Abstract
The Huexotzinco Codex is one of the earliest surviving manuscripts from the early colonial period of Mexico. The codex pertains to the legal case of conquistador Hernán Cortés and contains paintings and documents detailing the seizure of Cortés’ personal properties and over-taxation of his Huexotzincan allies by the colonial government in New Spain (present-day Mexico). Eight paintings within the manuscript were subjected to non-invasive analytical techniques revealing the pigment palette and production methodology. The findings of this study show a mixture of pre- and colonial codex production practices as well a unique Maya blue formulation and the identification of a silicate material used as a matrix for an organic yellow dye.
Highlights
Mesoamerican codices are the best primary sources for understanding the historic and cultural legacy of the ancient Nahua and Mayans
The goal of this paper is to expand upon the earlier analysis and to study the materiality of the eight codex paintings in-depth using a variety of non-invasive techniques, including X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, fiber optic reflectance spectroscopy (FORS), portable external reflectance Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ER-FTIR), and microscopy
Painting VI (Fig. 1) is colorless, only XRF and FORS were performed on the paper
Summary
Mesoamerican codices are the best primary sources for understanding the historic and cultural legacy of the ancient Nahua (which includes the Mexica, or Aztecs) and Mayans. There has been on-going research for the past decade or more devoted to the non-invasive analysis of pre- and colonial codices in an attempt to better understand not just the materiality of these works and technological similarities between different Mesoamerican cultural traditions, as well as changes introduced by the Spanish colonizers. Studies of codex materials [1,2,3,4,5] far have uncovered region-specific pigment and papermaking technologies and experimentation, revealed important iconography, and provided historic details about life and culture before and after the Spanish. Produced in 1531 in the town of Huexotzinco, Puebla, the codex consists of eight pictographic paintings and 79 documents written in Spanish concerning the legal case of conquistador Hernán Cortés against three members of the First Audiencia, the colonial government in New Spain. The paintings reflect a predominantly Indigenous tradition with regard to their convention of communicating information through pictographs and their use of Indigenous papers and colorants
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