The Higa and the Tlachialoni: Material Cultures of Seeing in the Mediterratlantic

A painted page from the sixteenth-century Codex Magliabechiano preserves a complex dialogue about Mediterranean and Mesoamerican theories of vision. From Mesoamerica, the artist depicted two tlachialoni staves: two 'devices of seeing'. From the Mediterranean, the artist depicted a human ha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Art history 2018-09, Vol.41 (4), p.624-649
Main Author: Hamann, Byron Ellsworth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Art history
Artistic representation (Imitation)
Early modern period
Eyes & eyesight
Historic documents
Material culture
Prehistoric era
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:A painted page from the sixteenth-century Codex Magliabechiano preserves a complex dialogue about Mediterranean and Mesoamerican theories of vision. From Mesoamerica, the artist depicted two tlachialoni staves: two 'devices of seeing'. From the Mediterranean, the artist depicted a human hand fisted to form an higa, a gesture of deep antiquity that warded off the evil eye. In other words, prehispanic objects for amplifying the user's gaze are juxtaposed with a European gesture for deflecting the malevolent gazes of others. That European gesture, in turn, is painted on a round indigenous shield, a type of object which would have been covered in the mosaic. This essay moves from antique Rome to early modern Iberia to prehispanic Mesoamerica to sixteenth-century New Spain, exploring the comparative collision of Old and New World theories of extromissive vision and its material cultures.
ISSN:0141-6790
1467-8365
DOI:10.1111/1467-8365.12357