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Spanish Colonialism and Aztec Representation Michael Schreffler "Their Cort?s and Our Cort?s": Spanish Colonialism and Aztec Representation Michael Schreffler or to reconstruct the com Writing in Santiago de Guatemala (present-day Antigua) in counted by D?az actually occurred the second half of the sixteenth century, the conquistador position of the painting allegedly produced in 1519. Instead, Bernal D?az del Castillo (ca. 1495-1584) recalled one of his I explore the ways in which early modern rhetoric and ico the text related texts Francisco early encounters with the indigenous people of the Ameri nography?here, by Diaz, by It on Easter in 1519 near the the de a that cas.1 occurred Sunday port L?pez de Gomara and Antonio Sol?s, and painting Spaniards called San Juan de Ul?a, an island just off the Gulf depicts the incident said to have occurred at San Juan de as a in Mex Coast of Mexico. There, a man Diaz identified the gover Ul?a?constructed distorted view of painting Aztec in of nor of a community loyal to theAztec Emperor Moctezuma II ico and entangled it the conventions colonial historiog conclusion is in the uncontroversial arrived with his entourage to greet and exchange giftswith raphy. This rooted in the form of colonial Hern?n Cort?s, the leader of the Spanish expedition.2 After premise that representation?here, to three the calls texts and not a window onto bowing Cort?s times, governor?whom Diaz period images?is transparent him woven and the As the of Aztec "Tendile"?presented with gold, cotton, fish, past. such, representation painting poten us the other foodstuffs. Cort?s responded with countergifts that tially tells less about that practice than it does about a a and a anxieties and of those who the texts included wooden chair, glass beads, necklace, expectations produced crimson and under Recent cap.3 image consideration.7 scholarship suggests and both Aztecs and Accounts of such ritual exchanges between Spaniards that painting?practiced by Spaniards?pro the inhabitants of Aztec Mexico abound in Diaz's memoir, vided a site for contact and compatibility between the two was a to published in 1632 as La historia verdadera de la conquista de la cultures.8 However, it also topos that gave shape early Nuevo Espa?a (The True History of theConquest ofNew Spain), modern conceptualizations of historiographie authority and of in cultural difference. and in other sixteenth-century chronicles exploration the New World.4 The incident that follows this interaction, however, is more unusual: Bernal D?az and the Aztec Painters In writing about the production of the painting at San Juan Tendile brought with him the great painters that theyhave de Ul?a in 1519, Bernal D?az noted that Governor Tendile to al natu a of in his but that in Mexico, and he ordered them paint [pintar brought group "great painters" retinue, to one ral] an image of the face, body, and features of Cort?s and those artists had collaborated make just painting ("he of the and of all of the captains, and the soldiers, and the boats and took if) displaying all people, animals, things . art sails, and the horses and even the two hounds, the mentioned in the passage. Evidence from the history of the and the entire he indicates that such a would have the artillery pieces, cannon-balls, army picture employed seen in codices or cloths had brought, and he [Tendile] took it to his lord [Mocte graphic conventions painted (lien zuma] .5 zos) of the sort produced in pre-Hispanic and colonial Mex ico.9 Those formats for painting served as vehicles for the of economic transac The author's description of the Indians' production of this visual representation history, space, an it and ritual and an examination of some painting is remarkable. If such image truly existed, tions, practice,10 would be of great interest to both the history of art and the extant works of this type demonstrates the style and artistic as one of the earliest documented conventions in the service of history of perception, indigenous painters working used in for exam pictures of Spaniards made by indigenous people in the Moctezuma might have 1519.11 Consider, Americas, and it could reasonably be called the firstwork of ple, the first illustrated page in the Codex Mendoza (Fig. 1), the last of art?in a in or around Mexico in about colonial art?or, alternatively, work Aztec manuscript produced City of Tenoch Mexico. But since no painting that can be securely identified 1540.12 It depicts the founding and early history whose invasion and as the one produced on Easter Sunday of 1519 has survived, titlan, the Aztec imperial capital conquest was Bernal D?az. The artist identified the in order to imagine what such a picture might have looked narrated by cityby name as a at the center of the like, the reader is inevitably left to rely on the passage. And in its (drawn large hieroglyph and rendered it as a rectilinear island surrounded and conjuring up that vision, the reader confronts the problems page) to into blue bands of water. His use of that ensued when sixteenth-century Spaniards attempted partitioned quadrants by the and of visual in contour flat areas of color, a "scattered" two convey practices products representation heavy lines, Aztec Mexico. dimensional spatial scheme, and standardized hieroglyphic some of I am not to icons is characteristic of the scholars believe In examining those problems, aiming painting style new a that has was in Aztec Mexico.13 But what is most uncover information about Aztec art, subject prevalent perhaps the use of as an indicator of how the on the been carefully researched through archaeological helpful indigenous painters and the men who data, ethnohistorical texts, and art historical methods.6 Nor Gulf Coast might have portrayed Cort?s or not re him is the Codex Mendoza artist's do I intend to determine whether the episode accompanied representa This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 19:01:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions DECEMBER VOLUME XCI NUMBER 4 408 ART BULLETIN 2009 Men tion of the human figure. Placed throughout the city's four resembling the founders of Tenochtitlan in the Codex are ten shown near center of the left The quarters Tenochtitlan's founders, seated. doza appears the edge (Fig. 2).16 a of Their faces drawn in profile and their bodies covered in artist used similar graphic vocabulary in his depiction same cloaks, they are nearly identical in appearance and are dis three Spaniards in the pictorial space. One of them, near corner the beneath a tinguished from one another only by their names, rendered placed the upper left of page glyph in the as hieroglyphs adjacent to or above their heads.14 Near the representing the year 1529, is identified accompanying as bottom of the page the artist employed similar conventions in alphabetic text the conquistador ?u?o de Guzm?n. Drawn areas his delineation of four additional men as pairs of warriors with black contour lines and flat of color, Guzm?n's as a engaged in battle.15 face appears in profile, and he is distinguished Spaniard an the horse he This way of representing the human form recurs with some (rather than Aztec) by his beard, his clothing, cross him are two other modifications throughout the corpus of visual imagery pro rides, and the he carries. Beneath are duced by indigenous painters in colonial Mexico. On a page Spaniards, and they, too, depicted in the visual language or in the Codex Telleriano Remensis (ca. 1560-70), a figure of the Aztecs.17 Seated on curules, hip-joint chairs, rather This content downloaded from 129.252.86.83 on Sun, 16 Mar 2014 19:01:31 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SPANISH COLONIALISM AND AZTEC REPRESENTATION 4Q9 2 Events in theYears 1529-1531, from the Codex Telleriano Remensis, ca. 1560-70, ink and wash on paper, 12*4 X 8V2 in. Biblioth?que Nationale de France, Paris, MS Mexicain 385, fol. 44r (artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by the Biblioth?que Nationale de France) than reed mats to symbolize their authority,18 the Spaniards painting said to have been produced at San Juan de Ul?a in are accompanied by hieroglyphic renderings of their names 1519? Diaz's account of what ultimately happened to the written next to them. picture he described problematizes this view of the image and or As Stephanie Wood notes, suits of armor, beards, horses, its likely formal characteristics. Diaz reported that six and wooden chairs were adopted as standard elements in the seven days after the initial encounter with Cort?s, Governor an iconography of Spaniards by early colonial Mexican manu Tendile returned to the site of the original meeting with rea script painters.19 The twenty-first-centuryreader might addition to his entourage: sonably suppose that the painters Diaz observed would have used these conventions or similar ones to produce the image With them came a great Mexican chief who, in his face, of the Spaniards, their ships, and their weapons in 1519. features, and body, resembled Cort?s. And Moctezuma Indeed, two images of Cort?s made by native artists in the had sent him intentionally; for, as they said, when Tendile second half of the sixteenth century demonstrate this graphic took the rendering of Cort?s, all of the important men vocabulary. Painted on a long strip of bark paper recording who were with Moctezuma said that one of them?who was the pictorial history of Tepechpan, a central Mexican town, called Quintalbor?resembled the conquistador.
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