3magaloni colors between two worlds.pdf

8/10/2019 3MAGALONI Colors between two worlds.pdf

1/225

Villa I Tatti

The Harvard University Centerfor Italian Renaissance Studies

28

Florence


2/225

ColorsBetween

Two Worlds

THE FLORENTINE CODEXOF BERNARDINO DE SAHAGN

Acts of a conference atVilla I Tatti and the Kunsthistorisches Instit ut in Florenz,

12 13 June 2008

Organized byJoseph Connors, Gerhard Wolf, Diana Magaloni,

with Clara Bargellini, Diana Magaloni, and Alessandra Russo

Edited byLouis A. Waldman

Villa I TattiThe Harvard University Centerfor Italian Renaissance Studies

Kunsthistorisches Institutin Florenz

Max-Planck-Institut


3/225

Contents

Joseph Connors and Gerhard WolfForeword xi

Clara BargelliniThe Colors of theVirgin of Guadalupe 3

Ida Giovanna RaoMediceo Palatino 218220 of the BibliotecaMedicea Laurenziana of Florence 27

Diana Magaloni KerpelPainters of the New World: The Process ofMaking the Florentine Codex 47

Piero Baglioni, Rodorico Giorgi, Marcia Carolina Arroyo,David Chelazzi, Francesca Ridi and Diana Magaloni KerpelOn the Nature of the Pigments of the General Historyof the Things of New Spain:The Florentine Codex 79

Berenice Alcntara Rojas

In Nepapan Xochitl:The Power of Flowers in theWorks of Sahagn* 107

Salvador Reyes EquiguasPlants and Colors in the Florentine Codex 135

Marina Garone GravierSahagns Codex and Book Design in the Indigenous Context 157

Villa I Tatti

Publication of this volume has been made possible by

The Myron and Sheila Gilmore Publication Fund at I TattiThe Robert Lehman Endowment FundThe Jean-Franois Malle Scholarly Programs and Publications FundThe Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Scholarly Programs and PublicationsThe Barbara and Craig Smyth Fund for Scholarly Programs and PublicationsThe Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Endowment FundThe Malcolm Wiener Fund for Scholarly Programs and Publications

ISBN XXX XX XXX XXXX X


4/225

VIII

Lia MarkeyIstoria della terra chiamata la nuova spagna: The Historyand Reception of Sahagns Codex at the Medici Court 199

Sandra Zetina, Tatiana Falcn, Elsa Arroyo,and Jose Luis Ruvalcaba

The Encoded Language of Herbs: Material Insights into theDe la CruzBadiano Codex 221

Elena PhippsTextile Colors and Colorants in the Andes 257

Roco Bruquetas GalnLocal and Imported Colors: The Spanish Maritime Tradeand the Pigment Supply in New Spain* 283

Louisa C. MatthewThe Pigment Trade in Europe during the Sixteenth Century 301

Roland KrischelThe Venetian Pigment Trade in the Sixteenth Century 317

Thomas CumminsI Saw It with My Own Eyes:The Three Illustrated Manuscripts of Colonial Peru 335

Gabriela SiracusanoColors and Cultures in the Andes 367

Francesco PellizziAfterword Colors Between Two Worlds:

The Codice Fiorentinoof Bernardino de Sahagn 379

Bibliography 389

Photo Credits 437

Index 443

CONT E NT S


5/225

Fig. 1.Virgin of Guadalupe, sixteenth century, tempera and oil on cloth.Col. Insigne y Nacional Baslica de Santa Mara de Guadalupe, MexicoCity, Mexico.

In memory of Anne DHarnoncourt

For all its calm and gentle dignity, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a veryactive painting (fig. 1). Apart from its life as a miraculous object, it bringsinto focus basic questions about the making, qualities, and functions ofpainting in New Spain. A look at some aspects of its complex history andreception can offer important insights into the principal artistic concernsrepresented in the FlorentineCodex created in 15761577 by Bernardinode Sahagn and his Amerindian collaborators, and now in the BibliotecaLaurenziana.1 The FlorentineCodex has been relatively little studied byart historians.2Yet, as all the papers in this volume demonstrate in dif-ferent ways, upon close examination it emerges as a visually unique andhighly important work.

The Guadalupe painting was produced at least a couple of decadesbefore the codex, but for our purposes the two works can be thought of asobjects created within the same Indochristian cultural context. Due in partto the paintings Marian subject and the religious functions it fulf illed, thework came to play a very prominent role in the religious and social life ofMexico City, and later, of New Spain as a whole. Whereas the codex was

* Besides the organizers and participants of the symposium, I wish to thank JeanettePeterson, and two colleagues who read and commented on this essay: Jorge Guadarrama andStafford Poole.

Unless otherwise indicated, translations are mine.1. Diana Magalonihas established these dates from internal evidence in the manuscript

itself. See her essay in this volume.2. See the essays in part IV of Klor de Alva, Nicholson, andQuiones Keber, The

Work of Bernardino de Sahagn, and contributions 610 in Schwaller,Sahagn at 500.

The Colors of theVirgin of Guadalupe*

CLARA BARGELLINIInstituto de Investigaciones Estticas

Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (unam)


6/225

CLARA BARGE LLINI4 THE COLORS OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE 5

almost lost when the indigenous world of Mexico City collapsed aroundthe end of the sixteenth century, the painted representation of the Virginof Guadalupe made a new beginning. Within half a century, the imagebecame the subject of learned devotional texts and was frequently repro-duced by artists. The afterlife of the Virgin of Guadaluperaises questionsthat are central to many of the papers assembled for this volume: the iden-

tity and status of the artist, and the materials and methods of paintingespecially in the ways these issues relate to the use of color. This essayconsiders these two themes in order to frame and introduce the presen-tations of the symposium, and also to suggest topics for future researchand discussion.

Today the orig inal Mexican Guadalupe painting is located high up onthe sanctuary wall of the new church built for it in the 1970s, very close tothe site where the apparitions of the Virgin to a recently converted Amerin-dian named Juan Diego are sa id to have occurred in 1531. The documentedhistory of the painting, however, begins only in 1555, the year when it wasshown in a chapel on more or less the same site, the hill of Tepeyac,north of Mexico City.3 A famous controversy over the image, between

Archbishop Alonso de Montfar (in Mexico 15541572) and the Francis-cans, took place a year later.4On 6 September 1556, Montfar preachedin favor of the Tepeyac image. The Virgin was allegedly performingmiracles, her sanctuary was very popular, especially with Spanish colo-nists, and the archbishop favored its promotion. Two days later, on Sep-tember 8 (the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin), the provincial of theFranciscan order in New Spain, Fray Francisco de Bustamante (in Mexicosince 1542), delivered a sermon vehemently denouncing the archbishopspromotion of the Virgin at Tepeyac as a miracle-working image, claim-ing that its cult was liable to have detrimental effects on the faith of thenatives, whom the Franciscans had struggled hard and long to keep frompracticing idolatry.

3. Reyes Garca , Cmo te confundes?, paragraph 56; the translation of the Nhuatltext is discussed on pp. 5355. Favrot Peterson, in Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe,pp. 581583, agrees with and expands Reyes Garcas arguments.

4. OGorman, Destierro de sombras, pp. 81107. The documents of the controversy,which are reports by witnesses of what Bustamente said, can be consulted in Torre Villarand Navarro de Anda,Testimonios histricos guadalupanos, pp. 3672. They are also avail-able at http://www.proyectoguadalupe.com/documentos/infor_1556.html (April 15, 2009).

Fray Francisco is reported as having identified the maker of the imageas a native artist, whom he called Marcos, indio pintor. This brings usdirectly to the topic of the status of painters, particularly native painters.

Although the 1556 documents cite Marcos as the author of the Virgin ofGuadalupeonly once by name, a painter (or painters) called Marcos turnsup in several sixteenth-century documents. A Marcos Cipac, also known

as Marcos Tlacuilol(the Nhuatl term for painter-scribe), who lived in theIndian barrio of San Juan Moyotlan in the southwestern part of MexicoCity, is one of the thirty-six indigenous painters mentioned in theAnalesde Juan Bautista, acollection of facts and commentaries, mostly producedbetween 1564 and 1569.5Marcos Cipac declared in 1565 that he was f ifty-two years old.6If this is correct, he would have been born in 1513, andwould have been about forty-three at the time of the 1556 controversy.Three years before the dispute, in 1553, a Marcos Griego legalized own-ership of a house he had just purchased in the barrio of Santa MaraCuepopan, or Tlaquechiuhcan.7 In the document ratifying this transac-tion, Marcos Griego, who identified himself as a painter, presented hiscase to the Spanish official through an interpreter. He signed the agree-ment with his mark, a cross flanked by two lions, apparently in referenceto the lion that is the symbol of the arti sts patron saint, Saint Mark. Griegodeclared himself to be fifty-five years old in a document of 1572; thus hewould have been born around 1517, making him about thir ty-nine at thetime of the Montfar and Bustamante sermons. Finally, we know of anindividual called Marcos de Aquino, for whom no birth date is recorded.This third Marcos was cited as one of three famous indigenous artistsin New Spaincomparable to Apelles, Michelangelo, or Berruguetein Bernal Daz del Castillos History, which was written between 1555and 1568.8

Since Joaqun Garca Icazbalceta first proposed the theory in 1883,scholars have assumed that Marcos Cipac and Marcos de Aquino were one

5. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, pp. 4749, 205, believes he was one person,variously referred to as Marcos Cipac, Marcos Tlacuilol, or simply Marcos.

6. Ibid., paragraph 352.7.ngele s Jim nez, Apeles y tlacuilos, pp. 11533.8. Daz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, vol. 1, p. 275, and vol. 2, p. 362. In referring

to Berruguete, Daz del Castillo likely meant Alonso, who had a more internationalandrecentfame than his father, Pedro.


7/225


and the same.9The subsequent discovery of the other MarcosGriegocomplicated the situation by introducing a third surname, though it is stillpossible that all three names refer to the same individual.10On the otherhand, theAnales consistently connect Marcos Cipac with the barr io of SanJuan, while Marcos Griego, at least in the year 1553, owned a house in thebarrio of Santa Mara. I doubt that this discrepancyin documents writ-

ten while the individuals in question were alivecan be attr ibuted simplyto ignorance or confusion on the par t of contemporaries. TheAnaleswerecompiled in Cipacs barrio, San Juan, and that may explain why the textnames no fewer than twenty painters from San Juanmore than those inany of the other three indigenous barrios of Mexico City. Only a singlepainter, cited simply as Toribio, is described as living in Santa Mara.11Ifthey were not in fact the same person, we can suppose that Marcos Cipacand Marcos Griego would have collaborated in one of the most impor-tant art commissions executed by Amerindian artists in Mexico City, thealtarpiece for San Jos de los Naturales (finished by Christmas of 1564).12Marcos Cipac is thought to have had an important role in the San Jos delos Naturales altarpiece, together with artists from all four barrios.

In any case, the Marcos cited by Bustamante in 1556 as author ofthe Guadalupe painting probably studied with Fray Pedro de Gante at theFranciscan school for natives set up at San Jos de los Naturales, where hewould have had access to European prints of compositions corresponding,like the Guadalupe, to the early phase of Immaculate Conception iconogra-phy.13Other sixteenth-century paintings produced in indigenous contextsattest to the use of such European images as models. One example is themural of theAssumption of the Virginat the Franciscan monastery of San

9. Garca Icazbalceta, Carta acerca del origen, consulted in Torre Villar andNavarro de Anda, Testimonios histricos, p. 1107.

10.ngel es Jimne z, in Apeles y tlacuilos, pp. 126127, supposes so, and suggestsa link between the surname Griego (Spanish for Greek) and a desire to recall the GreekApelles. Griego, however, is also a Spanis h sur name, w hich complicate s his identity. FavrotPeterson, in Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe, p. 590, believed Marcos Cipac was thesame as Marcos Aquino; she did not know of Marcos Griego.

11. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, p. 47. The Marcos Griego documents identifyPedro Cuautli, mentioned in the Anales, as also living in Santa Maria: ngele s Jimnez ,Apeles y tlacuilos, p. 129.

12. Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?, paragraphs 32729.13. Numerous sug gestions are cited by various authors. Some are compiled byVargasl ugo

in Juan Correa, volume 4, part 1, pp. 267271, and most recently by Favrot Peterson, inCreating the Virgin of Guadalupe, pp. 590605.

Martn Huaquechula, with the revealing detail of the single angel beneaththe Virgins feet (fig. 2). The same iconography, with the same singleangel, appears on sixteenth-century featherwork miters, including the onementioned in the 1571 inventory of Ferdinando I de Medici (Museo degli

Argenti, Florence).14In technical terms, the three works di scussed above embody three dif-

ferent relationships between indigenous and European artistic traditions.Even though the painter of the Virgin of Guadalupe was Amerindian,the work is painted on cloth, a technique with European precedents.The Medici miter is an example of native artists adapting a traditional

native technique, featherwork, to Christian liturgical use. Mural paint-ing, on the other hand, was a technique with a long tradition both inMesoamerica and in Europe. Thus at Huaquechula, although the site andiconography are Christian, the hand could be either European or Amer-indian, and the materials are probably a mixture of the two.

14. Discussed by Russoin TheArt s in Lat in Amer ica, pp. 164 165.

Fig. 2. Virgin of the Assumption, sixteenth century, wall painting. Uppercloister of the monastery of San Martn, Huaquechula, Puebla, Mexico.


8/225


These same three works serve as starting points from which to con-sider important questions about the topic of color. Featherwork and muralpainting can be considered two extremes in the handling and viewing ofcolor. Justly equated by Europeans with mosaics, but more intricate thaneven the most minute mosaic work, feather painting involves colors thatare brilliant yet subtle, constantly changing as the viewer handles the

object or changes position. A feather mosaic can be brown and flat at onemoment and pulsating with fluorescent colors the next, offering one ofthe most exciting viewing experiences imaginable. Little wonder, then,that the feather mosaics became prized export items. Furthermore, thebearers of these colors, the feathers, evoke the flight and song of birds,ever beautiful and yet ever changing, recalling that the confluence ofpermanence and evanescence in art, and life, is one of the basic concernsof Mesoamerican thought. Wall painting was another matter. At Francis-can sites, in particular, most of the murals that have survived are nearlymonochromatic, and were intended to be seen from a distance. Some useof color did exist, however, such as at Huaquechula, but we know littleabout the pigments used, since there are as yet few technical studies. Itbears remembering that the Franciscans in Europe in the sixteenth cen-tury also favored monochromatic decorations, as in the frescoes by DonoDoni (15051575) in the cloister of Pope Sixtus V next to the basilica ofSan Francesco at Assisi.15

As for the painting on cloth of the Virgin of Guadalupe, it s a llegedmiraculous origin has prevented its being examined thoroughly with mod-ern means.16Only the 1982 report by conservator Jos Sol Rosales and the1996 commentary by Jorge Ral Guadarrama Guevara, former director ofthe Museum of the Basilica of Guadalupe, have been published.17Rosalesand Guevara were permitted very little time to investigate the object andhad to rely on rather superficial observations, so their conclusions areuncertain. However, Rosales saw four different types of tempera paint-ing, one of which he believed to be aguazo, a technique that involved

applying pigment to a damp cloth surface and resulted in the color

15. Doni began work there in 1564: Prosperi Valenti Rodin, Limmagine di SanFrancesco, pp. 176178.

16. See Favrot Peterson, Creating the Virgin of Guadalupe, pp. 573577, for anaccount of the examinations carried out so far.

17. Ojeda Llanes, La tilma guadalupana, pp. 212219.

passing to the back of the support.18As for the pigments, he posited that,with the exception of cochineal in the tunic, they are of mineral origin.Guadarrama commented on the similarity of the palette to that of pre-Hispanic painting and also noted the employment of aguazo.19Both meninsisted on the need for further technical studies. Yet, even though thereare gaps in our knowledge about it, the Virgin of Guadalupeis a work of

extraordinary importance as the only painting on cloth to have survivedfrom the sixteenth century in more or less original condition.At first , of course, the painting was not unique. Indeed, one of the

main points made by Fray Francisco Bustamante in his conflict with thearchbishop was that there was nothing unusual about the Guadalupepainting, since there were others like it.20 It is easy to believe that thiswould have been the case in 1556, because there were many Amerindianpainters in Mexico City then. By the same reasoning, we can infer thatthe paintings author was probably not considered a very important fig-ure during his own time. Bustamente mentions Marcos indio pintoronly once by name; elsewhere he refers to the paintings creator simplyas un indio. Intentionally or not, Bustamantes text might have impliedto the archbishop that such a painting could hardly be performing mira-cles, since its author was merely un indioa message that his Spanishaudience was probably disposed to accept. In other words, shortly afterpainting the Guadalupe, Marcos had already begun to disappear fromwritten history.

Even during Marcoss lifetime, major changes were taking place inMexico City that would obliterate his world, and that of other contempo-rary indigenous painters, forever. Epidemics decimated the nat ive popula-tion. Those who survived in Mexico City suffered enormously over thefollowing decades from changes in the tribute st ructure and the organiza-tion of work.21More and more painters were arriv ing from Europe. In 1557,the year following the sermon that mentions Marcos, ordinances based onSpanish precedents were promulgated:22Indians could be members of

18. Ojeda Llanes, La tilma guadalupana, pp. 212214.19. Ibid., pp. 232234.20. Torre Villar and Navarro de Anda,Testimonios histricos, p. 66.21. These are central concerns in Reyes Garca, Cmo te confundes?.22. On the sixteenth-century guild, still a much understudied topic, see Toussaint,

Pintura colonial, chap. 5; Ruiz Gomar, pp. 205211. Mues Orts, La libertad del pincel, pp.185203.


9/225


the guild, if they were properly examined by European professionals. Thearchbishop was intent on controlling the friars and implementing reformsin accordance with the Council of Trent then in session,23and it is notdifficult to see in the new guild a mechanism designed to bring nativesinto line with European practices, and to limit their ability to compete forcommissions. It was in this atmosphere of tragedy and repression that the

FlorentineCodex was made and spirited off to Europe. Nevertheless, thepainting of the Guadalupe was preserved, and with it there survived somememory of its creation by a native painter.

How was the Virgin of Guadalupepreserved? In part, it was a case ofrehabilitation after the Council of Trents reaffirmat ion of devotion to Maryand of the devotional value of images generally. Like many other depic-tions of Mary that were venerated in Europe, the Guadalupe painting waspreserved precisely because, by the late sixteenth century, it was a work ofgreat age: In addition to its status as a miracle-working image, it was a relicof an irretrievable past. The notion of the image as being imbued with avenerable antiquity was probably first evoked between the late sixteenthand early seventeenth centuries, and it soon became a commonplace.Indeed, the fact that the painting had survived so many years was con-tinually cited as proof of its miraculous nature.

The 1606 copy of the painting by the Basque art ist Baltasar de EchaveOrio, now in a private collection (fig. 3), proves that the story told aboutthe apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe had changed by the early sev-enteenth century, thereby ensuring the survival of the original painting.The Echave picture represents the image of the Virgin, but it is not a copyof the original painting. Mary is in the same position and has the sameattributes, but she is not in the sky among clouds. She is on a piece ofcloth that is clearly distinguished from the canvas on which it is painted.By 1606, then, the status of the image had changed: it was no longersimply a painting that performed miracles, but one whose creation, osten-sibly without the aid of human hands, was itself a miracle.24The parallel

23. Toussaint, Pintura colonial, chap. 5.24. The painting was first published by Ortz Vaquero, Imgenes guadalupanas, pp.

2930. All the scholars who have written about it since have recognized its quality and out-standing importance for the history of the Guadalupe painting: Vargasl ugo, Juan Correa,vol. 4, part 1, p. 271; Cuadriello, La propagacin, p. 258, Atribucin disputada, p. 239,and in Cuadrielloet al., El divino pintor,pp. 185187; Bargellini, Originality and Inven-tion, pp. 8586.

between Echaves depiction and the story of Veronicas veil is unmistak-able, and this painting demonstrates that the artist understood very wellwhat the issues were. He rendered the Virgins figure carefully, smoothly,with clear outlines and details, and most importantly, he distinguishedher precisely defined form from the piece of rough cloth on which it

appears. In other words, through his handling of paint he distanced theheavenly figure from the earthly cloth and made clear that the Virgin ofGuadalupewas not, like many others, a miraculously discovered painting,but rather a unique and miraculously made painting.

To better understand the process by which the original Guadalupeimage became a relic embodying the actual presence of the Virgin, it ishelpful to compare it to Echaves painting in terms of color. As alreadymentioned, we know little about the actual pigments of the original, and

Fig. 3.Baltasar de Echave Orio, Virgin of Guadalupe, 1606, oil oncanvas. Private collection, Mexico City, Mexico.


10/225


the same is true of the Echave copy, which is relatively inaccessible. Ofcourse, both the original and copy would have looked different in 1606.Nevertheless, we know that in contrast to the original, which is in tem-pera, Echaves painting is in oil, and the hues and overall tonalities aresignificantly different in the two paintings, especially the blues. It is as ifEchave had been given the commission not only to include the miracle

story but also to renew the old image, while preserving its original gravityand general ancient appearance, which was of the style or language ofthe Indians, as the painter Miguel Cabrera would write in 1756.25

Significantly, there appears to have been a change of mind amongthe Franciscans in regard to the image. The Echave painting is prob-ably identical with a portrait and copy of the miraculous one paintedby Balthazar de Chavez and described in 1697 as being in the churchof San Francisco in Mexico City.26The friars of San Francisco and thepatrons of Echaves painting seem to have wanted a painting that appro-priated the original image venerated at Tepeyac, while at the same timeelevating it by association with a history of its miraculous origins, andyet partly modernizing its appearance through the use of contemporaryEuropean materials and techniques.

The process recalls the numerous images, especially of the Virgin,that were being reframed, renewed, and copied in Europe around thissame time. Most important among them was the icon of Santa MariaMaggiore in Rome, the Salus Populi Romani, an image especially vener-ated by the Jesuit s, who sent four copies of the icon to New Spain in 1576for their newly established colleges there (fig. 4).27For the Franciscans inMexico City, it may have been significant that before his death in 1590Pope Sixtus V, himself a Franciscan, had expressed his intention of build-ing a new chapel for the Roman icon28(a project carr ied out by Pope Paul

V in the early seventeenth century).True to form, the copies of the SantaMaria Maggiore painting commissioned by the Jesuits soon acquiredmiraculous status, and this may have inspired the Franciscans of Mexico

City to emulate their success by reinventing the Virgin of Guadalupe as a

25. Cabrera , Maravilla, p. 29.26. Vetancu rt, Chronica, p. 36, paragraph 50: retrato, y copia de la milagrosa.27. Florenciaand Oviedo, Zodiaco Mariano(1995), pp. 144146.28. Ostrow,Art and Spir ituality, pp. 127128.The shift in Franciscan reception of the

Guadalupe painting did not go unnoticed in the seventeenth century: see the comments byFlorencia, Estrella , chap. XII.

divinely created image. In any case, with the disappearance of much of thenative population of Mexico City by the end of the century, the hesitat ionsthe friars had expressed about the Virgin of Guadalupein 1556 also seemto have vanished.

The very preservat ion of the first painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe,seen within the indigenous tradition in which writing and painting were

Fig. 4.Anonymous Italian, (retouched 20th century), Salus Populi Romani,

c. 1575, oil on canvas. Jesuit Archive, Mexico City, Mexico.


11/225


one, meant that the memory of its creation could not be totally lost. 29Yet the story of the images miraculous apparition erased whatever knowl-edge might have been left concerning the precise identity of its origi-nal creator, the Amerindian painter Marcos. Similarly, the story of themiraculous apparition, as it developed in the early seventeenth century,assigned a less visible role to the Indian; instead of an active painter, we

are presented with a humble and passive seer, Juan Diego. Though holyand admirable, the Indian who has the vision of the Virgin is cast by thelegend as an obedient vehicle for a providential event meant to comfort anduplift him. Historians tend to think that this story had some basis in nativeoral traditions, probably from the period of the making of the FlorentineCodex or slightly later.30 I would add that it is not surprising that sucha passive, receptive, and needy role be assigned to an Amerindianand be assumed by Amerindians as wellduring the frightful, trau-matic period of the late sixteenth century, when the ancient native worldwas vanishing.

Many scholars agree that the story of the Virgin of Guadalupe, as it iscommonly told, was first put into writing in 1648 by Miguel Snchez, 31and the first known representation of the actual narrative in painting,signed and dated in 1656, is by Jos Jurez (fig. 5).32 Jurezs paintingis preserved in greda (Soria), Spain, at the convent whose abbess wasSor Mara de Jess (16021665), a mystic and author who was deeplyinfluential in New Spain, especially among the Franciscans, for herinterest in the conversion of indigenous peoples.33 The central imageis enhanced by a painted frame and complemented by four episodes ofthe narrative telling how the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego (upper left),

29. Hill Boone, Stories in Red and Black, pp. 245249, for a summary of indigenousideas about the recording of history in painted images.

30. For example: Noguez, Documentos guadalupanos, pp. 185190; Poole, Our Ladyof Guadalupe,p. 220. Florenciamade an eloquent apology for the value of tradition as wellas nontextual sources, including indigenous hieroglyphs, in establishing the truth of theGuadalupe story: Estrella, fols. 43, 99. See also Brading, Mexican Phoenix, pp. 8895, whodiscusses the pos sible relationship of the tradition to the College of the Santa Cruz at Tlatelolco.

31. Snchez, Imagen de la Virgen, consulted in Torre Villarand Navarro de Anda,Testimonios histricos, pp. 152281. For a cogent and recent discussion, see Poole,Our Ladyof Guadalupe, chap. 7.

32. Sigaut Valenzuela, Jos Jurez, pp. 208214; Favrot Peterson, Painting aNew World, pp. 154159.

33. Donahue, Mary of greda, pp. 291314; and recently, Fernndez Gracia, Icono-grafa de So r Mara de greda, pp. 11011.

Fig. 5.Jos Jurez,Virgin of Guadalupe with Apparitions, 1656, oil on canvas.Convent of M. M. Concepcionistas, greda, Soria, Spain.

then instructed him to pick flowers nearby (upper right), and to go to thebishop to tell him of her desire for a church to be built at Tepeyac (lowerleft). On opening his cloak (or tilma) before the bishop, the flowers fellto the ground, revealing the image of the Virgin as she had appearedto him (lower right). The inscriptions included in Jurezs 1656 paintingwere evidently considered necessary in a work meant for a Spanish publicunfamiliar with the story.

The full apparition narrative, as expounded in writing and in paintingfor audiences in New Spain, included as one of its central concerns the

problem of how exactly the original painting of the Virgin of Guadalupehad been made. It was not sufficient to say that it was a miracle and toshow the events in sequence, as in the paintings sent to Spain. MiguelSnchez, who was a learned cleric, presented the story as an allegoryof the salvation of New Spain, prefigured in the Immaculate Concep-tion and revealed in the apparition of the Woman of the Apocalypse.Theology aside, he also made generous use of the vocabulary found intexts about painting, detailing the ways in which he himself became the


12/225


devout painter of this image in writing of her.34In recounting the story,he placed emphasis on the discussion of the mechanisms of the paintingsproduction. He is eloquent on the role of the flowershe refers to them asrelicsthat the Virgin took f rom Juan Diego and gave back to him withher own hands.35When the Indian opened his cloak, the bishop saw in ita sacred grove, a miraculous spring season, an oasis of roses, lilies, carna-

tions, irises, broom, jasmine, and violets, and all of them, falling from thecloth, left on it the painting of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God.36Hisclosing paragraphs insist on and expand metaphorically upon the flowersthat produced her lasting presence, and whose sweet odors chased awaydemons.37The importance and variety of the flowers was a theme takenup by many authors, such as Francisco de Florencia, who insisted on the

Virgins handling of a variety of flowers: She took them with her t wohands as if to register them, and having sanctified them by the preciouscontact, she put them back and composed them in the cloak.38BecerraTanco, who mentions only roses, assigns the creation of the image to themoment when the flowers passed from Marys hands to the cloak.39

The importance of the flowers was also emphasized in painted repre-sentations of the story. Juan Correa (16461716), who became famous forhis copies of the Guadalupe, was obviously familiar with the idea that theflowers were the source of the colors for the painting. In a 1667 version ofthe story (fig. 6),40he is careful to include flowers of various colors, espe-cially in the final scene, where the blooms that have fallen to the groundcorrespond exactly to the hues of the apparition on the Virgins mantle:these three primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) were generally recognizedamong seventeenth-century painters as the source from which all the others

34. Snchez, Imagen de la Virgen Maria, p. 197: Yo me constitu pintor devoto deaquesta santa imagen escribindola.

35. Ibid., p. 187: reliquias en flores. Marys touch converts the flowers into relicsof herself.

36. Ibid., p. 190: Una santa floresta, una primavera milagrosa, un vergel abreviado derosas, azucenas, claveles, lirios, retamas, jazmines y violetas, y que todas cayendo de la mantadejaron pintada en ella a Mara Virgen Madre de Dios.

37. Ibid., p. 259.38. Florencia, Estrella , fol. 13v.: Ella las tom con sus dos manos como que las regis-

traba y avindolas santificado con el precioso contacto dellas, las volvi a poner y componeren la tilma.

39. Becerra Tanco,Origen milagroso, consulted in Torre Villarand Navarro de Anda,Testimonios histricos, p. 319.

40. Favrot Peterson, in Los Siglos de Oro, pp. 306309.

could be created. As shown by Correa, it was by her handling of the flowersand returning them to Juan Diegos cloak, as we see at the lower right, thatMary made contact with the cloth. Correa further emphasizes the flow-ers, varied in hue and kind, by depicting them as strewn upon the earthby angels. Nearly forty years later, in 1704, Correa insisted more than everon the flowers in a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the four

apparition episodes (fig. 7).41

In this version, the flowers surround all thenarrative scenes, seeming almost to smother the angels that fly among them.One might suggest that all these floral displays are due to the intro-

duction into New Spain of Flemish paintings of sacred scenes and person-ages within flower garlands. Elaborate and exquisite works such as thosepainted by Rubens and Brueghel42did not reach the New World, so faras we know, yet the genre was familiar to painters in New Spain, whoreproduced it.43Indeed, in Correas 1704 version, the flowers function asframing devices, and European tulips can be seen among them. In thiscase, it is reasonable to recall Flemish models. By contrast, this was notthe case in Correas earlier painting. In 1667, he did not include largetulips or any other flower that would have been familiar only in Europe.Nor are the flowers used to frame anything. They are an integral part ofthe narrative, a narrative with roots, I suggest, in Amerindian sixteenth-century painting practices and ideas, in which the making of pigmentsand dyes with flowers and plants was the norm, and in which flowerswere an integral part of relating to the divine.44Dyes, in particular, arementioned in Francisco de Florencias account of the 1666 examinationof the original Guadalupe painting, during which the Jesuit author claimsto have begun a discussion among those who were examining the paint-ing about which plants had produced the large spots of color that lookedlike the juice squeezed from various flowers and their leaves visible onthe back of the painting.45

41. Ibid.42. Woollettand vanSuchtelen, Rubens and Brueghel, pp. 116121.43. A relatively early example is a Saint Joseph and Childwithin a garland of circa 1700,

though repainted and thus difficult to assess: Cuadriello, Catlogo, vol. 1, p. 273, number20. One should remember the relationship of this genre to Counter-Reformation ideas, asdiscussed by Jones, Federico Borromeo and the Ambrosiana.

44. See, especially, the essays byAlc ntar a and Magaloniin this volume.45. Florencia, Estrella, fols. 139v140r: unos manchones de colores como del jugo

exprimido de varias flores, y hojas dellas.


13/225


Other representations of the scene confirm that painters were con-scious of the fundamental importance of the flowers in the makingof the image. In two eighteenth-century paintings, one signed by andthe other attributed to Jos de Ibarra (figs. 8, 9), we see two versions ofthe miracle of the apparition presented. In both, Juan Diego is shown

standing and looking out at the viewer while opening his cloak, allow-ing the flowers to fall and reveal the image. One version correspondsto the most common textual form of the story, which emphasizes thevariety of flowers in order to elicit wonder, as well as to evoke the vari-ous colors of the Virgins image (as Juan Correa had done in his earlypaintings). The other version, instead, shows only roses in the cloak, an

element that had been common in European paintings of the Virginsince the Middle Ages. In both variants of the Guadalupe narrative, theflowers accompanying the vision are associated with transcendence. Theroses signify the flowering of grace, but the immanence of the colors ofthe varied flowers in the image itself, and their essential contributionto its formation and existence, call to mind the actual making ofthe original image within a painting tradition that included indigenouspractices and materials.

Fig. 7.Juan Correa,Virgin of Guadalupe with Apparitions, 1704, oil oncanvas. Parish of San Nicols de Bari and Santa Mara la Blanca, Seville,Spain.

Fig. 6. Juan Correa,Apparition s of the Virgin of Guadalupe, 1667, oil oncanvas. Museo Nacional Colegio de San Gregorio, Valladolid, Spain.


14/225


Though the paintings of Guadalupe that we have just been discussingwere made by well-known criollo and casta46 artists working in MexicoCity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as we have seen, theirpractice conserved an element of ancient painting traditions: the associa-tion of flowers with pigments, dyes, and colors. Recent documentary dis-coveries indicate that something else from the indigenous past survived far

into the seventeenth century: a strong association between native paintersand the depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Even though the individ-ual Amerindian painter Marcos may have been forgotten, some notion ofthe indigenous role in the original making of the image remained.

46. Criolloswere Spaniards born in New Spain. Castaswere individuals of mixed blood.

Fig. 8.Jos de Ibarra,Juan Diego Opening His Cloak with Flowers, 1743,oil on canvas. Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City, Mexico.

Fig. 9.Jos de Ibarra(?),Juan Diego Opening His Cloak with Roses, c. 1743,oil on canvas. Museo Regional de Quertaro, Quertaro, Mexico.

When the Italian Jesuit Juan Bautista Zappa sought to acquire a copyof the painting after his arrival in New Spain in 1675, he was told togo to the sanctuary of Guadalupe and look for the Indian painter whopossessed the gift for painting the Virgin of Guadalupe.47The accountrelates that when the Indian who had this gift died, the native paint-ers gathered at the church of Guadalupe. They all confessed and took

communion and then painted the Virgin as best they could. They thendecided among themselves who had made the most faithful copy and hadthus received the gift.48

In Zappas time, the native painter with the gift was Luis de Tejeda,and his copies were said to be more miraculous than any others. Thistradition was also reported by Francisco de Florencia in 1688. Althoughthe latter made no specific mention of an individual gift, he wrote thatit was believed that the copies of the Virgin of Guadalupe that are lessimperfect and most accurate are all by Indian painters.... And it is anestablished opinion in Mexico City that only Indian painters have felic-ity and talent in copying this holy image. He adds that he himself tookthree copies to Europe in 1668, and in mentioning the very busy painterwho made them (who, as we now know, was Tejeda), notes that the art ists

father had also been a worthy maker of the replicas.49Thus, the traditionof the Indians possessing the gift may well go back to the sixteenth cen-tury, dovetailing with the erasure of the painter Marcos, whose individualidentity was apparently transformed into a collective role.

Another episode of the Guadalupe story with important implicationsfor the history of art centers on the text entitled Maravilla americanaand on its author, Miguel Cabrera, the best-known painter of the mid-eighteenth century in Mexico City. It is the only original treatise on theart of paintinga phrase used on its title pageto have been producedin New Spain, and it should not surprise us that the text focuses on thepainting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the wonder and conjunction ofrare wonders of the New World. Cabrera himself made images of the

47.Vargaslu go, El indio que tena el don ... , pp. 203 215.48.Ibid., p. 205.49. Florencia, Estrella , fol. 9999 v.: ... y las que hay menos imperfectas y cabales,

todas son pinceles de Indios. Quando yo sal de Mxico para Europa, haba uno que por famosocopiador, en todo el ao no pintaba sino imgenes deste santuario.... Yo llev tres de la medidade la original.... Su padre de este mismo fue tambin insigne trasuntador de aquesta imge-nes.... Y ya es asentada opinin en Mxico, que solos pintores indios tienen felicidad y aciertoen copiar esta santa imagen.


15/225

CLARA BARGE LLINI22

Guadalupe, in which, like earlier painters, he expressed the theme ofGods authorship of the work. This was, of course, a topic that elevatedthe painting profession to the greatest of heights.50In Cabreras versionof God painting the Virgin, the pigments on the palette are representedby flowers.

The emphasis on the flowers in these works from the middle and

later eighteenth century may be related to the indigenous origins of theGuadalupe image. One such painting of the narrative, in particular,attributed to Joaqun Villegas (born 1713 and still active in 1753), givesJuan Diego an unusually prominent role (fig. 10).51He provides the flow-ers that make the miraculous apparition possible, but instead of looking atthe Virgin he turns his gaze toward Christ, with whom he is identified byvisual means and by the two speech-scrolls that attribute to both of themverses from the Song of Songs. Jesus addresses the Virgin in words tradi-tionally associated with the Immaculate Conception: Ecce tu pulchraes, amica mea.52(Canticles [Song of Songs], 1:15). Juan Diegos scroll,placed below the figure of Christ in a form reminiscent of a footstool,declares, Flores apparuerunt in terra nostra53(Canticles, 2:12). In otherwords, Juan Diego is presented as an essential actor in the creation of the

miraculous image, implying by extension that he is a part of the story ofsalvation. A f ramed verse inscription, which Juan Diego holds up with hisleft hand, reinforces the message, mentioning the flowers that God theFather is using to paint the Virgin, and going on to say that the Indianhad provided the canvas.54

The emphasis on the presence of the indigenous figure found in thisand other eighteenth-century paintings can perhaps be understood withinthe context of the controversies surrounding the establishment of theCollege of Canons at the Guadalupe sanctuary, which took place in 1751

50. See Cuadriello, Atribucin disputada, p. 241, and his treatment of this idea within

a discussion of the relationships between these paintings and contemporary sermons in ElDivino Pintor, pp. 189191. See also Bargellini,Originality and Invention.

51. Cuadriello, Catlogo, pp. 169173; Divino pintor, pp. 175178.52.Behold thou art fair, O my love, . (Douay-Rheims Bible translation, Canticles

[Song of Songs] 1:15).53. The flower s have appeared in our land, . (Douay-Rheims Bible, Canticles 2:12).54. The inscription reads, Dios qual Pintor soberano gastar quiso lindas flores, y a Mara

con mil primores copi, como de su mano: Lienso ministr el Indiano de tosco humildesayal en su capa y sin igual se ve con tanta hermosura, que indica ser tal pintura Obrasobre Natural.

Fig. 10. Joaqun Villegas(?), God the Father Painting the Virgin ofGuadalupe, c. 1750, oil on canvas. Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.


16/225


(but had been under consideration since 1709).55 In a formal statementopposing the college and directed to the archbishop on 12 May 1750,the indigenous authorities claimed the miraculous image for themselves,stating that it was due to us, because it appeared for the benefit of ournation.56The struggle against the establishment of the college, thoughultimately unsuccessful, managed at least to provide formal protection for

the right of the Amerindians to continue their ceremonies and devotionsinvolving the image without hindrance.My final observation returns to the comparison between the colors

found in the original Guadalupe painting and those employed in its manyreplicas. Making allowances for the problems of reproduction, one gen-eral disparity exists between the original Guadalupe and all the later ver-sions: The mantle in the original is blue-green, and in the later paintingsit is decidedly blue. Cabrera is the only colonial authorindeed, the onlyauthor, as far as I knowwho has written about this discrepancy. In twoof the eight sections of his text, he refers explicitly to the color of themantle. In section seven, he refutes all the objections he has heard aboutthe original painting, including the claim that the mantle was originallyblue but had faded to a greenish hue. Since, as we have seen, its survival

and miraculous incorruption (milagrosa incorrupcin)were frequentlyadduced as proof of the images divine origins, as Cabrera notes at thebeginning of his text, the author insists that the blue-green must be theoriginal color: a painting made by God does not change color. In themeticulous description of the Guadalupe painting he provides in sectioneight, he says of the mantle, Its color is not blue, as it has been painted[in the copies]; rather it is of a color that is not perfectly green or blue,but of an agreeable medium between these two colors.57Cabrera refers tothe mystery of the composition of this blue-green and of the other colorsof the original Guadalupe in his introduction. He notes that he is unable

55. Lpez Sarrelangue, Una villa mexicana, pp. 83108.56. ... nos toca por haberse aparecido para el remedio de nuestra nacin: Sandoval

Villegas, La devocin y culto de los indios a la Seora del Tepeyac, in Sigaut et al.,Guadalupe arte y liturgia, vol. 1, p. 169.

57. Cabrera,Maravilla americana, p. 25: Su color no es azul, como se ha pintado; sinode un color, que ni bien es perfectamente verde, ni azul, sino un agradable medio entre estosdos colores.

to specify the material makeup of any of the colors or tell how they weremade because this knowledge is reserved to God alone.58

In this more secular age, I wish I could be more informative on thispoint than Miguel Cabrera. In fact, I wish I could state that the blue-green color is the famous Maya blue, which is one of the most renownedof Mesoamerican pigments. However, as already mentioned, the materials

of the Guadalupe painting have not been properly studied. Whatever itsphysical makeup, however, it is notable that the hue of the mantle looks agreat deal like a color in the only other painting on cloth from a sixteenth-century indigenous context to have survived in Mexico: the Assumptionof the Virginin the Franciscan church at Tecaxic, near Toluca, west ofMexico City. The Assumption is considered to be somewhat later thanthe Guadalupe,59and the figure of the Virgin has been severely repainted.Behind glass, in its shrine, it is also very difficult to photograph, but itis reportedly in tempera. Despite the damage the painting has suffered,some of the original hues are still visible in the lower section; they resem-ble those in the Guadalupe painting, including the blue-green.

In conclusion, I would like to recall that the Italian Renaissance,which is the broad art historical framework for the creation of the Virgin of

Guadalupeas well as the Florentine Codex,set standards not only for artproduction in the early modern period, but also for the study of art practi-cally down to our day. On the one hand, the established criteria and canonsmade it difficult, until the still fairly recent past, to see qualities outsidetheir European limits. On the other, however, a profound new understand-ing has been permeating art historical investigations: the notion that art isa fundamental human activit y and that the basis for approaching it, there-fore, cannot be culturally limited. The symposium that generated thisvolume and the contributions included here are the result of the convic-tion that we can learn a great deal and renew our vision by looking morewidely, as well as more carefully. This is probably the best tribute we canpay to the extraordinary Amerindian artists of the FlorentineCodex and

their contemporaries.

58. Ibid., unnumbered page before the first section of text: especificar cual sea la mate-ria de los colores que la componen; porque aunque son semejantes a los nuestros, el saber apunto fijo si son o no o en el modo que estn practicados o se hizo esta pintura, lo juzgo reser-vado al Autor de tanta maravilla.

59. Rodrguez Parra,Nuestra Seora, p. 46.


17/225

Fig. 1. Front cover, Med. Palat. 220.

Writing about Sahagns manuscript in the Biblioteca Laurenziana(Fig. 1), Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, director of the Museo Nacional de

Antropologa e Historia de Mxico, stated, le codex mrite bien quonsen occupe: mais ce sujet a t dja si tudi que je crains de rpter ceque dautres et moi mme nous en avons dit.1That was in 1896. Today,

over a century later, I have even more reason to worry about soundingrepetitious, for Sahagns manuscript has been much studied in the inter-vening years and the published results are well known.

However, methods of describing manuscripts have progressed in themeantime. They are now much more in-depth, above all from the codi-cological point of viewcodicology being a very recent discipline, datingback no further than the 1950sand this has convinced me that the timeis right to propose a new analysis of the codex. Furthermore, even themost careful and dedicated eyes risk missing something when examiningthese unique, inexhaustible testimonies of our culture. No manuscripts,not even those seen over and over again, are safe from this chance.

My intention here is to provide a description of the manuscripts st ruc-

ture, both external and internal, substantially following the guidelines ofthe Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche Italiane e per

1. Del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, 1896, p. 171; the article was subsequently translatedinto Spanish inAnales del Mus eo Nacional de Ar queologa, His toria y Etnog rafa, vol. IV, 1926,pp. 316320.

Mediceo Palatino 218220of the Biblioteca

Medicea Laurenziana

of FlorenceIDA GIOVANNA RAOBiblioteca Medicea Laurenziana


18/225

IDA GIOVANNA RAO28 MEDICEO PALATINO 218220 29

le Informazioni Bibliografiche. I shall add a brief comment, focusing spe-cifically on the elements that are entirely new or that need to be rectified. 2

FLORENCE, BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA,MED. PALAT. 218220

Paper, 308 310 210212 mm, saec. XV I (15761577).

number of folios: Med. Palat. 218, IV, 353, III'; Med. Palat. 219, II, 375,II'; Med. Palat. 220, IV, 495. Blank folios: Med. Palat. 218, IIrIVr, 241v242v,I'rII'v, III'v; Med. Palat. 219, IvIIv, 220r222v, I'rv, II'v; Med. Palat. 220,IvIVv, 151v, 494v495r. Excised folios: Med. Palat. 218, between fols. IV1,1213, 330331; Med. Palat. 219, between fols. 67, 371372; Med. Palat. 220,between fols. 8485, 371372, 409410.

foliation:The most recent numbering (which is used here) is in ink in thelower right margin on the recto. The original system, also in ink and sometimesrewritten, appears in the upper right margin on the recto; it starts anew at thebeginning of each of the twelve books and consistently omits folio numbersfor leaves containing argumenta, prologues, and summaries of the books, as

well as for leaves that are blank. Occasionally visible in the upper right marginis another foliation for purpose of verification; this is owing to Angelo MariaBandini (17261803), prefect of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

watermarks: two types,3 with variations; similar to Briquet 5691 (Croixlatine) (Likhatscheff 1564), Plerin 7582 (Milan, 1570),4with the second typepredominating (fig. 2).

2. Cf. Norme per la descrizione uniforme, ed. Ceccopieri and Menna. I have chosen toomit the general bibliography on the manuscript because of its overwhelming length, which

is due to the manuscripts fame as a veritable national treasure, in both text and illustrations,of the Nahua culture and language. Suffice it to cite the numerous contributions by MiguelLon-Portilla, for which see the bibliography in this volume. In any case, listing the publica-tions would not serve the purpose here because they would still need to be sorted and merged.Therefore, in the section of the description treating manuscript and printed data, reference ismade only to the publications about the manuscripts cataloguing and publishing history, withmy observations on their soundness.

3. Dibble, Watermarks, pp. 2528, refers to three watermarks, all datable to around 1570.After carefully checking in all th ree volumes, however, I was unable to find the third watermark.

4. Cf.Briquet, Les filigranes ds leur apparition,1985, vol. II, pp. 335, 415.

collation:impossible to determine because of the ext remely tight sewing.5

catchwords:hardly any instances, probably because of the presence of theprecise, original foliation.

layout and decoration: The writing, below the top line, is arranged in twocolumns. (The left, in Spanish, is a loose translation of that in the right column,in Nhuatl.) Lines of justification and intercolumniation are in brown; thereare no through lines. Written space: 308 210 = 26[247]35 23[80(10)80]17mm (Med. Palat. 219, fol. 249r). The number of written lines ranges from 29to 51. The three volumes, copied by various hands, exhibit some autograph entrie sby the author.6Other hands have made marginal or interlinear corrections in

minuscules ranging in size from 2 to 4 mm with only a few cursive features

5. Unfortunately, I do not think that even checking the position of the watermarks wouldproduce useful results, since they do not appear to be distributed methodically.

6. Cf. Med. Palat. 218, book IV, fol. 328r, for his signature (fray b[er]nardi[n]o desahagun). At least two other interlinear notes by Bernardino appear on Med. Palat. 219, bookVII, fol. 234r, and Med. Palat. 220, book X , fol. 72v.

Fig. 2.(Left) BML, Med. Palat. 218, fol. 241: Croix latinewatermark(Right) BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. II: Plerinwatermark


19/225


(ctand stligatures, macrons signifying missing nasals);7the ductus of this scriptsuggests a possible date of circa fifty years earlier, since it is t he crystallizationof a type of writing from the first quarter of the sixteenth century. Titles arein brown ink, as are the initials (1015 mm), the simplest outlined only, andthose that are more important filled in. A total of 2,468 images in pen and inkand in color, interspersed throughout the text, document the narration in bothcolumns, even though nearly all are situated in the left column.8

ex libris: two dif ferent stamps. One, oval, is of the Palatine Lorenese library:35 30 mm, decorated at the sides with two wings and surmounted by twocrowns, with the legend Bibl(iotheca) Caes(area) Med(icea) Palat(ina);stamped sometime between 1745 and 1765, i.e., after the Medici grand-ducalnucleus joined that of the Lorenese at the time of Francesco Stefano di Lorena,Grand Duke of Tuscany (17371765).9Found in Med. Palat. 218, fols. 1r, 353v;Med. Palat. 219, fols. 1r, 375v; Med. Palat. 220, fols. 1r, 494r. The other stampis that of the R(eale) Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana with the Sabaudian coatof arms of a cross surmounted by a crown (diameter 20 mm, saec. XIX [post-1885]). Found in Med. Palat. 218, fols. Ir, IVr, 1r, 33r, 353v, I'r, III'r; Med. Palat.219, fols. Ir, 1r, 33r; Med. Palat. 220, fols. Ir, 1r, 33r, 494v, 495v. There is also an

old shelf mark, in pencil, on the recto of the first flyleaves of the three volumes,in an eighteenth-century (post-1765) hand.10 Composed of the numerals andletters XXI. Anon(imo ), this shelf mark presumably corresponds to an inter-nal subdivision of the manuscript section of the Palatine Lorenese grand-ducallibrary, perhaps relating to its transfer to the Medici library, which occurred on21 June 1783, by order of Pietro Leopoldo di Lorena (17651790), since it i s verydifferent from the shelf marks 743, later 711,that the codex had in the Cata-logo ragionato e istorico de manoscritti della biblioteca imperiale MediceaLotaringia Palatina (17631765), compiled by the sottobibliotecario GiovanniGaspero Menabuoni (fl. 17631775). On folio IVv, a doxology reads Christusvivit/Christus v incit/Christus regnat/Franciscus famulatur, probably a glorifi-cation of God and Saint Francis for the end of the labor of compilation. 11

7. See the lengthy discussion in Martnez, El Cdice Florentino, pp. 2429.8. Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,pp. 1924.9. Cf.Ardu ini, Documenti per una storia, pp. 276301.10. This can be deduced , for instance, fr om the title inscript ion in Menabuonis

CatalogoX. Menab., which includes the phrase cominciato il d 24 agosto 1763 e finito il dXX V novembre 1765 on fol. [3r] unnumbered, for which cf. A SBL, Pluteo 92, sup. 227B[24].

11. Cf.Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,p. 17.

cover: 315 220 mm; Spain, saec. XVI, second half. Brown leather overpasteboard, blind-tooled (three concentric double frames, decorated with floralmotifs; a rhombus with double lines, and similarly decorated, fills the center)and gilt-tooled (the gilded ornamentation in each of the corners and aroundand inside the rhombus consists of small flowers, shells, acorns, birds, andangels heads). The spine has five double bands in relief, with similar blindand gilt tooling (small flowers and six crowned leopards in the correspond-ing panels, from which the title is missing). Headbands are glued, with theedge sprayed red. As already indicated by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, thisis almost surely a second binding 12certainly more ornate and precious thanthe preceding binding of Franciscan origin, which probably consisted of simpleparchment with support straps of leather, more like those used in archives. Thenew binding served to rearrange the work, formerly in four volumes, as clearlynoted by the author in book 9, into three, for reasons unfortunately no longerascertainable, unless to achieve a more uniform book block.13 It is practicallyidentical with one of the various covers preserved in the Biblioteca Nacionalde Espaa, Madrid (fig. 3), that came from the collection of Manuel Rico ySinobas (Valladolid, 18191898), a scholar and bibliophile who also happenedto be an authority on bindings.14

condition: The three volumes are in good condition today, even if a fewpages show traces of tannin or glue and signs of stains and mold, along withdamage caused by the iron gall ink. Their bindings were restored15 (paper

12. Cf. delPaso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 173174, where he refers to two passagesclearly trimmed during the second binding at folios 177r and 240v of Med. Palat. 219. Themissing parts can be completed using the Toulouse codex, the only k nown coeval apographof Med. Palat. 218220, for which see below (and n. 26). Various trimmed titles in the uppermargins provide further proof. Del Paso y Troncoso also noted traces of the earlier bindingon folio 222r (between the end of book VI and the beginning of book VII) of Med. Palat. 219,namely traces of glue where four parchment strips with writing had been attached, leaving anoffset in black ink, difficult to decipher but certainly on what presumably had been a flyleaf,given the large extent of the darkened area. Del Paso y Troncoso detected further traces on folio

152r of Med. Palat. 220, between the end of book X and the beginning of book XI. I personallyfind these less convincing.13. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. 307v, where in the Prologo to book IX it is made clear

that the first volume is to contain books IV; the second, book VI only; the third, books VIIX,and the fourth, books XIXII.

14. Cf. Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa, Madrid, RS/69. The binding is reproduced bothon the cover and inside the catalogue published on the occasion of an exhibition in Rome atthe Biblioteca Vallicelliana; Legature spagnole, p. 77.

15. One should point out the contemporaneous attempts to correct flawed passages byrewriting them on pieces of paper glued over the passages, as, for example, in Med. Palat. 219,


20/225

lining, replacement of the three glued headbands, glazing of various leaves)in 1960.16 The volumes good state of preservation is probably due in part toreduced wear on the original as a result of the existence of various reproduc-tions (chromolithography of the images, 1905; photographs of the entire text,1938; first microfilm of the entire work, 1955).17

MED. PALAT. 218, FOLS. 1353; MED. PALAT. 219, FOLS. 1375;MED. PALAT. 220, FOLS. 1495

Bernardino de Sahagn(from Palat. 218, at fol. 1r: fray bernardino de saagun)

Doze libros de las cosas divinas o por mejor dezir idolatricas y humanas y natu-rales desta nueva espaa(from Med. Palat. 218, at fol. 1r).

inc . : Prologo. El medico no puede acertadamente aplicar (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 1r)

exp.: y traba/jar fielmente en esta nueva espaa(Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)

inc .:Al sincero lector. Quando esta obra se comeno (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)

expl. : en la nueva y vieja espaa(Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3r)

inc . : Sumario de los capitulos del primero libro/Capitulo primero que habla(Med. Palat. 218, fol. 3v)

expl. : Capitulo treynta y siete de quando los muchachos mudan los di/entes.Ibidem (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)

inc . : Al lector /Para la intelligencia de la s figuras (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)

expl. : esta junto a los pies(Med. Palat. 218, fol. 9v)

inc . : Libro primero, en que se trata de/los dioses que adoravan los natu/ralesdesta tierra, que es la nue/va espaa|Inic ce amuxtli uncan motene/ oa in te teubin qujnmoteutiaia/in nican tlaca.

fol. 192rv, and Med. Palat. 220, fols. 50v, 158v, 389r, 389v.16. Cf. BML, Registro dei restauratori, nr. 5 (19551963).17. For the first chromolithographic reproduction, cf. Sahagn, Historia universal,1905;

for the photographic reproduction, see ASBL, 1938/XVI, 66, carried out in 1938 by Lansing B.Bloom of the University of New Mexico. The microfilm of the entire manuscript is available forconsultation in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana di Firenze (hereafter, BML).

IDA GIOVANNA RAO32

Capitulo primero, que habla/del principal dios que adoravan/y aqujen sacrifica-van los mexica/nos llamado vitsilubuchtli|Inic ce capitulo yntechpa tlatoa/y noccenca tlapanuja teteuh yn/qujnmoteutiaia yoan yn qujntlama/njliaia yn ievecauh.

Este dios, llamado vitsilubuch/tli, fue otro hercules|Vitsilubuchtli an ma/ceoallian tlacatl catca (Med. Palat. 218, fol. 13r).

expl. : y todo lo davan a/Motec uzoma, todo cloro venja a su pode r|valmocemaciintenu/chtitlan injxqujch Haca/laqujli in teucujtlatl(Med. Palat. 220, fol. 494r)

(cf. Cdice Florentino, 1979).

observations: Med. Palat. 218, at fols. 37r41v, also contains, in the rightcolumn, Sap., 13, 119; 14, 731; 12, 118; 15, 13; 16, 1316, translated intoNhuatl in the left column.

manuscript bibliography: ASF, Guardaroba medicea 132, fol. 484(?);BNCF, II II 309, fol. 31v; ASBL, Pluteo 92, sup. 227B(Catalogo ragionato eistorico de manoscritti della biblioteca imperiale Medicea Lotaringia Pala-tina), fol. 121r.

printed bibliography: Bandini, Bibliotheca Leopoldina Laurentiana,

coll. 454456; Civezza, Saggio di Bibliografia, p. 525; Brinton, Rig-VedaAmericanus; del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 171174; Sahagn, Floren-tine Codex,1956 and19701982; Historia general, 1938 and 1946; Historia uni-versal,1905; Conquista de Mxico,1978; Cdice Florentino, 1979 (reprint 1996),1982, 2001; Seler Sachs, Lehman, and Krickberg, Einige Kapitel; Cline,Missing and Variant Prologues, pp. 237251; Cacho, Manuscritos hispnicos,pp. 403405.

The work contained in Med. Palat. 218220 lacks both the authorsname and the title. It is the only known illustrated copy of the twelvebooks18 in which the Spanish Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagn(14991590) organized the remarkable quantity of material about Aztec-

18. Books IIII deal with the religion of the Aztecs (divinities, myths, feasts, sacrifices,idolatry); books IV and V are about astrology and divination; book VI contains prayers andsolemn discourses that exemplify the forms of Nhuatl rhetoric; book VII treats of the sun,moon, and the stars; book VIII deals with local history (nobles and governors); book IX is aboutcommerce (merchants and craftsmen working with gold and precious feathers); book X regardsAztec s ociety (vic es and v irtues of the people; di seases and remedies); book XI , the longest, isa treatise of natural history; and book XII, finally, describes the Spanish conquest and the fallof Tenochtitln.

MEDICEO PALATINO 218220 33


21/225


culture that he started to gather in the 1540s.19Written in both Nhuatl(by 1569) and Spanish (15691577), it is composed of outlines, variousdraft s, successive revisions, and redactions.20Sahagns models are believedto have been two famous, widely diffused encyclopedic treatises, theHistoria Naturalisof Pliny (2379),21and the De proprietatibus rerumofBartolomeo Anglico (1200s).22

19. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, fol. 1r. His secular name may have been Bernardino deRibera, native of Sahagn (Len). From 1529 on, he worked as a missionary in Mexico, whichin 1521 had just been conquered by Hernn Corts (14851547).

20. They are the Cdices Matritenses, both in Madrid, one at the Real Biblioteca and theother at the Real Academia de la Historia. Both were published in facsimile in Sahagn, Histo-ria universal,19061908, and later described in detail in Cdices Matritenses, 1964. The works

in question are the Primeros memoriales(15581559) and the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco (com-posed of Primer manuscrito de Tlatetolco, 15611562; Memoriales en tres columnas, 15631565;Memoriales con escolios, 1565). The fate of both the manuscrito de 1569 (which is believed tohave included a reorganization of the Manuscrito de Tlatelolco, clearly referred to in the pro-logo to the first book, see Med. Palat. 218, fol. 2v), and of the Sumarioof 1570 is unknown.The Breve compendio de los ritos idoltricos de Nueva Espaa of 1570 is conserved in theVatican Archive s (I XVIII , 1816). Cf. Dibble, Sahagns Historia, inSahagn, FlorentineCodex,19701982, vol.I, pp. 923.

21. Cf.Garibay K., Historia de la literaturanhuatl, vol. II, pp. 6971.22. Cf. Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting,pp. 167168.

Fig. 3. (Above) BML, Med. Palat. 220, and (facing page) BibliotecaNacional de Espaa, Madrid, RS/69: Comparison of covers

Sometime between 1577 and 1578, Philip II of Spain (15271598)decided to add Sahagns work to the index of prohibited books of theSpanish Inquisition. As stated in the infamous cdula of 22 April 1577,

addressed to the viceroy of New Spain, Martn Enrquez,23the Histo-ria universal de las cosas mas sealadas de esa Nueva Espaa concernedarguments que toquen a supersticiones y manera de vivir que estosindios tenan that should not have been written en niguna lengua,porque as conviene al servicio de Dios nuestro seor.

The Florentine Codex (so-called because of its location)24 origi-nally must have included both the name of its author and the title

23. Quoted from Marchetti , Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 136. During these years,Philip II had ordered the requisition of all of Sahagns writings. He was worried about trans-mitting the memory of idolatrous cults, both in writing (in t he vernacular) and in images, asspecified by the dictates of the Spanish Inquisition (14781834). This was in accord with the

Index librorum prohibitorum (15591966) of the Sacred Congregation of the Roman Inquisi-tion, one of the most important consequences of the Council of Trent (15451563). The Index,first promulgated in 1559, established that translations of the biblical message into vernacularlanguages could be read only with special permission by those who knew Latin, and not bywomen. On the adventuresome stages of the works compilation, at times warmly supported,at other times impeded and disturbed by the responsible religious and political authorities, cf.especially Dibble,Florentine Codex,1982, pp. 923; Pietro Corsi, Il Codice Fiorentino,pp. 8086; Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn, pp. 724.

24. On the earliest use, and spread, of the designation Cdice Florentino, cf. GarcaIcazbalceta , Bibliografa mexicana,pp. 322387; Zavala, Francisco del Paso y Troncos, p. 6;


22/225


presumably written out in full and graphically elaborated, like the fron-tispieces in contemporary printed booksas well as the internal subtitle.Evidence for this is a trace of writing on the recto of what remains of apage at the beginning of the book block, which was excised close to theinside margin. Del Paso y Troncoso, who was the first to notice the writ-ing in 1896, logically concluded that it was a part of the original title,25which happens to survive in the Toulouse codex,26 a coeval descriptusof the Castilian section of the Mediceo Palatino codex,27 conservingBernardinos text in Spanish only and without illustrations.

In my examination of the excised page, I noticed that there were twomore traces of writing lower down on the page, below the one on theupper part recorded by del Paso y Troncoso. The trace in the upper partappeared to belong to the curl of the Hof Historia,presumably the begin-ning of the now-lost title. Support for this hypothesis comes from the titleinscription still visible on the first supplementary page of the Toulousemanuscript, which was copied from the now partially illegible inscriptionat the beginning of the codex proper:28Historia universal de las cosas dela Nueva Espaa en doce libros y quatro volumenes en lengua espaola.Compuesta y compilada Por el Muy Reverendo Padre Fray Bernardino de

Sahagun, de la orden de los Frayles menores de observancia.29The twotraces that I noticed lower down on the excised page could be, instead,the remnants of the summary of the contents of the works first volume,

Dibble,Florentine Codex,1982, p. 15 and notes 5556.25. Cf. delPaso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 171, 174; cf. also Dibble,Florentine Codex,

1982, p. 15; Marchetti , Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 25, postulating also the presence of adedicatory page.

26. Fra Juan de San Antonio first noted the codex around 1732 among the books of theFranciscan convent of Toulouse (Andorra). In 1793 it was found in Madrid by Diego Panesy Avelln, who had it transcribed. Today it is in the possession of the Real Academia de laHistoria of Madrid (MS. A77; Coleccin de Muoz, 50. 9. 4812), for which cf. esp. Dibble,Florentine Codex,1982, pp. 2123; Martnez , El Cdice Florentino,pp. 1013; Marchetti ,Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 3 and n. 9.

For the opinion that it is a copy of the Florentine Codexmade in Spain around the 1580s,cf. Baudot, Fray rodrigo de Sequera, avocat du diable, pp. 4782. The Toulouse copy, com-pared with a photographic reproduction of the Florentine Codex, is published in Sahagn,Historia general, 1956.

27. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, pp. 172173; Cline anddOlwer, Sahagnand His Works, pp. 196203; Dibble, Florentine Codex,1982, p. 22; Martnez, El CdiceFlorentino, p. 13; Marchetti , Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 3, 7, 33.

28. Cf. Martnez,El Cdice Florentino,p. 18.29. Cf. del Paso y Troncoso, tudes, p. 172; Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,

pp. 10, 18.

likewise missing from the Florentine Codexbut included in the Toulousecodex, which begins (fol. 2v), (E)n este l ibro o primer (volu)men/ se con-tienen cinco (libros)/ con sus appndices. El primero trata.30

All this, as I said, refers to the recto. It has not been previously noticedthat there are also three traces of writing on the verso, probably testifyingto the presence of the first of the works two dedications to the ministergeneral of the Franciscans for Mexico, Fra Rodrigo de Sequera (fl. 15751585), who arrived 4 September 1575. Bernardino was indebted to him forthe final commission and for the means to finish the work of copying andillustrating his encyclopedia of the Aztecs. The dedication survives in theToulouse manuscript, after the summary of the first volume.31

While the hypotheses proposed above are well founded, the ques-tion of why the first page was excised is more difficult to answer with anydegree of certainty. It is worthwhile to point out that similar actsforinstance, tampering with a coat of armswere performed to obscure aworks original provenance, or its author and/or title when the work inquestion was banned by religious or civil authorities. In our case, the twopossibilities could coexist.

When was the page excised? The answer seems fairly obvious: it must

have been done (leaving a strip extending circa 25 mm from the insidemargin) af ter the work had been bound for the second time. If it had beenexcised during binding, the strip probably would have been glued to theinside of the quire. The present binding lacks any indication of a title,even on the spine of the three volumes.32

The title that has found the most widespread acceptanceHistoria general de las cosas de Nueva Espaaderives instead from thefirst edition of Sahagns work, brought out in 18291830 by Carlos Mariade Bustamante. However, the text printed was not that of Med. Palat.

30. Quoted from the transcription byMarchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 45.31. Ibid., p. 4.32. Until the critical edition is available, for the complex problems relating to the title

(from that most commonly used, Historia general de las cosas de NuevaEspaa, to the mostrecent one, Historia general [ouniversal] de las cosas de la Nueva Espaa ofLon-Porti-lla), cf. esp. dOlwer, Historiadores, p. 169; Dibble, Florentine Codex, 1982, pp. 1516;Martnez, El Cdice Florentino,pp. 1719; Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 31;Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn,p. 12, andLon-PortillainCdice Florentino, 2001, p. 124and passim.


23/225


218220, but rather that of the Panes codex, an apograph of the above-mentioned Toulouse manuscript.33

There is no doubt that the transcription and illustration of the bilin-gual copy of the Historiawas begun after the arrival in Mexico in 1575 ofFra Rodrigo de Sequera, Bernardinos supporter and patron, in the nameof Don Juan de Ovando, president of the Consejo de Indias (15241778),as he himself informs us in the Prologo to the first book ... pero comollego a esta tierra nostro R.moP.e R.ode Sequera ... mando que estos librostodos se Romanasen....34This same motive is behind the two dedica-tions in the book.35

We can be sure that the work was finished by 1577, since there arereferences in the manuscript to events that took place in 1576. Moreover,toward the end of book VI, Fra Bernardino writes ... que escrivio en lalengua mexican este ao de mjll y quinjentos y setenta y siete.36We canstate even more precisely that it must have been completed by the summerof 1577, because Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras wrote to Philip IIon 28 October of that year to assure the king that all of Sahagns works,which he had ordered sequestered with the abovementioned inauspiciouscdulaof 22 April 1577, would be sent as requested.37Further confirma-

tion is provided by the friars declaration of 26 March 1578, written inresponse to the kings same order, that ... todas las cuales obras acab desacar en limpio este ao pasado, y las d a Fr. Rodrigo de Sequera....38

33. Cf.Sahagn, Historia general,19291930.34. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, Prologo, fol. 1v.35. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 218, where, as we saw, the dedication was presumably on the

verso of the excised page; and Med. Palat. 219, book VI, fol. 3v.36. Cf. BML, Med. Palat. 219, fol. 219v.37. Cf. Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 22.38. Ibid., p. 23, for the full text of the crucial passage of Bernardinos letter to the king.

According to del Paso y Troncoso(tudes, pp. 173174) and Dibble(Florentine Codex,p. 15 and n. 50), there were two original versions of Sahagns bilingual Historia. Del Paso yTroncoso simply states that le manuscrit de Florence est un des deux originaux envoys

par Sahagun en Espagne without further details; Dibble, on the other hand, specifies thatone version, copied in 15761577, was carried back to Spain by the viceroy Martn Enrquez(the so-called MS. Enrquez), the fate of which he claims is not known; the other, copied in15781579, which was carried back to Spain by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera (the MS. Sequera),is to be identified with the Florentine Codex. In a note, Dibble also quotes a passage from FraBernardinos last revised version of the Spanish conquest, the Relacin de la conquista de EstaNueva Espaa, datable to 1585 and published by Carlos Maria de Bustamante (Mexico, D.F.,1840), in which the Franciscan does in fact refer to two copies, about which he has no furtherinformation. Martnez (El Cdice Florentino,p. 7) does not mention two copies, presentingonly the Florentine Codex,which he dates to 15781579. He maintains it came to Spain with

The work, therefore, was completed in the years 15761577, and pre-sumably the copy conserved in the above-mentioned Toulouse manu-script was made not long afterward. The Toulouse manuscript was, inturn, the source for at least three apographs.39

A lit tle less than two centuries a fter its completion, Sahagns workbecame a part of the Biblioteca Medicea Lotaringia Palatina.

In Florence, the work received its first stamps of provenance between1745 and 1765. Hitherto unknown is that the earliest description ofthe manuscript also dates from around this time. Giovanni GasperoMenabuoni described it in his Catalogoas follows:

N. 3 codici cartacei folio. coperti di pelle scura tutta lavorata e doratacontenenti lIstoria del Messico in lingua spagnola colla lingua messicanaaccanto. Si vedono in principio le immagini degli dei de quali si trattanellopera, che adoravano i messicani nel tempo della loro idolatria.40

Even though the Biblioteca Medicea Lotaringia had opened its doorsto the public from 1765 to 1771preceded by the Magliabechiana in 1747and the Marucelliana in 1752Bernardinos work remained shrouded in

silence until 1783, when Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo transferred it tothe Laurenziana, along with 248 other manuscripts.These are the few documented, and therefore secure, dates of the

manuscripts iterup to the present day. But what had happened in that

Sequera, to whom it had been consigned when he left Mexico at the end of February 1580. Nordoes Marchetti (Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 24, 26, 2930, and n. 101) mention two cop-ies. He correctly dates the FlorentineCodex to 15761577, but believes it left Mexico in 1578rather than with Sequera, based on a letter from Archbishop Pedro Moya de Contreras to PhilipII, dated 16 December 1578, in which he confirms that the manuscript had been shipped andsupposes it had already arrived. Marchetti critically analyzes the known text of Bernardinoslast works, which he maintains are highly uncertain. Lon-Portilla(Cdice Florentino, 2001,

pp. 125131) returns to the problem of the two copies, arguing that there is no proof they everexisted.39. These are the above-mentioned Panes codex (see above and n. 33) and the copy of

Felipe Bauz, the latter serving as the source for the partial edition (books IVI) of the Histo-ria, contained in books V and VII of King,Antiquit ies of Me xico, 9 vols., London 18311848.Sahagn,Histoire gnrale des choses de la Nouvelle-Espagne, 1880, is a conflation of the twocodices mentioned above. A third copy, known as Uguina, remains unpublished. It is preservedin the New York Public Library; cf. Marchetti, Hacia la edicin crtica, p. 3 and n. 9.

40. Cf. ASBL, Pluteo 9,2 sup. 227B, fol. 121r.; the second sentence is added in the margin,by a different, contemporaneous hand.


24/225


interval of circa two hundred years ? How, and when, did Fra Bernardinoswork make the remarkable journey from New Spain to Florence?

It is now generally believed that before coming to Florence, the man-uscript made an intermediary stop around 1580 in Spain. Fra Rodrigo deSequera had left Mexico at the end of January of that year,41presumablytaking along the manuscript dedicated to him, which, unbeknown to FraBernardino, had been saved from Philip IIs requisition. While in Spain,the manuscript would have received it s present Plateresque binding, herenoted for the first time.42Subsequently, the fir st page was excised, althoughit is not possible to say if this was done by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera or bythe recipient of the manuscript. From Spain, the manuscript would havetraveled to Florence. There are various hypotheses about when this mighthave occurred, and the times proposed stretch from the end of the 1580sto the first decades of the 1700s.43

In the course of research for my paper on Med. Palat. 218220, I cameacross an interesting document in the Archivio di Stato of Florence, an

41. Cf.dOlwer,Historiadores, p. 179; Baudot, Fray Rodrigo de Sequera, avocat dudiable, pp. 4782; Spagnesi, Bernardino de Sahagn,p. 14; for the two different hypoth-eses, see also above and n. 38.

42. It is reproduced without further observations in Martnez, ElCdice Florentino,p. 14. We would like to take this opportunity to note that in response to my paper at the con-ference, Carmen Hidalgo of the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de Espaa in Madrid hasundertaken to research the binding of Med. Palat. 218220.

43. According to one of the earliest hypotheses, the manuscript was consigned to Philip IIand then sent to Rome for papal approval. Pope Leo XI (16051606), a Medici, is named as apossible intermediary with grand-ducal Florence.The manuscript would then have arrived inFlorence during the first decade of the seventeenth century. It may subsequently have been inthe custody of the grand-ducal librarian and bibliophile Antonio Magliabecchi (16331714).Cf.Nuttal,Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, pp. 295326; Dibble,Florentine Codex,p. 16;Martnez , El Cdice Florentino,p. 7.

Marchetti (Hacia la edicin crtica, pp. 2426, 31) claims instead that as soon asPhilip II received the manuscript, between the end of 1578 and the first months of 1579, hedonated it to the ruling grand duke, Francesco I (15411587), with whom he was on excel-

lent terms, as a gesture of thanks for the economic and military help that the grand duke wasoffering for his campaign in Portugal. Philip would have sent it as a gift on the occasion ofFrancescos marriage to Bianca Cappello (15481587), in other words, before 12 October 1579.According to Marchet ti, this would also ex plain the removal of the fir st page, since it containeda dedication addressed to someone else, which could have afforded great embarrassment, evenif the manuscripts opulence and beauty made it a most regal gift. Note that Marchetti statesthe dedication was on the recto, although according to my examinations, see above, it was onthe verso. Spagnesi (Bernardino de Sahagn,p. 14) does not accept Marchettis proposalbecause of contradictions in the chronology. He is convinced that the manuscript was broughtto Spain by Fra Rodrigo de Sequera in 1580.

inventory from 1587, preserved in the Guardaroba medicea, listing thebelongings of Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici (15491609). Amongthe items in the cardinals library in Rome were two codices, describedas follows:44

Un libro di pitture dellIndie della camera venuto come sopra ad q. A,p. 399. 1Tre libri di (sic) quali sia, in consegna la camera, venuti come sopraa 399.

As far as I was concerned, there was a very st rong possibility that thesecond entry referred to Med. Palat. 218220. The dots could signify arepetition of the words in the first entry, or (thinking of our manuscriptsexcised first page) they might signify the lack of both author and title. Ifmy identification were accepted, it would allow us to finally establish aterminus ante quem for the works arrival in Rome, as well as a post quemfor its arrival in Florence, as part of Ferdinandos private library.

On 19 October 1587, Ferdinando renounced his ecclesiastical careerin order to succeed as grand duke. By the following year, 1588, the librar-

ian Domenico Mellini (fl. 15651606) had compiled an Index eorumlibrorum qui privatim regalibus in aedibus Ferdinandi Medicaei S. R. E.Cardinalis et Magni Ducis Etruriae tertii asservantur. 45 Naturally, Iimmediately searched Mellinis index for the Tre libri di ... listed inthe Guardaroba, but I found no likely candidate for Med. Palat. 218220.However, at n. 1138 in the list of Libri volgari scritti in penna wasa manuscript described as 1. De costumi de Mexicani libri 5 con unaaggiunta. traduzzione.46Here, again, was a description that immedi-ately made me think of the first volume of Bernardinos work. However,the fact that it was included with the vernacular books, that it was onlyone volume, and that it was a translation all seemed to argue against its

44. ASF, Guardaroba medicea132 (fol. Ir: 1587. Questo libro si chiama inventar io generaledella Guardaroba del serenissimo cardinale granduca di Toscana don Ferdinando Medici, altempo della amministratione del s. Benedetto Fedini guardarobiere maggiore; segnato A concoreggie, pag. di carte 500), fol. 484; in ASF, Guardaroba medicea79, at fol. 203, only thefirst item is cited (cf. also Perini, Contributo alla ricostruzione della biblioteca, pp. 571667).

45. BNCF, ms. II. II. 309 (formerly Magl. X. 13), fols. 1r41v.46. BNCF, ms. II. II. 309, fols. 30r33r. The title is also found in the Inventario della

biblioteca granducale (c. 1610), in ASF, Guardaroba medicea237ter, fols. 1r41v, published inPerini, Contributo alla r icostruzione della biblioteca, pp. 588667.


25/225


being the Laurenziana codex. Nevertheless, Mellinis note raised a ques-tion that I was unable to answer: what could this vernacular translation ofthe costumi

3magaloni colors between two worlds.pdf

Documents