Courtesy of the General Archive of the Indies, Sevilla, Spain.
The first printed grammar for facilitating Nahua-Spanish communication and a reference for beginner Nahuatl-learners in the 1500s.
Creators: Alonso de Molina
Date of Creation: 1571
Place of origin: Mexico City/Tenochtitlan (in Pedro Ocharte’s printing press).
Physical measurements: 117 leaves + 10 manuscript inserted pages at back, 14 cm in length
Materials: Paper
Process by which it was made: Woodcut title illustration (Saint Francis receiving the stigmata), woodcut initials throughout, and moveable type. Inserts include use of vermillion, a cochineal lake, and a gypsum-based pigment.
Painted by Native artists in the late sixteenth century, it includes information on the Christian and Aztec calendars, European medical astrology, and a history of pre-conquest and early colonial Mexico City.
Creators: Anonymous Nahua Scribes
Date of Creation: ca. 1578, updated over time
Place of origin: Mexico City
Physical measurements: 51 leaves, 102 pages, 10 cm x 20 cm
Materials: Paint on Native bark paper
Process by which it was made: Painting
Current location: Bibliothèque National de France.
Further Reading
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mexica. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican Books of Fate. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007.
Delbrugge, Laura. Reportorio de los tiempos. London: Tamesis, 1999.
Diel, Lori Boornazian. The Codex Mexicanus: A Guide to Life in Late Sixteenth-Century New Spain. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018.
Created in the sixteenth century by indigenous scribes in the community of Huejotzingo, Mexico, its eight sheets offer a tally of goods delivered to their new Spanish overlords.
Creators: Unknown (Nahua)
Date of Creation: ca. 1530
Place of origin: Huejotzingo, Mexico
Physical measurements: 8 sheets of various dimensions: p.1, 45 cm wide x 44 cm. high; p. 2, 42 cm wide x 27 cm high; p. 3, 20 cm wide x 52 cm high; p. 4, 44 cm wide x 23 cm wide; p. 5, 52.5 cm wide x 41.5 cm high; p. 6, 42 cm wide x 43.5 cm high; p. 7, 24 cm wide x 45.5 cm high; p. 8, 40 cm wide x 26 cm high.
Materials: Amatl paper, agave paper, pigments
Process by which it was made: Painting
Current location: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Information contributed by Barbara E. Mundy.
Further Reading
Boone, Elizabeth Hill. Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztecs and Mixtecs. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000.
Mundy, Barbara E. “The Emergence of Alphabetic Writing: Tlahcuiloh and Escribano in Sixteenth-Century Mexico.” The Americas 77, no. 3 (July 2020): 361–407.
Wolf, Gerhard, Joseph Connors, and Louis Alexander Waldman, eds. Colors between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún. Florence; Cambridge, MA: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut : Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; Worldwide distribution by Harvard University Press, 2011.
