The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec: A Painted History from the Northern Mixteca edi. by Arni Brownstone (review)

In the foreword, by Elizabeth Hill Boone, the function of Indigenous painted histories of Mexico, (before and after the Spanish conquests) are examined briefly, laying a foundation for the contributing authors’ examination of the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec, a pictorial document created in the Coixtlahuaca valley of Oaxaca, a region known as the Mixteca of Southern Mexico. The scholarly text, edited by Arni Brownstone, Assistant Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, includes a collection of essays and appendices by Nicholas Johnson, Bas van Doesburg, Michael Swanton, Eckehard Dolinski, and Arni Brownstone. The chapters give historical context and suggest interpretations for the sixteenth-century artifact currently housed in the Royal Ontario Museum. The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec, measuring 3.97 × 1.67 metres, employs both Mixtec and Aztec names, allowing the original Nahua and Mixtec readers to understand its imagery. Like other Meso-american painted histories, three important themes are communicated: an account of origin, merging two complementary stories of a creator god and first ancestors; the founding of the community at the centre of the world; and the continuity of dynastic rulers. Though the woven cotton lienzo may be read as a map, displaying places, the figures and glyphs create an historical narrative. The analysis in this book is comprehensive as its authors’ incorporate visual and textual evidence to unfold meaning with references to earlier studies in the field.

Numerous colour illustrations, photographs, maps and tables create a rich tapestry of support materials for the contributors’ essays weaving a multilayered account of the lienzo’s journey from Tlapiltepec to Canada, including its various names, its significance within the body of Meso-american manuscripts, particularly documents from the Coixtlahuaca Group, as well as an examination of transcriptions of related documents, and glosses found on the cloth itself.

In the first chapter, “What Is a Lienzo?” Nicholas Johnson places the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec within a body of other manuscripts contextualizing its meaning. Johnson suggests that though the Mixtecs of southern Mexico were less well-known than the Aztecs, they had a pictographic writing system that should be viewed within a wider perspective of Mesoamerican culture. The author compares the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec with pictorial manuscripts of the Coixtlahuaca Group, which allows for assessment of style and content. Johnson proposes that the lienzo is the work of a single artist, or at least several artists with the same training. He also points out the later glosses on the artifact, written in European language, which may help to decipher places and glyphs. Johnson gives readers unfamiliar with Mesoamerican manuscripts a guide to the figures, how to identify males and females, an introduction to the calendar system and conventions for place signs (glyphs). The first chapter explains the characteristics of lienzos, and compares them to other types of manuscripts, such as screen-folds. Johnson lists a number of other large single-sheet manuscripts, including their material, size, date, region and subject matter in an easily accessible table. He concludes by suggesting the best way to display these manuscripts, such as the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec, is to lay them flat, rather than hanging them vertically.

Bas Van Doesburg, in the second chapter, “The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec: The Royal Historiography of the Coixtlahuaca City-State,” places the artifact within the postclassical period, while suggesting it and other lienzos were created to fulfill specific political objectives of the elite who commissioned them; however, the obvious patrons of the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec, the last rulers depicted in the main genealogy, Lord 11 Vulture and his wife, 3 Serpent, cannot be placed with chronological certitude during the post-colonial era. The appearance of churches means that the lienzo dates to the first decades of the colonial period. Van Doesburg suggests solutions to this problem, but concludes that “no satisfactory explanation can be given,” (63) leaving open the possibility for further investigations.

In the third chapter, “The Languages of Lines on...