Page 571 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

tion of repose. As is this case with many hfeso-
american sculptures beginning with the ancient
Olmec civilization, the underside of this piece
is fully carved: the pads of the paws, although
invisible to the beholder, are depicted in detail.
As with almost all Aztec carved representations
of naturalistic animals and plants, it is not known
why they were carved or for whom. They could
have been placed in temples, in palaces, or even in
the homes of well-off people. It is quite possible
that this jaguar graced a military academy where
jaguar warriors were trained. M.D.C.

403 £*»
PUMPKIN

Aztec
porphyry with traces of feldspar
3
5
19.7 x 24.5 ( 7 /4X9 / 8)
private collection
404
The Aztec interest in the naturalistic rendering of THE MEXICANS' MANNER OF DANCING Ordained as a priest in 1570, he entered the Jesuit
plant and animal forms is well represented in this order three years later and eventually gained
vividly realistic sculpture of a pumpkin (Cucurbita from the Codex Tovar fame as a missionary preacher. He was fluent in
pepo) f a food plant first cultivated in Mexico 1583-1587 Nahuatl, Otomi, and Mazagua. Apparently basing
several millennia before the Christian era. Vari- colonial Mexican his studies on original sources, Tovar prepared
ous species of squashes, including the pumpkin, manuscript on paper a history of pre-conquest Mexico that has since
3
were grown in Aztec gardens; both their flesh and 2i.2xi5.6(8 /8x6y 8) disappeared. It is his second history that appears
the dried seeds were a part of Aztec cuisine. The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, in the Providence manuscript, along with other
It is not known what function this sculpture Providence material. His long life ended in 1626.
may have played. Nicholson (1983,113) suggested The Codex Tovar appeared in England in 1816
that it might have been on permanent display in a According to Ignacio Bernal (in Duran 1964, xxi- and came into the possession of Richard Heber.
temple dedicated to a fertility deity (perhaps Chi- xxxii), the late sixteenth century was "a golden On Heber's death in 1836 it entered the collection
comecoatl, the maize goddess). But we know little age of chronicles written on ancient Mexico." Still of Sir Thomas Phillipps, remaining in the Phil-
about Aztec connoisseurship, and it is also con- alive in Mexico were native survivors of the con- lipps library until 1946 when it was acquired by
ceivable that the work formed part of a private quest, and many native communities still carried the John Carter Brown Library. The volume, with
collection in a noble Aztec home or palace. on their own way of life. In the wake of the early a modern leather binding, consists of three parts,
M.D.C. pioneer missionary-ethnologists, including the first being an exchange of letters between
Olmos, Motolinia, and Sahagun, there followed a Acosta and Tovar that is important because it
new generation of historians, some of them born describes the first lost history. The second part of
in Mexico. This band of scholars included Her- the manuscript is a version of the historical text
nando Alvarado de Tezozomoc; the Dominican entitled "Relacion del origen de los Yndios,"
Diego Duran; and two Jesuits, Jose de Acosta covering Aztec history and the great ceremonies
and Juan de Tovar. With the exception of Acosta, linked to the solar calendar. This is largely but not
whose knowledge of ancient Mexico seems entirely drawn from the historical part of Duran's
entirely based on that of Tovar, most of them work; the Tovar version was copied in its entirety
drew their information from living informants as as chapter 7 of Jose de Acosta's "Natural and
well as from old, indigenous chronicles that have Moral History of the Indies/' while the so-called
been lost. They also drew freely on each other, Codex Ramirez, preserved in Mexico City, is
providing many problems of attribution for another copy of Tovar. This section of the Tovar
modern scholars. is illustrated by watercolors very similar to those
Juan de Tovar was born in Mexico (New Spain) accompanying Duran's work, but in a style that
around 1543-1546, either in Mexico City or is less European than that of Duran's artist (see
Texcoco, and was by his own account a relative Lafaye 1972). The third section is the Tovar calen-
of Duran (Kubler and Gibson 1951,11:12-13). dar, a description of the rites and feasts of the

570 CIRCA 1492