[Aztlan] Metztitlan mural

[Sam Edgerton]

I'm posting another URL here (but unfortunately of poor quality) of the 
original European source from which the Metztitlan mural was loosely 
derived,a 16th century Italian engraving by an artist named "Lulmus" who 
likewise depicted a friar in the same right-hand corner with an inscribed 
scroll, but holding it straight up and down. The Latin is also the same but 
written from bottom to top in this vertical version of the scroll, and thus 
could be read easily left to right from a normal viewing position only 
looking at it slightly from the right. The original artist in this case 
apparently did not intend his inscription to be read from above. The 
Mesoamerican copyist on the other hand definitely transposed the 
inscription in his rendition for reasons as previously stated. Moreover, if 
he thought to have the script looking only as if it were leaving the mouths 
of the figures in the order of the spoken words, he could simply have 
reversed it without turning it upside down.  The only colors other than 
black and white in the copied mural are blue and a slight touch of red, the 
latter identifying drops of blood dripping from Jesus's wound on his right 
side. Also from the wound issues streams of water just as the Gospel of St 
John described, here colored naturally blue, as is the water in the basin 
of the font (where is the other one that you see Dea?). Adding to the 
native artist's interpretation of this subject is a figure of the Virgin 
Mary also colored entirely blue! She isn't shown here, but I'll post a URL 
of her image tomorrow. Anyway, considering  the Lulmus print again, I 
believe it a splendid example of what I have termed the friar-missionary 
practice of "expedient selection," or their choosing as tools of conversion 
just such images of Christian stories and liturgies that bore some likeness 
or relevance to prior indigenous religious rituals. Notice that Jesus's 
cross emerges as a trunk of the spreading tree that itself grows out of the 
fountain. Whatever, the original European meaning of this symbolism, what 
could be closer to the native Mesoamerican concept of the World Tree 
growing from the primordial sea?   Note also the way the spreading branches 
left and right form wreathed cartouches, similar to certain Maya designs 
just as Elaine observed.  In my book, THEATERS OF CONVERSION, I describe 
how such wreaths of entwined boughs depicted in the cloister murals at 
Malinalco, represented "tetelas" or border markers between Indian 
communities. which again would lend the Lulmus print and its Mexican mural 
copy some relevance to native tradition.
Sam Edgerton

http://lanfiles.williams.edu/~sedgerto/lulmus.GIF