codex – AMERICAN CONTACT

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.

Information contributed by Lori Boornazian Diel.

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.