Object, Image, Cleverness: The Lienzo de Tlaxcala

The Lienzo de Tlaxcala was a painted cotton cloth created in Mexico around 1552. Through images and brief alphabetic captions, it told the story of the 'Conquest of Mexico' from a Native American point of view. The Lienzo disappeared in the 1860s, but a set of lithographs printed in 1892 a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Art history 2013-06, Vol.36 (3), p.518-545
Main Author: Hamann, Byron Ellsworth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antiquarian materials
Art criticism
Art history
Cultural heritage
Digitization
Mexico
Textiles
Citations: Items that cite this one
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Summary:The Lienzo de Tlaxcala was a painted cotton cloth created in Mexico around 1552. Through images and brief alphabetic captions, it told the story of the 'Conquest of Mexico' from a Native American point of view. The Lienzo disappeared in the 1860s, but a set of lithographs printed in 1892 allow a digital reconstruction to be created. This essay explores the Lienzo's status as a clever object by considering how it manipulates both materiality and iconography to function as trap and trapdoor, now and in the sixteenth century. The Lienzo is a trap in that its composition made formal references to a number of other types of object, a polymorphous physicality designed to make the images painted on its surface visually and intellectually irresistible. At the same time, this polymorphous physicality has unexpected consequences, now that the cloth has been virtually recreated - opening a trapdoor between past and present.
ISSN:0141-6790
1467-8365
DOI:10.1111/1467-8365.12017