Facsimiles of Colonialism: The 1565 Pintura del gobernador, alcaldes y regidores de México and its Reproductions

Abstract

This dissertation is an art historical study with a broad bibliographic and historiographic analysis of the 1565 Pintura del gobernador, alcaldes y regidores de México (Pintura) and its three facsimiles. This project argues that the Pintura was a colonial object that Spain and Mexico colonized and re-colonized multiple times over centuries. Nahua tlacuiloque (artist-scribes) and Spanish translators and scribes created the Pintura for the 1564 visita (inspection) by Gerónimo de Valderrama. Indigenous people made testimonies pertaining to exploitation by elites in and around Mexico City. The manuscript is comprised of thirty-nine folios with combinations of Nahuatl and Spanish text, with precolonial glyphic and early modern European-style images. By referencing Mesoamerican concepts, the Nahua tlacuiloque made choices to express their new colonial realities and the histories of their communities under Spanish rule. In 1878, Spanish scholars created a facsimile of the Pintura after the original manuscript was discovered in the Biblioteca Nacional in the recently-acquired collection of the Twelfth Duke of Osuna. The Mexican Instituto Indigenista Interamericano published another facsimile in Mexico in 1947. An extensive two-volume facsimile was created in the 1970s to correspond with the restoration of the sixteenth-century Pintura by the BNE. To further promote its colonial and imperial past, the BNE digitized the Pintura and placed it online in the 2000s. The facsimiles have influenced scholarship and the treatment of the Pintura for centuries. By analyzing the context of each facsimiles’ productions, this dissertation demonstrates the national agendas that they fulfilled.