Icons of Empire: Royal Presentation and the Conception of Rule in Aztec México

Painted Images of Aztec Rulers in Colonial Documents

The larger part of my research time was spent at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, viewing early colonial period painted manuscripts which depicted Nahua lords. This research was for the last portion of my "Icons of Empire" project which is concerned with the transition from Pre-Columbian to early colonial images of Aztec rulers. I was able to spend considerable time examining the originals of a number of documents including BNP 72 (Genealogía de los Principes Mexicanos); BNP 388 (Genealogía de la familia Cano); BNP 83 (Codex [Lienzo?] Mexicanus); BNP 114 (Titres Propriete México-Tenochtitlán); BNP 392 (Pièce d’un procès); BNP 152 (Copy of the Plan Topographique de Cuitlahuac); BNP 387 (Matricula de Huejotzingo); BNP 25 (Plan Topographique de Hueyapan), and a number of others.

The results of this portion of my research are difficult to synopsize as each document provided a particular insight into the varied landscape of early colonial representations of native nobility (both historic and ’contemporary’ 16^th century nobles). While a synopsis of the research conducted on each manuscript would prove too lengthy for this report and the synthesis of the data collected is ongoing in this area, I mention here only a couple of examples of documents which proved to be surprisingly useful. One of these was MSS. 73 Confirmation des Elections de Calpan of 1587 (BNP MS73) (Figure 10, shown below). While painted almost three generations after the conquest, by at least three different hands, the Confirmation provides a wealth of information regarding the visual repertoire used by Nahua artists to depict indigenous royals, both past and present. There is a surprising uniformity in the inclusion of certain iconographic elements, such as the inclusion of European-style crowns above colonial period rulers and the reversion to turquoise diadems in the pre-conquest periods addressed. There are also a great number of short glosses in this document which address the different royal titles held by members of this polity’s nobility, including tecuhtli, tzonpantecuhtli, quahuitecatl tecuhtli, tezcachiuhqui tecuhtli, and chichimeca tecuhtli. The variance in these nobles’ depictions, combined with their differing titles (both common and unique titles) will aid in the decipherment of not only Pre-Hispanic images of nobles, but also provide a wealth of information regarding the conception and depiction of various levels of nobility following their incorporation into Spanish colonial society.

A number of documents provided information not only pertinent to the larger part of this project, but that also tied in quite well with the figurines discussed above. In a review of the Codex en Cruz (Dibble 1981; [Codex en Croix] BNP MS15-17), I was able to clarify a number of elements not immediately discernable in the facsimile or the document’s numerous copies. In his commentary on the codex, Charles Dibble states that the document is painted in black ink on amate paper, and the artist only used color when painting rulers’ reed thrones with a brown/yellow wash (1981:1:4). However, I was able to discern that the artist used a grey and a brown/yellow wash in a number of places (aside from the thrones). The use of these colors was restricted in almost every case to highlighting images of rulers, particularly in highlighting aspects of their costume. For example, the standing image of Axayacatl included in the year 12 Rabbit (Figure 11), is painted in black formline and highlighted with a yellow/brown wash, while the figure depicted above him is painted with a simple black formline. Dibble (1981:24-25) feels that these figures reference the 1478 battle of Xiquipilco, and the wounds that Axayacatl suffered there at the hand of a Tolucan noble named Tlilcuetzpal[in] (Alvarado-Tezozomoc 1975:404-405).¹⁷  A figure with a black-lizard (tlilcuetzpallin) name glyph is painted in the upper portion of the column. Axayacatl, painted below with his standard water-face name glyph, is shown wearing an elaborate Xipe costume. That the artist included Tlilcuetzpalin along with Axayacatl (no other individual named Tlilquetzpallin appears in the ethnohistoric sources), corroborates Dibbles interpretation. The closest that the ethnohistoric sources come to describing Axayacatl’s costume is in Alvarado-Tezozomoc’s mention that Axayacatl had his yopihuehuetl ("Yopi-drum," Yopi being another name for Xipe, see Nicholson 1971), as well as his headdress of tlauhquechol feathers, and his shield (no specific type is mentioned).¹⁸  Durán (1994:268) only goes so far as to mention that Axayacatl beat upon his golden drum (which we can assume was the yopihuehuetl). Despite the lack of a specific reference to the Xipe costume in these two related sources, the Codex en Cruz attests that this was the costume worn by Axayacatl at the battle of Xiquipilco. To remove any ambiguity as to who or what was being depicted, the artist included Axayacatl’s standard name glyph beside him. The painter (or his patron) also felt that the details of this costume were important enough to merit the application of a yellow/brown wash (one of the few times that he did so in the document) to highlight them. The detail of the costume is remarkable–despite the diminutive size of the painted figures in the manuscript (ca. one inch high) the artist included not only the flayed skin garment, but also the Xipe rattle staff, the elaborate feathered and bejeweled headdress, and the tripartite shield discussed above.

However, while details of the costume are recognizable and clear, the motive behind their inclusion and the emphasis placed on them are not. There are a number of other visual references to Xipe in the document (either with iconographic elements of the deity’s costume or the tripartite shield), but the only one clearly associated with Axayacatl’s reign is a Xipe head depicted eight years earlier in another Rabbit year, 4 Rabbit, 1470.¹⁹  The head, probably representing the flayed skin mask worn by Xipe impersonators, is painted above a generalized image of a temple (Figure 12). This may relate to Axayacatl’s dedication of a temalacatl soon after taking office (4 Rabbit came two years after his accession). This type of sacrificial stone, more popularly known as the ’gladiatorial stone,’ played an important role in the celebration of Tlacaxipehualiztli, the main festival of Xipe Totec. Axayacatl’s interest in the cult of Xipe may have also led him to renovate the Yopico temple precinct, where the main temple of Xipe was located. As Umberger (1981:272) has pointed out, 4 Rabbit appears on a number of monuments in reference to one of the cardinal directions, usually the south.²⁰  That the temple of Xipe would be renovated during a year with a southern association would be in keeping with Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina’s policies of expansion in the south and the revitalization of the imperial cult of Xipe–both of which seem to have been continued during Axayacatl’s administration (see Barnes n.d.b).

From these two documents (and the examples discussed herein, which represent only a fraction of what is contained in the larger works), then, a wealth of information is provided in a number of what many might consider inconsequential details. The variance used in the depictions of rulers and nobles in the Calpan, and the details and selective emphasis the artist of Codex en Cruz illustrate very well that even after the conquest artists and their patrons were still concerned with adapting and using Pre-Hispanic signs and symbols to relate specific information regarding historic and contemporary rulers. That, as was done in the Calpan, the artist mingled European and indigenous signs and symbols shows that artists were adopting aspects of a new visual language, but only where the newer symbols could be equated with the old. That, as can be seen in the Codex en Cruz, colonial period artists still included extraordinarily specific details about specific rulers, allows us to surmise that they still knew, understood, and possibly even worked from Pre-Hispanic originals.

Endnotes

17. I am using Dibble’s dates here, as many of the early chronicles differ in the dating of the events in Axayacatl’s career. Dibble’s chronology used in the Codex en Cruz has Axayacatl taking office in 1468. Most other sources date this earlier, with Clavijero (1964:274) being one of the earliest with 1464.

18. There is a brief mention of Axayacatl capturing three warriors and being wounded in the Historia de los Mexicanos por sus pinturas (Garibay K. 1979:62), and the event is also mentioned by Torquemada (1975:1:250-251). Torquemada adds a number of details, including the names of the other two soldiers captured with Tlilcuetzpalin, but does not mention Axayacatl’s costume. As this is the only representation of Axayacatl and the man who wounded him, one must wonder if the Codex en Cruz artist and Alvarado-Tezozomoc did not consult the same source for this encounter.

19. This head is identified by Dibble (1981:21-22) as Piltzintecuhtli (a deity linked to Xochipilli), based on a similarity to the headdress worn by a day-lord of the day in the Tonalamatl Aubin. There is not general agreement on the nature of this particular supernatural (usually the 7^th of the 13 lords of the day), but in the codices this day-lord is most commonly identified as Xochipilli or Cinteotl (see Caso 1971:335-336). The headdress worn by this figure is the same that appears on the Berlin type B Xipe figures, and on a number of Xipe illustrations, most notably those in the Codex Borbonicus. All of these points are addressed more fully in my dissertation.

20. Durán (1971:390) as pointed out by Umberger (1981:107).

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