Feather-working scenes, Florentine Codex, Book 9, ca. 1570-1585. Bernardino de Sahagún, and others.
Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (Ms. Med. Palat. 219, f. 373). By Permission of the Ministero per i Beni e la Attività Culturali. Florence, Italy.

This page from an encyclopedia of Aztec history and culture describes pre-Hispanic “feather-painting.” This art form, in which thousands of brilliantly colored and iridescent feathers were painstakingly glued to paper or cloth, was unique to the Americas, and 16th-century Europeans marveled at it. The three vignettes picture different stages of an elaborate feather-painting project. At the bottom of the page, a craftsman wields a brush to glue the feathers, making images of saints and flowers. A small red and white circle hovers at the edge of the saint, a pre-conquest-style glyph representing an eye, to signify a glistening or iridescent object.

As the mix of European-style rendering and indigenous glyphs suggests, the Florentine Codex—named for its current location in the Medici Library in Florence—was a collaborative project. Under the direction of a Franciscan, Bernardino de Sahagún, Nahua elders provided information on pre-conquest practices; indigenous painters and scribes, fluent in both Nahuatl and Spanish, created the written text and colored images. The final version of the encyclopedia covered 12 volumes. Although the painters’ names are no longer known, it is likely that they were men trained in Franciscan schools, where they were part of the Franciscans’ utopian plans for a perfect indigenous Christian community, and as tlacuilos.

While it is an invaluable source about feather working, the Florentine Codex also provides insight into the ways indigenous and European image-making and record-keeping traditions intertwined in the first generations of colonization, and thus manifests the mechanics of mestizaje. The Florentine Codex has bound pages, a type of book introduced to Nahuas by Europeans. It is written in alphabetic script, another introduction. Also from Europe are the style of tunic worn by the craftsmen shown here and images of Christian saints. Indigenous contributions are the art of feather work—an art that continued into colonial times—as well as glyphs and Nahuatl ideas they represent.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Estrada de Gerlero, Elena Isabel. 1994. “La plumaria, expression artística por exelencia.” In Mexico en el mundo de las colecciones de Arte (Nueva España, vol. 1). Pp. 72-117. Mexico City: El Gobierno de la República.

León Portilla, Miguel. 1999. Bernardino de Sahagún: Pionero de la Antropología. Mexico City: UNAM. Translated as: Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist. 2002. Trans. Mauricio J. Mixco. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Peterson, Jeanette. 1988. “The Florentine Codex Imagery and the Colonial Tlacuilo.” In The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico. Jorge Klor de Alva, H.B. Nicholson and Eloise Quiñones Keber, eds. Pp. 275-294. Albany, New York: Institute of Mesoamerican Studies.

Sahagún, Bernardino de. 1979. Códice Florentino de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. Facsimile edition. 3 Volumes. Florence and Mexico: Giunti Barbera and the Archivo General de la Nación.

	Aztecs: (Nahuatl) A pre-Hispanic empire that controlled much of central Mexico, with a capital in Tenochtitlan, up until the Spanish conquest. The Aztecs called themselves the Culhua-Mexica. “Huey Tlatoani” or “Great Speaker” was the title of their supreme ruler. back to text
	Franciscans: (English) An order of Catholic priests; Franciscans were the first of the regular orders the Spanish crown sent to convert the indigenous people of the Americas. They arrived in Santo Domingo before 1500 and landed in New Spain in 1524. They began evangelization in Perú circa 1546, and founded the first Franciscan college in Quito, Ecuador in 1555. back to text
	Mestizaje: (Spanish) A descriptive word for the ethnic and cultural mixings in the New World. back to text
	Nahua: (Nahuatl) An ethnic group from Central Mexico whose pre-Hispanic empire, the Aztec empire, was defeated by the Spanish in 1521. The language they spoke, Nahuatl, was the indigenous lingua franca in the colonial period in New Spain, and is still spoken today in Mexico. back to text
	Nahuatl: (Nahuatl) The language spoken by the Nahua, an ethnic group from Central Mexico whose pre-Hispanic empire, the Aztec empire, was defeated by the Spanish in 1521. The language, whose name means “clear speech,” is spoken today in some towns in Mexico. back to text
	Pre-Hispanic: (English) The time before America's discovery and conquest by Spain; synonymous with pre-Columbian (before Columbus). back to text
	Tlacuilo: (Nahuatl) An indigenous scribe and painter. In the pre-Hispanic era, highly trained tlacuilos created pictorial books and other records for the Aztec court in Tenochtitlan, as well as for indigenous community leaders, priests, and high-status families throughout central Mexico. back to text

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