Between sombreros and diadems: a pictorial testament from colonial central Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the graphic choices in two sixteenth-century Nahua pictorials concerning the property distribution of don Miguel Damián after his death: Mexicain 34 and Ayer 1900. The uniqueness of these complementary documents has been unrecognized until now and helps us see the Central Mexican colonial testamentary tradition in a new light. The work on these documents so far has primarily focused on understanding their relationship to the Spanish will. But thinking about them also in relation to Aztec and colonial Nahua accounting documents can help us explain why testaments were so quickly and widely adopted by colonial Nahuas. The paper also shows how a careful visual analysis of these documents offers us a peek into the interstitial spaces generated by the conquest, spaces in which modes of recording, family structures, and expressive choices capture lived experiences in the process of radical cultural change between a Prehispanic past and a colonial reality.