v, and all the medical
8. Miguel Alonso, La imprenta renacentista y el nacimiento de la ciencia Botnica,
viewable online (as verified on 24 June 2010) at http://www.ucm.es/BUCM/foa/
exposiciones/11JardinesPapel/la_imprenta_renacentista....htm.
9. Dioscorides Anazarbeo, Acerca de la materia medicinal y de los venenos mortiferos,
viewable online (as verified on 24 June 2010) at http://bibliotecadigitalhispanica.bne.es:80/
webclient/ DeliveryManager?application=DIGITOOL-3&owner=resourcediscovery&cus
tom_att_2=simple_viewer&pid=228705.
10. The 1555 paper edition of the Laguna translation of Dioscorides, illustrated in black-
and-white, can be consulted online at the Biblioteca Digital Dioscorides, Universidad Com-
plutense de Madrid, at http://cisne.sim.ucm.es/search*spi?/Xdioscorides&searchscope=4&S
ORT=D/Xdioscorides&searchscope=4&SORT=D&SUBKEY=dioscorides/1%2C2106%2C21
06%2CB/frameset&FF=Xdioscorides&searchscope=4&SORT=D&7%2C7%2C.
11. Hassig, Transplanted Medicine, pp. 3053.
Fig. 2. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folios 1r and 63r. (Left) Title, Libellus
de medicinalibus Indorum herbis, and dedication of the manuscript by
the Indian doctor Martn de la Cruz to Francisco de Mendoza. (Right)
Signature of Juan Badiano as translator commissioned by the schools
director, Fray Jacobo de Grado.
terms are in Latin. The modes of depicting plants in these herbaria are
related to those of the antique texts, especially in regard to their exposure
of the root systems. By contrast, the trend of the more modern herbal
models, such as those in the Florentine Codex, was to insert the flora
into landscapes (without visible root systems), possibly inspired by the
Hortus sanitatis.
12
Though we do not have the early-sixteenth-century
12. We are grateful to Pablo Escalante for this insight. The 1536 version of the Hortus
sanitatis can be consulted (as verified on 24 June 2010) at Biblioteca Digital Dioscorides, at
library inventories of the Santa Cruz Tlatelolco College, the resemblance
between the Herbarius latinus of 1484 and the De la CruzBadiano
Codex suggests that the college library possessed a copy.
Although the Badiano manuscript shows strong formal affinities with
the European herbaria, the disposition of its contents follows a different
logic. The European works present the plants in alphabetical order, while
Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, at http://cisne.sim.ucm.es/search*spi?/
Xhortus+sanitatis&searchscope=4&SORT=D/ Xhortus+sanitatis&searchscope=4&SORT=
D&SUBKEY=hortus%20sanitatis/1%2C4%2C4%2CB/frameset&FF=Xhortus+sanitatis&sea
rchscope=4&SORT=D&1%2C1%2C.
Fig. 4. Pedacio Dioscorides Anazarbeo, Acerca de la materia medicinal
y de los venenos mortiferos, folio 351. Antwerp, 1555. Printed woodcuts on
vellum; bound, illuminated book, 616 p. Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa,
Madrid.
Fig. 3. Peter Schffer, Rogatu plurimorum inopum nummorum
egentium appotecas refutantium occasione illa, quia necessaria ibidem ad
corpus egrum spectantia sunt cara simplicia et composita (Herbarius
latinus), folio 21. Mainz, c. 1484. Printed woodcuts, 23 cm, 348 pp., bound.
Missouri Botanical Garden, Saint Louis, Missouri.
in the Mexican codex, the species are listed according to the ailments
they could be used to treat, as parts of particular recipes. As we shall
see, even though the images in the codex resemble the engravings that
illustrate the Herbarius latinus, the De la CruzBadiano Codex follows
an internal order that is conceptually different from those that guided the
medieval and Renaissance herbals of the time, whether manuscripts or
printed books.
THE DISPOSITION OF THE BOOK AND ITS ILLUSTRATIONS
The De la CruzBadiano Codex is divided into thirteen chapters, each
one related to the illnesses of a specific part of the body, starting from the
head downward. The last chapters discuss generalized conditions or ail-
ments, childbirth and children, and at the end, the signs that indicate that
a person is about to die. The codex also contains a preamble, an index,
and a colophon.
Each page in the body of the document is delineated on all four sides
in an orange-red ink. The upper half of the box is reserved for the illustra-
tion of the plant specimens, while the lower half is used for text describing
a remedy for a particular illness. The ink used in the writing is dark (fig.
5). Besides specifying the flora, all recipes include a number of important
minerals, different types of water, and products deriving from animals.
There are 184 figures of variously distributed plants on a total of eighty-
nine pages. The names of the plants are written in Nhuatl, and the sub-
titles naming the specific diseases to be treated are in Latin; both are in
red ink.
There are variations in the ways image and text relate to each other.
Sometimes inscriptions encapsulate the image, at other times they inter-
sect, underline, or run across the painting (fig. 6). The calligraphy, which
deserves a specialized study itself, is very consistent.
MATERIAL STRUCTURE
The book is composed of folded leaves, sewn together in eight signatures
and bound in a red velvet cover that is fixed with a six-cord spine. The
overall dimensions are 15.2 20.6 2 cm; the borders are gilded with
Armenian bole (hydrated silicate clays colored with red iron oxide). The
size of the paper suggests that prior to cutting, these were reute (small)
sheets of 31.8 43.6 cm.
13
The folios are numbered starting on the second
page. Numbers are inscribed with ink in the upper right corners of the
sheets (fig. 7).
The binding was repaired at some point, with the result that folio
6r was reattached with the recto and verso switched; there is one miss-
13. Rodgers Albro and Albro, The Examination and Conservation Treatment, pp.
97115.
Fig. 5. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 13v. Example of a conventional
folio: margins outlined in orange-red ink, Nhuatl name at the top of the
plant illustration, Latin name of the illness or disorder, and explanatory
note regarding the preparation of the medicine.
ing leaf. The velvet cover dates from an intervention after the eighteenth
century. The number of pages in each signature is variable (fig. 8). The
signatures do not correspond to the chapters of the book; each chapter
continues along two signatures, but starts or finishes at the beginning
or end of a specific signature. Some blank pages were left on the first
and last signatures (those containing the preamble, index, and colophon).
There are a total of nineteen[??] blank sheets: six between the introduc-
tion and the title of chapter one, and nine after the final text.
The codicological evidence does not enable a coherent explanation
of the method by which the book was constructed. The usual procedure
at a scriptorium was for scribes to work on separate leaves, which would
then be folded and assembled into booklets according to a preexisting
plan. In our case, however, it is possible that the scribes and illustrators
worked on already bound signatures. They may even have assembled the
book before writing and painting. Although there is no way of knowing
whether the writing or the illustration was done first, the precise coordi-
nation of images with their related texts suggests that the codex represents
a fair copy made from a previous draft.
As mentioned, the text box on each page was defined by a frame
painted with orange-red lines. These margins were marked using small
perforations on each sheet to guide the tracing of the lines. Even so, not
all the lines appear perpendicular to the edge of the sheet; the lines are
variably spaced[?], from one to two centimeters apart. This could be on
account of the books reassembly and its resizing during a later restora-
tion, presumably at the same time the volume received its velvet cover.
Two different procedures used in the creation of the manuscript are
identifiable. In the first, the images are painted before the drawing of the
boundary lines. Twenty-four pages show evidence of this practice, as the
boundary lines were interrupted to respect the illustrations. The opposite
procedure must have been followed on the eight pages/folios[?] on which
the drawings extend beyond the margins. There is no evidence for any
particular working order on the remaining fifty-seven illustrated sheets;
folio 23v has no margins at all. The only matter of which we can be fairly
Fig. 7. De la CruzBadiano Codex. Bookbinding and restoration. Fig. 6. De la CruzBadiano Codex, fol. 48r. Detail of the spatial relationship
between written plant names and plants.
sure is that the texts were written after the framing of the text boxes was
done, with the border lines serving as guidelines for the scribes (fig. 9).
The juxtapositions of image and text follow no wholly consistent
sequence. Most of the time the name of the plant species comes last,
playing a harmonious and integrated part in the images composition
(fig. 10). Such instances would indicate that, there at least, painting and
writing were carried out simultaneously. However, in most cases, the evi-
dence points toward the insertion of images after the completion of the
texts. Subsequent additions or amendments to the images and texts are
also in evidence.
When the art historian Justino Fernndez studied the manuscript, he
noted that some illustrations were missing species that were mentioned in
the text[??], and he described incomprehensible voids left next to tightly
grouped plant illustrations.
14
The images are generally[?] single, or in
groups of two or three exemplars, but there are some pages where groups
of four, five, seven, or even eleven species appear together. The most
crowded folios are also those painted more delicately, and the recipe they
illustrate is one related to the fatigue of the administrator of the repub-
lic, or one who holds a public charge (Contra rempublicam administran-
tis et munus publicum gerentis fatigationem). Nonetheless, even in that
long and well-illustrated[?] text, not all the plants referred to are depicted
(fig. 11).
14. Fernndez, Las miniaturas que ilustran el cdice, pp. 101106.
Fig. 8. Table describing the arrangement of gatherings, chapters, and folios
in the De la CruzBadiano Codex.
Fig. 9. De la CruzBadiano Codex (clockwise from upper left): details of
folios 44r, 10v, 34v, and 27v, showing different sequences in the order of
writing and painting.
One might imagine that the aim of the illustrations was to give addi-
tional information on special characteristics that would help identify a
particular specimen. As we have seen, however, the plants shown are not
necessarily those mentioned, and vice versa. On folio 41v, the scribe notes
that the rest of the herbs were painted above [in the codex], which you
may see in their respective places (Caeterae aliae herbae superius pictae
sunt, quas videas suis in locis).
To explain these apparent contradictions, one might posit that the
document combines two different languages and modes of explanation.
The images correspond to a Mesoamerican code of representation that is
very similar to the construction of the Nhuatl language (as we will see in
specific examples). The figures[?] also point toward a possible interpreta-
tion of the manuscripts process of manufacture, according to which the
medical expert Martn de la Cruz had the knowledge of the medicinal
herbs and was guiding the illustrators, who did not always have actual
plants to copy.
Fig. 11. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folios 38v and 39r. Related to the
fatigue of the administrator of the Republic.
Fig. 10. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 21r, showing insertions of plant
names and titles[?].
WRITING MATERIALS: IMPORTED RESOURCES
All the writing materials found in the De la CruzBadiano Codex were
commonly used during the first decades of the history of New Spain.
The paper of the manuscript bears the watermark of the Genovese paper-
maker Basili Acinelli.
15
The same kind of paper has been found in other
documents from the sixteenth century, including the Huejotzingo Codex
of 1531[?], documents from the Corts family, and texts originating in the
archive of the Hospital de Jess, in Mexico City.
16
The ink used in the main text of the manuscript and in the later addi-
tions is ferrogallic, or iron-gall. The ink of the additions to the text contains
a higher percentage of iron than that used for the main text.
17
Lead was
15. Stols, Descripcin del cdice, pp. 99100.
16. Rodgers Albro and Albro, The Examination and Conservation Treatment.
17. Zetina et al., Painting Syncretism, viewable online (as verified on 24 June 2010)
at http://www.ndt.net/search/docs.php3?MainSource=65.
also found in most of the capital letters and chapter titles. This suggests that
a different person, with another ink, wrote the capital letters at a another
time. Diego de Cortavilas inscription is clearly identifiable because of the
presence of copper and zinc within the iron-gall ink (fig. 12).
The margins were outlined with red minium (lead tetroxide). The sub-
titles, which refer to the names of plants and of illnesses, are of a different
red hue, produced mainly from an organic colorant but containing traces
of minium. On many occasions, the red margin lines and subtitles are
polluted with traces of iron-gall ink. This implies that the drawing of
the margin lines, the writing of the main text, and the rubrication of the
subtitles were done with the same instruments, and probably by the same
group of scribes.
PAINTING MATERIALS: MULTIPLICITY OF RESOURCES
In contrast with the homogeneity of the handwriting in the text, the illus-
trations show a multiplicity of technical solutions and styles, discernible
in a diversity of textures, colors, and shapes. Such stylistic and technical
variety suggests that a group of painters collaborated on the project.
It is probable that no contemporary manuscript from New Spain pres-
ents such diversity of painting techniques. Despite this technical variety,
a consistent palette was employed. Most of the colors employed were
obtained either by mixing organic colors (dyes or colorants) with gyp-
sum and clays, or by employing pure, unmixed dyes. Some colors have
a transparent quality, while others are highly opaque. These organically
based colorants have a different fluorescence under ultraviolet light from
lakes prepared in the European manner, which are dyes precipitated with
alum or other metallic compounds to create an indissoluble composite.
18

After preparing a set of European-style lakes to use as references to com-
pare with the analytical results from the organically based colorants of
the original codex, we found that the lakes had a strong fluorescence,
whereas the organic pigments gave an opaque answer to this wavelength.
X-ray fluorescence revealed traces of aluminum and potassium in the
lakes prepared in the European fashion (fig. 13).
18. Kirby, Spring, and Higgitt, The Technology of Red Lake Pigment Manufacture,
pp. 7187.
Fig. 12. De la CruzBadiano Codex (top two photos): folios ___ and ___.
(Bottom) X-ray f luorescence results for folios 1rv, 2rv, 6r, 7rv, 12r, 23v,
45v, 46v, 60r, 62rv, and 63rv, showing the relation of elements found in
iron-gall inks: Fe,Ca (iron and calcium); Cu,Zn (copper and zinc); Pb,Fe
(lead and iron).
Our research has not yet identified the colorants composition. The
number of materials used in indigenous dye tradition is very large (as shown
by several of the studies in the present volume). We were, however, able to
identify the areas in which dyes were used through infrared reflectography
and ultraviolet light. Examination by XRF revealed that some colors
were mixed with clay, as indicated by the presence of silicon, or gypsum
(calcium sulfate), as revealed by the presence of calcium. Other mineral
pigments were also identified by this technique: in yellow ochre, there
appear metallic elements such as iron; in the ochre and brown pigments,
manganese and iron are traceable in manganese dioxide or pyrolusite, a
dark iron oxide; arsenic in yellow tones indicates the presence of arsenic
trisulfide or orpiment; and white areas show the presence of gypsum used
as a pigment (fig. 14).
It is necessary at this point to make some observations regarding the
use of orpiment in sixteenth-century Mexican art. This pigment is usually
related to the European painting tradition. It is mentioned in treatises,
it was used in illuminated manuscripts, and Francisco Pacheco recom-
mended it for the painting of sargas (ephemeral canvases painted with
tempera).
19
Orpiment was approved by the 1493 Cordoba painters ordi-
nances, but its use on polychrome sculptures was forbidden.
20
The art
historian Roco Bruquetas states that it was widely used in European tem-
pera-on-wood panels during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was
extensively used in Venetian painting. It is considered the most common
yellow in Titians oeuvre. It functions as an oil retardant, but because it is
incompatible with copper and lead pigments, it was rarely used in Spanish
paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
21
Orpiment has also
been identified in some Mexican pre-Conquest polychrome objectsfor
instance, on the stone benches from the Eagle Warriors Precinct at the
Templo Mayor, in Tenochtitlan (stage IV, c. 1470).
22
It is worth noting
19. In the chapter referred to the painting of sargas, Pacheco recommends cheap pig-
ments. He says that yellows can be made of orpiment, and black of ordinary charcoal, and he
mentions the use of colorants as well. Pacheco, El arte de la pintura, 1990, pp. 84 and 485.
20. Santos Gmez et al., Aportaciones de antiguas ordenanzas al estudio, pp. 266
285.
21. Bruquetas, Tcnicas y materiales de la pintura espaola, pp. 160161.
22. Miranda et al., Pollution effects on stone benches of the Eagle Warriors Precinct,
pp. 611615.
Fig. 14. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 38r. X-ray f luorescence chart of
mineral pigments and aggregates.
Fig. 13. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 38r. (Left) Folio 38r under
ultraviolet radiation (365 nanometers). (Right) Ultraviolet f luorescence
response of laboratory-prepared samples of European-style lakes and
organically based colorants, and visible light registers. Ca=calcium,
Mn=manganese, Fe=iron, As=arsenic.
american metal technology of the post-Classic period produced a copper
alloy based on arsenic,
24
so today we can assert that the Mexica had access
to mines or other sources of metallic ores with arsenic, where orpiment
is found.
25
Finally, examinations we have performed on four panel paint-
ings from the second half of the sixteenth century show that the use of
orpiment as a yellow pigment was common in the palette of New Spain.
26

Though we have not identified the specific pigments used in the
De la CruzBadiano Codex, we can be certain that the palette consists
mainly of organic colorantsbrown, red, green, yellow, blue, purple,
pink, and orange (fig. 16). Sometimes the colorants appear to have been
mixed with inorganic pigments: calcium sulfate, clays, pyrolusite (for dark
umber), yellow ochre, and orpiment. No inorganic red or green pigments
appear to have been used. The orange-red pigment minium that was
used for the margins was not employed for the illustrations. Copper-based
24. Ruvalcaba, PIXE Analysis of Pre-Hispanic Items, pp. 138140.
25. An orpiment ore is found in the northern state of San Luis Potos, in the Soledad
Mine, in Guadalczar. See Panczner, Minerals of Mexico, p. 290.
26. Amador et al., Y hablaron de pintores famosos de Italia, pp. 7879.
that the palette employed in the stone benches contained ochre, gypsum,
pyrolusite, a blue produced with an organic dye (indigo), and a clay. This
combination of materials also appears in the De la CruzBadiano Codex
(fig. 15).
Other Mesoamerican manuscripts present similar materials. The
Cospi Codex has orpiment as a pigment on one side, but organic yellows
on the other.
23
The yellows from the Columbine Codex (circa thirteenth
century) were obtained from colorants used without a clay substrate. Since
few pre-Columbian manuscripts have been studied with scientific instru-
mentation, we cannot be certain, but it is possible that the use of orpi-
ment as pigment was part of the pre-Hispanic painting tradition. Meso-
23. An interdisciplinary team from the Dipartimento di Chimica, Universit di Perugia,
and the Universit di Bologna performed a noninvasive spectroscopic investigation on the
Cospi Codex, an astrological calendar from the Mixteca-Puebla (c. fifteenth century) painted
on animal skin with a gypsum ground. They found differences in the painting technique; on
the obverse, three organic yellow pigments were detected by UV-visible f luorescence and mid-
infrared[??] Fourier-transform infrared ref lectography (FTIR), while on the reverse, orpiment
was recognized by micro-Raman spectroscopy. See Sgamellotti et al., A Spectroscopic
Non-Invasive Study.
Fig. 16. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 38v. Detail of temahuiztiliquauitl.
Note the richness of the painters palette.
Fig. 15. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 38r. Nonochton azcapayxua:
detail of the roots painted with orpiment (arsenic trisulfide).
the image is also a text. The internal semantics of the plant names fol-
low categorization systems similar to those underlying the component
forms that create a given figure. For example, the couaxocotl (literally,
serpent fruit) on folio 38v is painted with two snakes (couatl) ascending
the branches to bite the fruit (xocotl) (fig. 17).
27
Yet the correspondence of
the paintings to the Nahua text is not always so literal. In some cases, the
text mentions the plants environment, as in the case of the plants on folio
44r: acacazontli, acacapacquilitl, acatl, and tzayanalquilitl (fig. 18). Atl
means water; its initial, A, precedes the plant names, and all these plants
grow on the banks of rivers.
28
Correspondingly, in the codex these plants
are shown in an aquatic environment, all linked together by their roots.
27. Historian and biologist Emily Walcott Emmart was the first specialist to record,
translate, and study the De la CruzBadiano Codex. She distinguished the use of the pre-
Columbian glyphs stone and water within the illustrations of the codex, and proposed the use
of pictographic conventions for the representation of roots. See her annotated edition of the
Badianus Manuscript (Codex Barberini, Latin 241) Vatican Library, p. 37.
28. del Paso y Troncoso, La botnica, p. 88.
greens can be identified only as stains on the paper (on folios 18v, 19r, 21v,
and 25v)perhaps caused by an accident in the workshopbut the color
was never used for the plant depictions. (The stains appear randomly[?]
on the pages.) The essential point of these observations is that, while the
painters of the De la CruzBadiano Codex had access to pigments com-
monly used in the European tradition, which had been used in the text of
the codex itself, they chose not to utilize them in their painting.
To better understand the paintings in the De la CruzBadiano Codex,
we created a database containing the following information for each of
the 184 plants depicted in the volume: its Nhuatl name and etymology,
the modern scientific species name, and notes regarding botanists degree
of confidence in the respective identifications upon reviewing the data.
We included notes on the individual images pictorial qualities (color, vol-
ume, contour, line, painting instruments used), along with technical evi-
dence (binding of folios into signatures, relations of images to margins and
text, etc.), and comparisons between the conventional color photographs
and infrared reflectograms of each plant image. We did this because the
images are constructed under a Nahua conception according to which
Fig. 17. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 38v. Detail from the couaxocotl
plant. Etymology: couatl=snake; xocotl=fruit.
Fig. 18. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 44r. Aquatic plants depicted on
a river bank.
We noticed some tiny blue drops depicted as flowing from the stems of
two plants, neither of which had yet been identified botanically. Accord-
ing to Angel Mara Garibay, the plant name shown on folio 25v, tonatiuh
ixiuh ahhuachcho, means something close to watered herb from the sun
(literally, sun herb watered).[??] The other, described as xihuitl tonalco
mochiua hahuachcho on folio 9v,
29
the same scholar translated as herb
that gets watered in the hot season.
30
In the Latin description of the ail-
ment relevant to this plant, the Nhuatl phrase xihuitl tonalco mochiua
hahuachcho was inserted, which Garibay interpreted as an error on the
part of the scribe or translator who did not translate the phrase. Our
observation is that the variously transliterated term ahhuachcho/ahuachyo
(watery) may be part of the plant name, but is referring to a characteris-
tic: the blue drops that signify water or [?] dew.
31
A similarly poetic image
occurs in the Florentine Codex, in the prayers to Tezcatlipoca against
pestilence, famine, and war (fig. 19). There we read how the gods anger
made pestilence, famine, and war fall into the city like dew from the
stem (in acatl in ahuachyo or in acatl ahuachyo; el roco de la caa in
Miguel Len Portillas translation).
32
The system of visual representations in the De la CruzBadiano
Codex, as in other documents of the same period, combined phonetic,
29. Xihuitl tonalco mochiua hahuachcho is Angel Mara Garibays transcription. I thank
Tesiu Rosas Xelhuantzi for the Nhuatl etymology corrections to this paragraph and for point-
ing out that during the sixteenth century, there was a deficiency in the phonetic represention
of the aspirated and glottal consonants in Nhuatl transcription because those sounds did not
exist in Spanish. Scribes of the time sometimes addressed this absence by inserting an h, but
generally such consonants were ignored. In this case, the variation in placement of the h (at
the beginning or in the middle of a word) was due to the inability of the Spanish language to
incorporate the aspirated Nhuatl consonant, and not the fault of the NhuatlLatin translator.
30. On folio 25v, tonatiuh ixiuh ahuachyo was translated as hierba aguaosa del sol
(watery herb of the sun, or literally, sun herb dewy/watery),[??] based on the etymology tona-
tiuh i xihuitl ahuachyo; on folio 9v, xihuitl tonalco mochiua hahuachcho is rendered as hierba
que en el tiempo de calor se hace aguaosa (herb that becomes watery during the hot season),
and the phrase inserted in Nhuatl in the Latin text is xihuitl tonalli co mo chihua ahuachyo.
Garibay, Nombres nahuas en el cdice De la Cruz-Badiano, pp. 231232.
31. Auacho: cosa que tiene rocio (Auacho: thing that has dew). Molina, Vocabulario en
lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana (1970).
32. Tlacatl, Totecuyo, Tloque Nahuaque. Y en verdad se inf laman, disfrutan, se acre-
cientan, se regocijan, el palo, la piedra, tu enojo, tu disgusto. De verdad se establece el humo,
se establece la quemazn. Los has puesto, junto los has allegado a su lado, sobre el pueblo los
has esparcido, los has hecho caer, como el roco de la caa. Y as les has puesto junto el castigo,
el agua helada, las ortigas, los colmillos torcidos, Len-Portilla, Oraciones a Tezcatlipoca
en las pestilencias, pp. 6061.
pictographic, alphabetic, and pictorial signs, and many unsolved ques-
tions remain about the ways these elements worked together to create
meaning.
33
In 1886, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso asserted that the
Nahua taxonomy was based on terms describing the plants daily uses.
Even though he never saw the De la CruzBadiano Codex, his conclu-
sions are nonetheless relevant to it. Del Paso found that combinations of
prefixes, suffixes, and radicals described the physical properties of the
plants, their similarities to other objects, and/or the terrain in which they
grew; verbal elements categorized botanical species as wild or cultivated,
and as trees, shrubs, or grasses; and sometimes these elements referred
to the plants therapeutic properties.
34
The scholar noted the abundance
of synonymythe repetition of a name applied to different speciesso
he addressed the iconography as a significant descriptive resource. He
regarded Francisco Hernndezs compilation as an iconographic source,
35

and suggested that the plant depictions might include figurative, sym-
bolic, or syllabic (pictographic) significance, or various combinations
thereof.
A given figure, in spite of the significance of the name it is depict-
ing, can also be studied as an image in its pictorial role. There are two
primary modes of elaboration: one that comes out of pre-Columbian rep-
resentational conventions, and another showing more affinity with Euro-
pean painting. The technical solutions used to create the images may be
analyzed and distinguished. We will use a few examples to demonstrate
the differences that become apparent, and the combinations of pictorial
modes employed. [??]
Different modes of color use and handling exist side by side. There
are areas created with flat and saturated colors, with very defined contour
lines, following the Mesoamerican tradition. On the other hand, model-
ing and shading may be formed by transparent layering of pigments, or by
the gradation of colors through the addition of white or black, as typical in
tempera painting. Most common is the simple juxtaposition of contrast-
33. Robertson, Aztec Picture-Writing, pp. 15144.
34. Del Paso y Troncoso, La botnica, pp. 8889, 124125.
35. Francisco del Paso y Troncoso had access to the Historiae naturae maxime peregrinae
printed in 1635 by the Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg (15951658), which included copies of
the original illustrations of Hernndez that were lost during the fire of the Escorial Library in
1671.
Fig. 19. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folios 23v and 9v, showing plant stems
with ahuachyo, or dew droplets. Also on 9v, a green stain from a copper-
based pigment. The lack of margins is evident.
ing colors to indicate volume, without shading. Color was applied with
either pens or brushes, with differing effects (fig. 20).
The case of the acamallotetl plant is interesting because it mingles
the use of many of the approaches mentioned above (fig. 21). The plant
stands on the pictograph for flowing water or a water spring; the base of
the sign is painted with a saturated blue pigment, delineated with a darker
hue of blue. The lines were formed with an uneven and segmented stroke.
The different branches of the flowing water end with symbols of precious-
ness, chalchihuite and shell, and the firmness of these forms and their
red color contrast with the lines of the flow. Above the water symbol, geo-
metrical forms overlap to indicate a kind of slab; this signification is also
unique. As we have seen, the painters used the pictogram stonehere
the rhomboidal forms appear to depict a special characteristic of a place
or material. The way in which the slabs are painted is also different.
The illustrator used bright and transparent colors that create an iridescent
effect from the superposition of contrasted tones. An intention of shading
is also evident, but the shade is flat; it underlines the whole margin of the
geometrical figures with a darker shade of green. The roots of the plant
were painted before the slabs, and were partially covered by them. The
forms were recuperated with the use of dark blue to emphasize some of
their parts. Finally, the trunk of the shrub was painted with a saturated
pink that becomes green toward the end of each stem. Using the same
hue of bright green, flower buds or rounded fruits crown each of the
stems, with the volume of the spherical forms expressed through dark
green shadings, and three yellow dots may indicate reflections of light or a
characteristic of the fruit-flower. The shading of the trunk was done with
dark green paint applied with short strokes of dry pigment on one side of
the figure, a solution we have only seen for the painting of earth clods,
as those depicted on the neighboring plant (coltolzin). Finally, the leaves
were painted with transparencies of a very diluted green-blue color. Rep-
resentation of the plant was solved as in a miniature, using contrasting
colors; the volume of the fruit was achieved with contrast and gradation;
and the leaves were painted by overlaying transparent layers. In this man-
ner, the painter was able to create a sense of volume in the plant, so that
it stands out against the flat Mexica water symbol.
The huizquilitl plant was represented three times in the De la Cruz
Badiano Codex (fig. 22). On folio 8v, the plant is depicted in a painterly
manner: the leaves are created with baths of purple and green; the shades
are built up by transparent washes. There was no need of a contour line to
delimit its silhouette. On folios 32r and 41r, the huizquilitl intertwines the
modes of Western painting with shapes from the Mesaomerican tradition.
In both cases, the plant was painted using a contour line, and the shades
to create volume were built up using transparent washes of black. In folio
6 of the Codex Borbonicus, where the goddess Mayahuel is depicted,
another example of the plant bares some resemblance to the illustrations
in figure 22, yet the color is applied in a flat and saturated manner, and
the contours are perfectly delimited (fig. 23).
Some images in the De la CruzBadiano Codex were configured by
a synthesis of the principal characteristics of a species; take, for instance,
the case of the cypress tree (fig. 24). The leaves were painted as smudges
of different hues of green, made up by thumping the brush on the paper.
The Spanish moss was created with descending gray lines painted with a
thin brush. Yet the cones were painted in an oversized manner, perhaps
to underline their importance in the recipe or to identify the useful part
of the plant.
pot, the figure of huacalxochitl spreads, covering the width of the page.
Observations with ultraviolet light, infrared reflectography, and magnify-
ing lenses allowed us to see a very complex construction. First, a gen-
eral preparatory drawing was made using a carbon or graphite pencil that
defined the entire contour of the specimen. Subtle transparent washes,
starting with the brighter tones, were applied, overlapping orpiment yel-
low and a blue colorant. The darker hues of green were created by super-
imposing washes of transparent blue. This colorant was also applied for
the modeling of leaves and flowers. The blue is graduated toward darker
shades in the creation of stems and leaves, and brightens with the addi-
tion of white toward the flowers. The final contour lines, which were
made with a pen, have the same color. The strategy achieves a modulated
volume with a strong pictorial effect. The roots were painted with white
The preparatory drawings were done in two ways: one in which the
color of the final contour line was used to mark the basic features of the
plant, the paint is very diluted, and the tools used may have been either
pens or brushes; in the second, the whole figure was drawn with charcoal.
These traces were detected by using an infrared reflectographic camera
on only a few specimens. Sometimes, there is no evidence of such under-
drawing (fig. 25).
Folio 18v presents an unusual disposition of the images for a recipe to
cure angina (fig. 26). The illustration shows two plants: the huacalxochitl
and the tepitoton teamoxtli, which are superimposed. In the background,
the tepitoton teamoxtli, a type of grass, is represented within a cylindrical
pot, seen in cross-section, and the soil in the container is painted in a
watercolor fashion, mixing earth tones and violet hues. The bottom of the
cylinder also has green sprouts. In the foreground, superimposed over the
Fig. 21. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 61r. (Left) acamallotetl and
coltolzin; (right, top to bottom) details of acamallotetl; a pictographic sign
for water, rocks, or slabs; and fruit. The etymology is uncertain, but the
suffix -tetl refers to rocks.
Fig. 20. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folios 28r, 22v, and 26r. Different
painting solutions: (top left) nonochtonazcapayxua, by contrasted colors
and superposition; (bottom left) tememetla, color gradation and defined
contour line; (right) quetzalxoxouhcapahtli, emphasis on drawing, using
pens for the fruits and shading of the leaves.
its display of the images. Two possibilities arise to explain this tension:
one is that the book was created within the dynamic of a workshop group
of scribes and illustrators who were guided by the translator Juan Badiano
and the medicine doctor Martn de la Cruz. The construction of the
book does not follow a linear order by specialty but demonstrates interac-
tions among those directed by someone who beheld a general idea of the
project. This team tried to integrate the Nhuatl knowledge and concep-
tions into European notions and taxonomy.
The second explanation to the imagetext tension has to do with the
field of language. The Mesoamerican world that was intended to be trans-
lated into a European image and text system could not be fully expressed
in Western language, so the painters had to resort to their own code and
modify it to signify new images that did not exist prior to the Conquest.
The De la CruzBadiano Codex uses a combination of two ways of repre-
pigment, a fine and purified gypsum, mixed with blue dye. The interior
of the flowers was painted with an organic red.
36

PAINTERS AND WRITERS LOST IN TRANSLATION
The De la CruzBadiano Codex is an artifact, a system where pre-
Columbian knowledge and image codes are contained within a Euro-
pean structure.
The book as a container of knowledge embodies the European cul-
ture; the form, the paper, the binding, were all made using imported
materials, but the images were created with indigenous pigments and
paintingwriting strategies that are linked to the Mesoamerican codex
tradition.
A total differentiation between written language and pictorial lan-
guage is obtained as a result of the analysis of the texts organization and
36. For the symbolic and psychotropic properties of this plant, see Alcntara, In Nepa-
pan Xochitl, in this volume. One might speculate whether this special composition had to do
with a symbolic and magical value given to the plant.
Fig. 22. De la CruzBadiano Codex (left to right), folios 8v, 32r, and 41r.
Details of huizquilitl plants, and different painting approaches to their
depiction.
Fig. 23. Borbonicus Codex, p. 6. Post-Classic painted manuscript on amate
paper, screenfold format, 38 pages, 390 400 mm each, length 14.16 m.
Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale, Paris.
from the people who illuminated the book. This is relevant because Juan
Badiano accomplished the construction of a text where each recipe was
fully explained. In the recipes, centuries of traditional knowledge proper
to Mesoamerican cultures were compiled that considered materials, times
of elaboration, directions, and results. Painters, on the other hand, gave
form to certain aspects of the recipes that did not necessarily refer to the
treatment of an ailment but to a mode of conceptualizing a painterly rep-
resentation on the basis of the Nhuatl language structure.
A break occurs at the moment of translating the empirical knowledge
of Martn de la Cruz into a group of images. A transliteration of the recipe
into illustrations would be very complex, so a selection of the specimens
that would be the most representative and eloquent elements to symbol-
ize each recipe had first to be defined. In this mode, the painters gave the
form of a herbarium to a traditional compendium of medicinal recipes.
It seems that the choice of the plants that were to be represented had to
be performed by the doctor, giving consideration to the most important
ingredient of the recipe, a selection of the active substance that had to
be recorded. This decision implies the existence of an image referee,
whose role was to define the visual thing that would accompany the text.
These referees could have been Juan Badiano and Martn de la Cruz
sentation. The form recalls that of a herbarium but does not describe the
herbs; the codex is, in fact, a medicinal recipe book with plant depictions.
There is a selection of specimens; not all of the plants described in the
text were illustrated, and they follow their own meaning, independent
from the text.
The approaches to plant depiction may recreate the objects form in
itself, or the figure may be a reflection of the Nhuatl name. The image
may incorporate what we have called, following Janice Lynn Robertson,
the picture-writing code. The painting strategies used in the manu-
script have referents in Mesoamerican codex writing, European illumi-
nated miniatures, and prints or engravings.
It is necessary to differentiate the participation of Juan Badiano not
only as the translator but as the interpreter of the knowledge of the indig-
enous doctor Martn de la Cruz, and also to distinguish the two of them
Fig. 24. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 47v (central image). [?]
Representation of the tlatzcan, or cypress tree, with emphasis on the size
of the seeds.
Fig. 25. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folios 38r, 38r, 56v. Details from
piltzintecouhxochitl, metztli yacauh, and tlilxochitl hueynacaztli,
exemplifying different types of preparatory drawings: green colorant
applied with a brush, brown ink applied with a pen, and lines drawn with
a stick of charcoal[?].
diseases. Behind the whole project was a familys patronage and their
interest in the Santa Cruz Tlatelolco College, as evidenced by their boun-
tiful donation to the school. The close relationship between Mendoza
and the authors of the codex could explain the prominent space given to
the illustrations and recipe to cure the governors fatigue.
In spite of the artifacts intended functionality, the book never accom-
plished either of Mendozas objectives: the recipes were incomprehensible
to European minds, and the imagesoperating independently as signs of
the Mesoamerican culturedid not function adequately as illustrations
for the identification of natural species. Even for someone who lived in
Mexico City in 1552, the recipes were unintelligible without the aid of the
medical doctor and the translator. Thus the book arrived at the Spanish
court and was kept as a rare and beautiful curiosity.
themselves, each supervising a different aspect and stage of the books
formation.
The De la CruzBadiano Codex has been compared to medieval
herbals because of its figures, but the difference between this book and
the herbaria is that it is structured as a medical book, following the bodys
parts and its ailments. It would be interesting to compare the content
of the codex with other contemporary medical books to try to define its
similarities and differences.
The manuscript was made at the request of Francisco de Mendoza; in
this sense, its functionality points toward the construction of a plant cata-
logue that would facilitate commerce in New World medicinal plants.
Mendozas commission was simultaneously to gather knowledge of new
cultures and to look for medical solutions in curing the modern worlds
Fig. 26. De la CruzBadiano Codex, folio 18v. (Left) Huacalxochitl and
tepitoton teamoxtli. (Top right) Infrared ref lectogram of the huacalxochitl
f lower and leaves; (bottom right) negative image of an infrared ref lectogram
of the general composition.
In the Andes prior to the arrival of the Spanish, colorants were extracted
from nature and processed for use in various creative media. Ochres and
other mineral pigments were employed for various types of painting on
architecture in mostly earthen tonesas can still be seen, for example,
in the frescoes and painted walls of the pre-Inca Huaca del Sol temple in
the Moche Valley of coastal Peru.
1
Ceramic production likewise included
the application of minerals to produce colors, both before and after fir-
ing, in a palette limited to the earthen tones of the minerals themselves.
Precious stones and shells, naturally colored in a range of shades, were
utilized for small-scale mosaics on personal ornaments such as ear-spools
and necklaces. Additionally, to enhance the colors of various base-metal
surfaces, precious metals were added to them and worked, lending the
whitish hue of silver or the yellowish hue of gold. These two metals were
employed in ways that emphasized their intrinsic colors, and were often
paired within one ornament to exploit the contrast between their colors
(fig. 2). These artistic processes incorporated color as an attribute, yet all
these were pursued on a relatively small scale and in a narrow tonal range.
For the very rich tradition of the artistic use of color in the Andes in the
pre-Conquest period, we must look primarily to textiles, such as tunics,
cloaks, and other components of ceremonial or ritual dress, rather than to
any other medium. In the pre-Conquest era, indigenous people expended
more knowledge, time, and effort in the identification, gathering, prepa-
ration, and production of colored materials for textiles than for works in
other media. In the absence of a written language, the visual language
of the daily, ritual, and political life of the pre-Columbian peoples of the
1. Photographs can be seen at http://www.huacas.com/page120.htm (verified 1 July 2010).
Textile Colors and Colorants
in the Andes
ELENA PHI PPS
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 1. Tunic, Inca period, late 15thearly 16th century. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. William Francis Warden Fund, 47.1097.
ELENA PHI PPS 258 TEXTI LE COLORS AND COLORANTS I N THE ANDES 259
Andes was expressed through a textile culture. Here I explore some of the
ramifications of this observation.
Color, in its material and spectral aspects, retained and imparted a
wide variety of meanings in the Andean region. The color red, for exam-
ple, was important for the Inca, who used it for royal garmentsfor exam-
ple, in the neck yokes of official black-and-white checkerboard tunics,
which always have a crimson red v-shaped neck area (fig. 1). Red was
also used in ritual contexts, as in the special garments worn by the sacri-
ficed virgins of the capacocha ceremonies that took place at special sites
atop snow-capped mountains. These red-and-white or red-and-yellow
garments included long, wraparound dresses and mantles, which were
reserved for ceremonial use and which have been preserved in a number
of ritual contexts (fig. 3).
2

There is a long and ancient tradition of the use of red in burial gar-
mentsfor example, in the extraordinary mantles covering the Paracas
mummies, from circa 300 B.C.E., which were woven or embroidered
throughout with an abundance of red (fig. 4). The ritual use of red con-
tinued well into the nineteenth century. As another instance, in the com-
munity of Coroma, in southwestern Bolivia, red-and-blue striped ceremo-
nial tunics, made in pairs, have long been kept in qepi bundles by local
authorities and worn on ceremonial occasions.
3

Color in textiles is not an abstract idea but rather a natural phenom-
enon, whether native to the raw yarn or the result of a chemical process. It
is very much subject to physical constraints and human ingenuity. Some
colors are ubiquitous because they can be obtained with little effort and
are present in their raw form. Other colors must be created but fade or
transform quickly. It is a matter of the resources available and the knowl-
edge at hand. To explore some of these themes relating to color and tex-
tiles, I will examine the sources and attributes of textile colors in the
Andes into the seventeenth century and discuss some of the changes that
occurred in the use, application, and export of textiles and fabric dyes
under Spanish rule.
Recent study of the representation of colored garments in the depiction
of Incas in an early Spanish colonial manuscript by Martn de Mura, His-
2. See Reinhard, The Ice Maiden, and the Pachacamac Temple of the Sacrificed Virgins
in Uhle and Shimada, Pachacamac, and Pachacamac Archaeology.
3. Adelson and Tracht, Aymara Weavings, figs. 3 and 25.
Fig. 2. Nose ornament. Loma Negra (Moche), 2nd3rd century, Peru.
Gold and silver, with shell inlay. The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial
Collection; Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1979 (1979.206.1225).
toria general del Piru (1616), now belonging to the J. Paul Getty Museum,
has afforded an opportunity to explore the relationship between painting
on paper and textile dyeing among the Inca.
4
The thirty-six hand-colored
folios of Muras manuscript include depictions of the Inca kings and
queens, each a detailed full-length portrait (fig. 5). These were examined
and scientifically analyzed to identify the pigments and colorants used to
4. Mura, Historia general del Piru, 1616. I had the privilege of examining this manu-
script intensively as a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum, OctoberDecember 1999. My
research during this residential fellowship period focused on Inca and Spanish colonial colo-
rants used to depict textiles in the manuscript, which I analyzed in collaboration with paper
conservator Nancy Turner and conservation scientists David Scott and Narayan Khandekar at
the Museum Research Laboratory at the Getty Conservation Institute; see Phipps, Summary
Report on a J. Paul Getty Museum Guest Scholar Project. Subsequently, the project incor-
porated extensive analysis conducted by Nancy Turner and Karen Trentelman; see Phipps,
Turner, and Trentelman, Colors, Textiles, and Artistic Production, pp. 125145.
produce the images. The study, conducted over a ten-year period, was at
least in part initiated because the colors used in depicting the garments
were similar to those used in historical dyed and woven textiles preserved
from the era. In other words, the portraits seemed to reflect the aesthetic
of the Inca textile tradition in both styles and colors.
Yet painting colors on paper as a process is very different from pro-
ducing dyed color in a textile. Generally, painting pigments consist of
inorganic colorants, primarily minerals,
5
and the colors of the pigments
are already visible in their raw form, when they are mined or recovered
5. Some painting pigments are made from organic materials that are rendered into lake
or insoluble form. In this form, they can then be ground into a powder and used in the same
manner as an inorganic pigment. See Kirby, Spring, and Higgitt, Technology of Eigh-
teenth- and Nineteenth-Century Red Lake Pigments, pp. 6987; and Kirby and White, The
Identification of Red Lake Pigment Dyestuffs, pp. 5680.
Fig. 3. Pachacmac womans dress (anacu), Inca period. Camelid warp
and weft. Museo de Sitio de Pachacmac, Peru (MSPACH 595).
Fig. 4. Mantle, 2nd1st century b.c.e., Peru; Ocucaje wool; H. 56 in. (142
cm). Gift of Rosetta and Luis Slavitz, 1986, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, (1986.488.1).
from their natural setting in the form of blocks or chunks. These mineral
rocks or aggregates are then ground into a fine powder, which may then
be washed and dried, and the resulting pigment is mixed with some type
of binding medium, such as egg yolk, gum arabic, or oil, before being
applied to a surface. That surface may have been coated with a prepara-
tory layer, or ground, that absorbs and holds the colorant. The pigments
can be used as single, pure colors or mixed together to make other colors
prior to application.
6
Alternatively, colors can be layered during the paint-
ing process, creating depth of color by varying opaqueness. The illus-
trations in the Mura manuscript employed all three optionspure and
mixed pigments as well as layered colorants.
7
Textile dyeing requires a more extensive and complex series of pro-
cesses. Whereas painting pigments are applied to a surface and allowed
to dry, dyes generally must be dissolved in a hot liquid. The textile is
immersed in the resulting dyebath, where the bonding of the color to
the fabric (or yarns or fiber) takes place, often requiring a mordant to set
the color permanently. While some Andean dyers applied color to the
surfaces of textiles by drawing with dyes, as in the so-called painted cloths
from the Chimu culture of the Central Coastal region,
8
for the most part,
even with a direct application, the cloth would subsequently need to be
cooked, if not boiled, to set the dye (fig. 6).
6. See, for example, Feller et al., eds., Artists Pigments; and Eastaugh, Pigment Com-
pendium.
7. Phipps, Turner, and Trentelman, Colors, Textiles, and Artistic Production.
8. See, for example, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Peruvian textile 1979.206.601.
Fig. 5. Cusi Chimpo Coya. Martn de Murua, Historia General del Peru,
[1616], fol. 33v. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (83MP159).
Fig. 6. Ocongate, Peru. Indigo dyeing.
For cloth or yarn to be dyed successfully, its fiber content must be
compatible with the type of dyestuff used. Cotton, which is native to Peru
and serves as a primary fiber in garments of the coastal region, can be
dyed with only a small set of dyes that yield a very limited color palette:
mostly browns, blues, and purples. Shellfish purple, from the secretions
of marine mollusks of the Muricidae family of the Concholepas (locally
referred to as locos), which live on the rocky coast, could be directly
applied to the textile, forming a strong, fast bond (fig. 7). This dye was
used from very early times, as we see in some examples with designs of
purple handprints from the Paracas culture (c. 300100 B.C.E.), and it
was more or less exclusively employed on cotton. In addition, Peruvian
pima cotton, Gossypium barbadense, grew naturally in a range of colors,
including white, various shades of brown, and even pinkish and greenish
hues.
9
Andean weavers working with cotton incorporated these natural
tones into their work to expand the limited palette available.
9. See Vreeland, Revival of Colored Cotton, pp. 112118.
Wool, produced in the Andes from a number of different animal
types, could be dyed using a wide variety of sources that produced an
extensive color range. Unlike Mexico, which had no large, wool-bearing
animals before the Spanish brought sheep into the region after the Con-
quest, the Andes were populated by native camelids, including llama,
alpaca, vicua, and guanaco. Such camelids were the most significant
source of fibers used in pre-Columbian South American textiles. They
are especially associated with the highlands, the animals natural habitat,
although camelid fibers have also been found in textiles from the coastal
regions, generally as a result of trade and the later acculturation of the
animals to lower altitudes.
10
Prized for their fineness and natural silki-
10. Shimada and Shimada, Prehistoric Llama Breeding and Herding, pp. 326.
Fig. 7. Conchalepas locos (shellfish purple). Puerto de Ilo, Peru, 2006.
Fig. 8. Alpacas. After K. MacQuarrie, J. Flores Ochoa, and Javier Portus,
Gold of the Andes, 1994, fig. ___.
ness, camelid fibers occur naturally in colors ranging from white to gray,
brown, and black, and take more readily to dyes than cotton (fig. 8).
Since pre-Columbian times, garments and ritual cloths woven in these
naturally occurring colors alonethe browns, blacks, grays, and whites
have been associated with ritual activities surrounding Pachamama, the
earth mother.
11
White was apparently especially important for the Inca.
A white llama, referred to as the napa llama, is said in Inca mythology
to have come out of the cave of origins, Pacarictambo, as a companion
to the ancient progenitors, and special herds of white llamas were kept by
the Inca king.
12
White was worn by priests of the important Inca cult of
the sun and was generally associated with religious ceremony, according
to Jos de Acosta, whose Historia natural y moral de las Indias reflects his
observations of late Inca culture.
In the colonial period, camelids continued to be an important source
of animal-fiber yarns for native weavers, even as other non-native animal
fibers became available. These included sheeps wool brought to the New
World from Spain (the animals having been introduced very soon after
the Conquest, by the late 1530s), and silk from China, first shipped via
Spain and later directly from China on the Manila galleons that annually
traversed the Pacific between Asia and the Americas in the late sixteenth
and the seventeenth centuries. These newly introduced materials could
be dyed with a wide variety of colorants. Some of them may even have
arrived in the New World already colored with dyes local to their sources,
such as safflower pink, a typical Chinese silk dye (fig. 9).
13

ANDEAN DYES
Textile dyes generally come from organic materials: roots, bark, wood,
leaves, and flowers of plants, as well as from secretions and parts of cer-
tain animals. Often the source materialsthe flowers, stems, roots, or
insectsneed to be gathered at specific times within the life cycles of
the plants or animals. Knowing when and where to collect the materi-
als used for dyeing requires knowledge and monitoring of environmental
11. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martn, The Colonial Andes, pp. 290292 (cat.
no. 99 by Phipps).
12. Phipps, Color in the Andes, p. 53.
13. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martn, Colonial Andes, pp. 190191 (cat. no. 39
by Elena Phipps).
conditions, familiarity with local habitats, and understanding of seasonal
changes in climate and temperature.
Before the Conquest, knowledge of plants, including their medicinal
and dye properties, was the purview of specialists, the camayos, in Inca
terminology. In the early seventeenth century, Martn de Mura provided
a list of Inca officials, noting that Indians who have as their work the
gathering of the colors with which they dye the clothing are called
tulpu camayo.
14
Mura also wrote that the pau aupallac dye the wool
diverse colors to make cumbi [fine cloth] for the Sun, for the idols, and
the Inca.
15
Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala remarks that pauau pallac
14. Mura, Historia general del Per, Madrid 1986, p. 402. Gonzlez Holguns Quechua
dictionary, originally published in 1952, included the entry Tullpuycamayoc: El Tintorero,
that is, the dyer; see Gonzlez Holgun, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Per,
p. 345.
15. Mura, Historia general del Per, Madrid 1986, p. 399 (my translation).
Fig. 9. Womans wedding mantle, 17th century. Silk with metallic threads.
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York. Gift of John Pierpont
Morgan, acc. no. 1902-1-782.
were young girls between the ages of nine and twelve who gather flowers
to dye wool, for cumbi and ropas [clothing], and other things (fig. 10).
16

Once a quantity of material is collected, the coloring component
must be extracted from its source. Sometimes the dye is extracted from
freshly gathered materials, immediately after collection of the plant or
animal, but at other times these source materials are dried prior to extrac-
tion. Freshly produced dyes may be used immediately, or the colorant
16. Guamn Poma de Ayala, Nueva crnica y buen gobierno, p. 220 (my translation). See
also Guamn Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva crnica y buen gobierno, p. 228 [230]. Viewable
online at http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/230/en/text/ (verified as of 1 July 2010).
itself, once extracted, may be dried to facilitate storage and transport, and
then used to dye fibers or cloth weeks, months, or even years later. Being
organic, however, these colorants are subject to degradation over time;
through exposure to air and moisture, they lose some of their potency.
The most basic and essential component of all dyebaths is water, and
its puritythat is, its naturally occurring mineral and biological content
has a direct effect on the dyeing process and the resultant colors. The
Inca clearly understood and respected the varying properties of water,
and differentiated their springs and water sources according to quality
and type. According to El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, for example, the
city of Cuzco itself has no good springs. During 15551556 they brought
in Tisatica water from a spring a quarter of a league away from the city. It
is very good and was brought down to the main square.
17

Some dyes require the use of mineral salts, or mordants, to produce a
strong and fast color, one that will be permanent and resistant to washing,
sunlight, and air. A common mordant such as alum was sometimes mined
in crystal form but was more generally made through burning the leaves
of certain aluminum-containing plants to form an ash that was used for
dyeing.
18
Master dyersthe camayocsunderstood the properties of each indi-
vidual dyestuff, and by adding particular materials to the bath, they could
shift the hues to the desired colors. Certain berries, for example, provided
alkalinity, while acids came from lemons, both of which had an impact
on the resulting colors. Bernab Cobo, in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo
of 1653, was the first to observe that some type of mordant was used that
allowed a dyer to modify a red dyebath to achieve a blue or purplish hue.
19

This process is still used today, as recorded in 1988 in Ana Roqueros field
observations of the work of cochineal dyers from Ecuador.
20
Indigo is one dye that does not require a mordant. The plant grows
throughout the tropical and semitropical regions, and has been used since
the early periods of pre-Columbian Peruvian textile production (fig. 11).
17. He also notes, for example, that in the making of the drink called aca, the Inca pre-
ferred to use water that was brackish because clean, sweet water did not make the drink taste
good; see El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General His-
tory of Peru, p. 322.
18. See Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de Amrica, 2006, pp. 91105.
19. See Cobo, Historia del Nuevo Mondo [1653], pp. 113116.
20. Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de Amrica, 2006, p. 149.
Fig. 10. Pauau Pallac. Que estas muchachas coxan f lores para tiir
lana, para cunbis [tejido fino] y rropas y otras cosas. Guamn Poma de
Ayala, Nuevo Crnica y Buen Gobierno, 1615, fol. ______. Royal Library,
Copenhagen, MS.______.
We do not know why, but for some reason, the Inca rarely used indigo
and we find it only in certain extraordinary ritual tunics, such as the blue
tunic found in the high-altitude ritual burial of Ampato.
21
However, the
dye was used extensively in colonial-period tapestries, where, curiously,
it was often used to depict a small rodent, the viscacha. We find these
blue animals woven into the borders of many colonial tapestries, and it
would seem that the animal achieved near-mythical stature. It lives in
regions where no other mammals can survive, such as the salt lakes of
highland Bolivia, and even today is used as a talisman for good luck and
health. The fact that it often appears in bluewhich we know was a spe-
cial colormay underscore its importance and provide a glimpse into a
native expression incorporated into a European artistic context.
22
The process of dyeing with indigo is very complex, requiring extrac-
tion of the color from the fresh leaves of the plant (Indigofera suffruticosa,
the American species) and the careful execution of a series of changes in
the chemical state of the dyebath. The first step is the extraction of the
color from the fresh leaves, resulting in an insoluble colorant. This needs
to be transformed from its oxidized and insoluble state to a reduced, sol-
uble state (referred to as indigo white, although it is actually a yellowish
color) that can be used for dyeing, and then must oxidized back to an
insoluble blue state, a change that occurs directly in the cloth or fiber.
This method is based on an understanding of the processes of fermenta-
tion and the effects of bacterial development (if not of bacteria them-
selves), as well as the careful manipulation and balancing of acids and
alkalis throughout the dyeing procedure.
With the relative absence of indigo in the southern Andean region
whether for cultural or environmental reasonsthe Spanish began at an
early date to import indigo from Mexico and Guatemala to Peru for their
obraje, or textile workshops.
23
In one eighteenth-century Cusco obraje, the
21. See Phipps, Turner, and Trentelman, Colors, Textiles, and Artistic Production,
p. 128, fig. 4.
22. See Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martn, Colonial Andes, pp. 214215 (cat. no. 53
by Phipps); see also figs. 118, 122.
23. Acosta mentions that indigo (air) from New Spain (Mexico) was shipped by f leets
(flotas) that also carried cochineal in quantity; see Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las
Indias (1590; reprint 1998), p. 255.
registers of alcabalas (taxes on visiting merchants) indicate that most of
the indigo used during a one-year period was brought from Guatemala.
24
Another dyestuff that the Spanish obrajes used to produce purple
came from tropical dye woods: brazilwood and logwood (Caesalpinia and
Haematoxylon, which grew outside the central Andean region.
25
While
easy to use in comparison to the complexity of indigo, this dyestuff does
24. Escandell-Tur, Produccin y comercio de tejidos colonials, p. 196, for obraje of 1786
87; see also Phipps, Cumbi to Tapestry, p. 98, n. 69.
25. Lewin, ed., Descripcin del Virreinato del Per.
Fig. 11. Indigo. Baltasar Jaime Martnez Compan y Bujanda,
(17351797), Trujillo del Per. 9 vols. 1780s. Vol. __, page/folio __. Madrid
Royal Library, MS. _________.
not seem to have been used by the royal weavers of the Inca, probably
because they were aware of its fugitive nature, as the bright purple color
fades easily to brown or beige in sunlight. While Andean dyers may have
had access to these wood dyes, they more commonly created purple by
sequential overdyeing of indigo blue and a red dye, usually cochineal.
Cochineal, called macnu by the Inca and grana by Spanish chroni-
clers, is an insect that lives on the Opuntia ficus-indica, or prickly pear
cactus. The insects were harvested from the cactus two or three times a
year, and were dried in the sun (fig. 12). They were also used in Mexico,
where they were cultivated intensively. Since no documents have yet been
found on the cultivation of cochineal in Peru, most of what is known
about the process comes from two major works on Mexican production,
by Gonzalo Gmez de Cervantes (1599) and Jos Antonio de Alzate y
Ramrez (1777).
26
Both speak extensively about the cultivation of the
26. See Dahlgren de Jordn, La grana cochinilla (which includes Gmez de Cer-
vantes, La vida econmica y social de Nueva Espaa); and Alzate y Ramrez, Memoria sobre
la naturaleza.
nopales (the cacti), the care of the mother insects, and the transplanta-
tion of the pregnant mothers onto the cactus pads. All of course, also
described by Bernardino Sahagn in book 11, chapter 11 (Los colores)
of the Florentine Codex.
Once the insects were harvested, they could be dried in several ways,
each of which affected their appearance. Andean dyers created balls or
cakes of the insects, which were dried and stored (fig. 13).
27
These cakes,
or panes as they were and are called in Peru even today, are still part of the
dye preparation process in Ecuador.
28
We know that the Spanish shipped
cochineal extensively as early as 1534. Thousands of tons crossed the
Atlantic, an export second only to silver, both from Mexico and Peru.
29

The Spanish merchants preferred the shipments of dried loose insects,
rather than those compressed into cake or ball form, because the quality
could be more readily controlled. As Alexander von Humboldt described
in his Essai politique, by the 1760s it was decreed that cochineal would
be grain spar so that the Indians are not able to introduce strange mate-
rial within their agglutinated masses.
30
Such masses were also made from annattothe seeds of the Bixa
orelanna, called achiote. Occurring from Mexico to South America, this
yellow colorant, because of its extremely fugitive nature, was typically
used in tropical regions for food preparation or for hair and body paint
rather than dyeing of textiles. Annatto was exported to Europe to produce
yellow silks and also as a finishing overdye for scarlet reds, one of the
most important textile types of the sixteenth through eighteenth centu-
ries. Some 5,400 pounds of annatto were carried on the Nuevo Constante,
a Spanish ship in a fleet returning to Cadiz carrying cargo from both
Central and South America. Leaving from Veracruz laden with dyestuffs
and silver, it was lost in a hurricane off the coast of Louisiana in 1766.
Remarkably, when the wreck was salvaged in the 1990s, some of its cone-
shaped clusters of annatto had survived (fig. 14).
31
The Nuevo Constante
27. Phipps, Color in the Andes, pp. 5159.
28. Roquero, Tintes y tintoreros de Amrica, 2006, pp. 148149.
29. Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias (1590; reprint 1998). See also Lee,
American Cochineal, pp. 20524; and Donkin, Spanish Red, pp. 384.
30. Humboldt, Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle-Espagne, vol. 3, p. 262: des
matires trangres dan ces masses agglutines appeles bodoques; see also Donkin, Spanish
Red, p. 19.
31. Information on the Nuevo Constante is viewable online at the site produced by the
Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in concert with the Louisiana
Fig. 12. Cochineal insect. Alzate y Ramrez, Memoria sobre la naturaleza,
cultivo y beneficio del la grana, 1777, folio/p. _____. The Newberry
Library, Chicago, Ayer MS. 1031.
carried other dyestuffs, notably over ten thousand pounds of cochineal,
nearly three thousand pounds of indigo, and forty thousand pounds of
colored tropical dye woods shipped as whole logs.
32
The export of dyes from the Americas had an extensive impact on the
European textile industry. Major centers of textile production in Spain,
Italy, France, the Netherlands, and England shifted their dyeing practices
to accommodate the newfound and readily available dyestuffs.
33
The geo-
graphical distribution of the prized dyestuff from the Americas was exten-
sive. As Sahagn noted in the 1570s, cochineal was shipped to China
and to Turkey and beyond.
34
EUROPEAN FIBERS AND DYES
While much has been said about the trade from the Americas to Europe,
it is also of interest to examine the reverse: that is, to understand how
European materials may have influenced the great weavers and dyers of
the Andes. To discuss this issue, I would like to return, once again, to the
Mura and Guamn Poma manuscripts.
Topa Inca Yupanqui, the tenth Inca king, is described by Guamn
Poma de Ayala as wearing a mantle that was called torne azul (fig. 15).
35

Mura, in his illustration of Yupanqui on folio 30v, also shows him wear-
ing a blue mantle and depicts the color in a very special way. Micro-
scopic examination shows that the color is created by overlaying azurite
blue pigment on top of a pink ground, resulting in a mottled appearance.
With the color illustrated folios, Mura shows what Guamn Poma only
names, that is, a fabric that has the appearance of a dual color, referred to
in Spain as tornesol (fig. 16).
Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission, at http://www.crt.state.la.us/archaeology/
virtualbooks/NUEVO/nuevo.htm. The annatto artifacts are shown at http://www.crt.state.
la.us/archaeology/virtualbooks/NUEVO/table.htm. (URLs verified 2 July 2010.)
32. Pearson and Hoffman, The Last Voyage of El Nuevo Constante.

33. See Donkin, Spanish Red; Hofenk de Graaff, Roelofs, and Van Bommel, The
Colourful Past; Lee, American Cochineal; and Cardon, Natural Dyes.
34. Sahagn, General History of the Things of New Spain (Sante Fe 195082), 216v; and
Donkin, Insect Dyes of Western and West-Central Asia, p. 865.
35. Guamn Poma describes Guascar Inca as wearing a tunic whose upper half is torne
azul; see Guamn Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva crnica y buen gobierno, 1615/16, p. 116,
online at http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/116/en/text/; see also p. 111, http://www.
kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/111/en/text/. (Both Web addresses verified 1 July 2010.)
Tornesol, as a fabric used in Spain, has been documented from at
least the fourteenth century.
36
It is found in France as early as the eighth
century, preserved in the garments of Queen Bathilde of Chelles.
37
Torne-
sol may have Islamic origins, in a fabric called bu qalamun (Persian for
chameleon).
38
One eleventh-century Persian traveler mentions that buqa-
lamun is produced only at Tinnis (Egypt) and its color changes accord-
36. A medieval Spanish dictionary lists a textile called tornesol, mentioned in a 1374
inventory from Aragn, which refers to mantles and headcloths made of taffetan de tornasol.
Martnez Melndez, Los nombres de tejidos en castellano medieval, p. 516, found the term
tornasol in two Spanish texts, one from 1348 and the other from 1435, in which the fabric had
been used for both manto and sayo (mantle and skirt), as well as in an inventory from 1374,
where it was reportedly used for a lining of a headcloth described as a taffetan de tornasol
(p. 517).
37. Phipps, Tornesol, pp. 221230; see also Phipps, Cangante/Tornesol.
38. I thank Stefano Carboni, curator of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
for this reference. See also Maeder, Costumes Worn by the Ancestors of Christ, pp. 194
223.
Fig. 13. Macnu, or cochineal processed into pane. Ecuador, 1980s.
is defined as Tornasol: silk that when turned in one way appears as one
color, and in another way, as another color.
42
This is significant for at
least two reasons: first, because an Aymara word exists for the textile,
which is not an indigenous fabric type, barely fifty years after the Con-
quest; second, because such an Aymara term refers to silk cloth, which
was an item imported from Spain.
Today this type of cloth, described by Bertonio in the seventeenth
century, can still be found in the Andes, where it is called pecho (or
pechuga) de paloma (doves breast). It is worn by women, particularly
in the southern highlands. The name refers to the shimmering effect
Andean weavers achieve by using a dark-colored warpgenerally black
and a bright weft of contrasting color in a warp-faced or highly warp-
predominant fabric. The dark warp colors dominate, but as the material
is folded or moved, the brightly colored hidden weft catches the light
and gives a glimmering effect. Most commonly, the cloth was made with
a black-camelid-hair warp and cochineal-pink silk weft. The use of silk
adds to the suppleness of the fabric, and the bright pink color can be seen
in brilliant contrast to the black camelid hair.
43

There are no surviving examples of tornesol fabrics made before the
arrival of the Spanish in Peru. I would suggest that the models for the
Andean fabrics originally came from Spain, and they must have been
part of the formal garments worn by Spanish administrators in the early
period of the viceroyalty of Peru. The wearing of silk, especially in black,
was the fashion among Spanish nobility of the period. In the New World,
the Spanish administrators also wore black for court and official events.
All such luxury fabrics came from Spain, and there can be no doubt of
their presence during the colonial era in the Andes, or of the influence
of Spanish cloth on the fashions and styles of the garments of Andean
nobility.
It is therefore extremely interesting that the two early colonial manu-
scripts of Guamn Poma de Ayala and Mura both refer to the garments
42. Bertonio, Vocabulario de la lengua aymara: Tornesol ropa or seda q tiene visos.
Huateca ifi, Paya famiri ifi (p. 453); Huateca isi. Tornasol, seda que buelta de una manera
parese e una color, y de otra manera de otra color (p. 154); Samiri, porpuesto a Paya. Paya
famiri ili. Ropa de dos colores, segn esta buelta a la luz (p. 307); Puraparo hakhsuri ifi.
Tornasol (p. 307).
43. The weft yarns of these fabrics are sometimes of other colors, including light blue,
green, or yellow, and they can be made of fine camelid hair instead of silk.
ing to the different hours of the day.
39
In Italy, cangiante fabric, as it was
called, was known from at least the fourteenth century, and was depicted
in the paintings and frescoes of the period. Traded to England for use in
the royal wardrobe, tornesol was popular throughout Europe.
40
The 1611
Covarrubias dictionary of the Spanish language has an entry for the term
tornesol, as a name of a flower. There is a note accompanying the entry
that states that there are certain silk and woolen cloths of this name,
fortheir different look or way of appearing in the sun (diversos visos puesta
al sol).
41

One year later, in 1612, in the Andes, tornesol is mentioned in the
Aymara dictionary of Padre Ludovico Bertoniothe first to document
the language of the people of the region. The Aymara word huateca isi
39. Carboni, The Wonders of Creation and the Singularities of Ilkhanid Painting, n.
455.
40. Accounts of 1480 for the wardrobe of Edward IV of England included chaungeable
sarscinet; see Maeder, Costumes Worn by the Ancestors of Christ, p. 198.
41. Covarrubias Horozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o espaola, p. 986.
Fig. 14. Annatto salvaged from Nuevo Constante.
be their place of origin.
44
Found in conjunction with a silver thimble and
a button, there is little doubt that this is a post-Conquest find.
Tornesol cloth, with its origins, uses, and adaptation by Andean weav-
ers, provides an example of the introduction of a special quality and type
of fabric from Europe that would have been new to Andean sensibilities
yet which appears to have been readily incorporated into the hierarchy of
44. According to notes in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, the
piece was found in a square adobe at Pata Kamaya, Bolivia. It is 19 inches high by 18 inches
wide, with blue-purple camelid warp yarn, red silk weft yarn, and two white silk heading cords,
and it has old silk repairs. See Phipps, Tornesol.
worn by Inca kings as torne azul. What is not known is whether this was
a misunderstanding of the Spanish term tornasol, or if it was an inten-
tional description of specifically a blue tornasol fabric (azul meaning blue
in Spanish). I have come across one blue tornesol fabric, excavated by
Adolph Bandalier in the 1890s. It is a rare fragment, found on an island in
Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, in a most sacred location of the Inca, considered to
Fig. 15. Capac Yupanqui. Martn de Mura, Historia General del Piru,
1616, fol. 30v. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (83MP159).
Fig. 16. Tornesol mantle, early 19th century(?). Bolivia. Black camelid
warp, cochineal-dyed pink silk weft. Private collection.
ELENA PHI PPS 280
garment and cloth types produced and worn by native elites. The fact that
actual examples of the weaving tradition have been preserved from per-
haps as early as the sixteenth century; that by 1614, as we see in Muras
colored folios, illustrations of the fabric type were being used for the gar-
ments of Inca kings and queens; and even that Guamn Poma uses the
term tornesol to describe these garments in his textall of these dem-
onstrate the incorporation of this special European-derived tornesol fab-
ric into the cultural traditions of high-status clothing in the Andes. The
aspect of the fabricas one that combines visual, textural, and chromatic
effectswas unique, and yet reflected the complex nature of Andean aes-
thetics.
CONCLUSION
What we can say from this exploration of colors and colorants in the Andes
is that categoriessuch as colorcannot be so clearly defined. This is
particularly so in the textile arts, where the concept of color is often con-
joint with issues of quality of the substrate upon which it is found and
the source material from which it is derived. The visual recognition of
color often coincides with the physicality of the material, along with the
understanding of the intensive and complex processes involved in their
production. The quality and type of fibers selected, for example, and their
natural length, sheen, softness, and fineness, all play roles in our percep-
tion of their color. Not only do the specific dyestuffs evoke color choices
but the composition of the yarns, the quality of their spinning, and the
method and structure of the weaving of the cloth all contribute to the
impression, substance, and meaning of color in the Andes.
During the early decades of the viceroyalty in New Spain, religious paint-
ing in a variety of media played a key role in the conversion of the indig-
enous population. In the span of only a few years, Amerindian artists
produced a remarkable number of mural paintings for the Franciscan,
Dominican, and Augustinian monasteries of New Spain (fig. 1). Tempera
paintings on cloth, known as sargas, must also have been quite common,
even ifas in Spainfew examples of this inexpensive, easily portable,
but rather ephemeral medium have survived (fig. 2). Of course there were
also painted codices, although they were produced for different purposes;
their aim was not to convert and instruct the indigenous population but to
furnish a record of the history, economics, and social life of their culture.
In the early years of the colonial period, the variety of locally produced
mineral pigments and organic colorants was probably insufficient to meet
the demand that arose in response to all this artistic activity.
In terms of technique, there was little difference between the work of
pre-Hispanic artists and the paintingsin tempera on canvas, in codices,
and on wallsproduced in the early years of the colonial period. Even
though pre-Columbian artists used organic adhesives as binders for pig-
ments, while European and colonial painters generally employed animal
glue, egg, or gum arabic as the binding medium for their tempera, the
two techniques produced quite similar optical and chromatic results.
1

* Acknowledgments: Pedro ngeles (Archivo Fotogrfico Manuel Toussaint del Instituto
de Investigaciones Estticas, UNAM), Gabriela Garca Lascurin (IIE, UNAM, Mxico),
Toms Antelo (IPCE, Spain), and Elena Cenalmor (Museo Nacional del Prado, Spain).
1. Magaloni, Materiales y tcnicas de la pintura mural maya; Reyes Valerio, El pin-
tor de conventos; Magaloni et al., Los pintores de Bonampak.
Local and Imported Colors:
The Spanish Maritime Trade and the
Pigment Supply in New Spain
*
ROCO BRUQUETAS
Instituto de Patrimonio Histrico Espaol
Fig. 1. Mural, mid-sixteenth century. Tempera on wall. Augustinian
monastery, Ixmiquilpan, state of Hidalgo, Mexico.
ROCO BRUQUETAS 284 LOCAL AND I MPORTED COLORS 285
Thus indigenous artists of the colonial period employed the same local
pigments and colorants that their ancestors had passed down through the
generations. The simple images that those painters of the colonial period
created were not intended to convey either tonal complexity and nuance
or saturation of color; in many cases, in fact, they were executed in mono-
chrome.
Pre-Hispanic artists had made use of a fairly wide variety of raw mate-
rials to produce colors. A number of chroniclers from the sixteenth cen-
tury comment on this, including Hernn Corts himself, in his descrip-
tion of the bustling marketplace in the city of Temixtitan (Tenochtitlan):
They sell colors for painters, as many as can be found in Spain and of
tones as superb as can be.
2
The chroniclers and conquerors admiration for this wealth of colors
was soon echoed in Spain. For instance, in his Comentarios de la pintura,
written around 1560, Felipe de Guevara states, They are fortunate in
colors, whether from the earth or from extracts of plants, not to mention
cochineal, which is a very rare carmine.
3

Moreover, pre-Hispanic painters were familiar with most of the min-
eral-based pigments that Europeans knew: yellow, red, and brown clays;
cinnabar; azurite and malachite; asphalts and bitumens; carbon black
and lampblack. However, they also made use of a wide array of organic
pigments of plant or animal origin, as described in the accounts of Fray
Bernardino de Sahagn. As a result of their transparency, these organic
colorants were suitable for manuscript illumination. They could even be
used, in some cases with modification (as in the case of Maya blue), for
murals in tempera and for sargas. This required that they be combined
with an organic adhesive, such as an agglutinant based on paste or glue,
to produce a water-based medium that impregnated the pictorial support.
In contrast, the oil technique was a complete novelty in the New
World. Brought by the first generations of artists who migrated there from
Europe, the oil medium quickly became widespread, just as it was in the
Iberian Peninsula, in part because its ability to create subtle transitions of
tone and color made it ideal for painted altarpieces and the polychromy of
2. Venden colores para pintores, cuantos pueden hallar en Espaa, y de tan excelentes
matices cuanto pueden ser. Second letter-report sent by Hernn Corts to Emperor Carlos V
(October 30, 1520). Corts, Cartas de Relacin a Carlos V, p. 59.
3. Son dichosos en colores ahora sean de tierra, ahora de zumos de yerbas, sin contar la
cochinilla que es carmn rarsimo. Guevara, Comentarios de la pintura.
Fig. 2. Detail, Virgin of Guadalupe, mid-sixteenth century. Tempera
painting on canvas.
religious sculpture (figs. 3, 4). In Spain, the professional painters of altar-
pieces and imaginera (religious sculpture) formed the principal group
in the painters guild. Other areas of pictorial expertise established in
Castile in the final quarter of the fifteenth century were painters a lo
morisco (in the Moorish style) or al romano (in the Roman style), painters
of sargas, and gilders. The painters a lo morisco painted laceras (geomet-
ric motifs of Arab origin); painters al romano created Renaissance-style
decorations inspired by ancient Roman models. Sarga painters, as men-
According to both the Spanish guild tradition and its continuation in
the New World, the painter of religious sculpture was required to have a
command of oil painting technique, which was compulsory in painting
panels in altarpieces. This was stipulated in the ordinances and it was
mentioned repeatedly in Spanish contracts for altarpieces from the final
third of the fifteenth century. Beginning in the 1440s, oil had gradu-
ally displaced egg tempera in European painting, and by the start of the
colonial period, it had become the preeminent technique. Flemish artists
had played a preeminent role in developing and refining oil painting, and
close artistic and economic ties between Spain and the Low Countries
during the fifteenth century led to early introduction of the technique
into Castile via artists and paintings arriving from Northern Europe.
Oil was compatible with all pigments known in the early Middle
Ages. Another of its principal advantages was the opportunity it gave art-
ists to experiment with different optical properties. The replacement of
the tempera medium by oils enormously expanded the variety and wealth
of tonal nuance at painters disposal. Opaque colors could be combined
with those that were transparent, or deeper tonalities with brighter hues.
Fig. 3. Altarpiece, c. 1505. Oil and gilt on wood. Cathedral of Santo
Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja, Spain.
Fig. 4. Detail of oil painting from altarpiece, c. 1505. Oil painting on
wood. Cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja, Spain.
tioned, were artists who specialized in painting in tempera on primed
or unprimed cloth. These areas of expertisepainting a lo morisco or al
romano, painting sargas, and gildingwere all associated with specific
genres or decorative typologies, as well as specific techniques: fresco, tem-
pera, or oil. This organizational hierarchy of professional painters, which
we find, for example, in the 1527 guild ordinances of Seville, was trans-
ferred to Mexico with the first painters ordinances, promulgated in 1557
by Viceroy Luis de Velasco.
4
4. Toussaint, Pintura colonial en Mxico, 1982, p. 218.
Glazing, a superimposition of fine layers of transparent oil glazes
over an underpainting of opaque pigments, had been highly developed
by fifteenth-century Flemish artists. Though oil painters in Europe con-
tinued to employ the mineral pigments universally used in other paint-
ing techniques, such as clays, carbon black, cinnabar, and orpiment, the
introduction of oil also encouraged artists to explore new pigments, most
of them manufactured rather than natural. Artificial pigments could also
be used in tempera, but they lent themselves particularly to the expressive
richness inherent in the oil technique. Lead-based pigments (lead white,
lead-tin yellow, and minium) could be mixed with other pigments to cre-
ate the opaque layers of underpainting over which transparent glazes were
applied. Lead white was the most important white in oil painting. On
account of its opacity, luminosity, and drying properties, it was used in
priming or was blended with other pigments, and it was the key element in
creating the lustrous flesh-toned surfaces of contemporary polychromed
sculpture. Organic lake pigments were used to achieve the subtle glazing,
especially red lakeproduced from insects of the genus Kermes or from
madder plants (Rubiaceae)which had long been an Italian specialty. The
same is true of verdigris, a pigment that had been used since the Middle
Ages for transparent green glazes, either on top of applied gold or silver
surfaces or as an overlay to an opaque green layer below (fig. 5). Smalt,
which was made from pulverized blue glass that took its color from cobalt
oxide, was another very important artificial pigment in oil painting from
the end of the sixteenth century onward.
In New Spain, mural painting and book illumination continued to
employ traditional local pigments, a fact confirmed by the presence of
Maya blue in murals in monasteries throughout the sixteenth century.
5

It is in oil painting that indigenous artists broke radically from the tech-
niques employed by pre-Hispanic artists. Apparently it was the demands
and possibilities of oil painting that led to the importation of European
pigments. It was almost a commonplace in the contracts for altarpieces
commissioned from artists such as Simon Pereyns (fig. 6), Andrs de la
Concha (fig. 7), and other European painters to mention that the paint-
ings had to be done al leo con colores finos de Castilla (in oil with fine
colors from Spain).
6
On the other hand, the documents also distinguish
between colores de Castilla and colores de la tierra (local or domestic
pigments), which confirms that pigments continued to be produced and
used in New Spain during the colonial period.
7

It is difficult to gauge the extent to which oil painters in sixteenth-cen-
tury New Spain relied on domestic or imported pigments. Our knowledge
of the pigment trade between America and Spain in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries is limited by a paucity of historical documentation.
The volume of trade devoted to meeting the needs of painters was tiny in
comparison to the traffic in lucrative staple items such as textiles.
The documentary records of ships bound for New Spain between
1550 and 1600 allow us to make a preliminary assessment of the pigment
market there during the colonial period. A sampling of the lists of mer-
chandise shipped during this time (from the years 1556, 1557, 1568, 1588,
5. Reyes Valerio, De Bonampak al Templo Mayor.
6. Los ngeles Romero Frizzi, Ms ha de tener este retablo.
7. An example of this distinction may be found in Cuentas de los diferentes reparos real-
izados en la Catedral metropolitana y por las fiestas del santsimo Sacramento, 26 de marzo19
de junio de 1602 [Accounts of the different repairs carried out in the Metropolitan Cathedral
for the celebrations of the Eucharist, 26 March19 June, 1602], which contains several listings
for the costs of purchasing colores de la tierra [local colors] and colores de Castilla [colors
from Spain]. Sotos Serrano and ngeles Jimnez, Cuerpo de documentos y bibliografa, p.
141.
Fig. 5. Detail of oil painting from altarpiece, c. 1505, showing layering with
verdigris. Cathedral of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, La Rioja, Spain.
and 1600) only turned up records of lead white and verdigris.
8
Obviously,
this does not rule out the possibility that other pigments might have been
imported, but it does suggest that lead white and verdigris were the only
two of significant commercial interest, probably because the demand
for them was greater than for others. One should remember that both
substances had other uses, being employed in medicines and cosmetics.
(Lead white, for example, was used by women to whiten their faces.) An
example of the diversity of genres represented is the cargo that Pedro de
Villegas, a painter from Seville, sent by galleon to Honduras in May 1557.
(Much of the merchandise sent to New Spain was shipped in this fash-
ion by private parties not necessarily connected to the great mercantile
firms, to be sold for the consignors.) In addition to an arroba (11.5 kg) of
8. Eufemio Lorenzo does not even mention the presence of lead white and verdigris in
his classic study of trans-Atlantic trade at the time of Philip II. Lorenzo Sanz, Comercio de
Espaa con Amrica.
lead white, Pedro de Villegass consignment included altarpieces, crosses,
paxes, portraits, fabric, clothing, thread, and wax.
9
In a recent research project on pictorial materials in seventeenth-cen-
tury Lima, I similarly tried to assess the painters dependence on imported
pigments.
10
Trade between Seville and Lima, based on the Spanish trea-
sure fleet system, was of considerable volume. According to data from
archives in Lima and Seville, it is clear that most of the pigments used
by painters in Lima from the late fifteenth century through the sixteenth
were imported.
11
Pre-Hispanic Peru was also the source of a wide vari-
ety of mineral pigments and organic colorants, but I have not found any
documentary evidence from the viceregal period for the existence of any
commercially significant local production. Nor have I been able to find
any indication of internal trade routes that would suggest that Lima was
9. Archivo General de Indias (AGI), Contratacin 1079, no. 8, fol. 58. The document
reads,
En 21 de mayo de 1557 Registro Pedro de Billegas pintor de imagineria v[ecin]o de
Sevilla que envia cargado / para la provincia de honduras en la nao nonbrada de los tres
rreyes magos de que es maestre / Bartolome rrodriguez v[ecin]o de cartaya consignada
a diego manuel estante en puerto de caballos / y rriesgo del d[ic]ho pedro de billegas lo
sig[uient]e
quatro rretablos de a ocho palmos de alto y cinco de ancho pintados de pinturas,
ytem otros dos rretablos menores de quatro palmos en quadra pintados de pinturas
ytem seis portapazes de madera pintadas y labradas
ytem seis cruzes doradas y pintadas para altares
ytem beintisiete retratos de prncipes de a palma
ytem quatro d[ocena]s de xerguillas de mujer
ytem dozena y media de camisas de rruan
ytem otras seis camisas del d[ic]ho rruan labradas de negro y blanco y algunas de punto
real
ytem una arroba de albayalde
ytem quarenta y quatro libras de hilo galludero
ytem seis libras de hilo laso
ytem cinco d[ocena]s de sobrecargas de camo
ytem diez y siete d[ocena]s de madexuelas de cordel teriado
ytem dos arrobas de cerca blanca labrada
ytem tres d[ocena]s de capillejos de rreo
juro a Dios que esta que [...] que todo los cont[eni]do en este /reg[istr]o no me questa
mas de quarenta y seis mil y / novecientos y cochenta y quatro m[aravedi]s mil /
m[aravedi]s mas o menos y que no ynbio cosa por registrar
P[edr]o de Billegas.
Other examples of shipments of lead white and verdigris by private parties are recorded in the
same shipment on the Tres Reyes Magos, in the year 1557, on folios 32, 36, 37, 55, 103, and 112.
10. Bruquetas, Tcnicas y materiales de la pintura y la escultura virreinales en el Per.
11. The archives consulted were the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the Archivo
General de la Nacin de Per, and the Archivo Arzobispal de Lima.
Fig. 6. Simon Pereyns, altarpiece, 1586. Oil painting. Church of San
Gabriel Arcngel, Huejotzingo. State of Puebla, Mexico.
supplied by inland centers such as the copper-mining zone of Lipes and
Atacama, which according to the chroniclers was rich in blues and greens,
or Huancavelica, a center of vermilion production.
On the other hand, a fair amount of evidence supports the presence of
trade in pictorial materials between the Iberian Peninsula and Peru. This
is confirmed by data from arrival records of ships to the port of Callao and
inventories of shop merchandise carried out in the context of commercial
transactions, deaths, or seizures of property by the Inquisition. (The last
were quite common, given that a considerable number of merchants were
converted Jews.) These documents corroborate the existence of European
pigments among the merchandise habitually imported to supply Lima,
the capital of the Peruvian viceroyalty. It appears to have been easier to
acquire pigments directly from Seville than to augment local production
of artificial pigments, such as lead white, verdigris, and minium.
12
This
was also true for lakes and purified mineral pigments, despite the abun-
dance of raw materials for natural pigments in Peru.
Unlike Lima, Mexico Citythe landlocked capital of New Spain
did not receive goods sent on Iberian galleons directly. Merchandise sent
by sea to the ports of Veracruz or Honduras had to be transported by land
to Mexico City, and the overland transport networks may have given the
capital more access to locally produced pigments, and so more indepen-
dence from Spanish imports, than Lima enjoyed. Nevertheless, Mexico
City was the largest economy in the viceroyalty, and thus the largest con-
sumer of goods from Spain. Further research is necessary into the surviv-
ing accounts and inventories from Mexico City before we will be able to
analyze the pigment market there and assess the role that Spanish imports
played.
With its iron-fisted monopoly on trade with New Spain, Seville sup-
plied the viceroyalty with the largest portion of consumer goods, including
pictorial materials.
13
With its concentration of merchants from Flanders,
Italy, France, and other countries, and the abundance of products they
brought with them, Seville was more than able to meet the high demand
for pigments among its local workshops (many of them veritable factories
of paintings and sculptures) and could still ship massive quantities of their
wares to America. In turn, Seville was Europes distribution center for
products arriving from the Americas in the Spanish treasure fleet.
Most pigments used in Spain during the sixteenth century were
imported from Italy and Flanders, the most important European centers
for the manufacture and distribution of painting materials in the sixteenth
century. The Spanish imported the classic pigments produced in Venice,
such as red lake, lead white, verdigris, lead-tin yellow, and clays; those
made in Germany and Flanders, such as smalt, lead-tin yellow, ochre,
and yellow lake; and others that came from Asia, such as orpiment and
realgar. In the Iberian Peninsula, there was no major tradition of pigment
production. Only scant references to it can be found, and those are partic-
ularly among craftsmen. The Jewish albayalderos (lead-white producers),
who were quite common in the Middle Ages, languished throughout the
12. One indication o this lack o local production at the time was that the irst ordinance
or lead white producers in Lima dates only rom the eighteenth century.
13. loweer, illegal traicking-a constant concern in those centuries-should not be
oerlooked as a possible source o goods rom other Luropean countries.
Fig. 7. Andrs de la Concha, main altarpiece, 1580. Oil painting.
Church of Yanhuitln, state of Oaxaca, Mexico.
sixteenth century, as did many other industries associated with Jews. Nei-
ther is there documentary evidence of the production of verdigris, which
was brought from Italy and later from France, nor of those pigments asso-
ciated with the glass industry, such as genuli (lead-tin yellow) and smalt.
Production of pigments in Spain was limited to some clays, such as
the renowned almagres (red iron-oxide clay) and ochres from diverse
localities on the east coast of Spain and in Andalusia; azurite, which was
still extracted in the sixteenth century from scattered deposits throughout
Spanish lands; and vermilion. Vermilion in its natural form had been
excavated since antiquity from the famed Almadn mines in the province
of Ciudad Real, and these continued to be exploited for centuries. Dur-
ing the Middle Ages, the Arabs had developed new methods of obtaining
mercury for the production of vermilion, which they made in Almadn
itself. From the mid-sixteenth century, artificial vermilion was produced
in Seville from sulfur and mercury, which arrived in large shipments from
Almadn to be sent by galleon to the silver mines in New Spain.
14
It is
probable that they also sent Sevillan vermilion to the viceroyalty, since the
extraction and sale of sulfur and mercury were royal monopolies, which at
least in theory limited the entry of vermilion from other countries.
Another red pigment, cinnabar, was known in New Spain, and in
fact, efforts were made to exploit the cinnabar beds there in the sixteenth
century. Bargallo mentions the mines of San Gregorio, but these proved
unprofitable because of low production levels and the necessity of accept-
ing prices set by the royal treasury.
15
Almadn could not meet the urgent
demand for mercury used in the amalgamation of silver in Mexican
mines. This led to the importation into New Spain of mercury produced
in the rich Peruvian mines of Huancavelica, and even from deposits in
China (through trade with the Philippines, which was also subject to the
Spanish monopoly). In both these cases, however, the trade was quite lim-
ited, and for the moment it is unclear whether these mercury shipments
were accompanied by vermilion.
Although there was an abundance of kermes in the Iberian Penin-
sula during the Middle Ages, there is no evidence that red lake produced
in Spain had widespread distribution in the New World. However, from
14. Matilla Tascn, Historia de las minas de Almadn.
15. Bargallo, La minera y la metalurgia en la Amrica espaola, p. 270; Lorenzo Sanz,
Comercio de Espaa, vol. 2, p. 478.
the mid-sixteenth century, Mexican cochineal began to reach the port of
Seville regularly, and references to carmn de Indias (carminecrim-
son lakefrom the Indies) began to appear in Spanish contracts for altar-
pieces, which suggests that red lake was produced, probably in Seville,
from dried Kermes insects brought from New Spain (fig. 8). One of the
earliest documents of red lakes circulation in Spanish territory is a 1565
record of sums owed to a court official, a late Master Pelegrn, for materi-
als used for certain royal works. The list mentions three ounces of car-
mn de Indias that the painter bought in Toledo at a cost of seven reales
per ounce.
16
Although cochineal is richer in pigment content than kermes, its value
was not recognized for many years because of the traditional prestige of
Florentine and Venetian lakes. Thus Pacheco claimed that to paint in
oil, [the one] from Florence is better than [the one] from New Spain, and
it is more reliable and durable, although the one from Honduras is not
bad.
17
Many artistic contracts reflect this preference, expressly request-
ing the use of carmine from Florence and not red pigment from New
Spain, such as the document signed by Alonso Snchez Coello for the
altarpiece of El Espinar (Segovia) in 1574: Likewise, may the entirety be
painted with very fine colors and may the carmines be from Florence and
not from the Indies.
18
Another contract from 1614 for the main and side
altarpieces in the monastery of Nuestra Seora de Beln in Valladolid
stated, the lakes or carmines must be those of Florence and not those of
Seville.
19

Nevertheless, as the seventeenth century progressed, there was a
growing inclination for New World carmine, which was specified as a
preference in some contracts. Unlike Pacheco, the anonymous author of
the Tratado del arte de la pintura, which dates from the mid-seventeenth
century, claims that the best is from Honduras, and then from Florence,
and the one from Granada is of poor quality.
20
16. Archivo General de Simancas (AGS), Seccin Casa y Sitios Reales (CSR), legajo 247,
fols. 47, 48.
17. Pacheco, Arte de la Pintura, reprint 1956, vol. II, p. 83. Red lake was also referred to
as carmine from Honduras because that was the shipping point to Seville.
18. Instituto de Conservacin y Restauracin de Bienes Culturales, El retablo
y la sarga de San Eutropio de El Espinar, p. 202.
19. Mart y Mons, Estudios histrico-artsticos, p. 614.
20. Sanz Sanz, Un tratado de pintura annimo y manuscrito del siglo XVII, pp. 6993.
The carmine produced in Seville, based on cochineal from New
Spain, was the pigment most commonly used by Spanish painters from
the second half of the fifteenth century through the seventeenth. Zurba-
rns abundant use of this carmine attests to the ease with which painters
in Seville could acquire it, even though it was an expensive pigment.
21
Trade in indigo, known as ail, from Central America also reached
important dimensions, with great economic benefits to the Crown (fig.
9). In Europe the pigment was known as Guatemalan indigo, to differ-
entiate it from the product that came from the Indies. Guatemalan indigo
was not commonly used in oil painting because it offered less coverage,
but it was employed in tempera painting on sargas, in illuminated manu-
scripts, and in sculpture.
Aside from indigo and the carmine produced from American cochi-
neal, azurite was the only pigment with a clear New World provenance
that was imported by Spain in considerable quantities during the six-
21. Bruquetas, Tcnicas y materiales de la pintura espaola, pp. 179185, 335.
teenth and seventeenth centuries. A mineral pigment, azurite was used
extensively in medieval European painting. The technique of applying
it involved coarsely grinding the pigment and lightly agglutinating it
with animal glue; this yielded a glossy and somewhat granular sheen and
an intense hue of great beauty. Rich veins of azurite, known as piedra
azul (blue stone) or azul fino de pintores (fine blue for painters), were
found on Hispaniola shortly after the arrival of the Spaniards in 1492, and
exploitation of the resource quickly followed. An early interest in this sub-
stance is evident in Christopher Columbuss letter to the king and queen
of Spain after his second voyage. He mentioned painters blue among
spice products found on the island that could be the object of trade.
22
Pie-
dra azul was one of the cargoes most frequently sent from Santo Domingo
to Seville, along with aj (a Capsicum, or pepper species), ginger, cow-
hides, caafstola (a plant from the Papilionaceae family), pearls, gold,
and silver, a trade that continued into well into the seventeenth century.
It is surprising that azurite attracted such interest, since it could only
be used for painting and not for dying textiles, and was thus far less eco-
nomically important than either indigo or cochineal. Nevertheless, at the
time the deposits were found on Hispaniola, azurite was extremely impor-
tant for the production of altarpieces and their frames. The final third
22. Varela, ed., Cristbal Coln, p. 241.
Fig. 8. Cochineal crimson.
Fig. 9. Indigo.
of the fifteenth century and the first third of the sixteenth represent the
height of the Gothic style in Castile and Aragon, when numerous large-
scale altarpieces were created for the apses of churches and cathedrals.
The architectural part of these Gothic altarpieces was dominated by gold
and azurite blue, which surely had much to do with the interest shown
in the commercial potential of piedra azul from the New World. While
ultramarine was rarely found in Spanish painting of the eraas a result
of a general lack of familiarity with its preparationthere was widespread
awareness and exploitation of azurite mines, which had been worked in
the Iberian Peninsula since at least 1417 to meet the painters needs.
23
In
fact, one of the first requests Columbus made to the king and queen of
Spain was to send experienced miners, so it is possible that experts among
the men he brought to Hispaniola had recognized azurite veins among
the abundant copper deposits there.
Royal decrees of 1503 and 1505, promulgated by officials of the Casa
de la Contratacin (the Spanish Crowns agency for overseeing trade),
ordered the assaying and shipment of samples of Hispaniola azurite to
the Spanish court to determine whether it was worthwhile to work the
deposits there.
24
The richest deposits of blue stone were those of the mines
near the town of Cotui, in Cibao, the central region of Santo Domingo.
Extraction of the mineral continued without interruption until the mid-
seventeenth century, when it fell into decline, partly as a consequence of
the depopulation of the land and partly because azurite was being sup-
planted by other blues as a pigment for painters. Santo Domingo azur-
ite, as Francisco Pacheco called it,
25
or Seville blue, as other authors
and documents refer to it,
26
reached Europe, as confirmed by the writ-
ings of Turquet de Mayerne, Norgate, Le Brun, Borghini, and Volpato.
27

New Spain received imports directly from Santo Domingo until the mid-
sixteenth century, when the Spanish treasure fleet system was established,
so until that time, azurite could have arrived directly from the island
without passing through Seville.
23. Bruquetas, Tcnicas y materiales de la pintura espaola, p. 169.
24. Bruquetas, Azul fino de pintores, pp. 148149.
25. Pacheco, Arte de la pintura de la pintura espaola, vol. II, p. 61.
26. Bruquetas, Tcnicas y materiales de la pintura espaola, pp. 168172.
27. Borghini, Il Riposo, 1967, vol. I, p. 217; Norgate, Miniatura; Turquet de May-
erne, Pictoria sculptoria, pp. 31, 39, 103; Le Brun, Manuscrito de Bruselas, p. 787; Volpato,
Modo da tener nel dipinger, p. 747. See Bruquetas, Azul fino de pintores, pp. 148149.
All of these factorseconomic, artistic, religiouspoint to one con-
clusion: an extensive trade in pigments extended across the Atlantic in
both directions between the late fifteenth and the seventeenth centu-
ries. The assimilation of indigenous painting to Old World models in
the service of the Catholic Church helped to spur the adoption of Euro-
pean pigments and the gradual abandonment of indigenous traditions of
color preparation, as seems to have happened in the case of Maya blue.
The introduction of oil painting, with the artificial pigments it required,
reinforced New Spains dependence on pigments from overseas. Sevilles
trade monopoly and the system of the Spanish treasure fleet afforded
easy access to consumer goods from the Iberian Peninsula, including the
colores de Castilla specified in contracts for painted altarpieces and
polychromed sculptures. Just as the effectiveness of the trade structure
organized during the viceroyalty ensured the economic and material
basis for the flowering of baroque painting and sculpture in the New
World, its very efficiency ultimately stifled the development of local pig-
ment production in the New World, helping to promote the abandonment
of pre-Hispanic traditions.
Research into the history of European pigments as a commercial
enterprise is a relatively recent undertaking. One aim of this paper, there-
fore, is to present the current state of this research. What is known about
pigments during the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance comes
from an unusually wide array of disciplines, ranging from economic his-
tory to conservation science. My intention in this paper is to cross the
boundaries of several of those disciplines in order to present a general sur-
vey of the European pigment trade that will concentrate on the sixteenth
century. We will discuss the various documents that exist and the ways
these have been useful, but we will also consider areas where our knowl-
edge is incomplete and the reasons why this is so, in the hope that others
will take up the challenge of work still to be done. The first interdisciplin-
ary conference ever held on the European trade in painters materials was
held over three years ago in London, jointly sponsored by the National
Gallery of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art. It was a resounding suc-
cess in bringing together economic historians, art historians, conservation
scientists, and conservators, and the proceedings are now in publication.
1
This paper will proceed by type or category of commerce, loosely
organized by geographical range. We begin with the widest-ranging cat-
egory of intercontinental commerce, where we will concentrate on trade
between Europe and the Levant. The second category is continental and
regional commerce, and the third is local commerce. At the end I shall
return to intercontinental trade with a brief mention of New World pig-
ments. The ways in which these categories regularly intersect with one
another, and their somewhat arbitrary nature, are among the reasons that
I have used them. European commerce is a very complex subject, even
1. Kirby, Nash, and Cannon, eds., Trade in Artists Materials.
The Pigment Trade in Europe
during the Sixteenth Century
LOUISA C. MATTHEW
Union College
LOUISA C. MATTHEW 302 THE PIGMENT TRADE I N EUROPE
DURI NG THE SI XTEENTH CENTURY
303
have survived for the Levant trade, pigments were most often subsumed
under the broad category of spices, and this is the case for records of com-
merce over shorter distances as well.
5
The spices mentioned by name are
those that were most important in terms of the merchants investment:
ginger and, above all, pepper top the list. Pigments are rarely mentioned
because they formed a very small part of this commerce, and again this
is true at all levels, not just for international trade. Gascons study of the
fairs at Lyon, for example, notes that the spices arriving from the East via
the Italians, and after 1503 via the Portuguese as well, included a surpris-
ingly wide range of products.
6
He divides spices into three categories: for
cooking, medicine, and dyeing. Colorants are not even mentioned.
Furthermore, since many substances had multiple uses, they were less
likely to be categorized by any one in particular, or were only associated
with the industry that purchased them in the largest quantities. Products
used in the dyeing industry were a major import from the Levantfor
example, kermes, lac, indigo, brazilwood, orpiment, gallnuts, and alum.
(The sources of some of these were subject to change in the course of the
sixteenth century.)
7
However, these and other materials were also used in
medicines, and as colorants or ingredients for processing colorants with a
wide variety of applications, ranging from painting to glass manufacture
to food preparation.
8
Many of the gums and resins coming from the east,
to give a second example, were better known for their uses in medicinal
preparations and cosmetics than for varnishes, oil glazes, and the pro-
cessing of certain mineral pigments such as lapis lazuli.
9
It is thus very
difficult to discover what percentage of any of these imports was actually
funneled into the pigment trade.
One might rightly ask, therefore, was there a pigment trade at all?
There was. In most of Europe, pigments and related materials were sold
5. For the spice trade, see, especially, the work of Eliyahu Ashtor and Frederic C. Lane.
Many of their articles are now in volumes of collected essays, such as Ashtor, Technology,
Industry and Trade and EastWest Trade in the Medieval Mediterranean; Lane, Studies in Vene-
tian Social and Economic History.
6. Gascon, Grand Commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe sicle, esp. pp. 8182.
7. See, especially, >-,&?, 1he Preparation o Larly Lake Pigments,` pp. 12-18,
and >-,&? and @6-*', 1he Identiication o Red Lake Dyestus,` pp. 56-80.
8. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia.
9. For varnishes, see the helpful publication by Vaidelich and Echard, De la peinture de
chevalet linstrument de musique.
without considering changes over time. Thus it may be useful to set up
categories, if only to see how they interrelate and, perhaps, to note when
they lose their utility.
When we discuss the commerce in pigments, we must include more
than just pigments.
2
There was, for example, commerce in raw materials
that could be processed into pigments, and there were also raw materials
that were essential to that processing, although not colorants themselves.
There were partially processed pigments and partially processed materi-
als that were not colorants but, again, were used to make pigments. There
were pigments that we might classify as ready-to-use, although of course
still requiring some sort of binder. Finally, there were many substances
used as pigments that were classified, and hence are usually now studied,
as something else, notably spices, medicines, dyes, and glass. Clearly, the
more we widen the scope of this commerce, the more aspects of trade
must be examined if we are to keep track of all these different types of
ingredients. I shall try to provide you with examples of most of them in
the course of this paper.
The documents most often used by scholars investigating European
trade include customs records, usually recording the various taxes lev-
ied on goods arriving and leaving a given port, port books that record
the comings and going of ships, the correspondence of merchants and
diplomats, judicial proceedings, and the occasional commentary by an
interested observer. (The famous diaries of the Venetian Sanudo come to
mind.)
3
None of these are comprehensive, to say the least, for any major
European city or port in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Many docu-
ments are lost, and those that have been used by scholars contain rela-
tively few references to specific pigments. When I began my research in
the Venetian archives several years ago, I naively thought that I would find
bills of ladinglists of ships cargoesonly to be told that almost none
have survived for any period in the long history of Venetian commerce.
4

The same appears to be true elsewhere in Europe. In the documents that
2. For these issues, see Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a
Vinetia; Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, pp. 680686; and Kirby, The price of quality,
pp. 1942, esp. p. 30.
3. The various types of sources will be cited in the course of this paper. Sanudo includes
several cargo lists in his diaries during the first half of the sixteenth century. They are cited by
Lane, The Mediterranean Spice Trade, pp. 111120.
4. For a discussion of bills of lading from the late Middle Ages in Italy, and of a few rare
surviving examples, see Bensa, The Early History of Bills of Lading.
305
terranean and the Atlantic, whose fortunes ebbed and flowed over the
course of the early modern period, although relatively few documents
have been published on the topic.
14
After the demise of the great galley
fleets in the early sixteenth century, Eastern spices still left Venice by
sea, headed for the rest of Europe, but large quantities also left Venice by
overland routes (as I will discuss below as continental and regional trade).
There is also an interesting change in the kinds of goods being exported
to the East in the sixteenth century: in addition to the traditional raw
materials, we now see pigments, paper, worked metals and jewelry, clocks,
expensive fabrics, and other luxury goods traveling to Constantinople and
Alexandria from Venice.
15
The most expensive and celebrated pigments whose material origins
lay in the Levant were lapis lazuli and some of the red lakesthose made
from the insect dyes kermes (Kermes vermilio Planchon) and lac (Kerria
lacca Kerr).
16
The dyes were imported for the textile trade and the pig-
ments made from them were usually processed from dyed textiles rather
than from the dried insects themselves. Lapis lazuli usually arrived in
its unprocessed mineral form, but there are no records of its importation
that I know of, other than a couple of references in merchants correspon-
dence.
17
This was probably because lapis was so costly that it arrived in
peoples pockets or private luggage, which also allowed them, in theory,
to avoid paying import duties (as was also the case with precious stones).
18
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, England was supplied with
pigments and related materials by means of the galleys arriving at South-
ampton from Venice, Genoa, and Florence.
19
The Levantine substances
14. Braudel and Ruggiero, Navires et marchandises lentre du port de Livourne (1547
1611), is one example of a study specific to a single port. As is typical, spices and dyes are men-
tioned, but pigments in particular are not.
15. For pigments in particular, see Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che
bisognino torre a Vinetia. A useful guide to Venetian imports and exports is Paxi, Tariffa de
Pexi e Misure. A better-known merchants manual from fourteenth-century Florence is Pego-
lotti, La pratica della mercatura. For trade with Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire,
see Simon, Contribution ltudes du commerce venitienne dans lempire ottoman, pp.
9731020; Arbel, Trading Nations; Mack, Bazaar to Piazza; and a recent exhibition cata-
logue, Carboni, ed., Venice and the Islamic World 8281797.
16. The most reliable discussion of red dyes as pigments is to be found in the work of Jo
Kirby, as in The Preparation of Early Lake Pigments, and Kirby and White, The Identifica-
tion of Red Lake Dyestuffs.
17. Gettens and West Fitzhugh, Azurite and Blue Verditer, pp. 2335.
18. This was noted by Steensgaard, Return Cargoes of the Carreira, p. 123.
19. Ruddock, Italian Merchants and Shipping in Southampton, 12701600.
by apothecaries who had purchased them from merchants.
10
This was
logical, as the apothecaries already dealt with many of the materials as
medicinal ingredients. What really tells us that pigments and related
materials were increasing in commercial importance is the emergence
of the vendecolori, specialized color sellers, in Venice, sometime in the
late fifteenth century. (The first dated document found thus far is 1493.)
11

These color sellers operated at the wholesale level but they also served the
retail market, taking over an activity that had previously formed part of
the general practice of the apothecaries. The expansion of this profession
in Venice in the course of the sixteenth century, and its appearance in
other parts of Italy and northern Europe by the end of that century, seem
to indicate the growing demand, profitability, and visibility of a particular,
specialized commerce in pigments. As we shall see, the trade in pigments
and related materials coming from the Levant was only one part of this
emerging commerce.
The Portuguese discovery of the Atlantic spice route to Europe around
the Cape of Good Hope at the beginning of the sixteenth century did not
destroy the traditional trade routes dominated by the Venetians. In fact, as
Lane and others have shown, the Venetian spice trade enjoyed a marked
revival during the second half of the century that appears to have peaked
in the 1560s, even though the Portuguese were importing more than half
of the spices arriving from the East by that time.
12
The success of both
trades testifies to the growth in demand for spices and to the rise in their
value that occurred in the sixteenth century. The Portuguese spices from
the Levant were distributed primarily through Antwerp until that citys
demise as a commercial hub in the 1570s, when the trade began to leave
for Amsterdam.
13
There was also an active trade, both intercontinental
and regional, into and out of various other European ports on the Medi-
10. See, for example, Julia A. Delanceys work on the apothecaries of Florence, e.g.,
Dragonsblood and Ultramarine, pp. 141150; Krekel and Burmester, Pharmacy Price-Lists
as a New Type of Documentary Source, pp. 3236; and Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia.
11. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia.
12. See, for example, Wake, The Changing Pattern of Europes Pepper and Spice Imports
ca. 14001700, pp. 361404; Tucci, Un ciclo di affair commerciali in Siria (15791581), pp.
95143; Ashtor, Spice Prices in the Near East in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 2641; and
Lane, Studies in Venetian Social and Economic History. For an overview of the bibliography on
the spice trade, see Welch, The Spice Trade.
13. Stabel, Blond, and Greve, eds., International Trade in the Low Countries, with
further bibliography, and Pearson, ed., Spices in the Indian Ocean World, Introduction, pp.
xvxxxvii, esp. p. xxx.
307
in London carried mercury, ashes, gum arabic, resin, alum, and dyes,
including fenugreek, kermes, madder, gallnuts, cochineal, and brazil-
woodthe last two of unspecified type, but probably from the New World
by this time.
26
The vessels also carried clearly described pigments, as well
as barrels of painters oil (probably linseed oil) and varnish. A ship from
Bordeaux brought turpentine. The pigments listed in the documents are
white lead, red lead, verdigris, vermilion, yellow ochre, orpiment (also
used in dyeing), and realgar. All were shipped in hundredweights, except
for one shipment of white lead (three and a half tons), and the vermilion
(shipped in pounds).
Where did these pigment and varnish substances originate? Orpi-
ment and realgar were likely transshipments from the Levant.
27
The oth-
ers were manufactured in Europe. Since the Middle Ages, Venice had
been a center for the manufacture of white lead, red lead, vermilion, and
verdigris, but by the middle of the sixteenth century, Flanders appears
to have established itself as a competitor.
28
Flanders and northern Italy
were the two most highly urbanized and industrialized areas in Europe
during the sixteenth century, and their products were distributed by land
and sea throughout Europe and, via the Genoese in Seville, to the Ameri-
cas.
29
During the second half of the century, one would expect to see
pigments from both centers throughout Europe. Flemish yellow and
Flemish smalt, both glassy pigments, appear in English and Venetian
records, including the inventories of the color sellers shops in Venice,
while Murano yellow and bianco da Venezia (Venice white, or Venetian
white lead) appear in various parts of Europe, including England.
30
Scat-
tered evidence from fairs in the German-speaking regions demonstrate
the variety of sources from which products could be obtained. The cata-
tury Antwerp, pp. 169191; see also Pearson, ed., Spices in the Indian Ocean World, Intro-
duction. Harreld, in High Germans in the Low Countries, p. 189, noted that Antwerp never
developed the industrial base of a city like London or other Low-Country cities, and that most
of its industry centered on finishing foreign products. Filip Vermeylens published work on the
art market in Antwerp does not include any specific discussion of the commerce in pigments.
26. See Dietz, ed. The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London Documents, espe-
cially the documents cited above in note 23, for all the substances discussed here.
27. West Fitzhugh, Orpiment and Realgar, pp. 4779.
28. See Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, esp. p. 684, and Matthew and Berrie,
Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia.
29. Van der Wee, ed., Rise and Decline of Urban Industries, and Pike, Enterprise and
Adventure.
30. Harley, Artists Pigments c. 16001835, p. 32.
were actually transshipments, having already landed in Venice (and we
can assume that this was also the case for the other ports as well). In addi-
tion to the substances I have already mentioned, these products included
dragons blood, aloes, sal ammoniac, and balsam, as well as dyes, alum,
and gallnuts. These fleets also picked up cargo along the way; signifi-
cant for our purposes were mercury and kermes from Spain. While we
associate kermes with Levantine sources (mainly the Middle East), it was
also found along the shores of the Mediterranean in southern France and
Spain. The import of luxury goods and spices into England increased
over the course of the late fifteenth century, while the exports taken away
by the Italians were less varied: cloth, tin, lead, hides, pewter, and alabas-
ter.
20
Certainly some of this tin and lead would have been used, in Venice
especially, to manufacture the lead-tin yellow pigments, one of which was
a glassy pigment, giallo da Murano (Murano yellow), whose name
associated its production with the island that formed the center of the
Venetian glass industry.
21
Southamptons chief importance was as a channel port for London,
and in the course of the sixteenth century its commerce declined as more
and more shipping traveled directly to London.
22
Some very specific lists
of commodities from the port of London in the 1560s are revealing, but
must be used with caution because we have so little comparative materi-
al.
23
By far the largest proportion of ships came from Antwerpand here
we are moving from the category of intercontinental trade to that of con-
tinental trade. Antwerp was indisputably the most important transship-
ment port in northern Europe during the sixteenth century, until the
political crises of the final three decades. As previously mentioned, it was
the redistribution point for spices, in the most inclusive sense of the term,
from Venice and from the Portuguese trade, as well as for luxury goods.
24

Antwerp was an important center for the importation of raw materials,
but the majority of these raw materials were probably re-exported instead
of being used locally.
25
The ships arriving from Antwerp and docking
20. Ibid., pp. 8489.
21. Khn, Lead-Tin Yellow in Artists Pigments, vol. 2, pp. 83112.
22. Dietz, ed., The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London Documents.
23. Ibid., see especially a list of commodities, pp. 138151, and various particular ship-
ments, including numbers 18, 45, 46, 53, 143, 155, 191, 228, 234, 357, 643, 703, 710, and 730.
24. Harreld, High Germans in the Low Countries, pp. 7475 and 140f.
25. See Stabel, Blond, and Greve, eds., International Trade in the Low Countries, and
in that volume, especially Harreld, German Merchants and Their Trade in Sixteenth-Cen-
309
The fairs at Lyons were another hub of continental trade in the six-
teenth century.
36
Portuguese spices arrived by way of Antwerp, while
Italian spices, most of them coming from Venetian traders, arrived via
transalpine routes or, increasingly as the century progressed, from the
port of Marseilles. The Lyons customs registers of 1569 indicate, however,
that products fabricated in Italy were valued at three times the worth of
products coming from the Levant via Italian portsfurther evidence of
the manufacturing power of northern Italy. Products from Milan were
dominant (35 percent of the total, with the next largest place of origin
representing only 17 percent), and these appear to have consisted mostly
of firearms and other products made of metal. I have found no published
records of pigments, but there must have been some among the spices,
and perhaps also among the manufactured substances.
German merchants and trading houses were a major presence in
Antwerp and Lyons, as they were in Venice and Milan.
37
They played
a major role in expanding overland commerce across Europe, from the
Baltic to Antwerp to Venice.
38
The Germans often traded in metals, espe-
cially copper and silver from mines in Saxony, Silesia, and Hungary.
39

The second half of the fifteenth century saw remarkable progress in min-
ing, both in traditional metals such as copper and silver, and in new tech-
nologies. Although European copper and silver mining slumped after the
mid-sixteenth century, largely due to the silver arriving from the Ameri-
cas, the period saw significant mining of natural vermilion (cinnabar)
in Spain, of alum in Italy, and of mercury in eastern Europe.
40
All these
substances were used in making pigments, either directly or indirectly by
means of the dyeing, glass, and ceramics industries. By way of example,
the 1556 inventory of a Venetian color sellers shop included Spanish ver-
milion, even though Venice itself was a center for the manufacture of
36. See Gascon, Grand Commerce et vie urbaine au XVIe sicle, esp. vol. 1. The statistics
in this paragraph are taken from Gascon.
37. See Harreld, High Germans in the Low Countries; Gascon, Grand Commerce et vie
urbaine au XVIe sicle; Dollinger, The German Hansa; and various essays with further bibli-
ography in Aikema, Bernard, and Brown, eds., Renaissance Venice and the North.
38. Harreld, High Germans in the Low Countries, pp. 98103.
39. In The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 2, see Nef, Mining and Metal-
lurgy in Medieval Civilization, pp. 693756, and Malowis, The Trade of Eastern Europe in
the Later Middle Ages, pp. 525610. Harreld, in High Germans in the Low Countries, p. 131,
notes that the most important goods going from Germany to Antwerp were metals and textiles.
40. Nef, Mining and Metallurgy in Medieval Civilization, pp. 735756.
logue from a 1582 fair in Frankfurt, listing goods available for pharma-
cists to purchase, includes three different lead whites: one locally made,
one from Antwerp, and one from Venice.
31

The rise in the number of patents during the course of the sixteenth
century also provides some evidence of interest in the manufacture of
pigments that had previously only been available as imports, although the
evidence so far comes primarily from England.
32
Patents were not neces-
sarily issued for something new, but could be obtained to restrict access to
a process that the patent holder had borrowed or stolen from elsewherea
reminder of how rapidly technological expertise spread through Europe
despite the best efforts of protectionist governments. By the seventeenth
century, England was making its own versions of at least some of these
pigments, and terms such as Venice white were less likely to indicate
that the white lead described was actually from Venice.
33
In fact, generally
speaking, the name of a pigment could indicate many different things,
including but not limited to the place where it was mined, manufactured,
or processed.
34
One further pigment appears in the shipments from Antwerp to Lon-
don: yellow ochre. The earth pigments were cheap and ubiquitous, yet
some continental varieties acquired reputations of their own, for instance,
the green earths from Verona. Although we do not know the origin of
the yellow ochre mentioned in the documents, the fact that the English
chose to import theirs from abroad reminds us that, even if a country had
the raw materials necessary to make a pigment, there was not always the
interest or the technology to produce it at home. It is also likely that such
pigments were indeed made for very local markets, but not in quantities
that would have had either a regional or continental impact, let alone
an international one. Yellow ochre may have had particular appeal as an
import because it could be heated to produce both red and brown colors.
35
31. Krekel and Burmester, Pharmacy Price-Lists as a New Type of Documentary
Source, p. 33.
32. Luca Mol is currently researching Venetian patents in the sixteenth century.
33. Harley, Artists Pigments c. 16001835, p. 32.
34. German blue, for example, is azurite. See Kirby, in The price of quality, who
comments on the variety in pigment nomenclature.
35. Howard, Pigments of English Medieval Wall Painting, esp. chapter 6, and Helwig,
Iron Oxide Pigments, pp. 39109.
311
they all traded in multiple commodities. We know that merchants in the
large centers, such as Venice, transshipped their goods to these fairs as
well as to the permanent town markets.
47
Even at the regional fairs (and
the Italian fairs tended to be regional rather than international), a great
deal of the business was at the wholesale and not the local or retail level.
Many of the fairs founded in the Middle Ages were still operating in the
sixteenth century, when they served increasingly to distribute goods within
the sphere of influence of a particular trading metropolis rather than as a
focus for continental or even intercontinental distribution. Welch and oth-
ers have discussed some of the rare documents surviving from the Italian
fairs, but one or two are worth repeating here. We know from the records
of a hospital pharmacy in Macerata (Marches) that both medicines and
pigments were purchased for resale at the fair in Recanati.
48
The Venetian
painter Lorenzo Lotto, living and working in northern Marches during
the first half of the sixteenth century, provides us with a chain of transac-
tions leading from the regional to the local level. He wrote in his account
book that he had obtained pigments from a local painter, who had gotten
them from an apothecary in Ancona, who had bought them at the fairs
in Recanati and Ancona.
49
There is ample evidence that Venetian color
sellers were exporting and transshipping pigments and related materials,
and the regional networks they used certainly help to explain both the
vendors increasing numbers as the sixteenth century progressed and the
prosperity of some of the pigment manufacturers. (My evidence comes
primarily from white lead manufacturers.)
50

Local products meant something very different in a major trading
metropolis than in a small town in the hinterland. Yet even in the latter,
pigments were available from the Levant, from both sides of the Alps, from
one or more of the large Italian manufacturing centers, and sometimes
from local sources. These pigments and related substances comprised a
combination of fully processed, partially processed, and raw materials. I
have speculated elsewhere that, as the sixteenth century progressed, more
47. See Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia.
48. The document was published by Zdekauer, Per una storia delle fiere di Recanati
(13841473), pp. 245265. See also Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, esp. chapter 6.
49. Grimaldi and Sordi, eds., Lorenzo Lotto 14801556, pp. 4849. Welch discusses the
document, citing the earlier edition of Lottos Libro. See Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance,
p. 168, and p. 333, n. 11.
50. Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia.
the far more popular artificial vermilion (a combination of mercury and
sulfur).
41
At almost the same time, we learn that the Venetian government
was looking for new sources of vermilion, mercury, and mercuric chloride
(Italian, solimado). If this search came about in response to a shortage,
it seems likely that the dearth originated with the more economically
significant glass industry rather than with the painters.
42
The government
may also have wished to find ways to protect local industries by lowering
their dependence on certain foreign sources of raw materials.
We know that German-speaking merchants who sold minerals used
for glazes traveled to towns in northern Italy that specialized in ceramic
production.
43
These traders were often the Italians source for the popular
blue pigment azurite and its companion green pigment, malachite, which
were mined primarily in southern Germany, Austria, and Slovakia. These
minerals were also shipped, in much larger quantities, to transshipment
and manufacturing centers such as Venice, where the copper carbonate
minerals were used in the glass and ceramics industries and in making
copper green pigments.
44
When azurite became less easily obtainable and
more expensive in the later sixteenth century, it was the Venetian glass
industry that provided a cheaper substitutethe blue known as smalt
(Italian, smalto), which was glass tinted with cobalt (another mineral
imported from north of the Alps).
45

We have already had occasion to consider commercial fairs. Epstein
has observed that fairs were a crucial link in the continental trading net-
work, providing for the distribution of goods at the regional and even the
local level.
46
These events were primarily periodic and rural. They had
their own calendar, which meant that merchants could do business from
one fair to the next, and they retained a flexibility that was impossible in
the permanent markets of larger cities. Some were quite specialized, but
41. This inventory, in the Archivio di Stato, has not yet been published. My thanks to Luca
Mol, who made me aware of its existence.
42. This is discussed in Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a
Vinetia.
43. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 683, n. 35. Matthew and Berrie, Memoria
di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia.
44. Gettens and West Fitzhugh, Azurite and Blue Verditer, pp. 2335.
45. Mhlethaler and Thissen, Smalt in Artists Pigments, vol. 2, pp. 113130. For a
discussion of smalt as a glass substance available in colors other than blue, see Matthew and
Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia, and Berrie and Matthew, Mate-
rial Innovation and Artistic Invention, pp. 1226.
46. Epstein, Freedom and Growth, esp. chapter 4.
313
red lead.
54
Scholars are fairly sure that the ship was headed for Constan-
tinople. We know that white lead was exported to other parts of the East,
and I would not be surprised if we were to learn that it traveled to the
Americas.
55

The cochineal that began arriving from the Americas in the 1520s was
adopted by dyers quite rapidly. According to Mol, the new cochineal was
formally introduced to the Venetian silk guild in 1543 and was in use
soon thereafter, although not without opposition.
56
Old-world cochineal,
either Polish or Armenian, had long been familiar to European dyers and
painters, who also made red lakes from textiles dyed with kermes, lac,
madder, and brazilwood (although examples of brazilwood lakes are less
common, and madder is more often used in northern Europe).
57
Italian
sources, through at least the sixteenth century, referred to both kermes
and Old World cochineals with the same term, grana, which is also used
in Spanish sources to refer to New World cochineal. Terms for reds, espe-
cially red lakes, are difficult to sort out, and very few scholars get it right.
Jo Kirby, who does get it right, has claimed that it took the painters longer
to begin using New World cochineal as a red lake pigment and that it did
not become widespread until the seventeenth century. Since it is only
very recently that conservation scientists have been able to distinguish
between different lake pigments, it will be some time before we can verify
this claim. By the early seventeenth century, red lakes seem to have been
identified more often by a place name than by the original plant or insect
source of the dye substance: red lake of Florence, of Venice, and of
Antwerp are the most common such usages. This suggests that the pig-
ment was being processed in some, if not all, of the large manufacturing
cities where it was being used in great quantities as a dye.
58
It may also
support my speculation, discussed above, that a larger variety of pigments
54. Gasparetto, The Gnali Wreck, pp. 7984.
55. As an example, Lane cites Sanudos description of a cargo headed from Venice to
Alexandria in 1561 that included a hundred barrels of white lead. Lane, The Mediterranean
Spice Trade, pp. 111112.
56. Mol, The Silk Industry in Renaissance Venice, esp. pp. 120130. For the cochineal
trade, see Lee, Cochineal Production and Trade in New Spain to 1600, pp. 449473, and
American Cochineal in European Commerce, 15261625, pp. 205224. See also Phipps,
Cochineal Red, pp. 148.
57. See the articles by Kirby, such as The Preparation of Early Lake Pigments, and
Kirby and White, The Identification of Red Lake Dyestuffs.
58. See Kirby, The price of quality.
and more fully processed, ready-to-use pigments (and other prepared
materials such as varnish and turpentine) were becoming available.
51

That hypothesis is based only on the inventories of Venetian color sell-
ers, and requires a great deal more evidence for confirmation. It may be
that the prices that had to be charged to cover such processing were only
obtainable in big cities, but at this point that remains a matter of specula-
tion. We know very little about prices at any level, and the myriad curren-
cies, weights, and measures further complicate the situation, along with
confusion over terminology and our inability to determine precisely what
grade of a particular pigment is being referred to in a given document.
52
If we look at manufacturing on any scale larger than that supplying a
purely local market, it often appears that pigments might well have been
by-products of larger industries that imported minerals or organic dyes
on a more substantial scale; the glass and silk-dyeing industries of Venice
come to mind. The painting industry, even in a large city like Venice,
seems at first glance too small to have created much demand for any prod-
uct. However, if one includes all objects that were painted or used as colo-
rants in such a metropolis, and then magnifies the scale of the operations
to include manufacture for export, the situation begins to look different.
We also need to know more about the pigment trade in Antwerp during
the sixteenth century, especially because of its large-scale production of
paintings for the open market, which would have stimulated demand for
pigments and related materials and might have altered any or all aspects
of the commerce.
On the other hand, some pigment manufacturing seemed to develop
purely on its own and not as an adjunct to another, larger industry. The
manufacture of white lead is probably the best example.
53
This was one of
the least expensive pigments and also the most widespread. When mixed
with oil, it could be applied to virtually any surface except damp plaster
walls, and it was the only white pigment used by easel painters until the
nineteenth century. As we have seen, Venice and Antwerp exported white
lead all over Europe. The contents of a Venetian ship wrecked off Zara in
the Adriatic Sea in the early 1580s included white lead and its derivative,
51. Ibid.
52. Kirby makes an excellent start on these issues in The price of quality.
53. This is discussed at some length in Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che
bisognino torre a Vinetia.
LOUISA C. MATTHEW 314
was being preprocessed and offered for sale ready-to-use than had been
the case a century earlier.
In a 1998 essay presenting results of a scientific examination of six
maps from the Relaciones Geogrficas created for Philip II of Spain
between 1578 and 1585, Haude discusses the organic and inorganic pig-
ments used to color the mapsa project that involved both indigenous
and Spanish artists.
59
As the author makes clear, her conclusions cannot
be definitive, based as they are only on optical microscopic analysis. It is
interesting, nonetheless, to discover that six of the inorganic pigments she
tentatively identifiedvermilion, red lead, azurite, green earth, and raw
and burnt umbercould not be found in any literature on pigments used
by the indigenous artists. Any or all of those six could have been imported
from Europe. Haude concludes that they were not, in fact, imported from
Europe, because most could have been found in natural deposits in Mex-
ico. As we have seen, however, the natural occurrence of a substance in a
specific region does not always mean that it was processed into pigment
there. Furthermore, if indigenous artists were being taught European
methods by the Spanish priests, it seems at least possible that pigments
identified with the European tradition were being imported for their use.
A survey as broad as the current one, in both area and time, is bound
to be selective. For instance, I have deliberately avoided discussing Seville
and other Spanish ports, as this has been a subject for other writers. None-
theless, it seems clear that the European pigment trade existed and that
sources for pigments and related materials grew and shifted over time.
Clearly there is more work to do on this subject, especially as it relates to
trade with the New World during the sixteenth century.
59. Haude, Identification of Colourants on Maps, pp. 240270.
Figure 1. Titian, Portrait of Alvise dalla Scala, 1561/62, Staatliche
Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemldegalerie Alte Meister, Gal. Nr. 172.
The register of the Venetian apothecaries documents a highly interesting
quarrel that must have caused quite a stir in 15781579. It opposed the
pharmacists corporation (the Collegio degli speziali) and the Venetian
pigment seller Messer Zamaria Zerbin dai colori. The merchant ran a
shop under the sign of the mermaid (Alla Serena), indicating the exotic
origin of his goods. There he had, among painting materials, recently
also offered a curative powder and thus violated the privileges granted the
apothecaries with their statutes only thirteen years earlier, in 1565.
1
This
incident sheds a bright light on the development of some closely related
professions in early modern Venice, where todays distinctions among
apothecaries, druggists, and pigment merchants came into being much
earlier than elsewhere.
DEVELOPMENT AND SOCIAL STANDING
OF THE PIGMENT SELLERS PROFESSION
In Europe, colors and other painting materials were sold by apothecaries
(in Italian, speziali; in Venetian, spezieri) from at least the thirteenth cen-
tury onward.
2
In fact, many of these substances were also used for medical
* I am very grateful to Julia DeLancey, who read a draft of the manuscript and kindly
shared results of her extensive research on Venetian color sellers with me. Any errors remain,
of course, my own.
1. Biblioteca Correr, Mariegole 209/I (= 209 A), Libro del collegio di spetieri medici-
nali, fols. 38v, 39r. For the foundation of the Collegio degli speziali in 1565 and their seminal
Ordini et Capitoli, see Dian, Memoria, pp. 89, 11.
2. Examples from different epochs and regions: Eastlake, Methods and Materials of
Painting, vol. 1, p. 11. In Florence, the painters were incorporated into the speziali around 1313:
Kubersky-Piredda, Kunst und Markt, p. 3536. See also Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia,
pp. 680686, esp. p. 680; DeLancey, Dragonsblood and Ultramarine, pp. 141150.
The Venetian Pigment Trade
in the Sixteenth Century
ROLAND KRISCHEL
Wallraf-Richartz Museum
ROLAND KRISCHEL 318 THE VENETI AN PIGMENT TRADE
I N THE SI XTEENTH CENTURY
319
purposes.
3
In Veniceoften regarded as the oldest location of the chemi-
cal industry and Europes biggest drugstorespezieri are documented
as early as 1225 and 1228.
4
The Venetian trade in pigments seems at first
to have been in the hands of the spezieri da grosso (wholesale apothecar-
ies), whose guild statutes of 1258 have been cited as the earliest known in
Italy.
5
Before the end of the fourteenth century, this branch diverged from
that of the spezieri da medicine, who were apothecaries in the narrower
sense of the word.
6

From about 1500 onward, a new professional category is documented.
By adding the label dei colori to their names, these merchants indicated a
specialization in artists materials. In 1493 the Scuola di San Marco (one
of the fivelater sixgrand lay confraternities of Venice) admitted to
their membership a certain Ser Francesco de Bartolamio. At his entrance,
he is called a texer in the register (or mariegola) of the confraternity. At a
later date, this was changed into da i colori.
7
It seems that Franceso, who
died before 1550, started his business by producing and selling canvas and
then diversified by adding colors. His shop name, the Moor (Saraxin),
alluded to the origin of his goods, while at the same time reminding his
clients of a typical pharmacy sign. Among the earliest specialized color
sellers, or vendecolori, must also be counted Matteo di Giovanni, who held
a shop under the sign of the Lamb (Agnellum) in the confines of San Sal-
3. Fuchs and Oltrogge, Farbenherstellung, pp. 435450, esp. p. 445.
4. Regarding Venice as the birthplace of the chemical industry, see Guareschi, Il
Plichto di Giovanventura Rosetti ed i colori a Venezia, pp. 343435, esp. p. 345; Bartels,
Drogenhandel und apothekenrechtliche Beziehungen, p. 74, n. 84; Schwarz, ed., Per una storia
della farmacia e del farmacista in Italia, p. 9. For Venice as Europes drugstore, see Flck-
iger, Zur Geschichte der Pharmacie in Venedig, pp. 245247, esp. pp. 245246; Maran-
goni, Associazioni di mestiere nella Repubblica Veneta, p. 166. For earliest documentation
of spezieri in Venice, see Flckiger, p. 245. Venetian speziali enjoyed a reputation reaching
far beyond the city itself (Marangoni, Le Associazioni di mestiere nella Repubblica Veneta,
p. 162), and were reportedly allowed to marry daughters of the Venetian nobility (Tassini,
Curiosit Veneziane, p. 618).
5. For spezieri da grosso, see Lazzarini, Il colore nei pittori veneziani, pp. 135144, esp.
p. 136. As for the guild statutes of 1258, see Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 681. An
exemplary document of 1317 concerns a certain Ricciardo Mozo, who was trading in brazil-
wood. Monticolo, I capitolari delle arti veneziani, vol. 1, p. 390.
6. Marangoni, Le Associazioni di mestiere nella Repubblica Veneta, p. 161. The confra-
ternity of the spezieri da grosso, existing since 1383 under the patronage of San Gottardo, met
first in San Matteo, then (from 1394 onward) near San Apollinare. Tassini, Curiosit Vene-
ziane, p. 616; Pazzi, La bussola del viandante, vol. 1, pp. 320321, vol. 2, p. 562.
7. Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Scuola di S. Marco, Mariegola 4, fol. 51v.
vador, and who made his testament in February 1504.
8
A representative of
the next generation is Ser Domenico quondam Ser Gabriele de Gardig-
nano (Gardignano=Gradignan), whose inventory from April 1534 was
witnessed by his colleague Ser Sebastiano quondam Ser Francesco.
9

Between 1519 and 1560, two color sellers were enrolled in the Scuola Pic-
cola of Santa Maria dei Mercanti ai Frari: Ser Francesco de Filippo and
Ser Nicolo dalaquila.
10
The last-mentioned vendors name reappears in
the 1551 inventory of Giovanni Griffalconi, a Venetian manufacturer of
lead white, among a list of vendecolori indebted to him: Here a Zuane
dallaquila is accompanied by Zampiero dalla collona, Antonio dalla
Madonna, Piero dalla ruoda, Salvador dal pomo doro, Alvise dalla
schala (to whom we shall soon return), an unnamed color seller dal S
Marco, and a certain Zuane de Bortholamio, of whom we know from
another document that he came from Brixen and held a shop under the
sign of Fortitudo in the confines of Santi Apostoli.
11

Topographically, the new profession must soon have become concen-
trated. Toward the middle of the sixteenth century, the physician and nat-
ural scientist Pierandrea Mattioli (15001577) mentions a calle, or street,
in Venice where they sell colors (oue si uendono i colori).
12
In 1588,
a calle de Colori is documented as the address of a certain Zuanne de
Cristoforo, a member of the painters guild.
13
However, was it the same
street? Predictably, the locations indicated in the documents (San Salva-
dor, Santi Apostoli, San Bartolomeo) show that the color sellers gathered
near the commercial heart of the city, the Rialto, where pigments were
also exchanged or sold via the German warehouse (Fondaco dei Tedes-
chi), by artisans of Flemish origin or by artists living in the nearby Cale
de le Aque.
14
In 1661, a color vendors widow, donna Felicita relitta de
8. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 681.
9. The combination of Italian names (sometimes even in Venetian spelling) with the
Latin quondam (meaning son of the late/ former) is quite common in Venetian records.
Ibid., p. 682; Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia, pp.
245252, esp. p. 246, 248.
10. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 681. For Nicolo dal Aquila and his son Zuane,
see also Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia, p. 247.
11. Ibid., p. 686.
12. Matthioli, I discorsi ne i sei libri di Pedacio Dioscoride anarzabeo, p. 704.
13. Favaro, Larte dei pittori in Venezia e i suoi statuti, p. 144.
14. For documented locations of color vendors, see Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p.
685. See Lotto, Il Libro di spese diverse, p. 247, for his purchase of azurite at the Fondaco in
1543, and also pp. 170171, where he obtains the same pigment mineral from mastro Sebas-
321
M. Anzolo Balbi dai colori, is living in a Calle dei Colori near San Leon-
ardo (sestiere di Cannaregio), a street that today is still called Calle da
Mosto or Calle Balbi dai Colori. Here toponomastics (specialized studies
of place names), point toward a whole dynasty of pigment sellers, and
maybe manufacturers.
15

As a professional category, the pigment sellers were apparently attached
to the Scuola dei Merciai, but it seems that they tried to found a corpora-
tion of their own even before 1612.
16
The membership of several color
merchants in the most important lay confraternities of the city bespeaks
their solid social rank. We have already heard of Ser Francesco with the
Moor as a member of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. His colleague
Ser Olivier quondam Jacomo, who died after 1549, must have belonged to
a younger generation. When he became member of the Scuola Grande di
San Marco in 1536, his profession was indicated as di Colori right from
the beginning. Four years earlier, a ser zuanpiero dale madonne vende-
colori spicier a S. Salvador had enrolled in the same confraternity, and
another color seller had become a member of the Scuola Grande di San
Rocco.
17
There Alvise dalla Scala (or, as spelled above, dalla schala),
and at least two other members of his family, Domenego and Anzolo,
even held offices in the governing body during the second half of the
sixteenth century.
18

tiano fiamengo sartor in Rialto in 1549. In 1540, Lotto had bought azurite and verdi azuri
from mastro Gasparo, depentor in Cale de le Aque, a Flemish colleague and (at times) assis-
tant. See Lotto, pp. 233, 364365. We know from other sources that between 1541 and 1543,
Jacopo Bassano paints several religious pictures for his colleague Alessandro Spiera, living in
the same street, and is paid in pigments. Muraro, ed., Il Libro Secondo di Francesco e Jacopo
dal Ponte, pp. 216217, 222223.
15. See Tassini, Curiosit Veneziane, p. 173. Pazzi, La bussola del viandante, vol. 1, p.
443. Other Calli dai colori now exist in several sestieri of Venice.
16. Tassini, Curiosit Veneziane, p. 173. See DeLancey, Selling Color.
17. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, pp. 681682.
18. Massimi, Jacopo Tintoretto e i confratelli della Scuola Grande di San Rocco, pp.
5169, esp. p. 155. Orazio Vecellio (second son of Titian, and who painted in his fathers style)
passed an important pigment commission of the Spanish court on to Alvise in 1572. Alvises
comparably high debt toward the lead-white merchant Griffalconi (see above) might indicate
that Alvise typically held a particularly large stock of pigments, but he might also have been on
especially good terms with Titian, who painted a portrait of him in 15611562 (see fig. 1). If this
was the case, he probably numbered among those confratelli who tried to frustrate Tintorettos
plans for the decoration of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The Dalla Scala familyat least
Dominigo Gradignan dalla Scalla (living in the parish of San Cassan)are relatives of the
Gardignano vendicolori, mentioned above. See the recent literature in n. 74.
When the pigment seller Jacopo de Benedetti died in 1594, his widow,
Barbara, asked for a refund of her dowry.
19
Apparently the objects in the
household itself were insufficient to cover the sum, which (according to a
document) must have been higher than 390 gold ducatsa small fortune,
indicating the elevated social status of the pigment merchant, who seems
to have been member of the elite caste of cittadini.
20
Even greater sums are
cited somewhat earlier, in connection with another pigment sellers shop.
In September 1547, a certain Maddalena, widow of Giovanni Bernardo
Battistagno dei Colori, entered the Benedictine convent of Santi Cosma
e Damiano on the Giudecca. Shortly before, she had sold the bottega al
insegna del Pomo doro in the Calle dei Stagneri near San Salvador,
together with all its merchandise and equipment, for nine hundred duc-
ats. This enabled her to become a main sponsor of the convents building
activities; she may also have commissioned an altarpiece from Tintoretto.
Before giving up the business, Battistagnos widow ran the shop herself
for quite some time (from at least 1540 onward); accordingly, she is called
Maddalena dei [dai/dalli] colori in several documents. Her successor,
Salvador quondam Domenico de Romagnoli, must be identical with the
above-mentioned Salvador dal pomo doro, who was indebted to the
manufacturer of lead white, Giovanni Griffalconi.
21
Around 1600, the
social standing and credibility of the profession is illustrated by contacts
with the Flemish wholesaler and Venetian cittadino Francesco Vrins.
Four pigment sellers act as witnesses for him in 1598, declaring that the
price of logwood (Haematoxylum campechianum) from Mexico had fallen
dramatically due to the recent arrival of enormous quantities.
22
When
19. Krischel, Zur Geschichte des venezianischen Pigmenthandels, pp. 93158.
20. See Bellavitis, La famiglia cittadina veneziana nel XVI secolo, pp. 5568, esp.
p. 63: le doti della maggior parte della popolazi[o]ne veneziana, artigiani e commercianti,
non vanno oltre i cento, al massimo duecento ducati. Julia DeLancey is intensely working on
the social status of the Venetian pigment sellers. See, for instance, her (as yet unpublished)
paper presented at the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, Venice 2010:
Limportantissima mercanzi: Color Sellers and Visual Environments in Renaissance Venice.
21. The case of Maddalena dei colori was kindly brought to my attention by Benjamin
Paul, who mentions her in two publications: Paul, Archaism and Pauline Spirituality, pp.
2535, esp. pp. 25, 31; and Not One but Three, pp. 4175, esp. n. 46.
22. Brulez, Marchands flamands Venise I, p. 288, no. 860. The shop names of the four
pigment sellers were the Three Crosses, the Angel, the Tower, and the Sun, respectively. Refer-
ences to the Angel begin, as Julia DeLancey kindly informs me, around 1586 and run through
at least 1625, and the shop is associated fairly consistently with the Gagin(i) family. For the
Tower, DeLancey has found records from the 1580s and 1590s; for the Sun, one reference from
1567 and some more from the 1590s.
323
Francesco Vrins died in May 1604, the color merchant Mattio Ferrari was
found to owe him the considerable sum of over three hundred ducats.
23

Looking back to the documents already cited, we now know of more than
two dozen pigment sellers active in Venice during the sixteenth century,
among them at least one woman.
THE RANGE OF GOODS IN THE
SHOP OF JACOPO DE BENEDETTI
In Jacopo de Benedettis inventory, the pigments found in Venetian
paintings of the Cinquecento are present, with few exceptions. Alongside
Venetian specialities, we find many imported goods illustrating Venices
preeminence as a European center of the pigment trade. Several color
substances not normally used in easel painting point toward long-forgot-
ten tasks of Venetian artists and artisans. A comparable analysis can be
made for the nonpigment materials.
24
These are gypsum, binding media,
varnish, mordants, tannins, diverse chemical substances of mineral ori-
gin, stationery, and brushes. With a weight between 1,300 and 1,700 kilo-
grams, these last-mentioned materials make up one third of the inventory;
the pigments weigh between 2,700 and 3,200 kilos. The largest portion
of the pigments is made up of the yellow colors, with about 1,200 kilos,
and especially orpiment, with over 800 kilos. Next come the red pigments
(670815 kilos), then brown and black (380520 kilos). There are equally
high quantities of green and blue pigments (each weighing between 200
and 300 kilos) as well as 55 kilos of lead white. The most expensive pig-
ments are generally present in the smallest quantities.
The choice of reds is dominated by iron-oxide pigments of natural ori-
gin (lapis roso, terra ros[s]a, and bolo gros[s]o), closely followed by
the equally cheap minium. The rather costly cinnabar (mercury sulfide,
or vermilion) is present in much smaller quantities, as is the wide variety
of expensive red lake pigments. As we have seen, the assortment of yel-
low pigments holds a special place in the Benedetti inventory, thanks to
diverse qualities and forms of orpiment. A broad choice of lead and lead-
tin yellow (zalolin, ~ chiaro, ~ chiaro bruto, ~ de fiandra, and ~
23. Ibid., p. 651. There are, as Julia DeLancey pointed out to me, at least four Ferraris who
show up as Venetian color sellers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
24. See Krischel, Inventory of the Venetian Vendecolori Jacopo de Benedetti, pp.
253266.
da muran are also found, but in comparatively small quantities. More
predominant are the yellow earth pigments. Predictably, the selection of
greens is rather small. Dominating are the green earths (terra uerde,
terra de cipro, terra da uerona), augmented by some lake pigments of
herbal origin (uerde poro, aqua uerde) and verdigris (uerde rame).
The most expensive blue pigment, lapis lazuli, is missing altogether, as
are gold and silver. We should note that these same substances are already
missing sixty years earlier, in the inventory of vendecolori Domenico de
Gardignano.
25
Most of the blue color offered is smalt. Of the much better
azurite, there is less than one kilogram. For miniature painters and artists
working with watercolors, Benedetti holds a limited stock of indigo and
an even smaller quantity of tornasol. Cheap earth pigments dominate
the range of browns and blacks, whereas the only white pigment is lead
white.
ORIGINS OF THE PIGMENTS
Many of the materials in the Benedetti inventory are local specialities,
and their industrial production in Venice is well documented, in some
cases even from the High Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Typical
Venetian products are cinnabar, lead-tin yellow, smalt, and lead white.
The origin of zalolin da muran and smalto da muran is easily rec-
ognizable. Several other pigments offered by Benedetti, such as the so-
called firitto di spagna (a red or black copper ash) and verdigris, were
probably also made in Murano. The glass, textile, and dyeing industries
of Venice as well as its arsenale (shipyards) were important suppliers of
the pigment merchants. Looking to the mainland, the earth pigments
from Verona could also be regarded as Venetian specialities, notably the
terra zala and the blue-green terra uerde.
26
Imported from Flanders
were zalolin de fiandra (probably to be identified with Hermann Khns
lead-tin yellow I) and smaltin de fiandra (apparently a smalt pigment
with low color intensity).
27
Whereas the azuriti of Spanish origin and
the lacha (gum lac from India that was the raw material for lac-dye)
25. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 682.
26. Regarding terra zala, see Lazzarini, Il colore nei pittori veneziani, p. 136; Bur-
mester and Krekel, Azurri oltramarini, lacche et altri colori fini, pp. 192211, esp. p. 197.
For terra uerde, see Grissom, Green Earth, pp. 141167, illustration on p. 149.
27. For lead-tin yellow I, see Khn, Lead-Tin Yellow, pp. 83112.
325
were relatively expensive colors, the terra uerde, or green earth, from
Cyprus was a more common pigment.
28
Some of the substances offered by Jacopo de Benedetti can be traced
back to the New World: endego de uaselo (vat-dye indigo), lacha de
crimese (cochineal), and lacha de uerzin (brazilwood lake).
The notion of endego de uaselo points toward a method of obtaining
pigment by skimming the surface of a dye bath and letting the skimmed
substance dry.
29
In Venice, the use of indigo for dyeing wool was pro-
hibited in 1588, but when a recipe from Constantinople spread through-
out the city a year later, the indigo imported from the West Indies soon
became a favorite with Venetian textile dyers.
30

In 1543, Venetian silk merchants, dyers, and regulatory authorities
started arguing about the use of cochineal, a carmine dyestuff from
the New World that is first mentioned in Western sources in 1523, after
the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
31
However, the exclusive presence of
Cremese de Spagna in a Venetian trading price list of 1588 indicates
that by that time, cochineal from the Americas was dominant. In 1587
alone, seventy-two tons of cochineal were shipped from Lima to Spain.
During the last four decades of the sixteenth century, Hamann tells
us, imports of cochineal registered in Sevilles Casa de Contratacin
averaged 183,000 pounds each yearan annual tally that, shockingly,
approached the output of European silver mining during its apogee in
about 1530.
32
Compared with the carmine varieties previously in use,
the cochineal brought by the Spaniards to Venice via Antwerp had an
obvious economic advantage, since it not only yielded more colorant but
28. For lacha, see Khn, Farbmaterialien: Pigmente und Bindemittel, pp. 754, esp.
p. 24; Schweppe and Roosen-Runge, Carmine, pp. 255283; Schweppe, Handbuch der
Naturfarbstoffe, pp. 272276; Brachert, Lexikon historischer Maltechniken, p. 114.
29. Penny and Spring, Veroneses Paintings in the National Gallery, pp. 529, esp. p.
8; Kirby, The price of quality, pp. 1942, esp. pp. 2526.
30. Mol, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, p. 130.
31. Ibid., pp. 120130. See also Merrifield, Original Treatises on the Arts of Paint-
ing, vol. 1, pp. clxxviclxxviii; Khn, Farbmaterialien: Pigmente und Bindemittel, p. 24;
Schweppe, Handbuch der Naturfarbstoffe, pp. 261268; Schweppe and Roosen-Runge, Car-
mine; Penny and Spring, Veroneses Paintings in the National Gallery, p. 8; Phipps, Cochi-
neal Red.
32. For the Venetian trading price list of 1588, see McCusker, The Italian Business
Press in Early Modern Europe, pp. 797841, esp. p. 820, fig. 1. For the shipments from Lima
to Spain in 1587, see Phipps, Cochineal Red, p. 27. Quotation from Hamann, The Mirrors
of Las Meninas, pp. 635, esp. p. 19.
was also much cheaper to produce because of low-cost indigenous labor.
Along with Florence, Antwerp, and Rouen, Venice became one of the
biggest consumers of this dyestuff, as well as the most important trad-
ing center for export to the Levant.
33
Moreover, Venice held a central
position in the refinement and trade of pigments made from cochineal.
Manufacturers of carmine pigments, such as a certain ferrares (perhaps
the Mattio Ferrari who was indebted to Francesco Vrins), enjoyed a far-
reaching reputation, as suggested by the commissions that the Spanish
court awarded Titian in 1570.
34
One must remember, though, that car-
mines de Yndias (cochineals from the Americas) were less appreciated, at
least by Spanish patrons and painters, than those imported from Florence
or Venice.
35
If a client whose own colonies produced the raw material for
red lake pigments turned time and again to Venice for red lake pigments,
this attests to the outstanding position of the Venetian refining industry.
When the transport of brazilwood from Ceylon, Sumatra, and east-
ern India via the Silk Road was blocked after the Turkish conquest of
Constantinople in 1453, the discovery of America opened new sources of
supply.
36
Thus around 1540, the brazilwood traded in several commercial
centers of Europe (such as Venice, Antwerp, Lisbon, and Nuremberg)
counted among the most important red dyestuffs for textile dyeing.
37

However, it owed this rank only to its comparatively humble price, since
it was still regarded as a low-quality substitute for insect dyestuffs, espe-
cially kermes.
38
The pernambuco wood (Caesalpinia crista L.) imported
from Brazil and Jamaica was considered the best variety.
39
Again, Flemish
merchants like Paulo Sivres and Francesco Vrins held a key position in
the Venetian trade in this and other brazilwoods.
40
33. Mol, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice, p. 128.
34. Mancini, I colori della bottega, pp. 163179, pp. 164165.
35. See Pereda, The Invisible? New World, pp. 4752, esp. p. 49.
36. Hofenk de Graaff, Zur Geschichte der Textilfrberei, pp. 2336, esp. pp. 31, 36.
37. Burmester and Krekel, Von Drers Farben, pp. 54101, esp. p. 70, n. 128.
38. Rosetti, The Plictho of Gioanventura Rosetti, p. xviii, p. 35 (recipe with brazilwood as
ersatz kermes); Penny and Spring, Veroneses Paintings in the National Gallery, pp. 2122;
Burmester and Krekel, Von Drers Farben, p. 70, n. 128.
39. Schweppe, Handbuch der Naturfarbstoffe, p. 414. Khn, Farbmaterialien: Pigmente
und Bindemittel, p. 23.
40. Brulez, Marchands flamands Venise I, p. 218 (document no. 652, dating from 5
July 1596), p. 631 (inventory of 1604). In the inventory of the Venetian vendecolori Francesco
di Bartolomeo (1586), over twelve thousand pounds of brazilwood are to be found, with a list
327
CUSTOMERS OF THE VENETIAN RETAILER
JACOPO DE BENEDETTI
Remarkably, the Benedetti inventory mentions several pigments that do
not turn up in technological or historical investigations of Venetian easel
painting. The presence of color de sal (an iron-oxide red) and fior
de calcina (a lime needed for the production of Bianco San Giovanni)
might indicate that Benedetti also sold pigments for wall paintings, such
as faade frescos.
41
Indeed, many of the colors offered (e.g., smalt, but
also the earth pigments) are useful for oil as well as for fresco painting.
42

Some of the substances in stock were primarily needed for miniature
painting. This applies to minio de biacha (an especially pure minium
fabricated by roasting lead white), zallo santo (a yellow or green lake
pigment of herbal origin), pomele de spin zerbin (common buckthorn
berries), verde porro (a leek juice), aqua verde (another green herbal
coloring substance), tornasol (a colorant juice extracted from the turn-
sole plant, Chrozophora tinctoria Juss., and conserved on pezette, pieces
of textile), antimonio (antimony), fumo de rasa (soot) and marche-
seta (marcasite, a substance imported from Germany and used as substi-
tute for silver).
43
Calligraphers, scribes, and book painters could also buy
stationery items like ink, quills, and even special brushes for miniature
painting (peneli da miniar) at Benedettis.
44
We must keep in mind,
of debtors including several dyers. Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino
torre a Vinetia, pp. 247 and 251, n. 42.
41. Valcanover et al., Pittura murale esterna nel Veneto.
42. See Sorte, Osservazioni nella Pittura, vol. 1, pp. 271301, esp. pp. 287288.
43. For tornasol, see Cennini, Il Libro dellArte, pp. 1213, n. 5; Merrifield, Original
Treatises on the Arts of Painting, vol. 1, pp. clxxxviiiclxxxix; Wallert, Chrozophora tinc-
toria Juss., pp. 141155; Schweppe, Handbuch der Naturfarbstoffe, pp. 529530; Wallert,
Libro Secondo de Diversi Colori e Sise da Mettere a Oro, pp. 3847, esp. pp. 39, 45; Fuchs
and Oltrogge, Farbenherstellung, p. 440; see also Brachert, Lexikon historischer Maltech-
niken, pp. 90 (voce Folium), 191192 (voce Pezette). Regarding marcasite from Germany, see
Simonsfeld, Der Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig, pp. 197198. For marcasite as a substitute
for silver, see Merrifield, Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting, vol. 2, p. 465 (no. 153).
44. During the period of the Benedetti inventory, the following specialists were members
of the Venetian painters guild: Batista Bonaza miniador, Camillo miniador da santi a S. Polo,
Luca Todesco miniator da libretti, Martin Rigler fa libretti, Santo Basi fa libretti, Vendramin
miniator, Zorzi Colonna miniador, Zanalvise di Dreseci (=Zanalvise de Bressa?) minia santi,
Zuanne quondam Domenico miniador fa libretti, Zuane Spontino miniator (also called scrit-
tor), Orazio Ardizoni scrittor. Favaro, Larte dei pittori in Venezia e i suoi statuti, pp. 138144,
147, 150, 153, 154. A list of painting materials in the Leiden Manuscript shows how many
however, that the herbal juices from the turnsole plant and buckthorn
berriestogether with pigments like cinnabar, minium, brazilwood lake,
orpiment, and verdigriswere also used for other purposes, such as color-
ing religious woodcuts or even playing cards.
45

In fact, many a purchase at Benedettis was probably for ephemeral or
decorative purposes now long forgotten. In the context of the numerous
musical and theatrical performances, and the receptions and processions
organized for church or state festivities or during Carnival, artists had
to face innumerable decorative challenges in a city famous for its lust
for representation.
46
For such tasks, as well as for the leather gilders (a
highly important and officially protected branch of the Venetian luxury
industry), Benedetti held an enormous stock of ersatz gold in the form
of orpiment.
47
Blazing red cinnabar and, as an alternative, terra rossa,
were especially needed by the depentori da chasse who gave protective
and decorative painting to chests, cradles, and hourglasses, while other
pigments (the no-name green earth, for example) served as wall paints.
The remarkable choice of mordants for staining wood must have greatly
interested the producers of intarsia, while resins like colophony would
have been useful for musical instrument makers. Even the textile dyer
and tanner, the potter, glass manufacturer, mirror maker, and goldsmith
would have found workshop supplies at Benedettis. Thus his shop (like
those of his colleagues) not only became a meeting point for artists and
artisans but also a point of exchange for ideas and technical knowledge.
48

of the pigments in Benedettis shop were used in Italian miniature painting. Hermens, A
Seventeenth-Century Italian Treatise on Miniature Painting, pp. 4857, esp. p. 55.
45. On the production of playing cards in Venice, see Nadin Bassani, Le carte da gioco a
Venezia. For a list of pigments used to color playing cards in Tournai in 1480, see Kirby, The
price of quality, p. 21. On the prohibition of imported playing cards in Venice, see Favaro,
Larte dei pittori in Venezia e i suoi statuti, p. 75, and Matthew, Working Abroad, p. 6169,
esp. p. 65.
46. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice; Tichy, Et vene la mumaria; Fenlon, The
Ceremonial City.
47. Regarding the leather gilders, see Favaro, Larte dei pittori in Venezia e i suoi statuti,
p. 75. See now also Tiozzo, Cuoi dipinti a Venezia: La Carit, pp. 5161, 7274.
48. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 686. See also Matthew, Focus on the Art-
ist and the Middleman, pp. 1316, and Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che
bisognino torre a Vinetia, p. 249.
329
CLIENTELE OUTSIDE OF VENICE
The lavish use of pigments typical for Venetian artists like Titian or
Tintoretto clearly bespeaks those artists advantage of location in the cen-
ter of the European pigment trade.
49
However, even painters and cus-
tomers from outside turned to Venice to procure high-quality artists pig-
ments for special commissions. Let us just review some famous instances
of the sixteenth century.
50

Looking forward to the decoration of Cardinal Piccolominis library
in Siena, Pinturicchio was, in 1502, assured of an advance of two hundred
gold ducats to buy gold and pigments in Venice. In 1508, Fra Bartolomeo
purchased azzurro for an altarpiece, first via a confrre from Murano,
then with the aid of the sculptor Baccio da Montelupo.
51
A decade later,
Raphael asked a garzone (possibly Battista Dossi) to find pigments in Ven-
ice.
52
Dosso Dossi had ordered Venetian azuro sent to Ferrara in 1515;
53

in 1541, he bought pigments in Venice with his brother Battista in order
to paint a theater set for Laura Dianti.
54
Zanolin de Muran was men-
tioned in 1527 in the context of the frescos of the Castello del Buoncon-
siglio in Trent.
55
Three years later, Parmigianino traveled to Venice to
purchase colors, and Girolamo Genga ordered material there for his work
in the Villa Imperiale near Pesaro.
56
Between 1526 and 1539, Federico II
Gonzaga regularly advised his Venetian ambassador to buy, with the help
49. For the lavish use of pigments by Lotto, Titian, and Tintoretto, see Bensi, Per larte,
pp. 63111, esp. pp. 9193 (pentimenti in paintings by Lotto); Lucas and Plesters, Titians
Bacchus and Ariadne, pp. 2547, esp. p. 43; Lazzarini, Il colore nei pittori veneziani,
pp. 137, 142; Lazzarini, Note su alcune opere, pp. 378384, esp. pp. 378379; Bortolaso,
Note su alcune opere comprese tra il 1542 e il 1576, pp. 385387, esp. p. 386; Lazzarini,
Indagini scientifiche, pp. 345352, esp. pp. 347348, 350; Plesters and Lazzarini, Pre-
liminary Observations on Tintoretto, p. 25; Plesters and Lazzarini, The examination
of the Tintorettos, pp. 8493, esp. pp. 8990; Plesters and Lazzarini, I materiali e la tech-
nica dei Tintoretto, pp. 275280, esp. p. 278.
50. For the following examples, see, if not otherwise indicated, Gage, Kulturgeschichte
der Farbe, pp. 129, 131, 287, n. 66, with further literature.
51. Kubersky-Piredda, Kunst und Markt, p. 131.
52. Golzio, Raffaello nei documenti, pp. 7576.
53. Gibbons, Dosso and Battista Dossi, p. 276, no. 9.
54. Ibid., p. 288, no. 176. For Dossos use of Venetian pigments, see also Matthew, Ven-
decolori a Venezia, p. 680, n. 2. Laura Diantis love of Venetian color is echoed in the dress
of the Moor accompanying her in Titians famous portrait (Kreuzlingen, Kisters collection).
55. Bensi, Per larte, p. 106, n. 45.
56. Ibid., p. 103, n. 32 (with further literature).
of Titian, pigments and brushes for Giulio Romano and his assistants.
57

The Bassano workshop and Lorenzo Lotto have left detailed accounts of
their numerous purchases of pigments in Venice, together covering the
two decades between 1523 and 1543.
58
Comparable documents concern
purchases of pigments and brushes for the Spanish court (most notably
for a copy of the Ghent Altarpiece executed by Michiel Coxcie and for
Federico Zuccaris work in San Lorenzo de El Escorial).
59
In the cases
of the Spanish court commissions, Titian (from 1561 at the latest), Ora-
zio Vecellio (in 15711572), and Tintoretto (in 1577) served as agents
between the Hapsburgs and the Venetian pigment sellers.
60
The Medici
court purchased significant amounts of pigments for the 1565 wedding
of Grand Duke Francesco I de Medici to Joanna of Austria, and in 1580
the Patriarch of Aquileia, Giovanni Grimani, asked Tintoretto to obtain
pigments and gold leaf for the Vatican.
61
Like Titian and his workshop
earlier, Jacopo received criticism concerning the quality of the materials
delivered.
62
Particularly interesting is an order of high-quality blue pig-
ments placed in 1586 from Spain by Federico Zuccari, because prices
and labeled pigment samples from that transaction have been preserved.
63
57. Ferrari, ed., Giulio Romano, vol. 1, pp. 146, 275, 278, 280281, 476, 595600, 646
647, vol. 2, pp. 726, 730, 750751, 753754, 828829.
58. Muraro, ed., Il Libro Secondo di Francesco e Jacopo dal Ponte, pp. 60, 151, 159, 187,
205, 216217, 222223; Lotto, Il Libro di spese diverse, pp. 170171, 233, 246247, 252253.
See also Bensi, Per larte, pp. 7576.
59. For Coxcies copying of the Ghent Altarpiece, see Van Mander, Das Leben der nie-
derlndischen und deutschen Maler, p. 29; Gage, Kulturgeschichte der Farbe, p. 287, n. 66; Saur
allgemeines Knstlerlexikon, vol. 22, p. 90. The copies of the altarpiece were made, according
to G. Seeligs article in the last-mentioned text, between 1557 and 1559 at the behest of Philip
II and are now dispersed in the museums of Berlin, Munich, Brussels and Saragossa.
60. For the roles of these three artists as agents, see Mancini, I colori della bottega.
For Titian, see pp. 163164; for Orazio Vecellio, see pp. 165, 177; and for Tintoretto, see pp.
168, 178. The date of the purchase of pigments realized by Jernimo Snchez with Tintorettos
help is disputed. A letter from Don Diego Guzmn de Silva (Spanish ambassador to Venice)
to Philip II immediately preceding the purchase has been dated to 1573 by L. Ferrarino. With
reference to the original document, Mancini (p. 167) gives 1577 as the correct date. Unfortu-
nately, he ignores Mulcahy, En la sombra de Alonso Snchez Coello, pp. 304309, esp. p.
306, who dates the purchase to the year 1575.
61. Julia DeLancey called my attention to the purchase of pigments by the Medici. For the
commission of the Patriarch, see Paschini, Il mecenatismo artistico del Patriarca Giovanni
Grimani, vol. 3, pp. 851862, esp. p. 855.
62. Mulcahy, En la sombra de Alonso Snchez Coello, p. 306; Mancini, I colori della
bottega, pp. 165, 167.
63. Bruquetas Galn and Presa Cuesta, Estudio de algunos materiales pictricos,
pp. 163176, passim.
331
FUTURE RESEARCH
Two closely linked tasks of future research are the identification and clas-
sification of the materials and substances mentioned in the manuscript
sources.
64
The main difficulty lies in a kind of twofold semantic diffu-
sion, different names having been used for the same substance and dif-
ferent substances having been given the same name. Unused pigments
are rarely preserved, and the pigments found in Renaissance paintings
have often changed through interaction with one another or influences
of climate, atmospheric pollutants, and light.
65
Thus, sometimes new sub-
stances even come into being that can erroneously be taken for histori-
cal pigments.
66
Similar difficulties are to be encountered in manuscript
sources: Even recipes can lie about the pigments in existence and in use.
67

A major challenge that remains is the link between archival study and
technological research. For Venetian Renaissance painting, this was first
tried in 19831985 by Paolo Bensi with regard to Lorenzo Lotto, then
again by Andreas Burmester and Christoph Krekel on the occasion of a
small but highly interesting Tintoretto exhibition in Munich in 2000.
68

Currently, Louisa Matthew, Barbara Berrie, and Marika Spring are revis-
ing our knowledge of Venetian artistic technique by reexamining paint-
ings and decorative art in the light of recent archival findings.
69

Unfortunately, the four known inventoriesof Domenico de Gardig-
nano (1534), Matteo dai colori (1556), Francesco di Bartolomeo (1586),
and Jacopo de Benedetti (1594)do not contain prices. Lottos libro di
spese and the account book of the Bassano workshop help us in gaining
64. See now Kuehni and Schwarz, Color Ordered.
65. See Lazzarini, Il colore nei pittori veneziani, for illustrations of color bins pre-
served from the second half of the sixteenth century. Regarding changes in colorants over time,
see Kirby, Saunders, and Cupitt, Colorants and Colour Change, pp. 6571; van Eikema
Hommes, Painters Methods to Prevent Colour Changes, pp. 91131.
66. van den Berg et al., On Copper Green Glazes in Paintings, pp. 1821.
67. See the Paradigms and Pigment Recipes series of articles in Zeitschrift fr Kunst-
technologie und Konservierung by Bucklow: Vermilion, Synthetic Yellows and the Nature
of Egg, no. 13, 1999, pp. 140149; Natural Ultramarine, no. 14, 2000, pp. 514; Silver
and Mercury Blues, no. 15, 2001, pp. 2533.
68. Bensi, Per larte; Burmester and Krekel, Azurri oltramarini, lacche et altri
colori fini.
69. Louisa Matthew is with Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.; Barbara Berrie is with the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and Marika Spring is with the National Gallery of
Art, London. For a survey of their recent research, see Goho, Venetian Grinds.
an approximate idea of the values, but we are far from reconstructing
prices for the numerous varieties of pigments mentioned in the invento-
ries, not to speak of the highly heterogeneous currencies and weight sys-
tems in early modern Europe that make an analysis of the international
trade in pigments extremely difficult.
70
Naturally, the choices of pigments
change, as do their prices over the course of a century. Thus it might be
rewarding to compare the known inventories with regard to the histories
of taste and of trading routes.
Some questions remain to be answered concerning the pigment sell-
ers themselves. How long did they prosper in Venice?
71
How much capi-
tal did they have to invest and what risks did they take? Where exactly
were the bounderies between wholesale trade, retailer, manufacturer, and
refinement industry?
72
Specialized producers of mercuric chloride (soli-
mato), cinnabar, and lead white are known.
73
But who, for instance, made
the vernice liquida and the brushes from quail feathers in Benedettis
inventory? As a unique item, the tela pegna (a seized and therefore
likely painted canvas) in Benedettis inventory opens up a new horizon,
as it reminds us that pigment sellers would become art dealers in the fol-
lowing centuries.
Only recently, Tristan Weddigen convincingly identified Titians
so-called Antonio Palma as a portrait of the already mentioned pigment
merchant Alvise dalla Scala (1515c. 1588), memorializing his election
70. For a first attempt, see Kirby, The price of quality. For the analysis of German apoth-
ecaries price lists, see Krekel and Burmester, Das Mnchner Taxenprojekt, pp. 450455.
See also Lapucci, Contributo alla conoscenza della storia, pp. 3240, where a comparative
pigment price list for Modena and Venice of 1688 is analyzed.
71. The profession certainly continued to exist in the seicento, but it seems as if by the end
of the eighteenth century, the sale of pigments had (at least partially) returned to the hands of
the spezieri da grosso. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 686. Julia DeLancey discovered
a document from 1660 that lists more than forty shops, and a large inventory for Carlo Piattis
shop at the sign of the Two Angels from 1678 that charts a thriving business. (E-mail to the
author, 4 May 2010). See Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a
Vinetia, p. 252, n. 49).
72. Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 680, n. 9.
73. For mercuric chloride, see Krischel, Inventory of the Venetian Vendecolori Jacopo
de Benedetti, pp. 258259; Matthew and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre
a Vinetia, p. 246. For cinnabar, see Krischel, Zur Geschichte des venezianischen Pigmen-
thandels, p. 103. For lead white, see Matthew, Vendecolori a Venezia, p. 681; Matthew
and Berrie, Memoria di colori che bisognino torre a Vinetia, p. 247; Berrie and Mat-
thew, Venice white.
ROLAND KRISCHEL 332
as degano di mezzanno at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in 1561.
74

(Fig. 1) This stately portrait is another proof of the relatively high social
rank of at least some representatives of this profession. Above the color
box standing on the window shelf, Titian painted a marvelous sunset as
background. One is tempted to call this conspicuous transformation of
pure pigment into pure atmosphere a transubstantiation of the painters
material. Given Venices long and rich Byzantine tradition (represented
above all by the mosaics of San Marco), it is not amazing that colors
here gained a spiritual dimension going well beyond the usual religious
iconography. In this context, Tintorettos confession to preferring black
and white to all other colors has yet to be interpreted.
75
This platonic (or
perhaps Erasmian?) choice corresponds to the arte povera he practiced
in his later years, especially in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.
76
At the
same time, it appears as a conscious and even repentant renouncement of
all the professional advantages his native city could offer as an emporium
of the luxury tradeincluding that of pigments.
77

74. For the short version, Weber and Weddigen, Tizians Bildnis des Farbenhndlers
Alvise dalla Scala, pp. 5865; for an extended version by the same authors, see Alchemie der
Farben, pp. 4659.
75. Ridolfi, Le maraviglie dellarte, vol. 2, p. 68: Dimandato quali fossero i pi belli
colori, disse il nero ed il bianco, perche luno dava forza alle figure profondando le ombre,
laltro il rilievo.
76. For the inf luence of Platos criticism of color, see Hills, Venetian Colour, pp. 166
167. For Erasmuss commentaries on Drers use of black-and-white and the possible inf luence
on the choice of colors in book 6 of the Florentine Codex, see Magaloni Kerpel, Painters of
the New World, in this volume. For a broader context, see Seidel Menchi, Erasmo in Italia
15201580.
77. For the moralizing and downright eschatological climate taking hold of Venetian soci-
ety during and after the catastrophes of the late 1560s and the early to mid-1570s, see Paul,
Identit e alterit nella pittura veneziana, pp. 155187. For the reinforcement of the Inquisi-
tion in Venice during the same period, see Martin, Venices Hidden Enemies, pp. 181228. In
Venetian art theory, a skeptical attitude toward the mere material beauty of colors is articulated
as early as 1548. See Pino, Dialogo di Pittura, pp. 95139, esp. pp. 108, 118.
There are only three extensively illustrated manuscripts known from early
colonial Peru. Spanish monk Martn de Mura (d. 1618) authored two of
them, and Andean Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala (c. 1535after 1616)
authored the other. This historical condition is radically different from
the cultural world in which Bernardino de Sahagn created his various
manuscripts, especially the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaa,
also known as the Florentine Codex. Just from the sixteenth century, there
are more than a thousand extant illustrated documents that were created
in New Spain. Production there began almost immediately after the Con-
quest, building upon and mixing two distinct but compatible traditions.
Thus, by the time Sahagns Historia general was seized under the express
instruction of the Spanish Crown, there was already an established new,
colonial tradition that found expression in both the metropolitan areas
and remote communities of Mesoamerica. Moreover, these image/texts
were produced by Mexicans, Spaniards, and all groups in betweencrio-
llo, mestizo, and so on. These documents crossed all genre boundaries
and mixed Mexican and European forms, styles, and materials. They
also appeared in a multitude of religious, legal, historical, and economic
sociopolitical contexts.
1

* This phrase is in reference to the title of a Mavis Staples song on her album Well Never
Turn Back, produced by Ry Cooder. The song bears witness to the tragic inhumanity of the
New Orleans f lood.
1. Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black; Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of
the Early Colonial Period; Gruzinski, Conquest of Mexico.
I Saw It with My Own Eyes:
*
The Three Illustrated Manuscripts
of Colonial Peru
THOMAS CUMMI NS
Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Fig. 1a. Portrait of Manco Capac. Martn de Mura, Historia del origen
y genealoga real de los reyes del Piru: De sus hechos, costumbres, trajes,
maneras de gobierno, 15901600. Detail, fol. 9v. Private Collection, Dublin.
Fig. 1b. Portrait of Manco Capac. Martn de Mura, Historia de los Incas
del Peru, 1616. J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XIII, fol. 21v.
Fig. 1c. Portrait of Manco Capac. Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala,
Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, 1615, p. 122. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige
Bibliotek, Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4.
THOMAS CUMMI NS 336 THE THREE I LLUSTRATED MANUSCRI PTS
OF COLONI AL PERU
337
In Peru, there was no such enthusiasm for illustrated texts, espe-
cially within Andean communities.
2
This difference is rooted in the dis-
tinct visual traditions of each area.
3
The three Peruvian manuscripts are
anomalies by any reckoning, and the unique nature of these anomalies is
made clear by the fact that all three Peruvian manuscripts are intimately
related, in much the same way that Sahagns Primeros memoriales and
his Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaa are related.
Among other connections, the earliest Andean manuscript served
as initial draft of the later two, and there was collaboration between a
friar and natives. Moreover, these Mexican and Andean manuscripts give
accounts and images of the histories of the Inca and Aztecs, as well as
of early colonial events and people. In the Historia general de las cosas
de Nueva Espaa, the colonial history only extends to the conquest of
Tenochtitlan, whereas the Andean manuscripts go beyond the cataclys-
mic events of the conquest and offer an account of the state of affairs of
the viceroyalty of Peru almost up to the time of the manuscripts comple-
tion. It is fitting, then, that the manuscripts of Martn de Mura and
Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala be thought of and interpreted alongside
the work of Bernadino de Sahagn, especially his Historia general de las
cosas de Nueva Espaa. In this short essay, I will describe briefly the
relationships among the three Peruvian manuscripts and then suggest the
main concerns that stand behind the use of illustrations, focusing on just
a few images and texts.
Produced approximately between the years 1589 and 1616, the three
Andean manuscripts are very similar in their structures. All three manu-
scripts essentially begin with Inca history and with the dynastic portraits
of the Inca kings (Manco Capac; Figs. 1ac), and their queens (Coya;
Figs. 2ac). The earliest of the three manuscripts is authored and illus-
trated in part by Martn de Mura, a Basque Mercedarian friar. This
manuscript is entitled Historia del origen y genealoga real de los reyes
ingas del Per, de sus hechos, costumbres, trajes y manera de gobierno, and
it is known as the Galvin Mura after its present owner, Sean Galvin. It
was begun sometime before 1590, and as we shall see, Mura continued
to work on it until perhaps as late as 1615. Martn de Mura also authored
2. There is no indication in sixteenth- or seventeenth-century sources that there were any
lost or destroyed manuscripts that were extensively illustrated.
3. Cummins, Representation in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 189219.
Fig. 2a. Portrait of Mama Cura Coya. Mura, Historia del origen y
genealoga real. Detail, fol. 9v. Private Collection, Dublin.
Fig. 2b. Portrait of Chympo Coya. Mura, Historia de los Incas. J. Paul
Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XIII, fol. 25v.
Fig. 2c. Portrait of Coya Chimbo. Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala,
Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, 1615, p. 122. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige
OF COLONI AL PERU
339
manuscript illustrations produced in Peru. Even so, the approximately 550
Andean manuscript images are dwarfed in number by the wealth of illus-
trations in Sahagns Historia general de las cosas de Nueva Espaa alone.
This comparison suggests the tremendous disparity of manuscript illustra-
tion between the great viceroyalties of the Americas.
None of these Peruvian manuscripts had any repercussions either as
text or image in the history of the early modern world, even though that
was the stated intention of the authors.
7
The works lay virtually unstud-
ied until the twentieth century, when they were rediscovered by different
scholars. Then, of course, they did have a major impact and there has
arisen something of a cottage industry concerning one of them, Guamn
Pomas Nueva cornica y buen gobierno. This is a manuscript of a thou-
sand pages, almost a third of which contain pen-and-ink images, written
and drawn by a native Andean and addressed to the king of Spain, Philip
III. The black-and-white drawings are sometimes verbally augmented by
the mention of colors, primarily in the context of the description of gar-
ments. As I noted some seventeen years ago, these descriptions are not
based on some lost Inca tradition of portraiture, as has been suggested
by many scholars, but on the manuscripts created by Martn de Mura.
8

The two Mura manuscripts have, until very recently, barely been
discussed, and they were most often treated as a kind of embarrassment
because they cast questions as to just how original and unique Guamn
Pomas manuscript is.
9
Since 2004, when Juan Ossio first made available
the earlier of the two Mura manuscripts, the Galvin Mura, through a
facsimile and then by securing the loan of the manuscript to the Getty
Museum in 2008, we have been able to establish how Guamn Pomas
decision to write and illustrate his manuscript was dependant on Muras
7. See Adorno, Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru; Cummins,
Uncomfortable Image, pp. 4659. This is very different from the reception of Mexican
manuscripts such as the Codex Mendoza or the Codex Magliabechiano held in the Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale, Florence. The former was read at the French court and annotated by the
kings cosmographer, Andr de Thvet (15601590), and the latter was consulted and used as a
source for the title-page illustrations of the Historia general by Antonio Herrera, royal historian
at the court of Phillip III.
8. Anderson and Cummins, Introduction, Getty Mura.
9. For the nearly total neglect and disregard for Muras manuscripts until Juan Ossios
tireless investigations that culminated in their facsimile publications and the first international
symposium at the Newberry Library in 2002, see Anderson and Cummins, Introduction,
in Getty Mura.
and illustrated the second manuscript, entitled Historia general del Piru.
It is known as the Getty Mura, since it is now part of the Getty Museum
manuscript collection. Begun in Peru and finished in 1616 in Spain, the
Getty Mura is, in fact, a highly reformulated version of the first manu-
script, the Galvin Mura.
4
The third manuscript is the Nueva cornica y
buen gobierno, whose author and illustrator was Felipe Guamn Poma de
Ayala.
5
A self-proclaimed Andean lord who worked for Martn de Mura
on his first manuscript (the Galvin), Guamn Poma created a number
of the images in that manuscript, as well as commentaries. However, by
the time he composed the Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, Guamn
Poma had become extremely antagonistic toward Mura, the evidence
for which I will discuss below. Completed in 1615, the Nueva cornica
was sent to Philip III in Madrid with the hope that it, too, would be pub-
lished, and just as it arrived in Spain, Mura was preparing his second
manuscript, Historia general del Piru, for publication.
6

Together, the three manuscripts represent almost the entire corpus of
pictorial images of the history of the Inca and the early colonial period.
There are 113 watercolor images in the Galvin Mura manuscript, while
the Getty Mura manuscript contains 38 watercolor drawings; however, it
is clear that the latter was intended to have many more, but it was never
finished. Guamn Pomas manuscript has 399 pen-and-ink drawings. We
could add, perhaps, ten to fifteen other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
4. Mura, Historia del origen y genealoga real de los reyes ingas del Per 1590; Mura,
Historia general del Piru 1616. There are four folios with images and text taken from the Galvin
Mura and placed in the Getty Mura. They have been placed in the Getty Mura by past-
ing them onto blank folios. This is a technique that was first used in the Galvin manuscript.
Although the folios that have been pasted onto blank folios in both the Getty and the Galvin
manuscripts all come from the Galvin manuscript, these transfers were not done at the same
time. This is to say, the folios pasted into the Getty manuscript were taken intact from the
Galvin manuscript and then pasted into the Getty manuscript, rather than having been pasted
into the Galvin manuscript and then removed.
5. Guamn Poma De Ayala, Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, 1615.
6. For a history of the Nueva cornica manuscript, see Adorno, Guaman Poma and His
Illustrated Chronicle from Colonial Peru, and A Witness unto Itself, pp. 796, as well as
Adorno and Boserup, New Studies of the Autograph Manuscript. For a history of the Mura
manuscripts, see Ossio, Introduccin, in Cdice Mura, pp. 772, to which all subsequent
accounts are deeply indebted. See, for example, Adorno and Boserup, Guaman Poma and
the Manuscripts of Fray Martn de Mura, pp. 107258; Anderson and Cummins, Introduc-
tion, in the Getty Mura. For discussions of the relationships among all three manuscripts
and the importance of Martn de Mura, see Cummins, Guaman Poma de Ayala and Martn
de Mrua and Images Fit for Kings. Regarding the Historia general del Piru, see Adorno,
Censorship and Approbation in Muras Historia General del Peru, pp. 95124.
OF COLONI AL PERU
341
first manuscript, in the creation of which Guamn Poma participated.
10

This dependence on Muras work is, however, clearly and intentionally
obfuscated by Guamn Poma. He never mentions having worked on the
Galvin Mura manuscript, and he takes full creative and intellectual
authorship for the Nueva cornica y buen gobierno. Guamn Pomas pre-
varication does not arise only in his claims about himself as author or
from his silence about having worked for Martn de Mura on the Gal-
vin manuscript. Rather, he goes out of his way textually and visually to
defame Mura. Among other derogatory claims, he writes that Mura
was a failed historian as well as a lecherous and cruel man, who tried to
seduce Guamn Pomas wife.
11
He even draws a portrait of the friar stand-
10. See Cummins, Images Fit for Kings; Ossio, Introduccin, in Cdice Mura, pp.
772.
11. Regarding Muras failure as a historian, Guamn Poma claims, Y escriui otro libro
fray Martn de Mora de la horden de Nuestra Seora de las Merzedes de Redencin de
ing behind and beating an elderly Andean woman in the act of weav-
ing (Fig. 3). Because we have no real knowledge about Muras pastoral
conduct, Guamn Pomas pictorial and textual defamation of the mans
character has often been taken at face value. What is significant, however,
is that we now know that Mura was an extremely innovative historian
and illustrator to whom Guamn Poma was profoundly in debt. Guamn
Poma copied him both visually and textually, sometimes almost verbatim,
so that he had real reason to cast aspersions of the most deprecating kind
on Muraaspersions that went far beyond personal animus. It is Mura,
however, who as both artist and author created the first known extensively
illustrated manuscript of colonial Peru.
12
It is demonstrable that Mura
painted some of the images in the Galvin manuscript and all but four of
those in the Getty manuscript, so he was not only the written inspiration
for Guamn Pomas work but the pictorial one as well.
13

In fact, Guamn Poma uses some of Muras images from the Galvin
manuscript as direct sources for several of his black-and-white drawings.
For example, in his portraits of the Incas in the Nueva cornica (see Figs.
1a, b and 2ac), he has not only copied Muras images (some of which
Guamn Poma had completed for him), but as already mentioned, he
refers in his text to the colors of the Mura images to supplement his
black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings.
14
Furthermore, Guamn Poma
reinterprets some of Muras images. The most significant example is
Cautibos; escriui de la historia de los Yngas. Comens a escriuir y no acab para mejor dezir
ni comens ni acab porque no deglara de dnde prosedi el (Guamn Poma De Ayala,
Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, 1615, p. 1080 [1090]). As for his allegations of lechery: mes-
tizos y mulatos y criollos, espaoles como en mi presencia los maltrata a los yndios. Mira,
cristiano, todo a m se me a hecho, hasta quererme quitar mi muger un f layre merzenario
llamado Mora en el pueblo de Yanaca, estos dichos agrauios y daos y males. Y no quieren
uer a yndios ladinos cristianos hablando en castilla; se le espanta y me manda echar luego de
los dichos pueblos. Todo pretende que fueran bobos, asnos para acauallo de quitalle quanto
tiene, hazienda, muger e hija. (Guamn Poma De Ayala, Nueva cornica y buen gobierno,
1615, p. 906 [920]).
12. Using negative evidence, Rolena Adorno and Ivan Boserup have twice claimed that
Mura produced an even earlier version that had no illustrations. Adorno and Boserup,
Guaman Poma and the Manuscripts of Fray Martn de Mura, and The making of Muruas
Historia general de Per, p. 766. Speaking from Ossios and my own actual examination of
the Galvin manuscript, we can now say that this claim is demonstrably false and unfortunately
misleading about the nature of Muras work. See Cummins and Ossio, Muchas veces dud
Real Mag. aeptar esta dicha ympressa.
13. Cummins, Dibujado de mi mano.
14. Regarding Guamn Pomas completion of the Mura drawings, see Ibid.
Fig. 3. Mercedarian friar Mura. Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica,
p. 661. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4.
OF COLONI AL PERU
343
they do in the Mura illustration; they are allegorical figures that stand
for the ethnogeographic composition of the Inca empire. Each of the four
figures wears the identifying headdress of one of the four regions, or suyu,
of Tahauntinsuyu. This is the Quechua term for the Inca empire, and it
means, more or less, place of four parts. These figures, therefore, liter-
ally embody the empire as a whole, in relation to its parts. The central
Inca, dressed in the tocapu tunic, is the centripetal force of Tahuantin-
suyu, around which the four parts are relationally organized.
15
This is a
richly complex image representing the nature of the Inca empire, and it is
used to close the precolonial section of the Nueva cornica y buen gobierno.
The next image repeats Muras composition; however, the portrait
of Guamn Poma himself is now the central figure, and he is dressed
in a combination of Andean and Spanish clothes. Above him is written
Pregunta el autor (the author asks). The Inca figure with the tocapu
tunic now stands to the side and addresses the figure of Guamn Poma
through hand gestures. The intention of this scene, among other things,
is to manifest visually the transmission of knowledge from an era before
writing to the colonial era of writing in which Guamn Poma, as author,
is the embodiment of that transmission. In the text that follows, Guamn
Poma writes that he has conveyed this precolonial history to his reader by
consulting both the stories recounted by the ancients and the accounts
kept by the khipucamayoc (record-keepers) on their khipu, Inca knotted-
cord devices for storing and retrieving information. The replication of
the composition creates a sense of continuity as the collective body of
knowledge of the Inca passes to the individual body of Guamn Poma,
who writes it down as author.
The relationship of the three images by Mura and Guamn Poma
offers a privileged entrance into the critical question of why these two
authors and artists make extensive recourse to images of Peru while no
one else does. At first glance, Mura seems to be responding, at least in
part, to the cultural politics of the powerful viceroy Francisco de Toledo,
who in the 1570s commissioned both a written history critical of the Inca
and a series of canvas paintings depicting Inca royal figures and historical
events, to be sent to King Philip II.
16
This historical precedent is insuffi-
cient, however, to explain the extensive use of images in the manuscripts,
15. Cummins, Queros, Aquillas, Uncus, and Chulpas, pp. 266309.
16. Cummins, La fbula y el retrato, pp. 141; Cummins, Dibujado de mi mano.
Fig. 4. All the Inca leaders of the kingdom. Mura, Historia del origen y
genealoga real. Fol. 21v. Private Collection, Dublin.
his use of Muras unfinished composition on folio 21v, entitled Todas
los primeres Incas de este reyno. Mura conflates all of the Inca kings
into a single space and time, which is the culminating point of the royal
Inca portraits of kings (Fig. 4). Guamn Poma copies this composition
twice and he, too, uses it at a critical juncture in his manuscriptthe
cataclysmic narrative moment when the history of the Inca concludes
and the liminal narrative time/space before the history of the Conquest
begins (Figs. 5a, b). In ordering the drawings sequentially, he reinter-
prets Muras original composition so that the first image allegorically
manifests Andean concepts of the nature of the Inca empire and then the
nature of the transmission of knowledge about it. This pen-and-ink draw-
ing is closest to the original Mura source, in that a central Inca figure is
depicted frontally and fully in the foreground, dressed in an uncu (tunic)
with a field of tocapu-like designs (discrete geometric abstract motifs). A
closely pressed cluster of standing figures surrounds the central Inca. The
four figures standing directly behind him are distinguished by individual
dress and adornment. These figures do not represent Inca ancestors as
OF COLONI AL PERU
345
things that are recounted in this book which therefore seems important to
point out that almost everything that is treated here concerning ancient
Peru is taken from the elders and the oldest khipucamayocs, accountants
of this realm who record [their histories] in the khipus and their remem-
brances [new ink and added later] therefore they dont lack a history as we
will discuss presently.
18

18. muchos de los q no han estado en este Reyno del piru ven las yndias no han visto esta
tierra ni aber tradado con indios an de dudar muchas cosas q en este libro se dizen de los quales
me parecio bien advertir los donde casi trata de todas las cosas de estas yndias citando los viejo
y antiguos quipucamacyocs contadores deste dicho reyno donde tratan dellos en sus quipus
y memorias [new ink and added later] sin que falte una historia como diremos a su tiempo.
Mura, Historia general del Piru 1616, fol. 66v.
although portraits commissioned by Toledo and the images in the manu-
scripts must be seen as related, at the very least, by intention. That is,
Toledo, Mura, and Guamn Poma all address the king in the desire that
he may find the images of value and pleasure. More importantly, we can
surmise that the pictorial use for all three men had an evidentiary status.
17

Both Mura and Guamn Poma state how difficult it is to convey the
history that each places before his reader, who in each case is understood
to be the king of Spain, either Philip II or Philip III. That is, how can the
manuscripts bridge the chasm between the forms of Andean knowledge
and those of European knowledge so as to convey faithfully and accu-
rately what the authors claim to have experienced? Guamn Pomas use
of Muras composition at the critical narrative juncture of his manuscript
is one attempt. It is meant to manifest visually the transformation from
the one (Inca collective knowledge) to the other (the authorial knowledge
of Guamn Poma). This conscious and continuously articulated process
of translation and transition is deeply embedded in the creation of these
manuscripts, and therefore it is important to describe and analyze this as a
concern that is structurally embedded in the texts and images at a variety
of levels.
Two folio pages, one from the Galvin Mrua and the other from
Guamn Poma Nueva cornica, are each emphatic about establishing
the credibility of what is presented to the viewer and reader through the
authors own experience and the Andean techniques of recording and dis-
seminating knowledge. The first, folio 66v from the Galvin manuscript,
illustrates the history of building by the Inca king Huayna Capac in the
area of Lake Titicaca (Fig. 6). The scale of the image is unique in the
manuscript. A gigantic figure of the Inca king sits on a tiana (seat of
authority) in the foreground. He dwarfs both the buildings behind and
the tiny figure seated on the ground before him. A passage has been
added later at the top:
many of those who have not been in this Kingdom of Peru see the Indies
[sic] nor have seen this land nor dealt with the Indians are apt to doubt many
17. The paintings commissioned by Francisco de Toledo were displayed before two audi-
ences, one Inca and one Spanish, in order to verify their truthfulness and accuracy. Their
testimonial nature was further on display when one of the paintings was used as evidence in a
trial in Spain. See Dorta, Las pinturas que envoi y trajo a Espaa don Francisco de Toledo,
pp. 6775.
Fig. 5a. Royal council of these kingdoms, Qhapaq Inka Tawantin Suyu
kamachikuq apukuna, the Inka lords who govern Tawantinsuyu. Guamn
Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica, p. 364 [366]. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige
Fig. 5b. The author asks. Guamn Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica, p. 366
[368]. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4.
OF COLONI AL PERU
347
We shall return to this letter below. The questions for now are these:
Why is it so hard to begin such a history and why is it necessary to illus-
trate it? Are the authors remarks simply false modesty before the reader
and viewer? I think not. Their anxieties arise from historical precedent
and the issue of commensurability between an indigenous system of rep-
resentation and a European one. They worry about the accuracy of the
knowledge they convey and how it has been conveyed from the Andean
sources to the texts that they have written. It is clear that the concerns
expressed in both texts are about an epistemological basis for Inca history,
a primary concern being that because the Inca lacked writing of any kind,
the very existence of history was in question.
It is again important, therefore, to look at the precedents for the three
illustrated manuscripts, the commissions from Francisco de Toledo to
record Inca history. Not only did he have the paintings of the Inca made
and sent to Philip II, but he also commissioned Pedro Sarmiento de Gam-
boa to write the three-part Historia general of the viceroyalty of Peru, of
A similar sentiment about the nature of Inca historical recording and
transmission is found in Guamn Pomas opening address to the king:
Letter of the Author
Letter from Don Felipe Guamn Poma de Ayala to his majesty, to King
Philip
Many times I have doubted, your Sacred Royal Catholic Majesty, accepting
this enterprise, and many more times after having stated it I have wished
to give up, judging my intentions to be foolish and not finding the where-
withal in my abilities to finish it in accordance with the manner that is
owed a history without any form of writing, but rather [recorded] by khipus
and the remembrances and stories of the oldest and wisest Indians, eyewit-
nesses, who swear to them so that any sentence [written here] is truthful.
And thus I spent many days and untold years listening to many discourses
that go back to the beginning of this kingdom.
19

19. CARTA DEL AVTOR:/ CARTA DE DOn/ Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala a su
Magestad, al rrey Phelipo:
Muchas ueses dude S[acra] C[atlica] R[eal] M[agestad], azeptar esta dicha yn[-]/ presa
y muchas mas despues de auerla comen[-]/sado me quise bolber atras, jusgando por te[-]/
meraria mi entencion, no hallando supge[-]/to en mi facultad para acauarla conforme/ a la que
se deua a unas historias cin escrip[-]/tura nenguna, no mas de por los quipos y me[-]/morias
y rrelaciones de los yn[di]o[s] antigos/ de muy biejos y biejas sabios testigos de uista/ para
q[ue] d fe de ellos y que ualga por ello/ qualquier sentencia jusgada y ac, cologado de/ de
[sic] uarios descursos, pas muchos das y aos yn[-]/determinando hasta que uencido de m y
tan[-]/tos aos, comienso deste rreyno, acabo de tan anti[-]/go deseo, que fue cienpre buscar
en la rudeza de/ mi engenio y ciegos ojos y poco uer y poco sauer/ y no ser letrado ni dotor ni
lesenciado ni latino/ como el primero deste rreyno con alguna o[-]/cacin con que poder seruir
a vuestra Mag[esta]d me de[-]/termin de escriuir la historia y desenden[-]/cia y los famosos
hechos de los primeros rreys/ y seores y capitanes nuestros agelos y des/ prencipales y uida
de yndios y sus generaciones y/ desendencia desde el primero yndio llamado/ Uira Cocha Runa
Uari Runa que desendi de No del/ [di]luuio Uari Runa, y de Puron Runa y de Auca Ru[-]/
na y de los doze Yngas y de sus ydlatras y herro/ na y de sus mugeres rreynas coyas y nustas
prense[-]/sas pallas seoras cuaraca uarme prencipalas y / de los capitanes generales, cincheco-
nas, y de los duques/ y condes, marqueses capac apoconas y demas yn[di]os/ mandoncillos
y de la contradicion del Ynga lexi[-]/timo Topa Cuci Gualpa Uascar Yngacon su erma[-]/
no uastardo Atagualpa Ynga y de su capitan/ general y mayor Chalco Chima Ynga Aua Panti/
YngaQuis Quis Yngaquizo Yupanq[ue] Ynga, Ma[n][-]/go Ynga q[ue] se defendio de los
daos de los espaoles/ en tienpo del enperadory despues de la conqui[-]/sta deste buestro
rreyno de las yndias del piru y del/ alsamiento contra uuestra corona rreal don Francisco Pi[-]/
zarro y don Diego de Almagro y Gonzalo Pizarro/ Caruaxal y Francisco Hernandes Girn con
los de[-]/mas capitanes y soldadosy del primero bueso/ bizorreyBlasco Nues Uelay del
uirrey don An[-]/tonio de Mendoza del auito de Sanctiago, y del/ uirrey don Andres marqus
de Caetedel ui[-]/rrey don Francisco de Toledo y del uirrey don Mar[-]/tin Anrriques y
Fig. 6. Huayna Capac and Tiahuanco. Mura, Historia del origen y
OF COLONI AL PERU
349
Sarmiento de Gamboa voices the same concern as both Mrua and
Guamn Poma. And why in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth cen-
turies should this be of concern for writing history about pre-Columbian
America? After all, there were by now literally hundreds of illustrated
manuscripts, such as the Florentine Codex by Sahagn and the Codex
Mendoza, that were based on the testimony of elders and Aztec images
and had been sent to Spain from Mexico. Many of these Mexican colo-
nial images had precedents in pre-Hispanic Mexican screen foldbooks
such as the Fejrvry-Mayer Codex (also known as the Tonalamatl de los
pochtecas). Pre-Columbian Mexican manuscripts, while sometimes clas-
cosa como con letras es cosa de admiracin ver las menudencias que conservan en aquestos
cordelejos de los quales ay maestros como entre nosotros del escribir.
(Sarmiento de Gamboa, Historia de los Incas [1988], pp. 4849.)
which only the second part is known. It is entitled Yndica, but is more
commonly known as Historia de los Incas.
20
But before entering into the full history of the Incas, I would like to warn,
or more accurately speaking, to address an issue that may arise among those
who have not been in these lands. Some say that this history, made from
accounts that these barbarians give, cannot be true because without writ-
ing, the natives could not memorize so many details of such ancient times
as are told here. To this one replies that these barbarians had a curious
method that was very good and accurate to substitute for the lack of letters.
It was that from one to another, parents to children, they would recount the
ancient things of the past up to their times, repeating them many times, as
we would read a class lesson, making their listeners repeat history lessons
until they remained fixed in their memories. Each one would recount his
annals to his descendants in this manner, to preserve the histories and feats
and antiquities and the numbers of people, towns, and provinces; the days,
months, and years; the battles, deaths, destruction, fortresses, and cinchis
[brave leaders in war]. Finally, they would record, and they still do, the
most remarkable things, in both kind and quantity, on some cords that
they call khipu, which is the same as saying racional, or accountant. On
the khipu they make certain knots that they recognize, through which, and
by the use of different colors, they distinguish and record each thing as if
with letters. It is remarkable to see what they preserve in these cordlets, for
which there are masters as there are for writing among us.
21
20. The first part of the Historia general was a geography of Peru that was not finished, and
the third part was to be a history of the Conquest. Markham, Introduction, in Sarmiento
de Gamboa, History of the Incas, p. x.
21. Mas antes de entrar en el cuerpo de la historia de los incas, quiero advertir, o
hablando ms propiamente, responder a una dificultad que se podra ofrecer a los que no han
estado en estas partes. Podran algunos decir que no tienen por cierta esta historia hecha por
la relacin que estos brbaros dan porque no teniendo letras, no pueden tener en la memoria
tantas particularidades como aqu se cuentan, de tanta antigedad. A esto se responde que
para suplir la falta de letras tenan estos brbaros una curiosidad muy buena y cierta, y era
que unos otros padres hijos se iban refiriendo las cosas antiguas pasadas hasta sus tiempos
repitindoselas muchas veces como quien lee leccin en ctedra hacindoles repetir las tales
lecciones historiales los oyentes, hasta que se les quedasen en la memoria fijas, y as cada
uno sus descendientes iba comunicando sus anales por esta orden dicha para conservar sus
historias y hazaas y antigedades y los nmeros de las gentes pueblos y provincias das meses
y aos, batallas muertes destrucciones fortalezas y cinches y finalmente las cosas ms notables
que consisten en nmero y cuerpo notaban las y agora las notan en unos cordeles a que lla-
man quipo, que es lo mismo que decir racional contador en el qual quipo dan ciertos nudos
como ellos saben por los quales y por las diferencias de las colores distinguen y denotan cada
Fig. 7. Inca khipu. Cotton. Central coast of Peru, c. 1500.
OF COLONI AL PERU
351
was a disaffinity between European and Andean forms. Aztec objects and
the forms of their symbolic technology were commensurate with Euro-
pean symbolic technology and hence history was knowable as something
remembered and recorded.
23
This apparent commensurability not only
established a credible basis for historical knowledge but also resulted in
a highly complex set of colonial documents that melded Mexican and
European forms, something that never happened in Peru.
There were, of course, numerous written accounts about the Inca, pub-
lished and unpublished. Many of them refer to the khipu as the device by
which the Andeans recorded their histories. However, unlike the Mexican
images and objects, the Andean device to which Sarmiento de Gamboa,
Mrua, and Guamn Poma refer as their source of knowledge is a three-
dimensional object. The khipu is a series of colored, knotted, dependent
strings attached to a main cord. Through it, Inca knowledge, historical
and bureaucratic, was transcribed. The khipu and the other, even more
esoteric, Inca form of recording informationgeometric motifs known
as tocapuwere critical for displaying and recording time and space and
well as statistical information and historical narratives (Fig. 7). These
objects and images were radically different from what the Spaniards
encountered in Mexico.
Therefore, Mura and Guamn Poma, as authors, position themselves
as go-betweens. They embody the transference from the oral testimonies
derived from khipus into written text. This intermediary condition is what
Guamn Poma means to convey by using Muras composition twice; by
substituting his own portrait for that of the Inca in the second composi-
tion, he places himself literally at the juncture between oral and writ-
ten history (see Figs. 4 and 5a, b). Guamn Pomas self-image casts him
as the purveyor of knowledge through his personal experience, which
he shares as author with his audience. This experiential position of the
author is also represented in the frontispiece to the Historia general, or
23. Jos de Acosta, a Jesuit who authored one the most important accounts of the Ameri-
cas, Historia natural y moral de las Indias, based on his pastoral work in Peru, wrote a letter
to his Mexican colleague Juan de Tovar concerning the foundation on which he had written
a history of the Aztec. Acosta asked, what certainty or authority does this relation or history
possess? If you could relieve me of these doubts, the pleasure afforded by this history would
not be subject to the suspicion that it may not be true and certain as a history should be. Tovar
responded to Acosta, citing the pictorial manuscripts of the Mexicans and producing a new
one to demonstrate the accuracy of the Mexican system. See Cummins, From Lies to Truth,
pp. 164166.
sified as demonic objects, were nonetheless understood as truthful sources
to substantiate Aztec historical memory. Moreover, colonial authors such
as Sahagn, Fray Diego Durn (c. 15371588) Durn, and Juan de Tovar
say they consulted the manuscripts and copied from them, and did so
almost seamlessly, apparently thanks to the formal similarity between
European and Mesoamerican books and illustrations. Andean colonial
authors also consulted the Inca equivalent, the khipu, as Sarmiento de
Gamboa, Martn de Mura, and Guamn Poma de Ayala all mentioned;
however, these Andean sources had no formal similarity, so that the capac-
ity for historical memory was in question.
22
In other words, there was an
immediate affinity between Mexican and European forms, whereas there
22. Sarmiento de Gamboa (ibid., pp. 172178) had a number of Inca testify that what he
had written based on these sources was the truth.
Fig. 8. Frontispiece. Mura, Historia de los Incas. J. Paul Getty Museum,
MS. Ludwig XIII.
Fig. 9. Royal coat of arms of the Inca kings. Mura, Historia de los Incas. J.
Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XIII, fol. 13r.
OF COLONI AL PERU
353
Muras Historia general, however, is not simply the faux heraldry of the
Inca invented in the sixteenth century for the descendants of the Inca.
The device is bound within the escutcheon to the other, smaller shields
so that the representation of the Inca is intertwined with those of the Mer-
cederians, Spain, and the author.
Martn de Mura, as witnessing author, appears allegorically in the
central element of the crest itself. Here, the disembodied sensory organs
of sight and sound are symmetrically but abstractly placed within the
crest. Two putti trumpet music toward the pair of ears, while the eyes
stare almost ominously outward at the reader/viewer. These images refer
to the Latin text inscribed thereTestamur quod vidimus et audimus [we
testify to what we see and hear]in which the authorial we refers to
Muras own experience of seeing and hearing, and by which he swears
to the reader that his text is true through his own sensory acuity. (This
is referred to as lynxlike in the Latin text written at the sides.) The
abstracted eyes and ears suggest the sensory knowledge and the distanced
surveillance of the embodied observer.
25
What Mura creates here is a
visualization of the ideal historian in the Americas, and especially in
Peru, as characterized at the beginning of the seventeenth century. For
example, Baltasar de Ocampo ends his 1610 account of Viceroy Francisco
de Toledos capture and execution of Tupac Amaru by writing that There
is, in this city, an old monk [Fray Nicholas] of the order of Mercy, as I
have mentioned before, who was an eyewitness of all these things and
heard them with his ears and touched them with his hands.
26
Guamn Pomas authorial portraits manifest something very differ-
ent: an intimate and experiential knowledge, embodied in an image of
participation. His source of knowledge is not abstractly represented as
the observer/author. Rather, he is the subject/author, as he has a corpo-
real presence in the form of a self-portrait/author-portrait. Thus, whatever
Andean cosmology divides the pictorial space of the frontispiece of his
manuscript (as analyzed recently by several scholars), it is important first
of all to see it as a space in which Guamn Poma manifests himself as
an actual person and not as an abstract set of sensory organs. In his own
25. This interpretation of the coat of arms in relation to the Latin translation was first
presented in 1994 at the Royal Library of Denmark. See Cummins, Guaman Poma de Ayala
and Martn de Mrua; Adorno, Censorship and Approbation in Muras Historia General
del Peru, p. 95, has come to the same conclusions.
26. de Ocampo, Account of the Province of Vilcabamba, pp. 203247.
Getty Mura (Fig. 8). Below the descriptive title and name of the author,
Mura has created a large, central coat of arms. The main escutcheon has
four inescutcheons, or smaller escutcheons that are placed within the pri-
mary shield of a coat of arms. Normally the inescutcheon is used for terri-
torial claims, but here the four coats-of-arms bring together the social and
political worlds of audience, subject, and author within a heraldic space.
Surmounting the crest is the royal coat of arms of Spain, with the alter-
nating rampant lions of Leon and the castles of Castile. Directly below,
within the crest, is the coat of arms of the Mercedarian order to which
Mura belonged. To the left is the coat of arms of the Inca, composed of
four quadrants. The upper right has the maiscapacha, or Inca royal tassel
worn at the forehead. The upper left has a jaguar behind a tree. The lower
right shows a beautifully colored bird with long tailfeathers, and the lower
right shows two large serpents with large, red banners hanging from their
mouths. This coat of arms appears as a full-page illustration on the next
extant illustrated folio, and on that page is identified as las armas reales
de los Ingas reyes.
This faux coat of arms of the Inca also appears on page 83 of the
Nueva cornica, and is labeled SEGVNDA ARMA: LAS ARMAS [the
second coat of arms {of the Inca}] (Fig. 9). In the Nueva cornica image,
the vertical left side of the shield is reversed, with the bird above and the
mascaipacha below.
24
Moreover, all the figures are identified textually,
as if Guamn Poma fears that the viewer will not understand what the
heraldic elements represent. The probable source for these three images
of the coat of arms of the Inca is one that is now missing from the Gal-
vin Mura manuscript. What its presence confers in the frontispiece of
24. Guamn Poma either did not understand that the fields of a coat of arms were highly
codified and that any pictorial change alters their meaning or he intentionally disregarded the
conventions of Spanish heraldry. It seems that the former is most likely, since he repeatedly
misrepresents the coat of arms of Spain by reversing the directions of the rampant lions. As he
depicts it in the frontispiece, the royal coat of arms of the king of Spain actually represents the
shield of the descendants of Fernando de la Cerda, the heir of Alfonso X el Sabio, and not
that of Philip III, who is pictured kneeling with his crown before him. See Pardo de Guevara
y Valds, Manual de herldica espaola, p. 85. Guamn Poma addressed his manuscript to
Philip III and understood the king to be its primary audience, so it is difficult to believe that
he would have purposely misrepresented such a highly codified royal symbol on the very first
folio, risking the kings displeasure. This misunderstanding of European symbolic space and
directionality brings into question whether or not there is a consistent intentionality that struc-
tures Guamn Pomas pictorial compositions, through which directionality becomes the index
of an underlying Andean symbolic system based on the social metaphors of hanan and hurin,
or upper and lower, seen as complementary halves of a unified conceptual duality.
OF COLONI AL PERU
355
records and revealed the information contained therein.
28
In each of these
images, the khipu is arranged so that the viewer can see both it and its
creator and therefore because they are subjects of representation based
upon observation, the viewer can imagine that the khipus content can
be orally passed to the written pages of the manuscripts. This attempt to
depict such a seemingly difficult and mysterious act of Andean recording
might be thought somewhat similar in concept to the evangelist portraits
that depict Matthew, Luke, and John, who appear writing their gospels
through the mystery of divine inspiration. The images of the khipu and
khipucamayoc of course have a different function in terms of the history
they convey and the mystery that surrounds them, but they are critical
28. For a discussion of these images, see Cummins, Tocapu.
frontispiece, he places his self-portrait in the same pictorial space with
the portraits of the Pope and Spanish king (Fig. 10). Their bodies are
seen together, compressed not only spatially but temporally. By placing
his portrait here, Guamn Poma establishes that his image and all those
that follow refer to concrete presences and realities. After all, if the king
sees himself represented to himself, how can he deny seeing Guamn
Poma presented to him?
27

It is therefore important to recognize that there are ten depictions of
Andean males holding and using khipu among the illustrations of Mura
and Guamn Poma (Fig. 11a, b). These are the individuals who are the
technicians of the khipu, the khipucamayoc, who both made the corded
27. Guamn Poma does not invent this type of authorial position in a frontispiece. Authors
or scholars often placed themselves in the same spaces as their patrons. For example, the fron-
tispiece of Juan de Zuigas vellum manuscript copy of Antonio de Nebrijas Introductiones
latinae, c. 1486, shows Nebrija lecturing to his audience while his patron sits frontally in the
center of the composition, listening to the great grammarian.
Fig. 11a. Admini[s]trador e provincias. Guamn Poma de Ayala, Nueva
cornica, p. 348 [350]. Ink on paper. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen,
GKS 2232 4.
Fig. 11b. Tupac Inca Yupanqui, the tenth Inca, with a khipucamayoc. Mura,
Historia de los Incas. J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XIII, fol. 51v.
Fig. 10. Frontispiece. Guamn Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica. Ink on
paper. Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4.
OF COLONI AL PERU
357
Archivo el P M Arcos de la Stm Trinidad Litera (Fig. 12). The handwrit-
ing is the same throughout, so it is clear it was written at one time and
after the final reassembling of the manuscript, most probably in Spain.
An illustration is pasted on the verso side of this title, and it depicts a
paradisal Andean landscape in which an Inca with a sling hunts a llama
in the foreground (Fig. 13). This seems to be an oddly placed illustration,
as it relates to nothing in the manuscript in its present state. However, we
know that it is not in its original state, and that it has been reassembled
and rebound at least twice. The pasted, hidden recto side of the illustra-
tion now reveals that this pasted folio was the original title page of the
manuscript as first completed in 1590 (Fig. 14). Using fiber-optic light
and digital photographic enhancement, Juan Ossio and I have been able
to read and transcribe the following text (with ellipses indicating illegible
areas):
The Famous History
And investigation of the origin and creation and first rule of the great lords,
Inca Kings/__ and nobles who were of this Kingdom/ and of their deeds
and customs and dress/ and other things of the service is done in this
monastery of our Lady/ of Mercies of this great City of Cuzco, capital
of said Kingdom of Peru/ translator of the Fray Martin de Mura of said
order in order to discover the/ Declaration that was taken from Lord Luis
Chaves Apanche[?] Governor of this City and from all the parishes and
from Lord Hernando Cussi, Cacique principal of the parish of San Blas
[missing]/ Mango Topa cacique principal of the parish of San [missing]
And from Lord Martin Quispe cacique principal of the parish/ and from
Don Pedro Purqui cacique principal of the yndios [probably of the parish
of Santa Ana, as these were not Incas but Caaris and therefore would be
called yndios, or Indians] / many other caciques principales, leaders of
ancient Indians / city/ knew the [plural]/ of the / Report of
his in this city.
Our Lady of Mercy of the Redemption of Captives of the Great City of
Cuzco the Capitol of this Kingdom and Province of Peru/, Month of May
Year 1590
29
29. La Famossa Ystoria
Y probanza hecha de el origen e cri[acion] e primera posesion de los grandes seores
Reyes yngas/ y seores que fueron de este Reyno de sus hechos e costumvres y vestimenta/
to the authorial positions of Mura and Guamn Poma, as they base the
veracity of their knowledge on the oral transmission of the content of the
khipu. Moreover, the various authorial images, either as full portraits or
the emblematic disembodied organs of sight and sound, give visual rep-
resentation to this experiential authority and the trust in the khipu as an
accurate instrument through which historical knowledge has been con-
veyed. It is this relationship, the relationship between the khipu and the
illustrated manuscript, that is at issue.
That there are only three Andean illustrated manuscripts underscores,
I believe, the issues that Mrua and Guamn Poma articulate. That is, it
is impossible to transfer fully the Andean object of recording into a Euro-
pean form so that it can reveal its narrative. The khipu can only be rep-
resented as an icon in the Piercean sense of the term. The khipu image
represents the thing itself but not its content. It is important. therefore, to
note that there are multiple illustrations in which the khipu is depicted in
conjunction with a manuscript or a written page in order to demonstrate
their homologous relationship. The very first appearance of a khipu in
Guamn Pomas manuscript is glossed with a placard on which is written
the word carta, or letter. Moreover, the comparatively numerous illustra-
tions of the manipulation of the khipu in these three manuscripts stand
in stark contrast to the Mexican pictorial manuscripts, where one almost
never sees depictions of the ancient or colonial codices being produced or
read. There was no need to illustrate their legibility because the Mesoameri-
can form of the screenfolds and the pictorial figures they contained were
transparent enough to a European trained within the semiotics of Saint
Augustine (Christian doctrine) that they did need iconic representation.
These are the issues that underlie the projects undertaken first by
Mura and then Guamn Poma and their relationship as authors and
illustrators. To gain further insight, it is critical to look at the first two
folios in the Galvin manuscript, which have only become available after
the research conducted at the Getty Research Institute. Until recently,
the texts on these folios were obscured because they had been pasted onto
blank folios so that only the illustrations were visible. The first pasted folio
is on the verso of the present title page, which bears the title Historia del
origen y genealoga real de los reyes ingas del Per, de sus hechos, costum-
bres, trajes y manera de gobierno, compuesta por el Padre Fray Martn de
Mora del orden de nuestra seora de la meced de redempcion de capitivos,
convental del convento de la gran ciudad del Cuzco cabeza del Reyno y
provincias del Per acabose por el mes de mayo del ao de 1590. Diole al
OF COLONI AL PERU
359
slightly different version of the original title; however, the date and place
remain identical. What is radically different is that in the now-hidden text
of the original title page, Mura lists the names of some of his principal
informants, and especially the Inca leaders of the different native parishes
of Cuzco. In this, he is similar to Bernardino de Sahagn, who consulted
the elites of Tenochitlan to gather and to write his Historia general, and
who also listed the names of his collaborators. Mura clearly claims to
textual evidence. In fact, they never studied this manuscript before writing their conclusions
about its production. Only Juan Ossio, Nancy Turner at the Getty Museum, and I have inten-
sively studied the manuscript, and Nancy Turners codicological study (forthcoming) is the
only such study that can be trusted as being based on the physical makeup of the manuscript
itself.
A good part of the middle and lower part of the text is illegible because
of the heavy painting on the reverse side, as well as some paper damage.
Nonetheless, it is clear that this is the 1590 original title page and that
it has been pasted onto the new one so that the 1590 illustration of the
Andean landscape occurs where it does in the Galvin manuscript as if
this were its original context.
30
The new title page added in Spain gives a
y otras cossas de el servicio es hecho en este convento de nuestra seora/ de las mercedes
de esta gran ciudad del Cusco cabea deste dho Reino del Piru/ Lengua de el padre fray Mar-
tin de Morua de la dicha orden para averiguar la/ Declaraion que de ello tomo de don Luis
Chaves apanchel[?] governador/ maior de esta dicha iudad y de todas las parroquias y de don
f hernando.[?]/ Cussi cacique principal de la parroquia del seor Sant Blas y [missing]/ Mango
Topa cacique principal de la parroquia de seor sant [missing]/ y de don Martin Quispe caci-
que principal de la parroquia [?][missing]/ y de don Pedro Purqui cacique principal[?] de los
yndios / otros muchos caciques principales de caveas de los yndios viejos / iudad
conosieron los / de el Relaion de su / nados en esta iudad .
30. Adorno and Boserup, in Guaman Poma and the Manuscripts of Fray Martn de
Mura, make several claims about the creation of this manuscript, including an imagined
first draft. Many of their assumptions, although stated as fact, are not based on any physical or
Fig. 13. Verso of original title page now pasted onto the verso of existing title
page. Mura, Historia del origen y genealoga real. Private Collection, Dublin.
Fig. 14. Unenhanced photo of original title page, pasted onto the verso of
present title page. Mura, Historia del origen y genealoga real real. Private
Collection, Dublin.
Fig. 12. Title Page. Mura, Historia del origen y genealoga real. Private
Collection, Dublin.
OF COLONI AL PERU
361
not mentioned in either of these folios by name, he was assisting with the
images and, at the very least, reading the text of Muras first manuscript.
This becomes clear in reading yet another newly revealed text in the
Galvin manuscript. This appears behind the coat of arms of the Mer-
cedarian order, which has been pasted onto a blank folio (Fig. 15). It is
thankfully the easiest to read. As will become apparent, it is written by
Mura himself (Fig. 16):
[Your] Royal Catholic Majesty, many times I doubted to accept this task
and many times afterward having begun I wished to give it up for fear
that my intentions not finding the ability in my faculties to finish it as to
conform to how a history so fantastic and, with much reason, surprising to
all the world ought to be, as this is a history without any writing, but rather
[kept] by khipus and the memory of the old and ancient Indians. And thus,
sustained by various discourses, I passed countless days, until I grew old in
this Kingdom and with so old a desire that I always had which was to find
within the coarseness of my wit some occasion by which I could serve Your
Majesty. I decided to write the history and dynasty and the famous deeds
of the Inca kings of this kingdom of Peru together with their government
that they had, I worked to find the most faithful accounts possible, taking
the information from those people [who] were brought to me from vari-
ous parts, which I distilled according to common agreement. I chose the
language and words of Spanish, with the desire to present it to your Maj-
esty book drawn by my hand so that the variety of colors and with the
composition of the paintings, to which your Majesty is inclined, makes the
reading of my text which lacks the style and imagination that is found only
in works of great genius, easier. Receive Your Majesty benignly the humble
and small service, accompanied with my great desire, and this would be a
blessed and tireless recompense for my efforts.
34
34. Muchas veces dude C[atlica] R[eal] Mag[estad] aeptar esta dicha ympressa y
muchas mas despues De auer la comenado Me quisiera bolver atras juzgando Por temeraria
mi yntenion No Hallando subjeto en mi facultad Para acabarla conforme a la que se deuia a
una ystoria gouierno tam peregrino e con razon tan espantossa a todo el mundo, Por ser istoria
sin Escriptura Ninguma, Mas de por los quipus y memoria del los yndios antiguos y viejos Y
assi colgado de Varios discursos Passe muchos dias Yndeterminados, Hasta que Venido de mi
y tantos aos De este rreyno Y de tan antiguo desseo que fue siempre Buscar En la rudeza de
mi Ingenio alguna ocaion, con que poder servir a V Mag.d Me determine de escrivir la istoria
y desendenia y los famosos Hechos de los rreies ingas deste rreino del piru juntamante con
el Govierno eroico que los dhos tubieron, trabaje, auer, para este efecto las mas verdaderas
Relaciones que me fueron pusibles Tomando La sustania de aquellas personas a Que de varias
have done something similar in Cuzco, but it would seem that his inspi-
ration is again based on the actions of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo and
Sarmiento de Gamboa, who also insisted in not only interviewing individ-
uals throughout the southern Andes, but then, when finished, presented
the complete text to the principal and intelligent members of the twelve
royal families of Cuzco so they could testify to the truth and accuracy
of what he had written. It is seems that Mura did the same. Not only
does he mention some of the individuals with whom he consulted in the
original title page, but we read, in another folio that has been pasted, a
letter that he drafted, dated 15 May 1596. In it, the Inca nobility of Cuzco
state that the manuscript of 1590 had been given to them to study.
31
Fur-
thermore, they attest to the veracity of Muras history of the Inca.
32
This
letter was originally placed somewhere at the beginning of the Galvin
manuscript and was moved to the Getty manuscript well afterward, as
folio 307. Clearly, this a reformulation of the title page drafted in 1590,
with the names of the Inca leaders of Cuzcos parishes.
33
In fact, some of
the wording from the 1590 title page seems to reused in the 1596 letter,
including the dating in May. It seems that although Guamn Poma is
31. In 1979 John Rowe noted that the bottom of the page, where he presumed that any
signatures would have been placed, had been used to draft a new title. Rowe, Martn de
Muruas Manuscripts on Inca History. Unpublished report for H. P. Kraus. Rowe 1979: 3 in
The J. Paul Getty Museum.
32. S. C. R. M. [Sacra Catlica Real Magestad]
Entre las cossas, que esta gran ciudad; topa cusco; A producido. Utles e pouechossas/
Al serviio de V. Magd. nos aparesido Hazer estima, de el yngenio E curiosidad, de le padre,
fray/ Martn de Morua, Religiossa del orden de nuestra seora de la meredes Redemion de/
Captivos; el qual abra inco aos que a escrito una ystoria de nustros Antepasados;/ Los rreyes
yngas deste Reino del pru, y de su gobierno, con otras, muchas curiosidades/ Por Relaion, que
de ello tomo, de los Viejos antiguos deste dho Reino Y de nosotros. Y que/ El estilo es fail Elo-
quente, grave y sustancial, y la istoria Muy Verdaders como, combiene/ Al sujeto, E personas
de quien trata, Y que demas. del serviio de V. Magd. que resultara de/ Ymprimirse, la dicha
Ystoria, comenandose a celebrar E Hazer ynmotal la memoria/ E Nombre, Delos grandes,
Seores Como lo meresieron sus Hazaas deseando ue todo esto/ Se consiga; Umillmente;
suplicamos a V. Magd. sea servido de fauoreser E Haber Mrd./ Al dicho Padre fray Martn
de morua, Paraque su pretenion baa Adelante, Que es lo q/ Esta dha iudad Pretende, de
que Resivira de, V. Magd. Grande E Particula Mrd./ Cuya sacra catholica Y Real Magd. Nro.
Seor guarde, E prospere/ Por mucho E mui felies aos con acresentamiento de mas Reinos/
Y seorios, como sus menore Umildes vasallos dese[-]/amos: Cosco quinze de maio de Mill
y/ Quinientos E noventa y seis/ Besa los Reales pies y manos a V. Magd sus Umildes Vasallos
33. Mura may be referring to Sarmiento Gamboas report toward the end of the origi-
nal title page, which although badly obscured, seems possibly to suggest some other, earlier
Relacion: iudad conosieron los / de el Relaion de su / nados en esta
iudad.
OF COLONI AL PERU
363
We have seen this text before and heard its concerns: the difficulty of
beginning and, once having started, of completing the task because it is a
history based on khipus and memories, not writing. In fact, the text is the
source for Guamn Pomas well-known letter addressed to Phillip III, as
cited above. With this new page from the Galvin Mura, it now becomes
clear that Guamn Poma did not really compose it but took it from the
Galvin Mura, reformulating Muras own letter to the king, a letter in
which he explains why he felt compelled to create the first illustrated
manuscript known from Peru. Is Guamn Pomas worry, then, really
Partes me fueron tradas al fin se rreduzan todas a la mas co (mun). (opi) non Escox la
lengua y fracis castellana, con el desseo de presentar a Va. Mag Libro, dibujado, de mi mano
Para que la variedad, de las colores Y la ynbencion de la pintura, a que, V Mag.d es ynclinado
Haga facil aquel pesso y molestia de una letura falta de ymbenion E de aquel ornamento y
pulido Estilo que En los grandes Yngenios solo se Hallan. Resiva V.Mag.d Venignamente
Este Umillde Y Pequeno serviio Acompanado de mi gran desseo Y esto me sera un dichosso y
descansado galardon de mi travajo.
Fig. 15. Coat of arms of Mercedarian Order. Mura, Historia del origen y
Fig. 16. Text hidden on reverse of the coat of arms of Mercedarian Order,
enhanced by fiber-optic light, prior to digital manipulation. Mura, Historia
del origen y genealoga real. Fol. 2v. Private Collection, Dublin.
OF COLONI AL PERU
365
detailed, seized upon his own misfortunes, as chronicled in the 1595 law-
suit against him, to address a larger world of wrongs.
36
Guamn Pomas
Nueva cornica therefore went beyond the work of Mura and his history
of the Inca and took up the problems of the Andeans after the arrival of
the Spaniards, and then he imagined and imaged the redress that could
be offered in his own dreamlike encounter with Philip III. In all three of
these manuscripts, however, the place of images has demonstrative place
unlike that in any other manuscript created in the Andes, and with the
intent to make the reader see what the authors had seen and experienced.
36. Adorno, Genesis of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayalas Nueva cornica y buen gobi-
erno, pp. 5392. See also Cummins, Guaman Poma de Ayala and Martn de Mrua.
about writing a history of a people who had no writing? After all, as an
Andean he fully understands the acute intricacies and accuracies of the
khipu. Is he not simply anticipating this European critique, as voiced in
the real anxieties of both Sarmiento de Gamboa and Martn de Mura?
One must ask, therefore, about the sincerity of Guamn Poma de Ayalas
concern about the nature of history and its transmission.
A second and even more startling revelation appears in this new text
in Muras manuscript. It concerns the claim to authorship itself, as well
as the reason for providing illustrations. Mura claims not only to have
written the manuscript (Escox la lengua y fracis castellana, con el des-
seo de presentar a Va. Mag Libro), but he also says that he made the
drawings (dibujado, de mi mano), which he in fact did.
35
He says the
reason that he has provided them is to lessen the weight of his text for his
reader, Philip II. (Para que la variedad, de las colores Y la ynbencion de
la pintura, a que, V Mag.d es ynclinado Haga facil aquel pesso y moles-
tia de una letura falta de ymbenion.) This text is also copied almost
verbatim by Guamn Poma. Knowing that he copied the text, we can
now understand the seemingly rather sophisticated passage in Guamn
Poma regarding his illustrations. The idea of images giving pleasure can
be found in Albertis Della pittura, and when Mura writes about the
variety of color and the ynbencion de la pintura, he seems to paraphrase
Alberti in the way he uses the term invention. Alberti advises painters to
associate with poets and orators because they know and use the terms of
rhetoric as outlined by Cicero and Quintilian, which refers to the precise
choice of the subject matter within the narrative. Whether Mura had
any knowledge of what Alberti had written is impossible to determine.
However, I believe it is clear that the rhetorical concept of invention is
critical to how Mura, and then Guamn Poma, understood their illus-
trations in relation to the text.
These now-legible passages demonstrate the degree to which Gua-
mn Poma was inspired by Mura in terms of how he framed his manu-
script for the new king, Philip III. At the same time, we know that Gua-
mn Poma became obsessed with going beyond what he had learned
from working for Mura. Much like Dante, who some three hundred
years earlier had seized upon his own personal trials and wrongs to create
the universal Commedia, Guamn Poma, as Rolena Adorno and I have
35. Cummins, Dibujado de mi mano.
When we think about color in cultures and in history, it is impossible
to avoid being thrown into a huge universe of practices, knowledge, and
beliefs that exceed the pure meaning of the word. Scientific explanations
for its optical nature, testimonies about methods for extraction of colorant
substances, economic and political interventions in their production and
distribution, social demands that linked artistic materials to the organiza-
tion of manual labor in artistic workshops and ateliers, experimentation
and creativity in old recipes, the weight of religious conventions related to
coloring certain iconographies, expensive pigments and dyes functioning
as a metonymic element for the expression of power, alchemical and her-
metic meanings, condemnations of certain heretical and supernatu-
ral uses of colors, or the usefulness of many of these same substances
for healing the bodythese are some of the aspects that are present in
European tradition.
As for the Spanish-American cultural milieu, all these aspects were
also part of the objects that demanded color on their surfaces and were
produced in that extensive territory under the Spanish control. As I knew
that this essay would be almost the last of those within this book, and that
my distinguished colleagues would probably cover many of these sub-
jects, Ive decided to invite you to follow me in some considerations of an
element that might be considered exemplary of the ways color functioned
as an autonomous element, full of power and sacrality, in the Andean
region. Im talking about the rainbow. As a relevant entity in the system
of Andean sacralities, it appears as the paradigm of the glorification of
colors in the Andean world (see Fig. 33 on p. ____).
Colors and Cultures in the Andes
GABRI ELA SI RACUSANO
Universidad de Buenos Aires
* This work is related to some ideas expressed in Siracusano, El poder de los colores.
It is also part of the result of a team project granted by the University of Buenos Aires,
Scientific Program UBACyT 2004-2007 (ID. F090).
GABRI ELA SI RACUSANO 368 COLORS AND CULTURES I N THE ANDES 369
of the cumbi, the fine fabric reserved for the attire of the Inca nobility,
as opposed to the natural colors of common clothing (auasca) worn by
conquered Indians. Such differences were expressly stated in the Incas
decrees: May each clothe and adorn himself according to his quality, the
common man as a common man, and the noble man as a noble man; and
may no man clothe himself in the kind of attire or costume or needlework
that kings wear.
4
Guamn Pomas chronicle displays this chromatism in the words he
uses to describe the times of the Incas, with their brilliant and colorful
llauto (headbands), unku (ponchos), and maskapaycha (red fringe worn
by nobles). His black-and-white illustrations can be contrasted with his
colorful account and with Inca garments today preserved in museums and
private collections, as well as with the depictions in another chronicle, by
Martn de Mura, which represents the gallery of Incas in full color.
We should also take into account that in the seventeenth century,
dictionaries like the one by Ludovico Bertonio (15521625) distinguished
kora, undyed clothes, yet of diverse natural colors (ropa no teida,
aunque sea de diversos colores naturales), from clothes that were dyed.
In the private life of Aymara groups, this semantic and symbolic division
between natural colors survives to this day: kura (black, white, brown,
or gray colors of fibers derived from llamas and alpacas), used in fabrics
related to grazing and in childrens clothing, and paona, or dyed fabrics[?]
representing the rainbow (red, yellow, blue, green, and the like), for agri-
culture and rituals.
5
Revered, according to the sources, by the Inca kings as the child of
the sun, the rainbow with its pure yet iridescent colors appeared in many
representations. Colonial sources cast light on the hierarchical place of
the bow of heaven in Andean rituality and in the official Inca reli-
gion, as well as the ways it could be represented. De Santacruz Pachacuti
Yamquis iconographic version of the Andean mythological worldnot to
forget his Christian acculturationshows the bonds of the Creator, the
first couple, the sun, the moon, the Pachamama (earth goddess), and of
course, the bow of heaven between sun and earth.
6
4. Santillan, Valera, and de Santa Cruz Pachacuti, Tres relaciones de antigedades
peruanas, pp. 182183.
5. See Cereceda Bianchi, ed.[?] Colores de Amrica.
6. de Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, Relacin de antigedades deste reyno del Pir.
The rainbow displayed contradictory qualities that associated it with
both its solar origin and with the mysterious and dangerous forces locked
away in the bowels of the earth. The presence of light and shade in its
chromatic scale, in which the seamless passage from one pure, bright
tone to another also preserved the identity of each color, brings us face
to face with what may have been the most perfect, and possibly the most
feared, model of beauty. Looked upon as a huaca or sacred place, bound
up with the metals and precious stones of the mines and the hazy, fuzzy
colors of dusk and dawn, with snakes and the eyes of felines, with wells
of colored water and iridescent fabrics, the rainbow emerges as a crucial
element in the coloristic world of the Andes, even before the Inca period.
1
At this point, I would like to note that this ambivalent response to the
rainbowfear and admirationshows the persistence of ancestral cults
during the Inca domination. Confronting a mythic past in which power-
ful, destructive, and awe-inspiring natural phenomena (thunder, light-
ning, dawn, and dusk) were identified with vague, indeterminate colors
or mysterious glows, Inca sun worship brought with it the hegemony of
a chromatism in which brilliance and definite colors helped maintain
and define a new social order.
2
Tonalities such as red, green, or white
thus appear in texts, images, or objects as the identifying properties of
Inca nobility and certain deities, as opposed to earthy colors, which were
associated with the dominated classes.
3
Dyed versus natural colors estab-
lished the boundaries of order and hierarchy. The painted world was the
exclusive heritage of the Inca. Sources like Guamn Poma, Garcilaso de
la Vega, Santa Cruz Pachacuti, or Blas Valera contain evidence that this
type of chromatic domination involved apparel, rituals, and even com-
mercial practices. The sources refer constantly to the multihued nature
1. The survival of this image in the unku [a type of Andean poncho] and kero [a wood
or metal drinking vessel] during the colonial period has been studied exhaustively by Tom
Cummins, who contributes a view embedded in the systems of negotiation between native
Americans and Spanish. See Cummins, Let me see! Reading is for them, pp. 130140, and
Toasts with the Inca. For a study of the dynamics of mestizo creations in New Spain and the
representation of the rainbow, see Gruzinski, La pense metisse, pp. 206224.
2. I concur here with the stance taken up by Sabine MacCormack, who draws a distinc-
tion between the Andean religions and the official cult of the Incas. See MacCormack, Reli-
gion in the Andes.
3. In any event, we should not forget that ceremonial spaces and objects like the ancient
chullpa [burial vault or tower] and the kero [drinking vessel] exhibited the use of colors like
red (generally made from hematite) and white. See Gisbert, Teresa. El paraso de los pjaros
parlantes, pp. 1638.
nies and Rites Used by the Indians According to Their Time as Nonbe-
lievers reads,
10
When the sun is eclipsed, or the moon, or a comet, or a glow in the
air appears, they are wont to shout and weep and to make others shout
and weep [.] They also hold it an ill omen, and that it is for death, or
for some serious hurt when they see the bow of heaven, and sometimes
a good omen: they greatly reverence it and dare not behold it, or should
they behold it, they dare not point at it with their fingers, believing they
will die. And that part where they believe the foot of the bow falls they
hold as a dread and fearful place, believing there is there some burial
mound/cache, or some other thing worthy of fear and reverence.
11
Cobo would reproduce this source in 1653.
12
Color, fear, ill omens,
and disease are the constants in the iridescent presence of the rainbow.
Nevertheless, we should not look at this dimension of fear and terror as
the only identification possible. The feared often conceals the desired
and the admired, and both qualities overlap in the terrain of the power-
ful. The bow of heavenly colors, identified sensorially and materially on
earth with stones, soils, plants, and animals, many of whose essences were
used for healing, also seems to have been credited with the power to bring
about healing or to counteract ill omens. The practice of healing by col-
ors, also called healing by the rainbow, was part of rituals in which the
passage from disease to health was enacted with differently dyed wools,
known in Aymara as pana.
13
Likewise, propitiatory practices performed
for the fertility of the land also seem to have been related to the power of
the color cord, as Cristbal de Molina relates when discussing the taqui
10. The text of the Instruccin contra las ceremonias y ritos que usan los Indios conforme
al tiempo de su Infidelidad, unlike others in the edition, appeared only in Castilian Spanish,
indicating the probable recipients of these directions.OK
11. Quando se eclipsa el sol, o la luna, o parece alguna cometa, o resplandor en el ayre
suelen gritar y llorar y hazer que otros griten y lloren []. Tambien tienen por mal agero, y
que es para morir, o para algn dao grave quando ven el arco del cielo, y avezes por bueno:
reverencianlo mucho y no lo osan mirar, o ya que lo miran no lo osan apuntar con el dedo
entendiendo que se moriran. Y aquella parte donde les parece que cae el pie del arco lo tienen
por lugar horrendo y temeroso entendiendo que ay alli alguna guaca, o otra cosa digna de
temor y reverencia. [Doctrina Christiana, De los ageros y abusiones, chap. 5, p. 4.]
12. Cobo, Historia del nuevo mundo (1890). Bouysse-Cassagne and Harris point out that,
according to these beliefs, the most dangerous place was the foot of the rainbow, where the
divided colors of the prism, the earth, and the sky merged. Bouysse-Cassagne and Harris,
Pacha: En torno al pensamiento andino, p. 25.
13. See Cereceda, Aproximaciones a una esttica andina, pp. 187211.
Guamn Poma also recorded the presence of the bow of heaven
in recounting the sacrifices performed at the Coricancha, or Golden
Courtyard:
all the walls were bedecked in finest gold, high and low, and high
up in the ceiling were hung many crystals, and on either side two lions
pointing sunward. The light shone from the windows on the both parts,
two Indians blew and c[]. The wind from their gusts entered and there
issued a bow they call cuychi. And there in the middle did the Inca kneel,
hands raised, face sunward.
7
A few years later, Garcilasos account also showed the rainbow and
its significance as a symbol of Inca royalty. Its image was displayed in his
family coat of arms, with the rainbow joined by the mouths of two ser-
pents. Garcilaso also reveals the persistence of a sacrality rooted in ances-
tral Andean cults (which associated the rainbow with a dark past, both
feared and revered) when he describes a room at the Coricancha, which
they dedicated to the bow of heaven, for they claimed it came from
the sun, and therefore the Inca kings took it as a device and blazon [.]
On a canvas therein, upon sheets of gold, they had painted most naturally
the bow of heaven, so large that it took from one wall to another with all
its vivid colors. They called the bow cuichu, and holding it in such ven-
eration, when they saw it in the air they shut their mouths and covered
them with their hands, for they said that if they showed it their teeth it
would eat them away and impoverish them. This simplicity had they,
among others, without giving any reason for it.
8
The interpretation of the rainbow as an element of adoration and ven-
eration, yet related to an object of fear, captures a dimension intimately
bound up with an Andean rituality that, as I have said, removed it from
sun worship and associated it with the glow of deities like Illapa.
9
Chris-
tian evangelists noted this at a very early stage. The Christian Doctrine,
a text rich in interpretations of local cults, which was produced with the
expert advice of authorities like Jos de Acosta and Polo de Ondegardo
as a result of the Catholic Third Council of Lima in 1583, bears out this
assumption. Within that document, the Instruction against the Ceremo-
7. Guamn Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica y buen gobierno, p. 265.
8. Garcilaso de la Vega, Comentarios reales de los Incas, book 3, chap. 21, p. 192.
9. Illapa was the Inca mythical figure of the lightning bolt, which was believed to carry
the decisions of the primary deities. OK
in which they sought not only predictions of the weather but also omens
and prophecies, seem to have been accompanied by the advice see the
rainbow, for there would be fevers.
16
Other forms of healing were linked
to ritual objects in which colors also played a role, such as toasted and
powdered macaw quills, corn grains with their chromatic variants (red,
yellow, white, black), or the different colored stones used as amulets or
uacanquis to cure ills of the body or soul.
17
In other words, color, in the
material form of powders to be ingested or blown into the air, whether as
a mediating chromatic presence for seeing (as in the colors of rainbow) or
as a participant in the form of objects to be worn (like stones or grains),
seems to have been a structuring element in the fabric of the relations
between human bodies and beliefs in Andean societies. The almagra
(a deep red ocherearth), verdigris, vermilion, malachite, orpiment, and
azurite that were ground and prepared by native apprentices in the hum-
ble pharmacies of Potos and in the workshops of artists in Cuzco during
the seventeenth century and much of the eighteenth continued to display
the chromatic symbolism of their malquis (ancestors) within the cults and
domestic curative practices, and in the residue of a visual memory that
could be not so easily extirpated.
18
At this point, we could ask how this powerful reflexive dimension of
color might have been incorporated into the new visual tales that were
demanded by conquest and evangelization. Could the image of the rain-
bow remain present in these tales as an autonomous sign of power, so
much linked to Andean life and nature but also so much rooted in an
abstract way of understanding them, or would it lose this quality in order
mismo da aparecieron sobre este rico Cerro y Villa Imperial, otros dos arcos de varios colores
y un admirable cometa de color de sangre.) Arzns de Orsa y Vela, Historia de la Villa
Imperial de Potos, part 1, book 3, chap. 7, p. 80.
16. Blas Valera in Santilln et al., Tres relaciones, p. 181. [DC query: What is the
name of the essay or section of the book (e.g., Introduction) dont have it right now?
17. See Millones and Pratt, Amor Brujo, pp. 5963.
18. I wonder to what extent Christian representations alluding to chromatism can have
remained indifferent to the eyes of natives who, even on the periphery of the old empire, still
held a dim mythical past in their visual memory (a past they feared going back to whenever
they witnessed the iridescence of the bow of heaven) and who had experienced an earlier stage
of inundation by solar chromatism associated with Inca dominance and the divinities. These
Christian representations may have evoked[?]DELETE: ? the perception of a second domi-
nance through color in the iconography of the evangelization, which was probably attached as
early as the seventeenth century. See Buruca, Siracusano, and Juregui, Colores en los
Andes.
or Yabaira dance in the festival at the Muro Orco. From the rooms at the
Muro was taken
a very long rope that they held there of four colors: black and white,
and ruddy and tawny, at the beginning of which was a thick, red woollen
ball, and they all came, their hands grasping it, the men one part and the
women another, performing the taqui called yaguayra; and gathering in
the plaza the forerunners, still clutching this same strap, came to do rev-
erence to the huacas and to the Inca; and thus they did the same as they
entered, and dance around the plaza; and after the ends had been joined
the first with the last, they performed their taqui in their order, which
when they had finished it form a snail, and they let go of the strap on the
ground coiled like a snake, for it was made in the manner of a snake. They
call this rope Moro Orco they went to sit at their seats and those who had
the strap took it to their houses. They performed this festival wearing
clothes they called pucay onco, which were black mantles, around them,
at the bottom, a white fringeand finished off with white trimmings; and
the feathers were white, from certain birds called tocto.
14
The visual sensationssymptoms of ill omenevoked by the cloud-
scapes of dawn or dusk (at days end there appear frightful signs in the
heavens, signifying blood [] and after this, bolts fall upon the fortress),
15

14. una soga muy larga que all tenan cogida hecha de cuatro colores: negra y blanca, y
bermeja y leonada, al principio de la cual estaba una bola de lana colorada gruesa, y venan
todos, las manos asidas en ella, los hombres a una parte y las mujeres a otra, haciendo el taqui
llamado yaguayra; y allegados a la plaza los delanteros, asidos siempre a la misma guasca,
llegaban a hacer reverencia a las huacas y luego al Inca; y as iban haciendo lo propio como
iban entrando, e iban dando vuelta a la plaza enrededor; y despus que se haban juntado los
cabos el primero con el postrero, iban haciendo su taqui por su orden, que cuando lo acababan
quedaba hecho un caracol, y soltando la guasca en el suelo dejndola enroscada como culebra,
porque era hecha de manera de culebra. Llaman a esta soga Moro Orco, iban a sentar a sus
asientos y los que tenan la guasca la llevaban a su casa. Hacan esta fiesta con unas ropas
que llamaban pucay onco, que eran unas camisetas negras, alrededor de ellas, por lo bajo,
una franja blanca y al remate f locaduras blancas; y las plumas eran blancas, de unos pjaros
llamados tocto. (Cristbal de Molina, Relacin de las fbulas y ritos de los Incas, p. 112.)
15. Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui, Relacin de Antigedades, p. 260. The signifying
force of the colors of the heavens is still present in the early eighteenth century in discourse
such as that of Arzns de Orsa y Vela (16761736), when he recounts the astrological events
during the death of viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza and the uprising in Los Charcas, link-
ing them to signs warning of divine justice: three suns and two moons appeared in the sky
above the seat of Porco, amid a great ring, and inside it two arcs of blue and red. The same
day appeared above this rich Hill and Imperial Town another two arcs of sundry colors and an
admirable comet the color of blood. (aparecieron en el cielo sobre el asiento de Porco, tres
soles y dos lunas en medio de un gran cerco, y dentro de l dos arcos azules y colorados. El
known, says Jerome: divine providence that like an Argus watches over all
human things. For, as God is my witness, if those wheels are revolution
itself and are enwrapped in the storm [], how then comes the rainbow,
which only appears in serenity and prosperity, to be upon the same tem-
pestuous revolution? If these wheels are fickleness itself and inconstancy,
how does the firmament fix above them its firmness and stability? If these
wheels roll and roll, and tumble downward, and flash their eyes on those
soils, or heavens [] how then comes sovereign providence to be on those
wheels, like an Argus of eyes, and more eyes? How? For all the mysteri-
ousness of that chariot is something else, say the most learned Prado, and
Villalpando. It is that amid his very anger God remembers His mercy.
Why? Because in that chariot of Auster [the south wind], both trimphs
and the glory of God will ultimately triumph.
20
The agency of this action, by which the ancestral fear was transferred
to the experience of the divine and royal sign, had to be sustained by
images of anger and punishment.
21
Avendao said,
This bow, children, though it be a sign of Gods mercy, is also a sign of
His justice, for it reminds us of the punishment with which He punished
men, which was the Flood, which we may fear, and we tremble to not
20. Porque dize Ezechiel, que sobre la cabeza del triunfador vio el Arco Iris, como quando
en la tempestad hermosea una nube. [] Que vio sobre el carro tendido como toldo el firma-
mento. [] Que vio todas las ruedas del carro alrededor embutidas, y taraceadas de ojos. []
Que significa el arco iris? Bonanza, serenidad y paz despues de la tormenta. Que significa el
firmamento? Ya se entiende de su etimologia, firmeza y estabilidad. [] Que significan tantos
ojos? Esso sabido es, dize Geronymo, la divina providencia que hecha un Argos mira todas las
cosas humanas. Pues, valgame Dios, si essas ruedas son la misma revolucion y estan embueltas
en la tempestad, [] como sobre la misma tempestuosa revolucion el arco Iris, que solo apa-
rece en la serenidad y bonanca? Si estas ruedas son la misma volubilidad e inconstancia, como
sobre ellas fixa la misma firmeza, y estabilidad el firmamento? Si estas ruedas van rodando, y
dando tumbos hacia abajo, y dando de ojos por essos suelos, o cielos, [] como en essas ruedas
entonces hecha un Argos de ojos, y mas ojos la soberana providencia? Como? Pues es otro lo
mysterioso todo de esse carro, dizen los doctissimos Prado, y Villalpando. Es que entre sus
mismos enojos se acuerda Dios de sus misericordias. Porque? Porque en esse carro del Austro,
ha de triunfar ultimamente la gloria de Dios [Lpez de Aguilar, Favores divinos en tiempo
de guerra, p. 10.]
21. Again, Warburgs concepts about the reaction to fear and his possible solutions (among
which was what he called Denkraum or thinking distance) comprise a useful theoretical
tool in understanding and analyzing this phenomenon. See Gombrich, Aby Warburg, p. 248;
Siracusano, Representaciones: Energas, fuerzas y poderes, pp. 375384; Buruca, comp.,
Historia de las imgenes e historia de las ideas.
to become part a new experience of the sacred, deeply embedded in a
Christian doctrine that deployed the most varied resources to separate the
presentative character of the system of idol worship from the represen-
tative character of the Catholic images?
Certain words and images can suggest some answers to these ques-
tions. On the one hand, the genre of sermons represented an optimal
field in which to essay new meanings for this sacred element. They could
appeal, for instance, to a knowledge that was close to scientific discourse
so as to desacralize this disturbing element of native beliefs and introduce
it into the imagery of a modern scientific system, as Father Fernando de
Avendao testified in the mid-seventeenth century:
The bow of heaven is not God, and so you may know of the manner
it is made I want to teach you. Know, children, that when the Rays of the
Sun enter into the clouds, some are very swollen, and others more subtle,
and thin, then it is these rays of the Sun and their light, which is soaked
up in the clouds, that cause the variety of colors in the bow of heaven, and
they make it so beautiful as we see.
19

The rainbow and the colors associated with it would then be intro-
duced in a figurative narrative system that placed them in a natural but
controlled landscape, one that owed its beauty and harmony to the hand
of God. We should remember that this system also invaded the repre-
sentational space of native objects such as the kero, placing the bow of
heaven in them. This did not invalidate the possibility of turning it into
a new sign, a useful resource for religious and political purposes, as
we can observe in another sermon, preached in Lima in 1644 by Father
Gregorio Lpez de Aguilar:
For Ezekiel says that above the head of the triumphant one he saw
the Rainbow, as when in the storm it beautifies a cloud. [] That he
saw above the chariot the firmament stretched like a canopy. [] That
he saw all the wheels of the chariot beset around, and inlaid with eyes.
[] What signifies the rainbow? Prosperity, serenity, and peace after the
storm. What signifies the firmament? It is already clear from its etymol-
ogy: firmness and stability [.] What signify so many eyes? That is well
19. El arco del cielo no es Dios, y para que sepas de la manera que se haze os lo quiero
ensear. Sabed hijos, que quando los Rayos del Sol, se entran en las nubes, que unas estan
muy hinchadas, y otras mas sutiles, y delgadas, entonces estos rayos del Sol con su luz, que
se embeve en las nubes, causan la variedad de los colores en el arco del cielo, y lo hazen tan
hermoso como vemos. [Avendao, Sermon 5, Quin es Dios, p. 54.]
GABRI ELA SI RACUSANO 376
anger Him, or commit sins, and so that we may worship Him alone, and
keep His Holy Commandments.
22
All along the southern Andes, this target was achieved by the advent
of an iconography embedded in the very heart of Christian narration:
the Four Last Things, or Novissima. From the early seventeenth century,
images of the Last Judgment flourished in churches within major urban
centers as well as in small chapels belonging to what were called pueblos
de indios, meaning towns where native people were gathered together with
the goal of controlling their lives and beliefs. (Tom Cummins has written
about this development.)
23
Mostly carried out by native painters under
the commission of Catholic priests and curacasnative leaders at high
political levelsthese paintings on canvases, panels, or walls displayed
the bow of heaven within a different landscape. Employed as the throne
of Christ, it appeared as part of the religious narratives of punishment
and salvation. A few Bolivian examples, like those found at Curahuara de
Carangas in Oruro, Caquiaviri in La Paz, or the one painted by Melchor
Prez de Holgun in Potos, achieve the symbolic dimension of this visual
revolution in terms of color.
24
The bright, vibrant, and defined colors have
now become property of a new heaven, full of saints and angels and the
rainbow, being protagonists within the whole but not the protagonist. Per-
haps this encouraged Jos Lpez de los Ros, who painted huge canvases
in the church of Carabuco, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, to eliminate
the bow of heaven in his Last Judgment by establishing a clear chromatic
division between Heaven and Hell.
25
He did this by using the most varied
pigmentscolor powders that, like the rainbow, had once been special
guests in the old ritual practices but now had to negotiate their places
and functions in order to be preserved in memory.
22. Este Arco hijos, aunque es seal de la misericordia de Dios, tambien es seal de su
justicia, porque nos acuerda del castigo con [space?]que castig a los hombres, que fue el
Dilubio, para que temamos, y temblemos de no enojarle, y de cometer pecados, y para que a
l solo adoremos, y guardemos sus Santos Mandamientos. [Avendao, Sermon 5, Quin es
Dios, p. 54.]
23. Cummins, Formas de las ciudades coloniales andinas, pp. 151196.
24. See Siracusano, Postrimeras en el rea colonial andina, [pp. 79-93, and Con la
pluma y el pincel, pp.146-159
25. Siracusano, Gabriela. Notas para detener el escndalo. Fiesta e idolatra, in AAVV,
IV Encuentro Internacional sobre Barroco. La Fiesta, La Paz, Unin Latina Centro de Estu-
dios Indianos Universidad de Navarra Viceministerio de Cultura Fundacin Cultural del
BCB, 2007.; Siracusano, Gabriela (ed.) La Paleta del espanto. Color y cultura en los cielos e
infiernos de la pintura colonial andina. Buenos Aires, UNSAMEDITA, 2010.
Although I am in no way an expert on its contents, I must confess that I
have treasured for decades, in my chaotic library, several editions of the
Historia Generalincluding the Facsimile edition of the Florentinus pub-
lished by the Mexican Government in 1979. Ever since I first encountered
the work he and his Aztec collaborators created, I have always considered
Fray Bernardino de Sahagn to have been the greatest ethnographer of
the modern age (comparable to Herodotus in antiquity), and perhaps the
first true Americanist. My admiration notwithstanding, my few and lim-
ited observations about the various contributions to our conference will
have to be from the modest perspective of a sometime Mayanist ethnog-
rapher, and one who has always regretted that the great Friar did not also
engage with Yucatecans, Guatemalans, and Chiapanecosperhaps even
founding a Collegio de la Santa Cruz de Zinacantln.
1

I shall begin with the two images chosen by Louis A. Waldman for the
program of our conferenceand which served as Gabriela Siracusanos
key reference, in her in-depth description of the chromatic symbolism of
Inca and early colonial blazons and their indigenous mineral makeup,
I wish to thank Joseph Connors and Gerhard Wolf, two distinguished honorary Ameri-
canists, for inviting me to attend this conference, and Gini Alhadeff for going over the English
form of these comments.
1. San Lorenzo Zinacantn (Zinacantln, in the Florentinus) is the modern name of
the Chiapas Highland Maya township where I conducted first extensive, and later intermittent,
ethnographic field-research between 1968 and 1994.
Afterword
Colors Between Two Worlds:
The Codice Fiorentino of
Bernardino de Sahagn
FRANCESCO PELLI ZZI
Harvard University
FRANCESCO PELLI ZZI 380 AFTERWORD 381
they presumably draw part of their power from their exogenous origin.
In both the natural rainbow and artificial candles, thenand I would
not be surprised if polychromous feather-works could function, at least
in some contexts, in an analogous waywe have an assortment of colors
acting as a barrier, a shield, and even a mystical weapon of sorts. My
point, in relation to the general theme of our conference, is to call atten-
tion to this ambivalence of colors connotations (because rain, after all,
is life, and what shuts it off can be beneficial, at times, but also announce
quaresma a droughtwith its spectre of famine).
Perhaps this ambiguity of Sahaguns rainbow is also expressedas
mentioned in the discussion of Diana Magalonis very informative gen-
eral account of colors in the Florentinusby the fuzzy boundaries of
its depicted colors, the fact that they are not contained, as she said,
while we know that a sharp black graphic demarcation characterized
most (not all: Teotihuacan was one exception) Mesoamerican painting
of both supernatural and natural entities, since Pre-Classic times. In this
vein, we might even wish to explore possible relations between the mys-
terious quasi-black color appearing in the rainbow (also noted by Piero
Baglioni), which is the color of the West and of death: hence it is also
the color of ancestrality and of the generative powers hidden inside the
earth. By astral extension, moreover, the earthy brown associated with the
rabbit-in-the-moonas Magaloni also showed usin what she felicitously
described as the technique of creating the symbolic substance of the
image. And let us not forget here the black moon on which Clara Bar-
gellinis Virgin of Guadalupe is perched, carrying her celestial Maya-blue
mantel, unscathed, through the centuries.
Incidentally, the tornasol, shifting quality of certain feathers and
pigments may actually also relate to this ambiguous dimension of chro-
matism and tonality, as Alessandra Russo reminded us (in a paper not
included in the present volume). This in turn may have some connec-
tion (but I cannot explore this here) with the interchangeable nature of
sacrificer and sacrificedthe root, perhaps of Dr Russos vaghezza (and
Louisa Matthews collo del colombo). Be that as it may, this symbolic
ambiguity seems to persist almost unchanged in transitional Mesoameri-
can settings through the centuries, from the Colonial Two Worlds of
Sahagn (if we discount the imported African slaves) to the present-day,
post-colonial, Multiple Worlds of the contemporary neo-Zapatistas.
This dimension of the ambivalence or ambiguity of color was present
in several of the talks at this conference, as for instance, if only implic-
and their possibly esoteric contents. One of these images depicts of rain-
bearing clouds (Fig. 1), almost monochromatic, originating (as it is said
in native belief) from inside (or behind) a mountain, but whose form also
shows an uncanny resemblance to those of Leonardo and Drer. The
other image is that of a striking, and even odder, colorful rainbow (Fig.
2), almost child-like in style, archingominously and improbablyover
a rather desolate and yet also unmistakably Mexican landscape. There
appear to be cactuses, and some fairly dry rocky formations, depicted in
nuanced colors, and as if through a hazeand haze, as we have learned
here, is part of the rainbows Nahuatl name. The first thing I notice in
these images (in addition to all that has been said) is the whitish back-
ground of the rainbow and its underlying landscape, which is not there
just for pictorial contrast, since right above it is an irregular streak of
intensely blue sky: I infer that this somewhat whitish color may actually
represent the misty atmosphere which, according to both the Nahuatl
and Spanish texts of our Codex, often accompanies the appearance of a
rainbow. But it is also said in the text that the rainbow signals the end of
heavy rains, and of the strong wind that often comes with them. I was
told these very same things, four hundred years later, by my Maya col-
laborators in the Tzotzil-Maya town of Zinacantn, which also happens
to be mentioned and depicted in the Florentinus, as one of those towns
where Nahua merchants went, disguised as natives (and after learning,
like anthropologists, the local language), to gather goods and information
in advance of a possible future Aztec conquest (which actually too place:
in their own way, the Aztecs already knew how to be malinchistas, when
their interests were at stake). This was also the region, of course, from
which quetzal feathers came. According to the Florentinus these took the
place of the whitish heron feathers the Mixtecs had used before they
spread their trading-dominance to the South.
But there may be more to these symbolic consonances: In Chiapas,
I saw rows of small, multicolored candles being set up in front of sacri-
ficial offeringslike miniature rainbowsinside mountain caves and at
other sacred sites, and I was told that their colors shut the eyes of brujos
who otherwise might come to appropriate, spoil, or divert the efficacy
of the gift to the gods (be they ancestral or infernal, depending on
the occasion): the language used was almost exactly the same as that
which they would use to indicate how a rainbow shuts off the rain, and
it is also the wording commonly used to denote masking. These little
candles are exclusively made by ladinos (the Chiapanec mestizos), and
original materials and techniques used in to produce that outthus fore-
shadowing another leitmotiv of the conference. In this perspective, one
is reminded that it was at the Court of Spain (as well as in its dominions
in the Low Countries) that the figures of the nobleman as Artist (Rubens)
and of the Artist-as-Noble-Man (Velasquez) were first affirmed in the
Siglo de Oro (though of course, in Italy, we had also had the Cavalier
dArpino). And we have heard that Sahagn, the tireless missionary and
educator, no less than Drer before him, manifests utmost admiration for
Native craftsmen. To my mind, all this reaffirms that there was much
more going on, in the new supposed dark ages and the Counter-Ref-
ormationFranciscan or otherwisethan censorship (though that too
is not entirely absent from the Historia General) and the horrors of the
Santa Inquisizione (whose name, to us, is quite an oxymoron).
The New-Mexican writer Haniel Long said it well when he attributed
the following to Alvar Nuez Cabeza de Vaca, in writing to his King, at
the end of his harrowing journey among the Natives of North-America:
An abyss deeper than the Ocean divides the Old World from the new;
and the things to which I had by now become accustomed would astound
an honest bourgeois from Madrid or Salamanca. The Florentinus is
one of the principal bridges over that abyss, and I too have been struck
by the insistence in it not only on the description and depiction of the
multivalent abilities of the craftsmenwho, as we heard, could represent
whatever they wished with feathersbut by the fact that the corpora-
tion of these very craftsmen inhabited their own town, over which they
had largely autonomous jurisdiction, even politically. Most of this power
was of course gradually lost in subsequent ages, until the time when the
new figure of the mestizo Modern artist emerged from the fringes of late-
Colonial and post-Colonial society, in the wake of the Mexican Revo-
lutionsomething already foreshadowed, in a curious way, by the wild
chromatist(s) of Sandra Zetinas De la Cruz-Badiano.
Dr Russos eloquent insistence on the tensionwith its theologi-
cal implicationsbetween the quasi-scientific exploitation of colors in
natura and the inventio that would trick the viewer as to both their
origins and factura (I believe it was Willem de Kooning who said that art
must be, first of all, effective trickery) pointed to the evidence of some-
thing that the Florentinus strives to visually illustratethrough two thou-
sand images (as Dr Magaloni reminded us, with a profusion of revealing
analytical detail)but that our Codex can only evoke through the fic-
tion of its representational techniques and hues: that is, the exquisite, I
itly, in Thomas Cummins discussion (unfortunately not included in this
volume) of the three, also bi-cultural, Peruvian illustrated manuscripts
composed not long after our Codex, that reveal a similarly striking trans-
Atlantic mixture of forms, representational modes, and ideological con-
tents, all the more striking in that they are set against the prevalently
abstractor perhaps one should say aniconic? Inca representational tra-
dition. Which may speak to the evidentiary value of images that both his
manuscripts and the Florentinus may represent. And it may also be signif-
icant, for the future history of the Colonies, that neither the Florentinus
nor the three Peruvian manuscripts ever reached their intended recipient
(as also recalled here by Lia Markey). And some of these characteristics
of the Hispanic/Andean artistic merger were of course also quite evident
in Elena Phipps excursus on the history and phenomenology of textile
colors in the Andes, all the way to their depiction in the same Mura
manuscript analyzed by Professor Cummings. Here we were able to see,
once more, the traditional use of colors not only as insignia of status and
distinction, but as both banners and masks of a power at once earthly and
celestial. But Ms Phipps also stressed the importance of the trans-optical
quality of pre-Conquest colorstheir all-important substance and materi-
alityas well as their factura. Something that Ludwig Wittgenstein, who
criticized Goethes purely external-optical theory of colors, would have
appreciated: The inner truth of both color and the material (as Dr Russo
also stressed).
This discourse on the inter-continental dialogue on colors was cer-
tainly there, as if between the lines, in the key-note lecture that opened
the Conference, by our only true Florentine participant, Clara Bargel-
lini, with her novel account of the quasi-Plinian and divine origin of
sacred representationneither natura nor inventioin the Colonial and
inter-cultural story of Marcos Indio Pintor, Juan Diego and the Virgin of
Guadalupe. In eliciting the intricacies of this founding story of the roots
of Mexican Modern identity through its artistic representations Professor
Bargellini shed light on the special status of craftsmen, both in early-
Colonial society and in the relations between the Spanish Kingdom and
the Vice-Kingdom of New Spainalso alluded to in the Florentinus and
about which several other presentations offered remarkable insights. She
also critically brought to bear on her story the shifting status of artists in
the emerging Modern World, on both sides of the Atlanticwith all the
paradoxes of the shift from an art-of-magic to the magic-of artwithout
ever neglecting the question of those other shifts between traditional and
in colors and other materials, already established in pre-Columbian times
as well as in Europe and then in-between the Old World and the so-called
New, as we were shown by Rocio Bruguetas Galan, Roland Krischel and
Louisa Matthew. And Lia Markey drew on some of her long-standing
research into the Medici American collections by speculatingquite
plausibly, in my opinionon the ways and reasons behind the transport of
Sahagns masterpiece here to the Laurenziana. Just as they start losing
power, states, princes, and political regimes have all been known to look
far and wide for possible imperial and mercantile adventures that might
rescue them from their straits. What better way to explore that possibil-
ity, in an already declining post-Renaissance Florence, than by protect-
ing utopian and sometimes supremely clever Mendicant friars, who were
unwittingly acting as scouts and spies? (To be used that way was, actu-
ally, the disquieting fate of some well-meaning modern anthropologists).
The competition between carmin de indias and carmin de Florencia,
described by Rocio Bruguetas, or that between Old World and new
World cochineal, which Louisa Mathew discusses in her essay--and
even the Venetian fear of catastrophe invoked by Roland Krischel--all
point to a rising awareness that America, the coveted potential source of
riches, might also spell disastrous financial trouble for those among the
old European economic powers that proved unable to gain control over
its resources.
Sandra Zetinas analysis of the De la Cruz-Badiano Codex on medici-
nal plantsone of the few early codices that takes its name from its prin-
cipal native authorsand, significantly, also a product of Sahagns Impe-
rial College of the Santa Cruz de Tlatelolcoreveals its representations
of Mesoamerican flora to have been an original synthesis of European
and pre-Columbian literary, pictorial and chromatic conventions. The
Badiano Codex, as she argues, reveals a pictorial tensionpresent in fas-
cinating ways in the Florentinus as wellbetween the flat pictorial con-
ventions of pre-Columbian/early-Colonial art and the three-dimensional,
corporeal rendering of forms with light and shadow that was one of the
most influential pictorial innovations of Renaissance Europe. At the risk
of sounding dated, I would like to suggest that it might be interesting
to explore further these representational shifts and fluctuations in rela-
tion to the well-known theories of the Jesuit Father, Walter J. Ong, and
of Marshal McLuhan, on the conceptual-expressive changes brought
about by the invention and diffusion in that era of mechanical reproduc-
tion of images and texts by printing. In a cogent way, Marina Garone
am almost tempted to say transcendent and evanescent, materiality of the
objects it representsbe they natural or artificial. Thus, Piero Baglioni
discovered for us the color-binding mucilage of Blatia campanulata and
Laelia autumnalis, and Salvador Reyes Equiguas (in a text sent from
Mexico CVity, miracles of our electronic encodings) focused on the plants
used in tlahcuiloliztlithe art of writing and paintingand especially
the sacred dimensions of some of these plants, sometimes revealed by
the etymologies of their Native names. One is once again astounded by
the proficiency of several of Sahagns studentsabout which Berenice
Alcantara was also illuminating: they were fluent in three languages, and
their Latin, according to him, was equal to that of any good cleric in his
Madrepatria. And Latin, before Linnaeus, was still, in what would better
be called the Catholic Reformation, the lingua franca not only of the-
ology, but of philosophia naturalis and inter-cultural speculation. I only
wish that the Native-Latinist and Hispanist co-authors of the Florentinus
were better known to us, with their lives and goals.
Color, of course, also means beauty, and beauty, as we have seen, has
its powers and dangers. Berenice Alcantara specifically dealt with this
chromatic dimension in her account of in nepapam xochitl, the symbol-
ism and power of flowers, in the preparatory documents leading to, and
accompanying, the Florentinus, both on the Native-ethnographic and on
the Christian side. Flowers are, notably, natural colors-on-earth, but they
are also celestiallike the blue of a clear skyand thus, once more, con-
duits to transcendental realms, and sometimes, as in our Codex, the visual
representation of unrecorded but inspiringly spoken words. Flowers, we
have learnt from her, are eminently performative symbols for the Aztecs,
and Diana Magaloni had already told us that when they could not paint
the image of a God, they put the corresponding flower instead. Flow-
ers, though, were also both vehicles and symbols of earthly desire, and as
such associated, as in the Florentinus, with alluring depictions of less than
wholesome feminine graces, which once again, may very well have both
Indigenous and European roots, in their forms as well as in their some-
what sexist-moralist bent: in this, an archaic warrior-ethos and a monastic
one saw eye-to-eye, it would seem, across the Great Divide. And in Clara
Bargellinis account, it was striking how the Native Virgin was made to
appear as a sort of sacred tree-of-flowers and even more how, through
time, her flowers became ever more consubstantial with her own body.
Both the making of the Florentinus, and the crafts of the cultures it
depicts, presuppose the existence of a complex mercantile system of trade
Laurentianus Mediceus Palatinus 218-220that encounter is an isolated
miracle in the cultural history of the world. Quite apart from the value of
its scholarly contributions, this conference, and even more so the revised
and expanded texts of the papers from it that are collected in this volume,
will stand as a fully deserved tribute to its uniqueness and its treasures,
and to the magic of what the organizers so expressively called its colors
between two worlds.
Gravier offered a penetrating view of the relationship, in the Florentinus,
between historical text and visual space. Of course, the monumental
work is much more than a historical tract: it could better be described,
(and this was said), as an Encyclopedia Indiana, a Summa of Indian
life in both its natural and historical settings (and in that sense, too, it is
a proto-anthropological tractsomething like a colossal foreshadowing
of Malinowskis Coral Gardens). But whoever leafs through its folios is
just as powerfully struck, like Garone, by the extraordinary clarity of its
European script, both in Nahuatl and Spanishin my view at least in
part due, once again, to the mediating tradition of Latin scriptas by
the famous encapsulated images and the often overlooked profusion of
colorful, arabesque-like images of vegetation and other motifs that appear
suddenly in the chapter on ceremonies (at first almost timidly, and then
interspersed throughout much of the text). Thus, to me, the layout and
look of the Florentinuswhile conforming superficially to the required
model of an official report appears almost like an archaisant experi-
ment, made by someone well acquainted with contemporary printing
techniques and practices (as Garone aptly demonstrated), but who also
glanced back at both the traditions of pre-Columbian and early Colonial
Native codices and at that of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Thus in
the Florentinuss representation of an ubiquity of flora and fauna I also
sense a utopian echo of those extraordinary Laudes of the Poor man
of Assisiamong the earliest and most poetic documents in the Italian
vernacularin which all creation was praised as witness to the glory and
grace of Gods caritasas if the writer were indeed suspended between
two worlds.
Ethnologists who invariably bring up their field experiences are as
tedious as big-game hunters on the subject of their exploits (both spe-
cies are now fortunately endangered), but please indulge me one last
time. I, toolike others in the Harvard Chiapas Projecttrained illiter-
ate Mayans to write stories for me, both in Tzotzil and in Spanish, and
occasionally even elicited from them short treatiseson the subject of
their beliefs, customs and world-view. We received some noteworthy
accounts; but nothing, I can assure you, even remotely approached the
grandiose accomplishments of Sahagns pupils and collaborators. The
encounter of an Old World literary genius, animated by a profound ethi-
cal zeal, collaborating fifty years after the Invasion with the last holders
of specific and specialized knowledge about a civilization still steeped
in its prevalently oral and visual memoryas embodied in the Codex
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Image Credits
Bargellini Essay:
Figs. 14, 610. Photo: Archivo Fotogrco Manuel ToussaintInstituto de
Investigaciones Estticas, unam
Fig. 5. Photo: cenedicUniversidad de Colima
Rao Essay:
Frontispiece for essay. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med.
Palat. 220, front cover. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit
Culturali. All rights reserved.
Fig. 1. (Left) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat.
218, fol. 241. (Right) MS. Med. Palat. 219, fol. II. By permission of the
Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. All rights reserved.
Fig. 2. (p. 36?) Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat.
220, cover. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali.
All rights reserved. (p. 37?) Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, Madrid, RS/69.
Magaloni Essay:
Figures 19, 1119. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. By
permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. All rights
reserved.
Fig. 1 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 2 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 3 MS.
Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 4 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 5 MS. Med. Palat.
_, fol. _; Fig. 6 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 7 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _;
Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 12 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 13 MS. Med.
Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 14 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 15 MS. Med. Palat. _,
fol. _; Fig. 16 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 17 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig.
18 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 19 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _.
Fig. 10 [Photo credit?]
I MAGE CREDI TS 438 I MAGE CREDI TS 439
Figs. 3a, b. Tables by Salvador Reyes Equiguas, based on Sophia Popper,
A Reconstruction of Nahua Plant Classication, pp. 1517. Museum of
Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Paper presented
at 2nd Annual Ethnobiology Conference, University of Washington. Seattle
1984. Transcribed in Estrada Lugo, El Cdice Florentino: su informacin
etnobotnica, Mxico, Colegio de Posgraduados, 1989.
Fig. 4. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat. 220,
book 11, fol. 218v. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit
Figs. 5a, 6. Photos from Miguel Len-Portilla, Cdices: Los antiguos
libros del Nuevo Mundo, Aguilar, Mexico, 2003. Fig. 5a: Len-Portilla g. 3,
Mendoza Codex, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, lam. LXXI. Fig. 6: Len-
Portilla, Borbonic Codex, Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale, Paris, g. 28.
Fig. 5b. Photo from Eloise Quiones Keber, Codex Telleriano-Remensis:
Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript, Austin, Tex.,
1995. Codex Telleriano-Remensis, Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale,
Paris, fol. 30r.
Garone Essay
Fig. 1. Details: (Quadrate) MS. Med. Palat. 220, book 10, fol. 151r;
(Rounded) MS. Med. Palat. 218, book 6, fol. 1r; (Rustic) top, MS. Med.
Palat. 220, book 10, fol. 1v [or 1r?]; bottom, MS. Med. Palat. 218, book 1,
fol. 37r; (Chancery) detail, MS. Med. Palat. 218, book 1, fol. 1r. Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e
le Attivit Culturali. All rights reserved.
Fig. 2. Reproduction of original table by Marina Garone.
Fig. 3. Details: (Scribe 1) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. __; (Scribe 2)
MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___; (Scribe 3) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book
__, fol. ___; (Scribe 4) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___; (Scribe 5)
MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___; (Scribe 6) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book
__, fol. ___; (Scribe 7) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___; Florence,
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e
le Attivit Culturali. All rights reserved.
Fig. 4. Reproduction of original table by Marina Garone.
Fig. 5. Details. Stylized vegetal: (1st and 2nd) MS. Med. Palat. 220, book 11,
fol. 364v; (3rd and 4th) MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___. Exuberant
stylized vegetal: MS. Med. Palat. ___, book __, fol. ___. Florence, Biblioteca
Medicea Laurenziana. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit
Baglioni Essay
Fig. 110.
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat. 218220.
By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. All rights
reserved.
Med. Palat. _, fol. _.
Alcntara Essay
Figs. 12, 4, 812.
Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espaa. Facsimile edition by the
Secretaria de Gobernacin, Repblica Mexicana, of MS. Med. Palat. 218
220 of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.
Fig. 12 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _.
Figs. 3, 7, 13. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS. Med. Palat.
218220. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. All
rights reserved. Fig. 3 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _; Fig. 7 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol.
_; Fig. 13 MS. Med. Palat. _, fol. _.
Figs. 5, 21. Martn de la Cruz, Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis,
Fondo de Cultura Econmica / Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social,
Mexico, 1991.
Fig. 6, 1620, 2223. Photos: Berenice Alcntara
Fig. 14. Photo: Adriana Estrada
Fig. 15. Cdice Matritense del Palacio Real de Madrid. In Bernardino de
Sahagn, Primeros memoriales, facsimile ed., Ferdinand Anders, University of
Oklahoma, Norman, Okla., 1993.
Equiguas Essay
Fig. 1. Photo: Miguel Len-Portilla, Tonalmatl de los pochtecas (Cdice
Fejervary Mayer), Revista Arqueologa Mexicana, special no. 18, Mexico,
Editorial races/Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, 2005. The
codex is located in the National Museums Liverpool, England, cat. 12014.
Fig. 2. Photograph: Salvador Reyes.
I MAGE CREDI TS 440 I MAGE CREDI TS 441
Fig. 16. Photo: B. Schwarz.
Bruquetas Essay
Figs. 12, 67. Courtesy of Archivo Fotogrco Manuel Toussaint del
Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas, UNAM, Mxico D.F.
Figs. 35. Courtesy of the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de Espaa.
Photo: Toms Antelo.
Figs. 89. Photo: Christhiam Fiorentino.
Matthew Essay (no gures)
Krischel Essay
Fig. 1. Courtesy of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden,
Gemldegalerie Alte Meister, Gal. Nr. 172.
Cummins Essay
Fig. 1a, 2a, 4, 6, 1216. Courtesy of Private Collection, Dublin. Photo: Photo
Mine. Figs. 1a, 2a Details of folio 9v; Fig. 4 Fol. 21v; Fig. 6 Fol. 66v; Fig.
12 Title page; Fig. 13 Verso of original title page now pasted onto the verso
of existing title page; Fig. 14 Unenhanced photo of original title page, pasted
onto the verso of present title page; Fig. 15 Fol. 2v (text behind coat of arms
of Mercedarian order pasted onto blank folio); Fig. 16 Fol. 2v (text hidden on
reverse, enhanced by ber-optic light, prior to digital manipulation).
Fig. 1b, 2b, 8, 9. Courtesy of J. Paul Getty Museum, MS. Ludwig XIII. Fig.
1b Fol. 21v; Fig. 2b Fol. 25v; Fig. 8 Frontispiece; Fig. 9 Fol. 13r.
Figs. 1c, 2c, 3, 5a, 5b, 10, 11a, 11b. Courtesy of Det Kongelige Bibliotek
(The Royal Library), Copenhagen, GKS 2232 4.
Fig. 7. Inca khipu. Cotton. Central coast of Peru, c. 1500. [Photo credit?]
Pellizzi Essay
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana: Fig. 1 MS. Med. Palat. ___, fol.
___; Fig. 2 MS. Med. Palat. ___, fol. ___. By permission of the Ministero per
i Beni e le Attivit Culturali. All rights reserved.
Markey Essay
Figs. 12, 3b, 10. By permission of the Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo
Museale Fiorentino. Photos: Anne Ryan, zrIMAGES.
Figs. 3a, 9. By permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivit Culturali.
All rights reserved.
Figs. 45. Courtesy of the Hispanic Society of America, New York.
Fig. 67. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence.
Fig. 8. Courtesy of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
Zetina et al. Essay
Figs. 12, 57, 922, 2426. Photo: Eumelia Hernndez, Instituto de
Investigaciones Estticas, Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (IIE
UNAM)/Copyright Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia (INAH).
Fig. 3. Image courtesy of Missouri Botanical Garden/Creative Commons.
Fig. 4. Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa, Madrid. Image courtesy of Biblioteca
Digital. Hispnica).
Fig. 23. Bibliothque de lAssemble Nationale, Paris. Reprography: Eumelia
Hernndez, Instituto de Investigaciones Estticas, Universidad Nacional
Autnoma de Mxico (IIEUNAM)/Copyright Bibliothque de lAssemble
Nationale.
Phipps Essay
Figs. 1, 4. Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Fig. 2. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Fig. 3. Photo: Daniel Giannoni, after Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martn,
Colonial Andes, g. 3.
Figs. 5, 15. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Fig. 6. Photo: John Cohen, 1958.
Fig. 7. Photo: Yutaka Yoshi.
Fig. 8. Photo: [name of photographer?]________, after K. MacQuarrie, J.
Flores Ochoa, and Javier Portus, Gold of the Andes, 1994, g. ___.
Fig. 9. Courtesy of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York.
Fig. 10. Courtesy of Royal Library, Copenhagen.
Fig. 11. Courtesy of Madrid Royal Library.
Fig. 12. Courtesy of The Newberry Library, Chicago.
Fig. 13. Photo: Ana Roquero.
Fig. 14. Courtesy of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation
& Tourism and the Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities
Commission.
Index
[To come]

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