Page 544 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

his solar rival, Huitzilopochtli, are nonexistent, Maya, but there is little evidence for or against before a temple; as Seler (1902, 344-345) recog-
perhaps because the Spanish troops and mission- this idea. There are strong iconographic ties nized, the day-signs in a column to the left of
aries made every effort to obliterate the image between the Cospi and other members of the each picture assign each of the deities to one of
of that deity wherever they found it. M.D.C. so-called "Borgia Group" of screenfolds, such the four world-directions (the sun god Tonatiuh
as the Codex Borgia and Codex Vaticanus B. to the east, for instance). Both pages can be
Seven of the twenty pages of the obverse of the matched, in much fuller form, by pages 49-52
359 Codex Cospi were left blank, as were eight pages of the Codex Borgia. A comparison with pages
of the reverse. Different hands are evident on the 25-28 of the Dresden Codex, a fifteenth-century
CODEX COSPI two sides. The artist responsible for the obverse Maya screenfold manuscript, suggests that both
worked with thin and extraordinarily uniform the Cospi and Borgia sections represent New Year
c. 1430-1521 black outlines, which he filled in with flat colors rituals through a succession of four years: Reed,
Aztec or Mixtec in a rich but muted palette. The reverse is carried Flint, House, and Rabbit.
screenfold manuscript out by a more hasty hand, with hesitant outlines There is yet no convincing explanation of pages
paint on animal skin overpainted with gesso
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each page 18 x 18, total length 360 (j /s x jVs and bright and somewhat clashing colors. This 21 to 31 of the reverse of the Codex Cospi. Here
x dichotomy extends to the completely different eleven deities, some of them clearly female, are
iconographic content of the two sides. seated, each holding a shield with darts in the
Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, MS 4093 There are three thematic sections on the right hand and an atlatl (spear thrower) with dart
obverse. On pages 1-8, the tonalpohualli (the in the left. Below each figure is a grouping of bar-
The Codex Cospi is a ritual screenfold manuscript sacred calendar of 260 days) is laid out in fifty- and-dot numbers (6, 7, 8, 9, and n)arranged in an
of a kind that must have existed in every temple two columns of five members each, each day /-shaped layout, which probably represents arrays
and religious seminary within the Aztec empire. being accompanied by the head or symbol of the of offerings to be made to the god. At the sides
Its exact origin remains unknown. Eduard Seler ruling lord of the night, in a repeating succession of each page are the figures of animals, insects,
(1902, 351), who made the first study of the man- of nine lords. Next, on pages 9 to 11, is the Venus scorpions, and animal-headed hearts, which have
OC S
uscript, thought that it might have come from calendar. Last, on pages 12-13, eacn °f f° ur 8 ^ not yet been interpreted.
Aztec territory bordering on the land of the stands, with a smoking, ladle-type incense burner, The Venus pages are of the greatest icono-

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