Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America (Art Ebook)

WOMAN AND ART
IN
EARLY MODERN LATIN AMERICA
THE ATLANTIC WORLD
Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500-1830
EDITORS
Wim Klooster (Clark University)

Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington)
VOLUME X
WOMAN AND ART
IN
EARLY MODERN LATIN AMERICA
EDITED BY
KELLEN KEE MCINTYRE AND RICHARD E. PHILLIPS
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2007
Cover illustration: Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in Purgatory. 1708,
Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán, Mexico.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISSN 1570–0542
ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15392-9
ISBN-10: 90-04-15392-6
© Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ........................................................................ ix
List of Illustrations ...................................................................... xi
Introduction
Kellen Kee McIntyre .................................................................... 1
PART ONE
RECONNAISSANCE: MARKING AND MAPPING

THE NEW WORLD WITH THE FEMALE BODY
Chapter One. The Queen of Heaven Reigns in

New Spain: The Triumph of Eternity in the Casa
del Deán Murals ...................................................................... 21
Penny C. Morrill
Chapter Two. Affections of the Heart: Female Imagery

and the Notion of Nation in Nineteenth-Century
Mexico .................................................................................... 47
Magali M. Carrera
Chapter Three. The Virgin of the Andes: Inka Queen

and Christian Goddess .......................................................... 73
Carol Damian
Chapter Four. Women and Men as Cosmic Co-Bearers

at Oaxtepec, Mexico, about 1553 ........................................ 99
Richard E. Phillips
vi contents
PART TWO
TAKING POSSESSION: APPROPRIATIONS OF THE

NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY
Chapter Five. Abused and Battered: Printed Images and

the Female Body in Viceregal New Spain .......................... 125
K. Donahue-Wallace
Chapter Six. Reclaiming Tlatilco’s Figurines from

Biased Analysis ...................................................................... 149
María Elena Bernal-García
Chapter Seven. El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma:

The Betrothal of Two Worlds in Eighteenth-Century
New Spain .............................................................................. 181
Ray Hernández-Durán
Chapter Eight. Nurture and Inconformity: Arrieta’s

Images of Women, Food, and Beverage ............................ 207
Jenny O. Ramírez
PART THREE
CONSOLIDATION: THE QUALIFYING AND TAMING OF

THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY WITH SIGNIFIEDS
Chapter Nine. Clothing Women: The Female Body

in Pre- and Post-Contact Aztec Art .................................... 221
Lori Boornazian Diel
Chapter Ten. Savage Breast/Salvaged Breast:

Allegory, Colonization, and Wet-Nursing in Peru,
1532–1825 .............................................................................. 247
Carolyn Dean
Chapter Eleven. Emblems of Virtue in

Eighteenth-Century New Spain ............................................ 265
Michael J. Schreffler
contents vii
Chapter Twelve. The Figure of Mary as the Cloister

in Mexican Mendicant Art .................................................. 289
Richard E. Phillips
PART FOUR
FULFILLMENT: THE EXTENSION AND

EXPRESSION OF THE FEMALE BODY IN
THE NEW WORLD
Chapter Thirteen. Convents, Art, and Creole Identity

in Late Viceregal New Spain .............................................. 321
Elizabeth Perry
Chapter Fourteen. The Sweeping of the Way:

Rethinking the Mexican Ochpaniztli Festival .................... 343
Catherine R. DiCesare
Chapter Fifteen. Exploring a Female Legacy: Beatriz

Álvarez de Herrera and the Façade of the Casa
de Montejo ................................................................................ 367
C. Cody Barteet
Chapter Sixteen. Isabel de Cisneros in Her Own Role ........ 395

A. Lepage
Chapter Seventeen. From Mujercilla to Conquistadora:

St. Teresa of Ávila’s Missionary Identity in Mexican
Colonial Art ............................................................................ 419
Christopher C. Wilson
Index .......................................................................................... 443

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I extend my heartfelt thanks to all of our contributors who were

prompt, patient, and generous in their support of this project. I am
indebted to all of the wonderful people at Brill Academic Publishers
who worked so hard to bring this book to press. Among them: Julian
Deahl who immediately understood the value of this project; our
editors Marcella Mulder, Boris van Gool, Tanja Cowall, and Gera
van Bedaf, who were patient and supportive to a fault; and the type-
setters and designers who did such a beautiful job with the layout
of the book. My writing partner, Richard E. Phillips, has been a
delight to work with. The breadth and depth of his knowledge about
Viceregal Latin American art and architecture continue to amaze
me. And finally, I dedicate this book to my talented, funny, and
wonderful husband, Eric F. Lane, whose support in this and every-
thing else that I do is boundless.
Kellen Kee McIntyre
I would like to thank Dr. Nancy Moyer, Prof. Reynaldo Santiago,

and Prof. Richard N. Hyslin, successive Chairs of the Art Department
of the University of Texas—Pan American, and Dr. Wallace Tucker,
Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, for their sup-
port of my official workload reduction for research purposes. Without
this reduction, I could not have contributed to this book. I also thank
the Association for Latin American Art and the Lozano Long Institute
for Latin American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin for
permitting us to post an announcement calling for contributors in
their listserv and their weekly calendar, respectively. I thank the staff
of Brill Publishers for their constant guidance and encouragement of
our project. I am most grateful to my co-editor Dr. Kellen Kee
McIntyre for inventing the concept behind this book, for defining
its theme, and for recruiting me to assist her with this project. I also
thank Eric Lane for his assistance and encouragement in complet-
ing this book. And I am grateful to Canek, Citlalli, and Alicia for
their love and support. I dedicate my efforts on this volume to the
memory of my parents, Frank and Marguerite Phillips.
Richard E. Phillips
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Penny C. Morrill
Fig. 1.1 The Triumph of Love. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán,
Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.
Fig. 1.2 The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Mural painting in the Casa del
Deán, Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.
Fig. 1.3 Juno. An engraving from Francis Pomey, Pantheum mythicum,
seu, Fabulosa deorum historia. Amsterdam: Ex Officina Schou-
teniana; Apud J. J. a Poolsum, 1757. Courtesy of the
Chapin Library Collection, Williams College, Williamstown,
Massachusetts.
Magali M. Carrera
Fig. 2.1 Patricio Súarez de Peredo, Alegoría de las autoridades españo-

las e indígenas (Allegory of the Spanish and Indigenous Authorities).
1809, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm. Museo Nacional del
Virreinato, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de
la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico.
Fig. 2.2 Anon., Alegoría de la Independencia. 1834, oil, approx. 169 ×
196 cm., Museo Casa de Hidalgo, Centro INAH-Guana-
juato, Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. Reproduction authorized
by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia,
Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-
MEX), Mexico.
Fig. 2.3 Louis Charles Routte and Jacques-Louis Copia, after Louis-
Marie Sicardi, La Liberté, Patrone des Français, after Louis-
Simon Boizot. 1795, etching, S.P. Avery Collection, Miriam
and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations.
Fig. 2.4 Petronilo Monroy, Constitución de 1857. Exhibited 1869, oil,
approx. 170 × 90 cm., Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico
xii list of illustrations
City. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional

de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura
(CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico.
Fig. 2.5 Frontispiece. Color lithograph. In Vicente Riva Palacio,
ed., México a través de los siglos . . . vol. I (México City:
Ballescá, 1887–1889), n.p.
Carol Damian
Fig. 3.1 Anon., School of Cuzco, Coya or Ñusta. 18th c., oil on can-
vas, 75” × 47”, Museo Arqueológico, Cuzco, Peru.
Fig. 3.2 Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata. 18th
c., oil on canvas, 78” × 51”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima,
Peru.
Fig. 3.3 Anon., Alto Perú, La Virgen María con el cerro de Potosí (The
Virgin Mary with the Mountain of Potasiama). 18th c., oil on
canvas, 53” × 41 ½”, Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí,
Bolivia.
Fig. 3.4 Luis Nino, Alto Perú, Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga. Ca.
1735, oil on canvas, 59 ½” × 43 ¾”, Denver Art Museum,
Denver, Colorado.
Fig. 3.5 Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Candlestick of Tenerife
with Tunic of Feathers. Ca. 1680–1700, oil on canvas, 61” ×
45”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.
Richard E. Phillips
Fig. 4.1 Schematic iconographical diagram, first floor of the clois-

ter, Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, State of Morelos,
Mexico, ca. 1553. Drawing courtesy of Prof. James Dutre-
maine.
Fig. 4.2 Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the clois-
ter. View toward the east down the south cloister walk,
with the mural paintings of Sts. Paul and Catherine of Alexandria
on the southwest pier. Photo by the author.
Fig. 4.3 Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes. Dominican monastery
of Oaxtepec, first floor. West end wall of the refectory,
south side. Photo by the author.
list of illustrations xiii
Fig. 4.4 St. Peter. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of

the cloister. First image of the pier cycle. Photo by the
author.
Fig. 4.5 Blessed Osanna Andreasi. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec,
first floor of the cloister. Ninth pier face of the cloister
arcade cycle, south cloister walk. Photo by the author.
K. Donahue-Wallace
Fig. 5.1 Manuel López López, Fue muerta y destrozada. . . . 1806, etch-
ing. Courtesy of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American
Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author.
Fig. 5.2 José Mota, Madre Gerónima de la Asunción. 1713, engraving.
Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Blooming-
ton, Indiana. Photo by the author.
Fig. 5.3 José Morales, Sor Sebastiana de la Santísima Trinidad. 1765,
engraving. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University,
Bloomington, Indiana.
Fig. 5.4 Manuel López López, Desalines (sic). 1806, etching. Courtesy
of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection,
University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author.
Fig. 5.5 José Morales, The Virgin of Guadalupe. 18th c., engraving.
Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico
City.
Fig. 6.1 Diego Rivera. The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History. Mosaic,
12.85 × 42.79 m., 1951–1953, Teatro de los Insurgentes,
Mexico City. Detail. Drawing by the author at the site.
Fig. 6.2 Tlatilco. Type D1 Female and Male Figurines. Clay with
paint, 1500–300 B.C.E. Drawing by the author after
Thomson (1971), Fig. 14.
Fig. 6.3 Tlatilco. Pair of Female Figurines. Clay, 15.5 cm. high,
1500–300 B.C.E. Drawing by the author from the origi-
nals in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia,
Mexico City.
xiv list of illustrations
Fig. 6.4 Tlatilco. Whirling Type D1 Female Figurine. Clay with

red, white, and yellow paint, ca. 11 cm. high. Drawing
by the author from the original in the Museo Nacional
de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Fig. 6.5 Zacatenco. Burial 19. Drawing by the author after George
C. Vaillant (1931) “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological
Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 32 (New
York: 1931) 189.
Fig. 7.1 Anon., El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma, fragment. 18th c.,

oil on canvas, Priv. Col.
Fig. 7.2 Sebastián López de Arteaga, Los desposorios de la Virgen,
17th c., oil on canvas, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico
City.
Fig. 7.3 Luis de Mena, Cuadro de Castas con la Virgen de Guadalupe.
Ca. 1750, oil on canvas, Museo de América de Madrid.
Fig. 9.1 Capture and Sacrifice of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughter,

Tira de Tepechpan (after Aubin 1848–1851).
Fig. 9.2 Capture of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán.
Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris.
Fig. 9.3 Presentation of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex
Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France, Paris.
Fig. 9.4 Cihuateteo (Pasztory 1998: plate 186).
Fig. 9.5 The Cihuateteo on the Day 1 Eagle, Florentine Codex (after
Sahagún 1950–82 4: Figs. 78–82).
Carolyn Dean
Fig. 10.1 Anon., An Allegory of America Suckling Foreigners (called An

Allegory of Spain and Her Treatment of Her South American
list of illustrations xv
Colonies). Ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 32” by 23 ½”, Cuzco,

Peru. Priv. Col. Photo courtesy of the Frick Art Reference
Library.
Fig. 10.2 Johannus Stradanus. Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing
in America. 16th c., pen and ink on paper. Courtesy the
Metropolitan Museum of Art [Gift of the Estate of James
Hazen Hyde, 1959 (1974.205)].
Fig. 10.3 Anon., (circle of Mauricio García), The Virgin of Mercy with
Three Saints (Francis of Paola, Anthony of Padua, Gertrudis).
Mid-18th c., oil on canvas, 37 ⅝” × 26 ⅝”, Cuzco, Peru.
Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum [41.1275.181].
Fig. 10.4 Anon., La Virgen de la Leche. Sculpture for sale in Cuzco,
Peru, 2001. Photo by the author.
NOTE: Figures 11.1.–11.5. are photographs of sections of “The Richmond

Screen,” a folding screen or biombo from New Spain, late eight-
eenth or early nineteenth century. These sections of the original screen
are in the Virginia Historical Society Collection, Richmond, cata-
logue number 1948.W.1108. The plates are provided as a cour-
tesy by the Virginia Historical Society.
Fig. 11.1 Section with the emblems “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama
la virtud por si misma) and “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud
es immovible [sic]).
Fig. 11.2 Section with the emblems “Virtue Consists in the Mean”
(La virtud consiste en el medio) and “Virtue is the Target of
Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la emvidia [sic]).
Fig. 11.3 Detail: The emblem “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la vir-
tud por si misma).
Fig. 11.4 Detail: The emblem “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es
immovible [sic]).
Fig. 11.5 Detail: The emblem “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La
virtud consiste en el medio).
xvi list of illustrations
Richard E. Phillips
Fig. 12.1 The Annunciation. 1570s or ’80s, mural painting, first floor,
cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán,
Puebla. Photo by the author.
Fig. 12.2 The Death and Coronation of the Virgin. Ca. 1563, mural
painting, first floor, cloister of the Augustinian monastery
of Epazoyucan, Hidalgo. Photo by the author.
Fig. 12.3 The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Saints Thomas
Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Ca. 1558, mural painting, first
floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo,
Puebla. Photo by the author.
Fig. 12.4 Schematic iconographical diagram of the first cloister of
the Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico,
built after 1539, mural painted ca. 1560. Drawing cour-
tesy of Prof. Reynaldo Santiago.
Fig. 12.5 The Annunciation Witnessed by Sts. Augustine and John of Sahagún.
Highly damaged mural painted ca. 1560, first cloister,
Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico.
Photo by the author.
Elizabeth Perry
Fig, 13.1 Unknown Mexican artist, Virgin and Child with Saints. 17th c.,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Dr. Robert H. Lamborn
Collection.
Fig. 13.2 Unknown Mexican artist, Coronation of the Virgin with Saints.
Ca. 1770–90, Denver Art Museum, Collection of Jan
and Frederick R. Mayer.
Fig. 13.3 Andrés López, Sister Pudenciana. 1782, Olana State Historic
Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and
Historic Preservation.
Fig. 14.1 Ochpaniztli, fol. 21r, Codex Tudela. Reproduction by per-

mission of the Museo de América de Madrid.
list of illustrations xvii
Fig. 14.2 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Elizabeth Hill Boone, The

Codex Magliabechiano and the Lost Prototype of the Magliabechiano
Group (Berkeley: 1983), fol. 39r, by permission of the
University of California Press.
Fig. 14.3 Ochpaniztli, fol. 3r, Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Reproduced
by permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Fig. 14.4 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Diego Durán, Book of the Gods
and Rites of the Ancient Calendar, eds. Fernando Horcasitas
and Doris Heyden (Norman: 1971) Pl. 24. © 1971 by
the University of Oklahoma Press.
Fig. 14.5 Ochpaniztli, plate IX of the Tovar Calendar. Reproduced
by permission of The John Carter Brown Library at
Brown University.
C. Cody Barteet
Fig. 15.1 Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo

by the author.
Fig. 15.2 Detail: Right Tondo Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo,
Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.
Fig. 15.3 Detail: Coat of Arms, Upper Façade, Casa de Montejo,
Fig. 15.4 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo,
Fig. 15.5 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo,
A. Lepage
Fig. 16.1 [Copy of ] Portrait of Juana de Jesús, original: Isabel de

Cisneros. Ca. 1703, Convent of Santa Clara, Quito,
Eduador.
Fig. 16.2 Miguel de Santiago, Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo
y su hijo. Ca. 1699–1706, Santuario de Nuestra Señora
de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.
Fig. 16.3 Detail of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube. Previously
attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and currently attributed
xviii list of illustrations
to Miguel de Santiago. Late 17th c., Santuario de Nuestra

Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.
Fig. 16.4 Archangel St Michael. Previously attributed to Isabel de
Cisneros and presently without attribution. Early 18th c.,
Monastery of San Agustín, Quito, Ecuador.
Fig. 17.1 Luis Juárez, St. Teresa Praying for the Release of a Soul from
Purgatory. First half 17th c., Museo Nacional del Virreinato,
Tepotzotlán, Mexico.
Fig. 17.2 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in
Purgatory. 1708, Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán,
Mexico.
Fig. 17.3 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa in Penitence. Late
17th–early 18th c., Sacristy of former Discalced Carmelite
Monastery (today Museo de El Carmen), San Ángel,
Mexico.
Fig. 17.4 Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, St. Teresa in Penitence.
1613, The Carmelitana Collection of Whitefriars Hall,
Washington, D.C.
Fig. 17.5 Andrés López, Emblematic Portrayal of St. Teresa of Ávila.
Second half 18th c.
INTRODUCTION
Kellen Kee McIntyre
The impetus for the present volume developed out of basic need.
Several years ago, armed with a broad background in both feminist
and viceregal1 period art historical theory and practice, I determined
to construct a graduate seminar on the representation of women in
early modern Latin American art. At first I believed materials appro-
priate for the course would be relatively easy to come by, but I was
seriously mistaken. Fortunately, I had recently heard a lecture by
Richard E. Phillips in which he analyzed images of female saints on
the piers of the sixteenth-century cloister at Oaxtepec, Morelos.2
Over the next couple of years, Richard and I shared insights into
the topic and I was finally able to offer the course for the first time.
Our collaboration resulted in a College Art Association Conference
session titled “Image, Icon, Identity: Constructions of Femininity in
Viceregal Latin American Art and Architecture,” held in Los Angeles
in 1999. Reception by audience members suggested to us that there
were other early modern Latin Americanists who were also inter-
ested in the subject. Since that time, we have made a concerted
1
The editors of this book have avoided the terms “Spanish colonial” or “colo-
nial” art. These terms pre-condition the spectator to expect that the artistic and
social forms of the colonized countries are largely derivative or imposed with regard
to those of the colonizing polity. This is not the case with the tremendous creativity
of local traditions developed by the regions subjected to Spanish control in the New
World. The cultural contributions of Spain and the rest of Western Civilization to
Latin America were of course fundamental, but they were not slavishly imitated
nor monolithically imposed without great originality in their reinterpretation, nego-
tiation, and redirection by the New World inhabitants. So instead of the outmoded
terms “Spanish Colonial” or “colonial,” we follow the example of the great scholar
of Mexican architectural history Robert Mullen, who titled his seminal 1997 book
Architecture and its Sculpture in Viceregal Mexico without further elaborating on his choice
of the word “viceregal” in his text. The adjective “viceregal” refers to the viceroys
appointed by the Spanish kings to rule over their New World dominions and is
therefore a preferable and historically correct substitute for such terms as “Spanish
Colonial.”
2
See Ch. 4 in the present volume.
2 kellen kee mcintyre
effort to seek out research and collect essays that deal with various
facets of the topic; our efforts are revealed in this volume.
As we worked on the project, we noted with some surprise that
although feminist art history had expanded exponentially from its
inception in the 1970s with regard to ancient and European artis-
tic traditions, not a single essay on the art and architecture of the
early modern period in Latin America had made its way into the
many feminist art historical publications on the period. The various
essays in this publication, selected from a variety of sources, begin
to correct that omission. They combine feminist approaches with
interdisciplinary methodologies to expand our contemporary under-
standing of the art and architecture of the viceregal epoch.
Feminist art historians have identified five basic methodologies,
called ‘feminist interventions,’ with which to reappraise traditional
art historical practice.3 I begin with the first four interventions and
defer the fifth to a later position in this introduction. Of primary
importance over the past three decades has been the reconstruction
of the contributions of both (1) female artists and (2) patrons, and
(3) the inclusion of a significant number of both in the standard art
history survey texts. The feminist approach also (4) seeks to identify
the institutionalized strictures that have traditionally hindered the
ability of women artists to become professionals as they were his-
torically limited or denied access to the artistically and economically
nurturing environments of art guilds and academies.
These four feminist interventions were identified by convention-
ally trained art historians with primary expertise in Western Euro-
pean traditions. The arts of the past century or so aside, these four
approaches have not been applied systematically to the historical
visual art production of cultures outside or on the periphery of this
tradition.
The example of Latin America, particularly during the early mod-
ern or viceregal period, is a case in point. This exclusion of vicere-
gal Latin America from the feminist art historical discourse—that is,
the identification of women artists and patrons, their inclusion in
standard art historical texts, and their limited or denied access to
training—runs counter to Latin American scholarship in other human-
ist disciplines. Groundbreaking work by researchers such as Silvia
3
Pollock (1988) 1ff.
introduction 3
Marina Arrom, Luis Martín, Elizabeth Salas, Verónica Salles-Reese

and Irene Silverblatt, to name only a few, in the disciplines of vicere-
gal history, literature, and anthropology, have produced significant
feminist texts over the last twenty years.4 Many of these scholars,
especially the historians, have begun to reconstruct the contributions
of specific women to viceregal history and culture, yet no art histo-
rian—with the important exception of those concerned with convents
of nuns throughout Latin America5 and some forms of portraiture—
had published a text on the contribution of women to the develop-
ment of viceregal art. It is probable that the contribution of women
in general and women artists in particular during the viceregal period
will never be understood fully due to the dearth of direct archival
material. Indeed, as A. Lepage argues in the present volume, it is
equally impossible at this stage to tease out the individual contribu-
tions of artists, male or female, in many parts of Latin America—in
her study, Quito—due to the collective corporate practices of period
artists. Nevertheless, few studies have combed the archival material
for encoded words and practices that suggest institutionalized artis-
tic bias toward women. The work by Kelly Donahue-Wallace in the
area of women and prints remains one of the notable exceptions.
As has been clearly shown in studies of Dutch, Italian, and English
guild and workshop records, these documents can be as telling for
what they do not say as for what they do. In addition, research into
women as patrons of the arts in the viceregal period has been scant
save for the studies on conventual nuns, as in Elizabeth Perry’s essay
on the Mexico City Conceptionists in this volume. Historical research
by Martín and others has shown, however, that individual wealthy
women with considerable control over vast estates were influential
in the development of other aspects of viceregal culture, such as ani-
mal husbandry and agriculture. The essay in the present volume by
Cody Barteet begins to address the artistic leverage of high status
female patrons, while that of Phillips on the monastery at Oaxtepec
suggests that powerful native women, too, could affect period prac-
tice. Still, a more complete picture remains to be written.
4
Arrom (1985); Martín (1989); Morant (2006); Salas (1995); Salles-Reese; and
Silverblatt (1987).
5
For an introduction to the literature on this topic, consult the bibliography by
E. Perry, ch. 13, this volume.
Why has viceregal art history lagged so far behind comparable

humanistic disciplines in the adoption of feminist methodologies? Part
of the reason lies in the bias against ‘peripheral’ art by feminist art
historians trained in the Western European tradition, as mentioned
above. A second factor is the comparatively tardy development of a
general feminist consciousness in many contemporary Latin American
countries. This is apparent yet today, where the reappraisal of the
artistic contribution of women even in this past century is only begin-
ning to emerge. And third, as Cecilia F. Klein noted just a few years
ago, there had been reluctance on the part of Latin American art
historians, no matter their country of origin, to apply contemporary
theory purposefully to the study of viceregal art.6 Klein mentioned
resistance theory and semiotics, to name only two; to her list I add
most feminist art historical theory. (The situation has improved markedly
since her observation, as is clearly evinced in this anthology in which
feminist concerns merge with other critical theoretical methodologies.)
I intentionally qualify that statement with the word ‘most,’ for it
is only with the fifth feminist intervention that one can find some
exception to the general observation that Latin American art histo-
rians had, until the last five years or so, tended to ignore feminist
theory in the analysis of viceregal art. This fifth intervention centers
on the visual representation of woman: the social and cultural con-
struction and definition of female identity through the art document.
For the sake of argument and due to the paucity of research to the
contrary, let us assume that a good number of representations of
women in the viceregal period were created by male artists primar-
ily under male patronage. Yet, what can these primarily male artis-
tic productions say about the status of women in viceregal Latin
America? The editors of the present volume take the position, and
it is borne out in many of the essays included herein, that Latin
American artists in this period were collectively aware of a vocabu-
lary of gender that could be tailored to deliver varying messages
about the position of women vis-à-vis viceregal culture and society.
Viceregal images of women can be divided into two broad cate-
gories: Secular and religious. In the secular realm are allegory and
history painting, portraiture, and various forms of genre. In the reli-
6
Klein (1999).
introduction 5
gious realm are Marian devotions, depictions of female saints, and

several types of portraits of nuns.
Marian devotions arrived in the New World with Columbus.7 He
was a devotee of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe at a monastery
near Cáceres in the province of Extremadura, Spain (not to be con-
fused with the sixteenth-century Mexican Guadalupe). This monastery
was a favored pilgrimage site and place of retreat for the Crown of
Castile. Many early conquistadors, most notably Cortés and several
of his followers, who arrived on the Mexican coast in 1519, were
from Extremadura. As such, they were adherents of the Extremaduran
Guadalupe, which by that time was a popular image venerated
throughout the Crown of Castille. This eleventh or twelfth-century(?),
18” high wooden statue, attributed with many miracles, depicts a
fully frontal seated Virgin who holds the Christ child on her right
and a scepter in her left hand. She is dark skinned. There are a
number of these in Spain, and they will multiply in the Spanish
colonies; most are credited with miraculous, often healing, powers.
This particular image is among the most, if not the most, potent of
the type in Spain.
Besides the devotion to the Extremaduran Guadalupe, Cortés
brought at least two more Marian devotions with him to New Spain.
He introduced the military processional banner, a medieval survival,
in two variants: One displayed an image of the Crowned Virgin,
the Cross on its reverse. A second banner offered an image of the
Virgin, identified by Manuel Toussaint as an abbreviated image of
the Immaculate Conception, an avocation of the Virgin popularized
in the late fifteenth century and the one championed by the Francis-
cans.8 Through them this guise of the Virgin became a special Crown
devotion. It was thus politically advantageous for Cortés and his fol-
lowers to devote themselves to the Immaculate Conception (he made
the formal request that would bring the Franciscans, the first friars,
to Mexico) and to the Extremaduran Guadalupe, devotions both
favored by the Crown.
The third image, the Virgen de los Remedios, brought by one of
Cortés’s men, became the one most closely associated with the Spanish
7
This paragraph and the next build upon research by Brading (2001); Taylor
(1999); Poole (1995); Peterson (1992); Rodríguez (1995); and Dunnington (1999).
8
Cortés’s banner is mentioned by Díaz del Castillo (1956), Ch. 27, and repro-
duced in Toussaint (1965), pl. 14.
conquest of Mexico. This small, sculpted Virgin, which stands about

10 1/2” high, sustains a scepter in one hand. In the other she holds
an infant Christ, an obvious reference to her role as peaceful nur-
turer. Spanish conquistadors credited an apparition of this miracu-
lous image with the final vanquishing of the Mexica (or Aztecs) in
1521.9
That the Virgen de los Remedios is associated with war is not
unusual in Catholic devotion. From at least the sixth century, if not
before, the Virgin Militant functioned as one of the most important
protectors of Christian armies claiming triumph under her care. By
the late 1400s, as Rose Demir convincingly argues, various images
of the Virgin that stand on the crescent moon functioned as “pro-
tagonist and protector against foreign Islamic presence in Spain.
Considering the anti-Muslim sentiments throughout Spain in the
fifteenth century . . . the crescent moon, which by then had become a
well-recognized symbol of Islam, beneath the feet of the Virgin, was
seen as a . . . sign of the conquest [of Christian Spain over] Islam.”10
For the Spaniards in the New World in the following century, the
Virgin continued in her dual role as patroness of both war and
peace. At the same time, for many native populations she assumed
the principal divine position over a pantheon of pre-contact female
deities with similar dual natures.
The most frequently cited example of the dual nature of Mary in
Latin America is, of course, the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. She
shares this name with the Extremaduran Guadalupe. The reasons
for this coincidence have long been the subject of conjecture. Many
scholars believe that soon after conquest of the Valley of Mexico,
Spaniards, perhaps Cortés himself, attached the name “Guadalupe”
to a hill, called Tepeyacac in the pre-contact period (now Tepeyac),
just three miles northwest of the main plaza in Mexico City. It was
a crucial pre-contact entry point into the Valley, sited at the cross-
ing of three major causeways into the city, and it continued as an
important entry under Spanish rule. That it was Cortés or his fol-
lowers who renamed the site “Guadalupe” is plausible; it could only
have served to curry royal favor. Viceroys and other Spanish author-
9
Salazar Monroy (1973).
10
Demir (2005) 20.
introduction 7
ities entering the city for the first time traditionally stopped here to
refresh and to apprise local authorities of their imminent entrance
into the city. Tepeyac also had pre-contact ritual significance: an
important female earth deity, Tonantzín, was associated with the
site. She was both a war goddess and an earth mother figure, a nur-
turer.11 With the Extremaduran Guadalupe, the Tepeyac Guadalupe
shares her miraculous appearance. Unlike the former, however, the
Tepeyac Guadalupe, a painted image nearly five feet high, does not
hold the Christ child. Her body sways in an s-curve, her head bends
to the right and, like the Apocalyptic Woman of Revelation 12:1,
the Tepeyac Guadalupe is “clothed with the sun, and the moon
under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” She
stands on an upturned crescent moon; the sun’s rays frame her in
an almond-shaped mandorla. Surrounding her head are the twelve
stars; they multiply and scatter over her blue mantle. An angel (a
later addition), a reference to the Virgin’s Assumption, upholds the
composition. In European images of the Virgin of the Apocalypse,
she often stands on the vanquished apocalyptic serpent, a metaphor
for the ultimate glorious victory in the battle of good over evil, the
holy war. In the Tepeyac Guadalupe the serpent is absent, which
on the surface might suggest that this Virgin does not refer to Mary
as patroness of war. But in pre-contact cultures, especially in the
Valley of Mexico, the serpent, venerated as a deity, was associated
with the moon, depicted beneath the Virgin of Guadalupe’s feet.
Perhaps the moon was enough for native devotees to recognize the
Tepeyac Guadalupe as triumphant over the serpent. In that case,
this Virgin symbolizes both the conquest in general, but also specifically
the Valley of Mexico: its pre-contact insignia was an eagle with a
serpent in its talons or beak, perched atop a nopal cactus, as depicted
in the often-reproduced frontispiece from the Codex Mendoza of the
1540s. This emblem became the coat of arms of Cortés’s Mexico
City. In a print from the seventeenth century, the Tepeyac Guadalupe
actually stands atop the coat of arms.12
If she is the personification of victory in war, the Tepeyac Guadalupe
is also the purveyor of peace and humility. Her head tilts right, her
11
The information in this paragraph is the result of my interpretation of research
contained in Taylor (1999) and Brading (2001).
12
Peterson (1992) 39–47.
eyes cast down, her hands press together in prayer. She is submis-
sive and obedient, the perfect woman as defined by medieval men-
dicant texts. Marina Warner, in Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and
Cult of the Virgin Mary, writes:
Although Jesus and Mary exemplified the virtues of poverty, humility
and obedience in equal measure, and although Christians of both sexes
were exhorted to imitate them, the characteristics of these virtues—
gentleness, docility, forbearance—are immediately classifiable as femi-
nine, especially in Mediterranean countries. The more fervently religious
the country—Spain, for instance—the more men folk swagger and
command, the more women submit and withdraw and are praised for
their Christian goodness. Machismo, ironically enough, is the sweet and
gentle Virgin’s other face.13
Since, like her Extremaduran counterpart, the Tepeyac Guadalupe
is dark skinned, and because her physiognomy has commonly been
characterized as Indian, she entreats native women to submit to the
will of their husbands while admonishing the indigenous peoples to
surrender, like good wives, to the will of Spanish religious and sec-
ular authorities.
The Tepeyac Guadalupe and the Virgen de los Remedios, as his-
torian William B. Taylor has pointed out, are but two of the more
than sixty images of the Virgin venerated in the Valley of Mexico
alone; there are hundreds of revered images scattered throughout
Mexico in both Spanish villas and native villages.14 Many of these
have probable connections with pre-contact goddesses and all speak
to the position of women in viceregal society. Images of the Virgin
with dual natures were also pervasive in the Andean region. A case
in point, as Carol Damian describes in this volume, is the Virgin in
the bell-shaped gown, an image intimately linked with the landscape
and with concepts of fecundity and maternity, but also with war.15
Let us now turn to depictions of female saints in early modern
Latin America, specifically as they are posed in Mexican retablos, or
altarpieces, intended for mission churches in native villages, the pueb-
los. Retablos intended for main altars were famous for their elabo-
rately carved, gilded frames and complex hagiographic programs.
Characteristically, they rise to the height of the church and fill the
13
Warner (1976) 183.
14
Taylor (1999).
15
Damian (1995) 51–2.
introduction 9
apse wall. No sixteenth-century missions were dedicated to female

saints, therefore none turn up in the central and most prominent
position of the retablo, although the image of the Virgin Mary usu-
ally assumes an important place. Images of male saints, including
groups of apostles, dominate retablo iconography; less than twenty
percent of the images found on late-sixteenth and seventeenth-cen-
tury apse altarpieces are of female saints. Each retablo employs
images of female saints for specific purposes, but there seems to be
no standard placement of them. Yet, they more commonly show up
in positions of lesser import—at the sides or base or as diminutive
images—and are thus marginalized, rarely assuming prominence over
male saints. No female saint ever stands alone; each is paired on
the opposite side of the retablo with another female saint of similar
legend or mystical quality, or less commonly, with a male saint who
shares certain traits.16
The main retablo of St. Dominic at Yanhuitlán, in Oaxaca, is a
case in point. Originally constructed in 1575, its paintings are attrib-
uted to the important Spanish painter Andrés de la Concha, active
in Mexico from 1568 to 1612. This fifty-foot-high, screen-fold retablo
was updated in the late seventeenth century with baroque spiraling
columns. In this construction, women appear at two levels. Small
round panels of the Dominican St. Catherine of Siena (left) and the
martyr Catherine of Alexandria (right) flank the center depiction of
Christ’s Descent from the Cross on the upper level. They are predictably
paired: the fourth-century Alexandrian Catherine was the namesake
of the Sienese Catherine, who died in 1380. Both virgins were known
for their piety, wisdom, and physical suffering; both experienced mys-
tical marriages to Christ. The intent of their placement here high
in the retablo was to inspire piety and devotion in worshippers, par-
ticularly women.17 Their relative small size, however, diminishes their
import. In addition, both of these female saints were proselytizers of
the faith. Catherine of Alexandria, of royal birth, was a converted
Christian, highly educated and erudite. In debate she converted to
Christianity fifty pagan philosophers; for this she was eventually
beheaded. She was the perfect model for native women from the
cacique class, the Indian petty nobility. Friars educated cacique children,
16
May (1996) 16.
17
Ibid., 10.
primarily boys, but there are references to the education of cacique-

class girls as well, for whom the Alexandrian Catherine would have
been the perfect model.18 Catherine of Siena, on the other hand,
was a Christian mystic who devoted her life to the care of the sick
and needy. She served as an exemplar for native women of all classes
who were shouldered with the burden of caring for the many sick
and dying Indians—primarily children, the aged, and men—who
succumbed to the waves of disease brought by Europeans to the
New World in the sixteenth century.
Below, in the banco or predella of this Dominican retablo, the fifth-
century ascetic Mary of Egypt, dressed in a white robe, reclines, her
hands clasped to her breast. She pairs with St. Jerome; both saints
were recognized for penitence, bodily mortification, and worldly
renunciation. In the right panel next to him is Mary Magdalene.
She and Mary of Egypt were revered as penitent whores. They were
often paired together in retablos intended for native churches at a
time when the mendicant friars battled what they considered the
wanton sexuality of the Indians: It was key in the spiritual conquest
of the New World to discourage sex outside marriage. At the same
time, mendicant orders from the medieval period onward viewed
woman as seductress—Eve—but through penance and prayer, she
could be reborn in grace. The message is clear. The penitent Marys
below represent redemption, the best of reality, the virginal Catherines
above the ideal. Any native woman viewing this retablo was reas-
sured that she could achieve an intimate spiritual association with
Christ no matter what her situation or social position.
The third and final type of religious female image from the vicere-
gal period is the nun’s portrait. The two presentational modalities
for the nuns’ likenesses—the feminine and the masculine—have been
defined by Kirsten Hammer. Mexican artists developed the first type,
collectively called monjas coronadas (crowned nuns), in the eighteenth
century. While the type has no direct European antecedent, its sources
are found in Spanish practice, in death portraits of nuns who some-
times wear crowns that symbolize their spiritual marriage to Christ
and their profession, and in the established iconography of the Virgin
18
A famed illustration by the Franciscan Fray Diego de Valadés depicts Franciscans
teaching catechism to four groups of Indians separated by gender and age in the
four posas of a convento atrio, Rhetórica Christiana (1989 [1579]).
introduction 11
Mary, especially as the Immaculate Conception and the Queen of

Heaven.19 In addition, these portraits depict young women who are
the cream of creole society, daughters of wealthy European families
at the top of the viceregal ladder. These feminized images of the
monjas coronadas contrast with the ‘masculine-style’ portraits of nuns
who have distinguished themselves through work accomplishments.
“Writers, performers, mystics, abbesses: their images were commis-
sioned not because an accident of birth unites them to Mary but
because their strength of will makes them more like men in the
framework of colonial culture.”20 This type of nuns’ portrait derives
from the portraits of accomplished men, both secular and religious,
who are depicted surrounded by references to worldly and spirit-
ual accomplishments—books, symbols of military prowess, familial
lineage . . .
This brief overview of three types of religious images of women
provides evidence that colonial artists were collectively aware of a
lexicon of gender. The representations of the Virgin, the most per-
vasive female type in viceregal art, could be read simultaneously by
both Spaniard and Indian as the goddess of war and peace, of con-
quest and nature. She represented the unattainable ideal. Effigies of
female saints, particularly those included in retablos intended for
indigenous worship, icons marginalized by virtue of their place-
ment and their relatively infrequent inclusion in the retablo, offered
practical role models for Indian women in their communities. The
two types of nun’s portraits—the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’—
provided specific messages about the character of the individual
creole sitter. “When fortitude, education, and accomplishment through
determination and labor were called for, a masculine model was
employed . . .; while purity, virginity, and privilege were formulated
as female.”21 The present volume, which expands our understand-
ing of the religious constructs of women in this period and also
addresses women’s position in the religious and domestic realms, will
revamp our contemporary understanding of the role of women in
the society and culture of early modern Latin America.
At this point it is necessary to explain why the title of our anthol-
ogy ends . . . in Early Modern Latin America. Why was the term “early
19
Hammer (1999).
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
modern” chosen instead of the word “viceregal”? The editors of this

anthology wanted to enhance its breadth and ensure its success by
including contributions from feminist scholars of Latin American
nineteenth-century art. The term “viceregal” is only appropriate as
a replacement for the term “Spanish colonial,” which can only cover
the period of Spanish hegemony in the New World, excepting Cuba
and Puerto Rico, from 1492 until the final defeat of the Spanish
armies in Peru in 1825.22 But we are as committed to the study of
the female presence in the nineteenth-century art of the newly ‘inde-
pendent’ Spanish American nations as much as to that of the era
of Hispanic dominion. Like the viceregal period, the Spanish American
nineteenth century was an inchoate epoch pregnant with implications
for our time, a field like the viceregal one that is ripe and begging
for feminist analysis of its artistic expressions. We cannot understand
the present without deconstructing the past. Also, the Latin American
nineteenth century continued many of the patterns of viceregal develop-
ment, including relative subjugation to the tutelage of more powerful
external polities and the economics perpetrated by their corporations,
with the consequent socio-cultural distortions that this caused. Inclusion
of the nineteenth century illuminates and strengthens our grasp of
viceregal developments and their destiny rather than distracting from
them. The term ‘early modern’ is sufficiently flexible to accommo-
date both the viceregal and nineteenth-century periods of Latin
American history in one vehicle. In the event, the essays that we
include on nineteenth-century art, by Carrera and Ramírez, concern
only art in Mexico, but are of an excellence that illuminates under-
standing of the congruent expression of the feminine in art through-
out Latin America and indeed, western civilization.23
The organization of this volume is determined not by the pre-
dictable linear framework, by periods and centuries, but rather by
the realization that in the early years of the conquest, and indeed
throughout much of the early modern period, Spanish authorities,
chroniclers, and others envisaged the Spanish colonies of the Americas
in gendered terms. Proffered as the female body, the ‘New’ (virginal
by implication) World was at differing times adored, pursued, courted,
22
The use of the term “viceregal” is justified in footnote 1.
23
On women artists in nineteenth-century Mexico see Widdifield (2006).
introduction 13
seduced, defiled, exploited, reviled, and denounced by those (males)

who encountered ‘her.’ This mentality is born out in the various
forms of representations of women that are discussed in this volume,
from the earliest days of the conquest through the burgeoning of
Republican Mexico.
Great improvisation, inaccuracy, and errors occurred in the first
era of exploration and colonization, suggested in the title of Part I:
“Reconnaissance: Marking and Mapping the New World with the
Female Body.” The Spanish conquistadors strove to understand the
land in terms of the chivalric literature of knighthood—in it love
remained unrequited—that induced them to give names like ‘California’
to the landscape they encountered. They invaded the river basin in
South America where they saw female warriors fight alongside the
men; their only frame of reference was in Greek mythology’s Amazon
women, and so they named the world’s greatest river the Río Ama-
zonas. This first era is clumsy, groping, fantastic: Mistaken ways of
trying to digest this daunting New World experience plagued the
endeavor. The conquerors were to a certain extent purposefully igno-
rant in order to deny the indigenous peoples and the indigenous
landscapes their true definition. They sought to undermine the price-
less identity of each native civilization by simply lumping the folk
under one disrespectful category, indios, a term that did not even
remotely correspond to them, only to peoples living half a world
away. Very few Spaniards sought to correct Columbus’s original mis-
apprehension that he had found the inhabitants of India, and by
failing to do so they acquiesced in the enterprise of devaluing the
natives by alienating them from their diverse heritages. As a result,
Spanish definitions became the conventional ones. In Penny Morrill’s
essay, the very foreign imagery of the Casa del Deán comes straight
out of European ideals of womanhood and as such it lacks a New
World consciousness. Outside the probable indigenous execution of
the murals and a few modest references to native motifs, most likely
selected by the patron, it denies indigenous symbolism or meaning.
This phenomenon continued throughout the viceregal period and
into the early phase of nation building. A case in point, Magali M.
Carrera’s essay underscores the very foreign and very European
practice of allegorizing the nation as the female body, whereas, in
an attempt to mark, map, and define the New World terrene, as
described by Damian, the image of Mary is inscribed by native artists
within the native landscape: She is the Great Goddess Earth Mother
presented in the form of a sacred mountain. And finally in this sec-

tion, Phillips analyzes the depictions of saints on cloister piers in the
Dominican convento of Oaxtepec. The friars not surprisingly employed
these images of saints—saints who never lived in Mexico or the New
World—to imprint the New World landscape with foreign, alien
signifiers in order to try to digest and exploit it. The beginning of
the assimilation of this foreign imprint into a new configuration of
an independent, de-colonized Latin American civilization is indicated,
however, by the fact that the indigenous women at Oaxtepec encour-
aged the adoption of a pattern that uncharacteristically included a
high number of female saints in privileged positions, which is more
in accord with the power of female deities and of women in pre-
Columbian Mesoamerican civilization. This becomes even more obvi-
ous when the advantageous placement of female effigies in the
Oaxtepec cloister cycle is compared to their marginalization in con-
temporaneous Mexican monastic retablos as studied by Julia May
and discussed earlier in this Introduction.
Part II, “Taking Possession: Appropriations of the New World/
Female Body,” is more vigorous, more aggressive; in it actors try to
force the reality of the New World to conform to male suppositions
about the nature of the land and of women. During the first period,
‘reconnaissance,’ outposts were established in Santo Domingo and
Cuba, both places where Cortés lived for several years prior to his
Mexican campaign, providing the framework for later and much
grander conquests.24 Cortés learned the ropes here, how to marshal
resources for grander ambitions, and to put together a more com-
prehensive colonial system.25 His experience was mirrored in Pizarro’s
early ventures in Panama that primed him for his brutally exploitive
‘successes’ in Peru.26 This escalating aggressiveness is explored espe-
cially in Donahue-Wallace’s essay, an analysis of how physical bat-
tery, abuse, and rape of women were appropriated and utilized in
24
For the Caribbean and especially its islands of Española and Cuba, colonized
during the first, reconnaissance, period and serving as the hemispheric bases for the
second period of consolidation in the grander realms of the mainland, see McAlister
(1984), 100, and Parry (1964) 179.
25
López de Gómara (1966) 7–11; MacLachlan and Rodríguez (1980) 67–69;
Gibson (1967) 26–27.
26
For Pizarro’s early career as a bridge between the first and second phases of
colonization, see Kirkpatrick (1967) 47–59 and 143–46.
introduction 15
period prints to achieve the political aims of the dominant classes. In

the second essay Mariá Elena Bernal-García describes how male
anthropologists and scholars aggressively distorted and transformed
the intended meanings and usages of the Tlatilco female figurines
to fit their own sexist view of the world in the early to mid-20th
century. Bernal-García ‘reclaim(s) that body’ or corpus of Tlatilco
female figurines from the traditional biased interpretation that has
been applied to it. It might be argued that Bernal-García’s essay is
beyond the chronological purview that was set by this anthology’s
title. The editors’ response is that Bernal-García addresses the phe-
nomenon of misidentification and misappropriation endemic to the
western enterprise in early modern Latin America and its continued
pathology into the twentieth century, enlightening and liberating us
vis-à-vis its whole line of development. Similarly, Ray Hernández-
Durán presents the aggressively distorted application of visual con-
structs traditionally associated with women and marriage to the
encounter between Cortés and Moctezuma as depicted in an eigh-
teenth-century painting as “part of an emergent American, particu-
larly creole, (proto) national awareness and agency.” Part II ends
with Jenny Ramírez’s essay on the forceful and outspoken way that
painter José Agustín Arrieta appropriated the female figure to fash-
ion allegorical and cultural statements about men’s perceptions of
female associations with food, beverage, nourishment, nurture, and
feeding.
Part III, “Consolidation: The Qualifying and Taming of the New
World/Female Body with Signifieds,” deals with attempts to com-
prehend and manage the New World reality in terms comparatively
more sophisticated than the more primal and aggressive tactics con-
sidered in Part II. Just as a territory must be physically conquered
and consolidated, its inhabitants must also be intellectually subju-
gated and controlled. Those enacting the consolidation must make
some cognitive sense out of it all so that a plan of action can be
elaborated and life can be lived with some sense of logic and
order. Consolidation also involves the integration of New World and
native aspects with European ones into the discourse as understanding
of the New World reality becomes clearer. This section opens with
Lori Boornazian Diel’s essay on negotiation over the meaning of the
Female Body and its use in subjugating the environment between
its prior pre-Columbian interpretation and its later postcontact rep-
resentation in Aztec art. Negotiation on how to qualify and define
the female anatomy between the indigenous and the European polar-
ities continues in Carolyn Dean’s essay. With Michael Schreffler and
the flourishing of the Mexican screen or biombo, which likewise has
New World meanings and addresses the European/New World in-
between cultural identity of the criollos, we have another instance of
such consolidation and qualification that involves a sophisticated alle-
gorical and moralizing strategy, no longer primitive or improvised
as it was in the essays from the previous section. Phillips’ essay on
“Mary as the Cloister” finishes off Part III with the magical conse-
cration of specific pieces of the New World land, the cloisters, as
the body of Mary. In this way the New World landscape is sewn
with the identity of Mary to co-opt and redirect, in a way beneficial
to the Catholic power elite, the non-Christian indigenous tendencies
to revere and adore the female principle inherent to the land. It also
paradoxically exalts the feminine principle while denigrating the actual
living and breathing human animal female, because no woman can
live up to the impossible standard set by Mary, who is a virgin and
a mother at the same time. Mary: Immaculately conceived in the
mind of God at the beginning of time as the vessel for his salvation
of humanity, free of sin, unlike all other females. So in Mary men
(and women, self-destructively) can adore the feminine principle and
fantasize about an ideal lover, and at the same time despise real
women and their supposed vulnerability.27
And finally, in Part IV, “Fulfillment: The Extension and Expression
of the Female Body in the New World,” the female identity pow-
erfully and proactively asserts itself to define the land and the cul-
ture of the New World partly or fully on its own terms. Female
creativity or female institutions thrive. Elizabeth Perry’s essay on
nuns and their particularized forms of cultural display emphatically
underscores the emergence of a “distinctly creole sacred identity.”
Catherine R. DiCesare’s essay deals with the projection and display
as a talisman of the body of the actual skinned and mutilated female
victim, perceived by pre-Columbian worshippers as the definition
and protector of the land that ensures its fecundity. It follows, then,
that it is obviously perceived by the believers as “the extension and
expression of the female body” to ensure survival and the discomfiture
of enemies. It can be seen as a metaphor for the projection of fem-
27
Warner (1976), especially page 183.
introduction 17
inine power inherent in the remaining essays of Part IV. In them

women or the feminine principle do not let themselves be fully con-
strained or contained by men. Rather, either they themselves, or
society, stand up for and express the full-throated defense and dec-
laration of the feminine principle. In the essay by Cody Barteet,
Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera is neither content to linger in anonymity
nor let her dynasty be defined architecturally without references to
herself and to her lineage. On the other hand, although the artistic
production of the Ecuadoran painter Isabel de Cisneros, as described
by A. Lepage, cannot be determined, the fact that her life has been
the subject of nationalistic fiction attests to her contributions to the
art of the period. And finally the aggressive proactive dissemination
of the missionary identity of the Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila
across the Latin American landscape is voiced by Christopher Wilson.
The editors of Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America see this
volume not as a definitive collection on the subject, but as a vehi-
cle from which to explore further the position in society of women
and the contributions made by them to the arts and architecture of
early modern Latin America.
Bibliography
Alarcón, R., et al. (1996) Pintura Novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán.
Vol III, Pt. 2 (Mexico City: 1996).
Arrom, S. M. (1995) The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford: 1985).
Brading, D. A. (2001) Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across
Five Centuries (Cambridge, UK: 2001).
Damian, C. (1995) The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami
Beach: 1995).
Demir, R. “Redefining the Crescent Moon: Symbolic Resonance in Muslim Spanish
and Indo-Christian Art” (MA, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2005).
Díaz del Castillo, B. (1956) The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, trans. A. P. Maudslay
(New York: 1956).
Gibson, C. (1967) Spain in America (New York: 1967).
Hammer, K. (1999) “Brides of Christ and God’s Laborers: Differing Gender
Constructions in Colonial Portraits of Nuns,” College Art Association, Los Angeles,
California, Feb. 13, 1999.
Kirkpatrick, F. A. (1967) The Spanish Conquistadores (Cleveland: 1967 [1934]).
Klein, C. F. (1999) “Introductory Remarks: Indigenous Artists and European Intruders:
Visual Strategies of Empowerment in Colonial Mexico,” College Art Association,
Los Angeles, California, Feb. 13, 1999.
López de Gómara, F. (1966) Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary _____
(trans., ed. Simpson (Berkeley: 1966 [1552]).
MacLachlan, C. M., and J. E. Rodríguez O. (1980) The Forging of the Cosmic Race
(Berkeley: 1980).
Martín, L. (1989) Daughters of the Conquistadores (Dallas: 1989).

May, J. S. (1996) “Female Saints on Mexican Retables of the Early Colonial Period”
Unpublished research paper written under the direction of R. E. Phillips, Virginia
Commonwealth University, 1996.
McAlister, L. N. (1984) Spain and Portugal in the New World 1492–1700 (Minneapolis:
1984).
Monroy, S. (1973) La Conquistadora de Hernán Cortés (Puebla: 1973).
Morant, Isabel, et al., eds. (2006) Historia de las mujéres en España y América Latina
(Madrid: 2006)
O’Neill, J. P., ed. (1990) Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries (New York: 1990).
Parry, J. H. (1964) The Age of Reconnaissance (New York: 1964).
Peterson, J. F. (1992) “The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?”
Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992) 39–47.
Pollock, G. (1988) “Feminist Interventions in the History of Art: An Introduction,”
in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art (London: 1988)
1–17.
Poole, S. (1995) Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National
Symbol, 1531–1797 (Tucson: 1995).
Rodríguez, J. (1994) Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among Mexican-
American Women (Austin: 1994).
Salas, E. (1990) Soldaderas in the Mexican Military (Austin: 1990).
Salles-Reese, V. (1997) From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana (Austin: 1997).
Silverblatt, I. (1987) Moon, Sun, and Witches (Princeton: 1987).
Taylor, W. B. (1999) “Our Lady of Guadalupe and Friends: The Virgin Mary in
Colonial Mexico,” San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas, March 14,
1999.
Toussaint, M. (1965) Pintura Colonial en México (Mexico City: 1965).
Warner, M. (1976) Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New
York: 1976).
Widdifield, S. G. (2006) “The Spaces of Nineteenth-Century Mexican Women
Artists,” in D. Cherry and J. Helland, eds. Studio, Space and Sociality: New Narratives
of Nineteenth-Century Women Artists (London: 2006).
Valadés, Fr. D. de (1989) Rhetórica Christiana (Mexico City: 1989).
PART ONE
RECONNAISSANCE: MARKING AND MAPPING THE

NEW WORLD WITH THE FEMALE BODY
CHAPTER ONE
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN REIGNS IN NEW SPAIN:

THE TRIUMPH OF ETERNITY IN THE
CASA DEL DEÁN MURALS
Penny C. Morrill
Introduction
An extensive mural cycle has emerged from beneath layers of white-

wash in two formal second-storey rooms of the Casa del Deán in
Puebla, Mexico (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The murals, painted by an indige-
nous artist with assistants, today look much as they would have
appeared when painted around 1580, the year carved in stone on
the house’s fragmentary façade.1 It clings perilously to the side of a
massive rectangular movie theatre that replaced most of the resi-
dence. This remaining façade and the two decorated formal rooms
on the interior are significant works in the history of early modern
art and culture.
The patron, Don Tomás de la Plaza, had come to New Spain
(roughly coterminous with the modern nation of Mexico) from
Alburquerque in Spain’s Extremadura province. He had served as
a secular priest in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca province before becom-
ing Dean of Puebla’s Cathedral in 1564.2 Founded in 1533, the city
of Puebla was strategically centered on the Camino Real between
Mexico City and the viceroyalty’s principal port at Veracruz.3 In
1537 the Cabildo (city council) of Puebla successfully petitioned that
the Cathedral of the Tlaxcala diocese be moved from Tlaxcala to
Puebla. The first bishop to reside in Puebla with the king’s autho-
rization was Fray Sarmiento de Ojocastro, who served from 1547
to 1557.4 Thus by the time of Don Tomás’s tenure as Dean, Puebla
1
Kropfinger von Kügelgen (1979) 211.
2
Schwaller (1987) 32–33.
3
Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931) I, 308–309.
4
Leicht (1986) 139.
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had recently become not only a manufacturing, agricultural, and

commercial center, but also the ecclesiastical hub of the Puebla-
Tlaxcala region.
Don Tomás’s residence was fashioned after the urban palaces that
were built in Spain at Seville, Salamanca, and in Extremadura dur-
ing the first half of the sixteenth century. The formal rooms with
their elaborately conceived mural cycle reflected the Dean’s inter-
ests: His humanist theology, Spanish ancestry, and experiences as a
priest in New Spain. Under his patronage, as demonstrated here,
indigenous artists found their models for this mural program in books
and prints published in the mid-sixteenth century at Antwerp or
Lyons.5
This article proposes that the theme for this wall-painted sequence
is built upon pre-figuration in the Room of the Sibyls and upon
fulfillment in the Room of the Triumphs. The final female allegor-
ical figure in the cycle, Eternity/Ecclesia, is the focus of this essay.
Embodying eternity, she escapes the confines of earth and triumphs
over Time and Death. As the personification of the Church, she is
the keeper of the Sacraments. Eternity and Ecclesia are conflated in
her because redemption through the Church’s sacraments is seen as
the key to the soul’s eternal life. She is simultaneously endowed with
the identities of the Virgin Mother, Queen of Heaven, and Juno. It
is argued that this figure constitutes a break in the European sym-
bolic tradition that had almost always represented the Triumph of
Eternity with the Christian Trinity. The essay ends with a discus-
sion of the possible precedents for this new iconography.
The multiple identities embodied in the Casa del Deán’s figure of the
Triumph of Eternity were, I believe, a familiar concept for both the
indigenous artists and their European patron. An appreciation for
5
Proof that such trade in prints from Europe was occurring around the time
that the Casa del Deán’s murals were created is provided by a 1572 inventory for a
shipment of books from Spain to Veracruz’s port at San Juan de Ulúa. It included
210 dibujos large and small. The modern translation of the Spanish word dibujo into
English is “drawing” while the word grabado is commonly used to refer to a print.
There was no known market in colonial Mexico for master drawings, so the term
dibujo in the 1572 inventory must refer to prints; see Fernández del Castillo (1982)
360–362 and 470–471. See also De Marchi and Van Miegroet (2000) 81–112.
the queen of heaven reigns in new spain 23
Fig. 1.1 The Triumph of Love. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla, Mexico.
ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.
Fig. 1.2 The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla,
Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.
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woman as allegory is evident in the Last Judgment play written in

Náhuatl by Fray Andrés de Olmos about 1540, a colloquy among
allegorical figures that I compare to the Casa del Deán murals.
Description of the Murals
In the foreground of the first mural, set before a continuous land-

scape, twelve young women, each elaborately costumed and carry-
ing her own standard, parade in order on horseback. The first is
identified as Synagoga, the personification of the Old Testament,
blindfolded and riding on a mule. She is followed by eleven Sibyls
whose prophetic gifts led to their association with Old Testament
prophecies and with specific events in the life of Christ.
The artist or artists wrote directly on the wall near each Sibyl,
announcing not only her name but also the book and chapter num-
bers for the related biblical passages. These citations were taken from
Old Testament prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, or the Book of
Revelation. The interplay of the printed biblical references, which
replace the traditional depiction of the prophet or evangelist to
embody such texts, the Sibyls on horseback, and the floating roundels
that contain scenes from Christ’s life, all contribute to a rendering
of space that reiterates rather than defies the two-dimensional sur-
face. This patterned effect is reminiscent of prints from Antwerp that
were ultimately derived from books like the Speculum humanae salva-
tionis with its multiple correspondences.
The landscape with the Sibyls on procession is framed by rinceaux
in the friezes. Among the leaves and large blossoms are entwined
putti and several rather unique versions of childlike centaurs. The
artist also depicted monkeys wearing jade bracelets and earrings that
playfully interlace their long tails. The most telling feature of these
anthropomorphic figures is the pre-Columbian sound scroll that issues
from their mouths.
The lower half of the first room’s lowest register appears to have
been painted out, raising questions concerning its original appear-
ance and meaning. Seraphim wearing jade pendants occupy the span-
drels and, in the arched openings, knights in armor, shown only as
heads in profile, alternate with large bunches of flowers that once
may have been depicted in vases or in a miniature landscape.
The murals in the second room of the Casa del Deán almost defy
description. Based on the Triumphs of Petrarch, the frescoes repre-
sent the patron’s immersion in Christian humanism. The person-
ifications of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity, taken
from Petrarch’s poem to Laura, are usually shown riding triumphantly
in noble chariots, with Eternity as the victor over the human con-
dition that demands death. Petrarch’s poetic expression of earthly
love converges with the ultimate realization of Christian redemption,
that is, the gift of eternal life.6 In this second room of the Dean’s
house, Don Tomás and the indigenous artist or artists whom he
commissioned broke with tradition and depicted only five of the six
Triumphs, and in a different order than is found in Petrarch’s orig-
inal text. The allegorical personages in their chariots and those whom
they have conquered occupy a rocky foreground save the figure of
Eternity whose chariot floats above the clouds. As a setting for the
Triumphs the landscape is not continuous, suggesting that the scenes
that unfold behind each of the victorious protagonists were meant
to contribute greater meaning to the specific figure.
Above and below the Triumphs are friezes of rinceaux in which
putti display cartouches containing images of animals involved in
activities that are anthropomorphic (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). Each animal
and the related emblems that surround it seem to be connected to
the Triumph nearest the cartouche. It is in this portion of the mural
cycle in both rooms that elements of pre-Columbian imagery are
especially evident and where it is likely that some form of cultural
symbiosis took place.
Petrarch’s Triumphs and Spectacle Literacy
The Triumphs, the ingenious rhetorical invention or concetto devised

by Petrarch, greatly influenced poets and artists for several centuries.
As each temporarily triumphant or ascendant aspect of the human
life span is in turn vanquished, Petrarch establishes for the specta-
tor (or reader) a conceptualization of the victory of Christian faith
over death that is palpable and sensual. The poem emerges from
6
Seigel (1968) 46.
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the classical Roman imperial tradition of the conquering general’s

heroic entry, accompanied by his retinue, into the capital.7 The mil-
itary quality of conquest and the notion of a ruler’s victorious entry
provide a note of irony in the poem. In five of the triumphs that
take place on earth, all of humanity is subject to defeat, a result of
the ephemeral nature of life itself. In the end all are offered the ulti-
mate triumph over death:
Five of these Triumphs on the earth below
We have beheld, and at the end, the sixth,
God willing, we shall see in heaven above.8
Several biblical passages can be considered as sources for the iconog-
raphy of the Triumphs.9 Ezekiel’s chariot is in concordance with the
triumphant appearance to St. John of the “King of kings and Lord
of lords” in the Book of Revelation. The four beasts that draw the
prophet Ezekiel’s chariot and appear again in Revelation became
the symbols of the four Evangelists. The most powerful biblical
description of a chariot is in the Second Book of Kings when Elijah
turns his power of the spirit over to Elisha:
And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and
horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a
whirwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and cried, “My father, my
father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” and saw him no
more.10
These ‘historical’ precedents, both classical and biblical, were equally
seductive for Petrarch’s early fourteenth-century contemporary Dante.
In his Purgatorio section of the Divine Comedy, Dante recounts a mirac-
ulous vision that is considered to be the personified Church Triumphant
in a chariot surrounded by the four beasts described by Ezekiel and
by St. John the Evangelist.11 Petrarch’s concept of triumph was elab-
7
Strong (1984) 44.
8
Petrarca (1962) 112.
9
Knipping (1974) 55.
10
Ezekiel 1:4–28; Revelation 4:6–8 and 19:11–16; and 2 Kings 2:9–12. The
Bible edition employed for this essay is The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha
(New York: 1977). In the sixteenth-century Franciscan monasteries of Cholula,
Huejotzingo, and Tecali, all near Puebla, are mural representations of St. Francis
in a chariot of fire. St. Francis is thus being identified as the new Elijah. According
to Montes Bardo (1998) 287–289, Elijah prophesies the salvation of the pagans and
the Last Judgment.
orated in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, pub-

lished in 1499. This exotic novel, with its vivid descriptions and illus-
trations, influenced the development and appearance of public
processions and representations of triumphs.12 Another powerful lit-
erary generator of artistic imagery was Savonarola’s Triumphus Crucis,
published in 1497. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, rides in a chariot
and displays his wounds, surrounded by the instruments of the Passion.
Erwin Panofsky asserted that “Savonarola seems indeed to be the
first to have visualized Christ in person as a triumphator ‘all’antica.’”13
The Triumphs entered popular culture through public religious pro-
cessions and triumphal entries of kings and princes. In 1443 King
Alfonso of Catalonia arrived in Naples in a gilded chariot drawn by
white horses and shaded by a cloth of gold. The Florentines in
Naples contributed a chariot in which rode the personification of
Fortuna, accompanied by the Seven Virtues on horseback. The
Catalans followed, “with mock horses fastened in front and behind
them, fighting a mock battle with mock Turks.”14
The sequence of triumphs devised by Petrarch evokes the dynamic
of the procession itself as not only highly symbolic but also with nar-
rative qualities. The parade passes before the viewers in the same
way that the triumphs follow an order expressive of Petrarch’s loss
and mourning. In a recent essay Domenico Pietropaolo has turned
his attention to formal aspects of the reception of spectacles and how
they might be applied to scholarly investigation of literary descrip-
tions like Petrarch’s Triumphs.
Spectacular literacy is that species of the phenomenon in which the
signs are units of spectacular discourse rather than words. . . . The prag-
matics of processional discourse concerns . . . a direct encounter with
a community of observers and not an encounter mediated by poetic
language. In the context of Petrarch’s Triumphs, which are linguistic
representations of spectacle rather than spectacle itself, the observer is
not external but internal to the text and ultimately coincides with the
narrative voice.15
11
Dante (1950) 365–367. Bocaccio’s Amorosa Visione of the mid-fourteenth cen-
tury describes a triumph based on classical sources; see Knipping (1974) 55.
12
Strong (1984) 45–6. The Library of Congress Rare Book Room has a 1499
imprint of the Hypnerotomachia . . .
13
Scribner III (1982) 66–67; and Panofsky (1969) 59.
14
Hughes (1997) 101.
15
Pietropaolo (1987) 359.
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Pietropaolo confronts the relationship of time and space by setting

forth what he terms the “three temporal dimensions of the present
moment”: actuality, recollection, and expectation. As the procession
moves through the street, what is past and what is anticipated are
perceived simultaneously.16 Thus, when time and space intersect, the
act of observing involves the construction of narrative.
The single most telling aspect of the Casa del Deán murals is that
all of the figures are shown on procession. The Sibyls on horseback
and allegorical figures riding in chariots could have been participants
in a triumphal parade or religious pageant in any major city in six-
teenth-century Western Europe. Festivals and triumphal entries served
social, political, and religious purposes, as in the case of Charles V,
the Holy Roman Emperor styled as the ‘Champion of Christianity,’
who employed them on a grand scale. “By the time of his abdica-
tion in 1556, every educated person within Europe must have been
familiar with the rhetoric and imagery of Sacred Empire.”17
Love of pageantry extended to the New World, an aspect of both
cultures that could be shared. In 1585 the citizens of Tlaxcala, the
original seat of the bishopric that had moved twenty-four miles to
Puebla, prepared for a formal visit from the viceroy. As Cathedral
Dean of the bishopric of Tlaxcala-Puebla, Don Tomás de la Plaza
could very well have been in attendance.
Prior to [the viceroy’s] arrival the people constructed a wooden castle
of several stories with quarters and vantage points for simulated war-
fare. Their plan was to dress as Spaniards, Tlaxcalans, and Chichimecs
and to present a battle scene. When the viceroy came, they offered
him the keys and requested the preservation of their fueros [rights and
privileges]. An army of Indians dressed as Spaniards and Tlaxcalans
accompanied this entrance. Finally, four old men, garbed as the four
“kings” of conquest times [i.e. the chiefs of the four quarters of the
pre-Hispanic Tlaxcalan polity] with crowns on their heads, addressed
sonnets to him in Spanish.18
Every year of his tenure as Dean, for eight days in late spring, Don
Tomás de la Plaza was responsible for the celebration of the feast
of Corpus Christi, when the Holy Sacrament was carried through
the streets in procession. All the citizens of Puebla were involved,
16
Ibid., 361.
17
Strong (1984) 74–75, 80.
18
Gibson (1952) 147.
sweeping and preparing altars at each street intersection. The city’s

Cabildo and confraternities provided financial contributions and marched
in the procession, carrying torches and banners with their insignia
and coats of arms. The procession began and ended at the Cathedral,
where dances and comedies were performed.19 Consequently it can
be asserted with little doubt that the Dean was intimately familiar
with all aspects of Christian processional lore as he proved in the
mural cycle that he commissioned for his home.
At a much later date, but related to Don Tomas’s deanship, was
the festive dedication of the Cathedral of Puebla upon its comple-
tion in 1649, presided by Bishop Don Juan Palafox y Mendoza:
This afternoon, festivities planned by the Noblest of Cities began, for
which the principal plaza was enclosed with scaffolding and in the
center was built a Castle in which fought various troops, attacking and
defending, dressed as Spaniards and Indians of various Nations, some
wearing animal skins and their costumes adorned with feathers accord-
ing to their tradition, who executed with skill the various skirmishes
and attacks. Then two costumed troops entered on horseback, dressed
as Christians and Moors with a large number of attendants on foot,
all richly dressed, who performed with equal skill the team events,
games, and tourneys and having concluded, a Triumphal Chariot
entered the plaza, dedicated to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,
whose sacred image was placed in the upper section and at whose feet
was a choir of musicians, very well-dressed, that, to the sound of a
large group of instruments, sang elegies to the sacred Mystery [i.e.,
the mystery embodied in God’s Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
Mary], moving around the plaza until after nightfall, when the cos-
tumed troops entered for a second time carrying lighted torches and
with these held in their hands, began to execute the various drills and
movements, which delighted the gathering far into the night.20
Petrarch’s Triumphs were especially beguiling for artists as variations
on the theme abounded: Triumphs of the Seasons, the Virtues, and
of Old Testament heroes. The transmutation from image to pageant
19
Actas de Cabildo de Puebla (1996), Ficha no. 09451, Vol. 0012, Document 056,
Asunto 04, 30 April 1586, fol. 0047v:
Pregon para que en la procesion de Corpus Christi y su ochavario de este
año, todos los obrajeros salgan con su pendon y candelas y que los oficiales
de todos los oficios salgan en ella, so pena de 50 pesos de oro comun. Que
se nombren a los veedores de los obrajeros para que participen en la proce-
sion. Ademas, se indico que se aderecen las casas y puertas y que en las encru-
cijadas se coloquen los altares como es costumbre.
20
Translation by the author from Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931) II, 79–80.
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and back to image reached its height in the sixteenth century.

Tapestries, frescoed walls, pottery, stained glass, marble, bronze, and
ivory sculpture, books, woodcuts, and engravings provided perma-
nence for what had been ephemeral events.21 The festival organiz-
ers consulted the Biblia pauperum, emblem books, and humanist and
classical writings to devise the complex layers of meanings that pub-
licly unfolded in what Émile Mâle has called “a miraculous conti-
nuity of revelation.”22
The first edition of Petrarch’s Triumphs in Castilian, the language
now commonly known as ‘Spanish,’ translated from the Italian by
Antonio de Obregón, was published in 1512 in Logroño, Spain.
Hernando de Hozes’s Spanish translation, published in 1581 in
Salamanca, was shipped to the New World in 1586. Several edi-
tions of the Triumphs are on the Inquisition lists because of perceived
heretical statements made in the commentaries. The 1541 Valladolid
edition was banned in Mexico. For the Seville version of the Obregón
translation, the officer of the Inquisition provided the specific folio
on which the offending text could be found.23
While the above evidence proves that there were printed book
versions of the Triumphs in the New World, it seems more likely that
Don Tomás and his artists found inspiration in a prints series from
Antwerp. After looking at numerous versions of the Triumphs pub-
lished between 1512 and 1581, it is hard to imagine that any of
these illustrated editions influenced the poblano murals. The iconog-
raphy of the images in most of the sixteenth-century book editions
of the Triumphs is dependent upon early Italian models, while the
variations evident in the Casa del Deán seem to derive from a north-
ern European tradition.
Several Triumphs prints series, not from books, were produced
around the time of the Puebla mural cycle, including those by Georg
Pencz and Martin van Heemskerck. At the Augustinian monastery
at Metztitlán, north of Mexico City, the sixteenth-century artists did
wall paintings of a Triumph of Chastity and a Triumph of Patience, both
21
Massena (1902) 127.
22
Mâle (1986) 233.
23
A copy of the 1512 Obregón edition is in the Hispanic Society in New York.
See Kropfinger von Kügelgen (1973) 81; and Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931)
246, 323, 486–487, 501.
taken directly from prints by van Heemskerck.24 Although the murals

in the Casa del Deán do not resemble the work of Pencz or van
Heemskerck stylistically, the strongest argument that they were based
upon a series of prints rather than on book illustrations is the fact
that Don Tomás changed the order of the Triumphs and excluded
Fame, making it more likely that the images were viewed separately
from text.
Triumphs Leading to Eternity
Launching the Casa del Deán mural cycle, the personification of Love
is clothed in a simple white robe and seated in a chariot pulled by
two spirited horses “whiter than whitest snow” as specified by Petrarch
(Fig. 1.1).25 Love’s chariot glides across the rocky terrain, leaving for
dead those whom she has conquered—a king, a soldier, a friar, and
a young woman. The serene pastoral landscape, with its atmospheric
blues and greens and soft linear transitions, provides a sharp con-
trast to the rock-strewn hard earth of the foreground.
In representations of the Triumphs, the steeds for each of the char-
iots had become traditional: White horses for Love; unicorns for
Chastity; oxen for Death; elephants for Fame; stags for Time; and
the symbolic animals of the four Evangelists for Eternity. As will
become evident, Don Tomás followed literary and visual traditions
when they adhered to the statement he wished to make. While Cupid
blindfolded played the role of Love Triumphant in many of the illus-
trated editions, in the poblano cycle Cupid makes his appearance
instead as a tiny figure perched on the chariot behind the personified
figure of Love (Fig. 1.1).
The nude winged figure of Cupid is masked and armed, “a cruel
youth with bow in hand and arrows at his side.”26 According to
24
Palm (1973). Palm discovered the connection between the Metztitlán murals
and the van Heemskerck prints. He also opined that the Heemskerck series pro-
vided the program for the murals of the Casa del Deán: “El libro de Hadrianus
Junius, médico de la cabecera del príncipe de Orania, proporciona además una
segunda clave. Al reunir epigramas sobre los Triunfos de Petrarca con otros sobre
las Virtudes cristianas, revela ser la fuente de Contrarreforma que sirve de pro-
grama común para los murales de Metztitlán y la Casa del Deán.”
25
Petrarca (1962) 5–6.
26
Petrarca (1962) 6.
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Panofsky, the ubiquitous personification of Love in Italian Renaissance

art and poetry acquired the blindfold as an attribute, and “[a] major-
ity of Renaissance artists . . . began to use the Blind Cupid and the
Seeing Cupid almost at random. In the illustrations of Petrarch’s
Triumphs both types appear indiscriminately.” However, he contin-
ues, within the context of the Counter-Reformation—the epoch of
our Mexican sequence—a distinction was made between the Blind
Cupid, who represented profane, sensual love, and the Seeing Cupid,
who signified that which is sacred.27 Because the Cupid in the Casa
del Deán is masked rather than blindfolded, I would suggest that he
represents love of the sacred.
The dual nature of love enters into the question of the female
figure’s identity as Venus.28 A century earlier the Florentine Marsilio
Ficino, attempting to integrate the ‘pagan’ philosophy of Plato with
Christian theology, conceived of love as the essential aspect of God’s
interaction with humanity. “According to Ficino, amore is only another
name for that self-reverting current (circuitus spiritualis) from God to
the world and from the world to God. The loving individual inserts
himself into this mystical current.”29
In the Neo-Platonic scheme envisioned by Ficino, the desire for
a higher understanding of the sublime leads to a love that manifests
itself in beauty. This beauty exists on earth as two aspects, symbol-
ized as the “Twin Venuses,” as love that can be celestial or natural
as originally identified and discussed in Plato’s Symposium.30 This Neo-
Platonic conceptualization of the nature of love was a guiding prin-
ciple in the development of the meaning of the figure of Love
Triumphant in the Casa del Deán painting. In Titian’s Sacred and Profane
Love, dated 1515, it is the nude Venus who represents love of the
sublime as she gestures ‘heavenward’ with a flaming vase.31 The
clothed Venus in Puebla holds a scepter in her right hand; in her
left is a flaming heart, symbol of impassioned spirituality, which she
raises toward the empyrean.32
This perception of love’s dual nature led in 1544 to the prohibi-
tion in Mexico of any sort of costumed dancing during the festival
27
Panofsky (1967) 103, 121–128.
28
Sebastián (1992) 110.
29
Panofsky (1967) 141.
30
Panofsky (1967) 142–143.
31
Panofsky (1969) 115.
32
Ferguson (1974) 48–49; and Hall (1979) 146.
of Corpus Christi. Archbishop Juan de Zumárraga set forth a trea-

tise on the proper and reverential manner of celebrating this devo-
tional event, including the following codicil:
And something of great irreverence and shamelessness, it seems that,
before the Most Holy Sacrament, men in disguise and in women’s
costumes go dancing and leaping about, swaying in an immodest and
lascivious manner, making a din that drowns out the church choirs,
representing profane triumphs, like that of the God of Love, so immodest, and
even to those persons without modesty, so shameful to see.33
In our Puebla murals, a hillside marks the transition to the next alle-
gory, introduced by a group of female figures depicted at the cor-
ner of the room. These are the Virtues who assist Chastity in her
triumph over Love, following Petrarch:
With her, and arméd, was the glorious host
Of all the radiant virtues that were hers,
Hands held in hands that clasped them, two by two.
Honor and Modesty were in the van,
A noble pair of virtues excellent,
That set her high above all other women;
Prudence and Moderation were near by,
Benignity and Gladness of Heart—
Glory and Perseverance in the rear;
Foresight and Graciousness were at the sides,
And Courtesy therewith, and Purity,
Desire for Honor, and Fear of Shame.
A Thoughtfulness mature in spite of Youth,
And, in concord rarely to be found,
Beauty supreme at one with Chastity.34
Chastity carries a palm in her right hand in recognition of the vir-
gin martyrs. The chariot is drawn by a pair of unicorns, an allu-
sion to female chastity.35 Like the personification of Love, “she wore,
that day, a gown of white . . .” In this very personal interpretation
33
My italics. García Icazbalceta (1968) II, 349, quoting Archbishop Zumárraga,
1544, this author’s translation:
Y cosa de gran desacato y desvergüenza parece que ante el Santísimo Sacramento
vayan los hombres con máscaras y en hábitos de mujeres, danzando y saltando
con meneos deshonestos y lascivos, haciendo estruendo, estorbando los cantos
de la Iglesia, representando profanos triunfos, como el del Dios del Amor, tan
deshonesto, y aun á las personas no honestas, tan vergonzoso de mirar . . .
34
Petrarca (1962) 42.
35
Hall (1979) 231–232, 327–328.
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of the Triumphs by Don Tomás de la Plaza, Chastity is that “Virtue,

that never doth forsake the good . . .” This virtue, which “kindles
pure desires within the heart,” 36 is the sacred vow of the priest, that
he might overcome earthly appetites to enact his spiritual calling.
The narrative of the procession in the Casa del Deán does not
involve the conquest of each of the personified aspects of life, as in
many of the other representations of the series. In the poblano mural
Chastity does not trample Sublime Love, as is usually the case, but
continues the quest for a higher spiritual and intellectual plane. The
focus of this iconographic program is on the drama of life’s choices
and demands, always with the promise of ultimate victory over death.
Time is represented by the winged figure of Saturn with his hour-
glass at his side. He uses a cane to support himself while he holds
up his son in the horrifying act of devouring him. As Panofsky has
written, “Petrarch’s Time was not an abstract philosophical princi-
ple but a concrete alarming power.”37
In his description of the Triumph of Time Petrarch writes of
Phoebus in his quadriga (chariot) with his ‘four good steeds’ moving
with great speed, a reminder of the brevity of life. In the mural the
chariot of Time is drawn by stags, known for their swiftness. The
destructive force of personified Time is represented by his advanced
age and crippled body. The cannibalistic act is the consumption of
all that is created.38
From destruction comes the revelation of Truth. The fleeting pas-
sage of time forces the rejection of all that is vain. By placing Time
before Death, Don Tomás has characterized life before its end. In
his version of the Triumphs, Fame does not vanquish Death nor give
meaning to life. It is nothing more than ‘arrant vanity’ or human
pride: “The Sun, victorious o’er the human mind, / Will still revolve,
and Fame will fade away.”39 Rather, it is Time that qualifies life,
admonishing and unflinchingly pointing toward the truth of Salvation.
The frightening skeletal apparition of Death holds his scythe aloft
as he drives his team of oxen. As his chariot rolls forward, Death
indiscriminately brings an end to life for people of all ages, from the
poor and powerless to those who have enjoyed earthly success. The
36
Petrarca (1962) 41, 44, 46.
37
Panofsky (1967) 79–80.
38
Ibid., 76–77.
39
Petrarca (1962) 96 and 99.
Three Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—determine each per-

son’s destiny and life span by cutting the thread of life from the
spindle on its distaff.40 In a village set into the middle ground, a
funerary cortege moves toward a circular walled enclosure. In the
center of the back wall rises a tall tower embellished with signs of
the cross on either side of the doorway. This tower is reminiscent
of those that were constructed in the mid-sixteenth century in the
towns of Tlaxcala and Tepeaca, both within close proximity to the
city of Puebla, at the behest of Don Francisco Verdugo.41 These
towers served as symbols of royal justice and power.
The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia
The allegorical figure of Eternity/Ecclesia displays a queenly man-

ner (Fig. 1.2). Her scepter in her right hand, she gestures a com-
mand to the peacocks to draw her aloft into the clouds. Behind her,
as part of the chariot, lighted torches are set upon Solomonic columns.
The bird’s eye view of the landscape allows the observer the same
perspective as that of Eternity. Clouds barely rise above the grass-
covered mountain in the foreground, while in the middle distance
villages can be seen in the valley below. The mountains in the far
distance are lost in a blue atmospheric haze.
For centuries the Virgin as Queen of Heaven was envisioned simul-
taneously as the Church Triumphant. An early example of this is
provided by the twelfth-century Hortus Deliciarum, in which the Virgin
appears as both Ecclesia and the Queen of Heaven, surrounded by
a hierarchy of bishops, friars, kings, and prophets.42 In a thirteenth-
century mosaic in Rome’s church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Christ
crowns the Virgin with His right hand and holds a book in His left
in which is written Veni, Electa mia, et ponam te in thronum meum. The
River Jordan flows through the foreground of the scene, “symbol of
baptism and regeneration; on its shore stands the hart, the emblem
of religious aspiration.”43
40
Hall (1979) 302.
41
Weckmann (1992) 370, 457, 594.
42
Schiller (1971–) I, 288–299. See also Panofsky (1966) 145–146.
43
Jameson (1895) 106–110.
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Panofsky interprets a work that illustrates the complexity of Late

Gothic Mariological symbolism, Jan van Eyck’s painting of the Madonna
in the Church:
In order to lend artistic expression to this mysterious and many-lev-
eled identity of Virgin and Mother, Mother and Daughter, Daughter
and Bride, Queen of Heaven and Church on Earth, an image had
been devised which may be described as “the Virgin Mary in a church
and as the Church.” [On her hem appear the following words:] It
[meaning Divine Wisdom as diffused in the Universal Church and
embodied in the Virgin Mary] is more beautiful than the sun and
above the whole order (dispositio) of the stars. Being compared with the
[natural] light, she is found before it. She is the brightness of eternal
light, and the flawless mirror of God’s majesty.44
Building upon this visual heritage of the identification of the Virgin
Mary with the Church, a tapestry from Chaumont in the Loire
Valley, datable to the period 1500–10 and now in the Cleveland
Museum of Art, provides the closest known iconographic antecedent
to Mary as the Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia as used in the Casa del
Deán. The tapestry displays two angels who crown the Virgin as she
sits enthroned in the Garden of Paradise, surrounded by a group of
angelic musicians. According to the inscription on the banner in the
upper right corner of the tapestry, Mary as Ecclesia has unmistak-
ably been endowed with the additional identity of the Triumph of
Eternity.
Nothing triumphs by right authority
Unless it is conducted by Eternity.
Nothing is permanent beneath the firmament,
But above us triumphs Eternity.45
Despite this iconographic development toward the Virgin as the
simultaneous embodiment of the Triumph of Eternity and of the
Church, in the illustrated editions of Petrarch’s Triumphs and in most
depictions of the subject on cassoni or in print series, the Triumph
of Eternity is evoked by the image of the Trinity or of Christ in
Majesty. Contemporaneously, Titian painted a fresco in his residence
of the Triumph of Faith and subsequently produced a woodcut based
on the painting in 1511. Rather than casting Christ as the Man of
44
Panofsky (1966) 145–148. This author’s brackets.
45
Shepherd (1961) 158–159 and 172–173.
Sorrows, as in Savonarola’s Triumphus Crucis, Titian has Him riding

in majesty, carrying a scepter and seated on a celestial orb, as the
Eternal Christ.46 While this representation has its origins in Italy and
is possibly reflective of the influence of Titian’s print, its use was
widespread throughout Europe in the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. Thus Dorothy G. Shepherd could affirm that the crowned
Virgin as the Triumph of Eternity in the Chaumont tapestry of ca.
1500–10 is without precedent.47 This conceit, as Sheperd states, may
have been unprecedented before the turn of the fifteenth century,
but this essay asserts that it was reprised around 1580 in the murals
of the Casa del Deán.
It is now necessary to settle the identity of this female personification
in the poblano cycle. Should she be considered the Triumph of
Eternity as in Petrarch’s poem, or has she taken on another role or
guise in the iconographic program of Don Tomás de la Plaza? The
answer lies in visual clues, the most important being the Solomonic
columns that are part of the chariot.
The twelve Antique twisted columns that were placed in Old St.
Peter’s Basilica in Rome were, according to legend, brought from
the Temple of Solomon by the Emperor Constantine. Solomon’s
Temple was the prototype for the universal Catholic Church and,
on another level, was the “pre-figuration of the Heavenly Jerusalem.”
Solomonic or Eucharistic architecture signifies the establishment of
the Heavenly Jerusalem on earth at the end of time. The Council
of Trent reinforced this view of the Eucharist, administered by the
Church, bringing the faithful on earth ever closer to heaven. As
Nora de Poorter observed on the symbolism embodied by the
Solomonic columns, “The church itself thus becomes a forecourt of
paradise. Through the power of the Eucharist . . . the believer is able
to see and experience in advance the blessedness that he is destined
to enjoy forever.”48 Consequently, the use of the Solomonic columns
in her chariot proves that the Puebla figure, besides embodying the
more common Petrarchist significance of Eternity, is also meant to
be seen as the simultaneous personification of Ecclesia. It could be
no other way for a cleric such as Don Tomás: Eternity, Eternal Life
46
Scribner (1982) 67; and Panofsky (1969) 59.
47
Shepherd (1961) 172–173, cites one other related example, a manuscript illus-
trated with ink drawings, number 5066 in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris.
48
De Poorter (1978) 171–176.
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is achieved by the otherwise ephemeral human being only by join-

ing with the body of the Church, so they are tantamount and indis-
tinguishable. And Mary is the figure for the body of the Church.
This allegorical figure, Eternity/Ecclesia, triumphs over Death and
Time. Her role as Mary, Queen of Heaven is validated by specific
classicizing symbolic references that pervade other murals in the
Room of Triumphs. She is defined by the peacocks, which draw her
chariot, by the crown she wears, and by the scepter she carries. This
imagery simultaneously identifies this syncretistic figure as Juno,
identified by the Renaissance as the preeminent queen goddess of
heaven in Antiquity and thus a trope for Mary (cf. Fig. 1.3).49
In her study of the Triumph of the Eucharist tapestries by Rubens,
de Poorter emphasizes that in the Lowlands “preference was given
at an early stage to Triumphs of a more didactic kind, in line with
the somewhat austere allegories of the Rhetoricians. Abstract ideas,
clad in allegorical forms, are seen in procession in triumphal cars,
but the original idea of victory is to a large extent lost.”50 This same
characterization can be applied to the Triumph murals in the Casa
del Deán.
The emblematic approach to this specific subject is apparent in
the works that were precedents for Rubens’s tapestry designs and
that happen to have been contemporaneous with the poblano cycle.
A drawing attributed to Jan van der Straet, in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and dated ca. 1590–1595, is entitled
The Triumph of the Holy Scriptures and the Church. Following tradition,
the chariot is drawn by the four animal symbols of the Evangelists,
but the triumphal figure is a female personification of the Church,
as in Puebla.51
Commissioned in 1590 by Albert and Isabella in Brussels, Otto
van Veen painted six panels representing the Triumph of the Catholic
Church. Ecclesia is a female personification common to all of the
49
Hall (1979) 182, 238; and Seyffert (1961) 337. On the early modern syn-
chronization of history whereby themes from pre-Christian Antiquity are given bib-
lical orientation, see Tanner (1993) 33–34, 54, 119–121; and Strong (1984) 68.
According to de la Maza, (1968) 33, the birds in Puebla identified here as pea-
cocks are instead geese. However, the artist who worked on the 1955 renovation
of the Casa del Deán murals assured me that they represent peacocks.
50
De Poorter (1978) 199.
51
Jan van der Straet was also known as Johannes Stradanus or Giovanni Stradano.
the queen of heaven reigns in new spain
Fig. 1.3 Juno. An engraving from Francis Pomey, Pantheum mythicum, seu, Fabulosa deorum historia. Amsterdam: Ex Officina
39
Schouteniana; Apud J. J. a Poolsum, 1757. Courtesy of the Chapin Library Collection, Williams College, Williams-
town, Massachusetts.
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paintings. In the Triumph of Verbum Dei and Ecclesia, also known as

Christ’s Investiture of the Church, the apocalyptic double-edged sword
extends from the mouth of Christ as he places a book representing
the Word of the Lord into the lap of Ecclesia, the crowned Queen
of Heaven. Surrounded by the four writers of the Epistles—Peter,
Paul, James, and John the Evangelist—Ecclesia’s chariot is drawn
by the animal symbols of the four Gospel authors.52
None of these works had a direct influence on the poblano murals,
but their development of symbolic references to the Church Tri-
umphant and to the Eucharist as the essential path to redemption
is reflective of the Counter-Reformation rhetoric that they share with
the Dean’s opus. Among the decrees of the Council of Trent was
the designation of the feast of Corpus Christi as an appropriate and
solemn veneration of the Sacred Sacrament. It was also envisioned
as the celebration of truth, the unique property of the universal
Church in its triumph over falsehood and heresy.53 The triumphal
figure in the Casa del Deán can be considered an example of a new
allegorical model for Ecclesia, whose creation in the Spanish Nether-
lands in the mid-sixteenth century led to Rubens’s Triumph of the
Eucharist. Prints of his composition were enormously influential in
New Spain in the mid-seventeenth century as can be attested by the
large renditions, virtually replicas, of Rubens’s work still hanging in
the Cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla.54
An illuminating text for the interpretation of the murals in the
Room of the Triumphs is a Last Judgment in Náhuatl, the predomi-
nant Indian language of central Mexico at the time of the Spanish
52
Sutton (1993) 14–15. De Poorter (1978) publishes an image of a lost tapestry,
Plate 76, described on page 201, dated c. 1520–30, entitled The Triumph of Faith,
in which the Virgin Mary is enthroned, holding in her right hand a model of a
church and in her left the cross of the Resurrection. Church equals Ecclesia and
Resurrection equals Eternity, Eternal Life, foretelling the poblano personification.
For the six van Veen panels, see de Poorter (1978) 199–200. De Poorter switched
the titles for the Triumphs in Plates 71 and 72. For the van Veen cycle, see also
Vogl (1987); and Knipping (1974) 57. For the biblical references to the sword,
Revelation 1:16; 2:12, 16.
53
De Poorter (1978) 165.
54
Burke (1982) 59–63; and Toussaint (1967) 238–241. Baltasar Echave Rioja’s
version of the Triumph of the Eucharist, dated 1675, is in Puebla Cathedral’s sacristy.
Cristóbal de Villalpando painted another for the Cathedral of Mexico City in 1685,
followed by Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez’s rendition in 1695 for the Church of El
Carmen in the city of Celaya in the present Mexican State of Guanajuato.
conquest and through the colonial period. Dating before 1550, this
play, now in the Library of Congress, has been attributed to the
Franciscan Andrés de Olmos. Ricard states that
The famous polyglot Fray Andrés de Olmos wrote . . . an auto entitled
El Juicio Final. . . . It was staged in the chapel of San José de los
Naturales [in Mexico City] before Viceroy Mendoza, who arrived in
1535, and before [Archbishop] Zumárraga, who died in 1548. According
to Las Casas, some eight hundred actors and supernumeraries partic-
ipated in it and played their parts to perfection.55
One of those parts is spoken by the Holy Church, and this alle-
gorical figure’s lines, along with those of Time and Death, are worth
relating to the meaning of their plastic counterparts in the Room of
the Triumphs.
The play begins with the sound of trumpets as the Heavens open
and St. Michael appears:
Michael: Be in deadly fear! For the Day of Judgment will descend upon
you, fearful, dreadful, frightful, paralyzing! Take warning and lead a
proper life. The Day of Judgment is at hand.
The trumpets sound again and Penitence, Time, the Holy Church,
Confession, and Death appear onstage. As they speak about the
Judgment that is imminent, the dialogue provides a closely related
parallel to the iconographic program in the Room of the Triumphs.
Time: I am Time. I am he who continues ever-questioning people. Our
Lord God sent and established me to keep them, care for them, warn
them, remind them day and night. Never do I stop speaking! I am
continually shouting in their ears so that they may remember their
Creator, their Maker, the Lord God. I take care that they cry out to
Him; that they bless Him; that they serve Him; that they do as their
Lord our God wishes. I urge them to go to His house and to praise
Him; to ask for His Divine Grace.
Holy Church: I am the ever-merciful mother. My beloved Son Jesus
Christ has established me here for the people of the earth. I am always
weeping for them, especially when some of them die. For when I shed
tears, I pray to my beloved Mother, the sacred fountain of Joy, to
have pity on her creatures and to give light to them. . . . My heart is
sad for them. Would that they might pray to be pardoned; that they
might weep and repent of their shortcomings and sins!
55
Ricard (1966) 47–48, 195. The play’s actual combined Spanish-Náhuatl title
is Nexcuitilmachiotl Motenhua Juicio Final.
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Penitence: Oh mother of complete faith, all that you say is quite true! . . .
Death: I am the officer of the law, the appointed one, the messenger
empowered by heaven. Here on earth the power spreads forth to the
uttermost limits as the rays of the sun shining forth in the heavens,
and over the whole earth. Let the people of the earth remember that
soon the beloved Son of God will come down to judge the quick and
the dead. . . .
Holy Church: I am the divine light of the only faith. I enlighten and
give spiritual vision to all Christians that they may come so that I may
cleanse them; for they are dizzy and stupid with sin. If they weep and
are sad, then my beloved Youth, Jesus Christ, will pardon them and
give them the kingdom of heaven.
The Judgment proceeds and the play ends with the entrance of the
priest.
Priest: . . . The Day of Judgment is coming soon. Pray to our Lord
Jesus Christ and to the Virgin Mary, that She may entreat Her beloved
Son Jesus Christ that you might merit and deserve the joy of Heaven—
that eternal glory! Amen.56
Andrés de Olmos has cast the Holy Church not only as Mother of
God but as the embodiment of “the divine light of the only faith.”
The Mater Ecclesia is the ever-merciful mother whose “beloved Son
Jesus Christ” has established Her, the Church, on this earth for all
people. At the same time that the Holy Church takes the part of
the mother who weeps for her children, the Holy Church prays to
the beloved Mother. In this interweaving of roles and identities, we
are reminded of Jan van Eyck’s Madonna in the Church, in which Mary
is depicted in the church and as the Church. In both the painting
and in Olmos’s play, the Virgin Mary shines with the radiance of
divine light: “She is the brightness of eternal light, and the flawless
mirror of God’s majesty.”57 And at the last it is the Virgin in Her
role as Queen of Heaven and Bride of Christ who is intercessor on
the Day of Judgment.
56
Ravicz (1970) 141–156.
57
Panofsky (1966) 145–148. Dotson (1979) 427, in her definitive interpretation
of Michelangelo’s mural cycle in the Sistine Chapel, points out that the Sibyls in
their oracles acknowledge the central role of the Virgin who as Mother of Christ
simultaneously becomes the Church, “which feeds her children, whose lap is a
refuge, in whose womb is the model of life.”
Conclusion
The narrative of the processions that make their way through the
two rooms of the Casa del Deán ends in serenity and peace. What
began with blindfolded Synagoga reaches its culmination in the
Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Panofsky wrote of this duality with its
eschatological implications that “The conversion of the Synagogue . . .
was the precondition of the final triumph of Christianity which was
ushered in by the Last Judgment and found fulfillment in what
St. Augustine calls the ‘Eternal Beatitude of the City of God.’”58
The theme for the mural cycle is built upon the concepts of pre-
figuration in the Room of the Sibyls and of fulfillment in the Room
of the Triumphs.59 The knowledge of the future beyond human expe-
rience involves a conception of history as divinely determined. An
eschatological and apocalyptic view of God’s plan can only be com-
municated through a ‘celestial mediator’ and then written down by
the visionary who has received the divine revelation. This concept
of a predetermined history can be characterized as teleological, a
“drama of conflict between good and evil leading toward a definitive
conclusion, an end that gives meaning to the whole.”60
The theme that unifies the mural cycle is the fulfillment of prophecy
in the Triumph of the Church. In the first room of the Casa del Deán,
the Sibyls foretell the events of Christ’s life on earth, ending with
the Resurrection. As predicted, Christ took on human form to live
and die and live again. Through His suffering and death Christ
became the last sacrifice, the propitiation for the sins of humanity.
Like the pagan believers who heard the Sibyls’ prophecies, the
indigenous people of New Spain, following this dialectic, accepted
the true God and His promise of redemption. This promise is fulfilled
in the Triumph of the Church. The unity of Christ with the Mater
Ecclesia is built upon the central sacramental responsibilities of the
Church: the administration of Baptism and the ongoing celebration
of Christ’s sacrificial omnipresence in the Eucharist. As the only true
agent of redemptive grace, the post-Reformation Church Triumphant
appears in the Casa del Deán mural as the Queen of Heaven in Her
syncretistic guise as the Triumph of Eternity.
58
Panofsky (1969) 65.
59
Dotson (1979) 409.
60
McGinn (1985) 51–53.
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The culmination of the poblano mural sequence in the Triumph

of Eternity/Ecclesia reveals a shared conceptualization on the part
of Don Tomás de la Plaza and the native artist to the effect that
they were participants in an unfolding cosmic drama. The Church
Triumphant was seen as the earthly agent that could bring the hope
of redemption to Spaniard and Amerindian alike, as tortillas became
sacred flesh, and wine, the sacred blood of Christ.
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Gibson, C. (1952) Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT: 1952).
Hall, J. (1979) Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, rev. ed. (New York: 1979).
Hughes, G. (1997) Renaissance Cassoni, Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage
Chests, 1400–1500 (London: 1997).
Jameson, A. (1895) Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts (Boston: 1895).
Knipping, J. B. (1974) Iconography of the Counter-Reformation in the Netherlands: Heaven on
Earth, 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop, The Netherlands: 1974).
Kropfinger von Kügelgen, H. (1979) “Aspectos iconológicos en los murales de la
Casa del Deán de Puebla,” Comunicaciones de la Fundación Alemana para la Investigación
Científica 16 (1979).
——, (1973) Exportación de libros europeos de Sevilla a la Nueva España en el año de 1586
(Wiesbaden: 1973).
Leicht, H. (1934) Las calles de Puebla, rpt. (Puebla: 1986 [1934]).
Mâle, É. (1986) Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages, H. Bober, ed., and M.
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CHAPTER TWO
AFFECTIONS OF THE HEART:

FEMALE IMAGERY AND THE NOTION OF NATION IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEXICO
Magali M. Carrera
Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it

invents nations where they do not exist.
Benedict Anderson
Women contribute most particularly to the happiness of the State . . . In
her bosom man begins to exist, in her lap he grows, is nourished and
acquires his first notions of Good and Evil.
Semanario Económico de México, 1813
“A nation is nothing more than a great family, and in order for it
to be stable and strong it means that all of its members must be
closely united with ties of interest and affections of the heart.”1 With
these words, written in 1847, Mariano Otero, a young Mexican
politician, reminded his countrymen that they must put aside their
differences and come together through love of country in order to
overcome Mexico’s tumultuous political, social, and economic disar-
ray in the mid-nineteenth century. Otero’s use of the metaphor of
family is important because it implies the concept of ‘nation’ as an
intricate web of affective relationships promoting a common good.
Indeed, the theme of love of country constantly echoed across visual
and written texts as the kingdom of New Spain, with its emphasis
on la patria, motherland (also fatherland), in service to the sover-
eignty of the king, became the Republic of Mexico, with its focus
on la nación, “nation,” in service to the sovereignty of the people.
This essay examines the gendered imagery that was associated
with such affections. As Mexico attempted to define and constitute
1
Otero (1975) [1847] 45. Otero’s essay was originally published anonymously
and is generally attributed to him. Dennis E. Berge (1975), an historian, believes
that the authors were Mariano Otero and, possibly, Juan Bautista Morales, also a
political essayist.
48 magali m. carrera
itself as a nation, sovereignty, represented by the imagery of the

king’s body, was replaced by a changing set of female images.
Throughout the nineteenth century, this new corporeal imagery marked
the shifting of the signifying site of sovereignty and represented
an ongoing search to give visual focus to nationalist affections of the
heart.
The Body of the Sovereign
“Vivan Nuestros Amados Soberanos Carlos Quarto [sic] y María Luisa de

Borbón,” “Long Live Our Beloved Sovereigns Carlos the Fourth and
María Luisa of Bourbon.” These words, supported by large wooden
props, appeared on the central plaza of Mexico City in December
1796 as part of a three-day celebration to mark both the birthday
of the Queen, María Luisa de Borbón, and the installation of a
statue of King Carlos IV. As one would expect of this opulent and
luxurious capital of New Spain, the city was elaborately decorated
with banners and its numerous public and private buildings were lit
with over 20,000 lights. In summarizing the event, the Gaceta de
México, a monthly publication, went so far as to state: “It offered a
spectacle that sweeps the imagination.”2
The culmination of the celebration, however, was the unveiling of
a massive statue of Carlos IV in the city’s central plaza that pre-
sented the king, his right arm extended, riding a great prancing
horse. In inaugurating this sculptural project, Viceroy Branciforte
asserted that the magnificent metropolis of Mexico City had enjoyed
many benefits of royal patronage and now possessed what it had
previously lacked—a great image of the king placed in the center of
the capital that illustrated his virtues.3
Closer examination of the circumstances of the statue, however,
exposes an obvious but unexplored fact about the historical context
of this equestrian visage: It was initially dedicated about three years
after the King of France, Louis XIV, had been beheaded and the
French monarchical system—figuratively and literally—had been dis-
2
Gaceta de México (9 December 1796) 231.
3
Documentos varios para la historia de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial
(1769 –1815) (1983) nos. 1–16, “Descripción de las fiestas,” 1.
affections of the heart 49
membered by the French Revolution. In New Spain there was great

dismay over the French Revolution and its implications as is evident
in a December 1794 sermon, delivered by Fray Servando Teresa de
Mier in Mexico City, which censored the treacherous ideas of Rousseau
and the horror of the Jacobin regicide.4 Within this political con-
text, the equestrian statue may be understood as a reification of the
paramount trope of the ancien régime: The body of the Spanish king
was assembled in New Spain as the sovereign body of the French king
was disassembled.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was continued
awareness of the conceptual destruction of monarchy caused by
French political thinking. This view is confirmed by the fact that in
August 1801 the Gaceta de México announced that the book Histoire
philosophique de la révolution de France by Antoine Fantin Desodoards
[sic] had been banned because it “emanated an implacable hatred
towards monarchical government, kingship, [and] the Catholic
Religion. . . .”5 In addition, Inquisition records indicate that French
political writings were in circulation in eighteenth-century New Spain
and a list of prohibited books was regularly announced. Various indi-
viduals were denounced for owning or reading books by writers such
as Voltaire and Rousseau.6
In December 1803 the commission for the equestrian statue of
Charles IV was completed when a bronze version was installed that
replaced the temporary wooden one which had been used for the
1796 celebration. On this momentous occasion, Viceroy Iturrigaray,
4
Brading (2001) 201.
5
Gaceta de México (29 August 1801) n. p. Further research indicates that the Gaceta
notice is probably referring to the book by Antoine Étienne Nicolas Fantin des
Odoards [1738–1820], Histoire de la République française . . . (Paris: A. J. Dugour [etc.]
an. VI [1798]). Also, late eighteenth-century New Spanish Inquisition records con-
tain numerous proclamations listing banned books and pamphlets. Books by Rousseau,
Voltaire, and other French philosophers were repeatedly placed on these lists.
6
Two examples for the time period under discussion include: “El Sr Inquisidor
fiscal de este santo oficio contra el Fr. D. José Pastor Morales, clerigo de ordenes
menores de este arzobispado . . . Por Proposiciones. Resulta contra Morelle, Durrey,
Enderica, . . . (leia libros de Voltaire, Rousseau, etc, era afecto a las maximas de
Francia y a su revolución, etc.),” AGN-202749, Inquisición, 1795, vol. 1361, Exp. 1
fols. 1–184 and “Relación de la causa seguida contra Dn, Antonio Castro y
Salgado . . . Soltero. Por proposiciones hereticas, lectura de libros prohibidos, defen-
sor de Rousseau, etc.” AGN-204162. Inquisición 1803 vol. 1414, Exp. 2, fols. 280–289,
309–328.
Branciforte’s successor, expounded effusively on the importance of

this monument by writing
In an instant, the place [central plaza] was filled with people of all
classes. Their faces reflected the enjoyment they felt in their souls.
They had no words to respectfully express their sincere gratitude for
their great fortune. As they gazed at the statue—at his paternal smile,
his tender looks—the people expressed reverent comments to each
other.7
As in 1796, ostensibly the purpose of the permanent statue was to
honor the king and bring his physical presence to New Spain and
into the hearts and minds of New Spanish subjects. The viceroy’s
words emphasized New Spanish loyalty and affection for the king.
We might wonder, however, why, after more than two-and-one-
half centuries of Spanish rule, was there a need to produce such
corporeal imagery of the king’s body in New Spain? In earlier cen-
turies, the person of the viceroy was considered to embody the king’s
presence in New Spain while verbal edicts and proclamations regu-
larly declared and assured the king’s oversight.8 An examination of
this reproduction of the king’s body in the context of the republi-
can ideas spawned by the French revolution provides possible answers
to this question.
In his excellent study of the ancien régime’s notion of the body
of the king, Antoine de Baecque asserts that the trope of the body
was derived from Enlightenment thinking that selected the human
body as the “proper matter for their studies and experiments, in
order to calibrate the grid through which to read the microcosm
and the macrocosm.” Baecque points out that “one single body per-
petuated itself from Bourbon king to king, embodying the continu-
ity of the state, a body in which all subjects could recognize themselves
and in which everyone recognized their sovereign.” French revolu-
tionary rhetoric was derived from this scientific viewpoint and polit-
ical understanding as “corporeal images were at the very center of
7
“En un instante se llenó de personas de todas classes, en cuyos semblantes se veía la ena-
genacion de sus almas, que llenas de regocijo no les cabian en el pecho; y que, creyéndose en la
presencia de su mismo adorado Monarca, manifestaban con respetuosos palabras su justa sincera
gratitud á tanta fortuna. Las dulces miradas, la sonrisa filial, la afectuosa reverencia y lo que
unos á otras se decian mirando á la Estatua, . . .” (1803) Documentos varios para la historia
de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial (1769–1815) (1983): XIV, nos. 1–12, 9.
8
See Cañeque (1999).
the metaphoric language used to describe the revolution in progress.”

Old Regime imagery had emphasized the body of the king, while
revolutionary visual and written rhetoric used corporeal imagery such
as the congenital deformity of the aristocrats and the impotence of
the king. As a result, the king’s body was deconsecrated, represented
as a sick, impotent entity that, literally and physically, had to be
torn apart.9
Considered as part of a broader corporeal discourse of the ancien
régime, the production of the massive equestrian statue of Charles
IV may be seen as an attempt to propose absolutist stability and
continuity in New Spain at a time when the conceptual tenet of the
king’s body as a sign of sovereignty was highly unstable in Europe
and its continuity in jeopardy. This latent discourse on sovereignty
was manifested through this late-eighteenth-century equestrian imagery
of Spain’s Bourbon king. More importantly, in the next century, cor-
poreal imagery would be continued in the metaphorical visual lan-
guage of Mexican nation-building.
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, New Spain saw dra-
matic political changes as the French Revolution’s purging of the
ancien régime trope spread to Spain when Napoleon Bonaparte
occupied Spain and forced the abdication of King Charles IV, the
renunciation and captivity of his successor, Ferdinand VII, and the
appointment of Joseph Napoleon to the Spanish throne in 1807.
In the period 1807–1821, elites in New Spain protested the Spanish
king’s forced confinement and moved initially to be autonomous from
Spain and, eventually, independent. During this time, New Spain
had to confront radical questions about the definition and imagery
of sovereignty: If sovereignty was no longer located in the body of
the king, where was it to be located and how would it be visual-
ized? How were loyal affections to be directed?
Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas by Patricio Suárez de
Peredo, an 1809 oil painting, reflects these early nineteenth-century
events (Fig. 2.1). In this panel, three oval-shaped medallions and two
groups of figures surround the central image of Ferdinand VII, a
captive of the French. An image of the Virgin of Guadalupe floats
in a white cloud above the king; the medallion to the right of the
king bears the Spanish crest of Castile y León, while that to the
9
Baecque (1997) 1, 4–5, 8.
Fig. 2.1 Patricio Súarez de Peredo, Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas (Alle-
gory of the Spanish and Indigenous Authorities). 1809, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm. Museo
Nacional del Virreinato, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional
de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-
INAH.-MEX), Mexico.
king’s left illustrates the insignia of Mexico City. The abraded leg-
end in the lower section of the panel begins with “Long Live the
King” and identifies the standing figure as José Ramírez, a Spaniard
and a delegate of the king. He is surrounded by Spanish soldiers
and Don Juan Felipe M., an elaborately dressed Indian corregidor, or
“official,” of the town of San Cristóbal Ecatepec. Don Juan stands
with another unnamed figure and a third partially dressed person-
age who wears the feathered dress associated with the traditional
indigenous costume. Overall, the painting both verbally and visually
states New Spain’s continued loyalty to the confined king.10
While the painting emphasizes loyalty to the captive king, its
imagery de-emphasizes the person of the king. It emphatically situ-
ates the body of the king within a new constellation of references
that do not come from the absolutist vision of sovereignty. Ferdinand
VII does not emerge as a singular, powerful figure. Instead he is
protected by a bulwark of emblems that, with the exception of the
Castile y León standard, emphasize New Spanish identity. Further,
new sets of bodies are also put in this constellation with that of the
King. These include Spanish and Indian subjects. Nevertheless, par-
ticularly striking, and not mentioned in the legend, is the presence
of the Virgin of Guadalupe: This female body, larger in scale than
that of the king, hovers over him. This leads us to question: Why
is the image of the Virgin depicted in this painting and how does
she relate to issues of sovereignty that New Spain was facing at this
time?
The Body of the Patria
“Long live religion! Long live our most holy Mother of Guadalupe!
Long live Ferdinand VII! Long Live America and death to bad gov-
ernment!” These insurgent words, pronounced on September 16,
1810, by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a parish priest of the town of
Dolores, elucidate the context of the Suárez painting. Spoken seven
years after the inauguration of the bronze equestrian statue, the
words called for a revolution from the Napoleonic tyranny that had
beset Spain.
10
For further discussion of this painting, see Acevedo (2000) 117–118.
Hidalgo reinforced his Grito de Dolores, as it is known, by adopt-

ing a standard emblazoned with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Thus, although the Grito de Dolores demanded Ferdinand’s freedom
from captivity, Hidalgo did not call on the imagery of the absolutist
body of the king to visualize his declaration; rather, he called on a
female image—an image unique to New Spain. Hidalgo’s use of
Guadalupana imagery may be derived from two dimensions of the
Virgin Mary: First, the broader historical associations of the Virgin
and, secondly, her specific meanings in New Spain. In researching
the wider cultural implications of the figure of Mary, Amy Remen-
snyder, a historian of medieval Europe, has argued that the general
scholarly perception of her as a figure of nurturing and benevolence
is an incomplete assessment of the iconographic constellation of the
Virgin. Mary was associated directly with the twelfth-century Christian
campaigns against Islam, confirmed by the fact that medieval man-
uscripts illustrate crusaders going into battle carrying banners that
display her image. Mary, in fact, could be quite a wrathful woman,
as is found in various New Testament texts. Remensnyder, con-
cluding that this vengeful side of Mary has been less acknowledged
by scholars, suggests that Mary is better understood as a boundary
figure who, as described in visual and written media, triumphs over
the ‘other.’11
The Virgin had this conquest/triumphant role in the subjugation
of the Aztec-Mexica, as Hernán Cortés is said to have placed an
image of Our Lady of Los Remedios, a renowned Marian icon in
Spain, on the altar of the main Aztec-Mexica temple of Tenochtitlán
to embody Spanish conquest. Eventually, Our Lady of Los Remedios
would be designated patron of Mexico City, the capital of New
Spain, and would become an important cult figure for the Spanish-
born population.12 In the context of these broad and very deep mean-
ings of the imagery of the Virgin and her association with aggression,
it is appropriate then that this insurgent priest of Dolores, steeped
in church history, chose the image of Mary to launch a revolution.
Along with the conquest associations of the Virgin Mary, Hidalgo’s
use of her image in the form of the Guadalupe has a second dimen-
sion that is specific to her appearance in the Americas. The tradi-
11
Remensnyder (2003).
12
Brading (2001) 46–47.
tion and cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe marked a profound change

in New Spain’s understanding of itself because, unlike Our Lady of
Los Remedios, Guadalupe was considered indigenous to New Spain.
To understand this significance, it is important to review the simple
story of the Guadalupe’s apparition. On December 9, 1531, Juan
Diego, a converted Indian, was walking across a barren hill called
Tepeyac. Suddenly, he heard music and was blinded by a light as
before him appeared a dark-skinned woman who identified herself
as the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. She directed Juan
Diego to tell Bishop Juan de Zumárraga that she wished to have a
church built on the hill in her honor. Hearing Juan Diego’s request,
the unbelieving Bishop asked for proof of the validity of the appari-
tion. Three days later, on December 12th, the Virgin reappeared to
Juan Diego and directed him to pick roses from a nearby bush and
take them to Zumárraga. Juan Diego obeyed, placed the roses in
his cloak and carried them to the Bishop. When he opened his cloak
to present the flowers, an image of the Virgin was miraculously
imprinted on Juan Diego’s mantle. Now a believer, the Bishop had
a small church built on the site of the apparition.
While the basic elements of this story are well known, the origins
and uses of this tale are convoluted and, perhaps, more interesting
than the story itself. The simple fact is that Bishop Zumárraga did
not provide any written description or certification of the apparition
and, in reality, there are no existing primary sources from the time
of the apparition. In his book The Mexican Phoenix, D. A. Brading
makes his way through a maze of secondary sources—especially ser-
mons—that started to appear more than one hundred years after
the apparition supposedly occurred and from which the generally
accepted story of Guadalupe is derived.
Although the circuitous details of the evolution of this Virgin’s
story cannot be presented here, it is important to recognize that in
the seventeenth century there was an explosion of interest in this
apparition that continued through subsequent centuries. Over these
centuries, written sources would tie together religion and patriotism
associated with the growth of a criollo, that is American-born Spaniard,
sense of a New Spanish rather than an Iberian patria. For exam-
ple, seventeenth-century writers would emphasize that, unlike Our
Lady of Remedios, “Mary and the Mexican patria were united in
the enduring imagery of Guadalupe.” Others remarked that her
image stirred “that natural affection which inclines so powerfully,
often without feeling it, and moves us with even more vehemence
on everything that is of the mother country.” In fact, by the last
quarter of the seventeenth century, the words “non facit taliter omni
natione,” “It was not done thus to all nations,” taken from Psalm
147, appeared in reproductions of the image of the Guadalupe. This
phrase indicated the belief that New Spain held a privileged place
in the supposedly special way that it was favored by this particular
apparition and vocation of the Virgin over other nations.13 Such dis-
plays of exceptionalism are central stratagems of nationalism and the
development of a national consciousness.
By the eighteenth century the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe
gained official status. In 1737 she would be named patron of Mexico
City and the kingdom of New Spain by the city council, and in
1754 Pope Benedict XIV would approve the Guadalupe as the patron
of New Spain. Brading concludes that the final eighteenth-century
emergence of the ‘nation’ in the discourse of these [Guadalupana] ser-
mons, no matter how distant from any social reality, testified to the
fervent patriotism . . . which helped inspire the cult of Guadalupe. . . . But
from the start, the inner meaning of the Apparition story was that the
Mother of God had come to Mexico, and in a special way had cho-
sen to remain in Mexico, acting as its patron.14
Thus, in adopting the imagery of the Guadalupe on his standard,
along with Her medieval associations of violence, Hidalgo was also
associating his revolutionary ideas with the affections for the patria
that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came to be associ-
ated with the Virgin.
It is clear then, that Hidalgo could not have called upon the image
of Ferdinand VII to endorse his proclamation because the ancién
regime’s body was weakened and unable to represent potent sover-
eignty. Similarly, in the painting Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e
indígenas, we see the king positioned not singularly but in the com-
pany of the Virgin’s female body and New Spanish subjects for the
same reason (Fig. 2.1). Along with Her association with the conquest
tradition and Her ties to the construct of patria, Hidalgo’s use of
the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe signifies the new relationship
of New Spanish subjects to Spain at a time when this nexus was
13
Brading (2001) 69, 111.
14
Brading (2001) 125, 132, 168.
being radically restructured. The body of the Virgin of Guadalupe

signifies a new process in the formation of the nación. Her use in
nationalist iconography also initiates the sequence of corporeal imagery
of females to mark the shifting of the signifying site of sovereignty
from the body of the king to a new body.
Napoleon’s actions in Spain marked the transition in that coun-
try’s political culture from the ancien régime, where legitimacy of
the state was based in the corporate institutions and their pact with
the king, to modernity, where the legitimacy of the state is predi-
cated on the individual and her/his contract with the nation.15 In
New Spain this transition was certified in September 1813 when José
María Morelos, a priest and student of Hidalgo as well as a promi-
nent military leader of the Mexican revolution, would convoke a
Constitutional Congress at Chilpancingo, Guerrero, and declare
Mexico’s independence from Spain. His declaration emphatically
stated that sovereignty springs from the people and established that
the “twelfth of December be celebrated in all villages in honor of
the patroness of our liberty, the Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe.”16
In sum, as New Spain became Mexico, the presence of the Virgin
of Guadalupe in early nationalist verbal and visual discourse marked
the presence of a boundary between the old regime and modernity
as affections of the heart were directed away from the king toward
the Virgin. This use of female imagery specified an altogether new
relationship of the subject to the patria. If the male body represented
the old regime, then the use of the female body may be seen as
helping to undermine the icon and symbol of the absolutist state.
The Virgin of Guadalupe now elicited the loyal affection toward the
patria previously educed by the king.
While introducing new imagery for the incipient stages of Mexican
independence, the Virgin of Guadalupe, however, would not and
could not become the central signifier of the Mexican nation in sub-
sequent decades. By the late 1820s a new set of female entities make
their appearance in the discourse of nationalist painting.
15
Anna (1998) 53–54.
16
Morelos (2002) [1813] 189–190.
The Sovereign Body of the Nation
At the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century,

Mexico gained its independence from Spain through the Treaty of
Córdoba and established itself as an independent state through the
Plan de Iguala. The Plan de Iguala attempted to bring together diverse
groups—liberal and conservative, rebels and royalists, criollos and
Spaniards—into an uneasy union and declared all inhabitants of
Mexico citizens.17 Establishing the founding principles of Religion,
Independence, and Union, the Plan called for a constitutional monar-
chy in hopes that Ferdinand VII or another aristocrat would rule
the Mexican empire. When it became evident that a European royal
would not ascend the Mexican throne, Agustín Iturbide, a hero of
the war of independence, was proclaimed Emperor Agustín I of
Mexico in May 1822.
Iturbide attempted “to preserve the best features of the social
administrative structure of the Bourbon monarchy, believing that
national unity required centralism. In claiming his role as emperor,
he reverted to the imagery of the ancien régime focused on his male
body as the center of national pageantry and imagery. Iturbide would
be forced to abdicate in March 1823, however, because he had tried
to impose this centralized system on an empire that was in fact an
aggregate of provinces that sought significant autonomy and sepa-
ration from centralized government. In the end, the Congress claimed
that Iturbide did not possess the right to exercise authority because
sovereignty belonged to the Congress as representative of the regional
states.18
As Mexico moved from the independence struggle toward the cre-
ation of nation, female bodies continued to represent the shifting
understanding of sovereignty. In particular, a new female figure
emerged to refocus the changing relationship of the citizen to the
nation, rooting it in the arousal of patriotic affection. Seen in the
oil painting Alegoría de la Independencia (1834), this young and some-
what frail seated female figure is identified as Mexico through her
crown of red, white, and green feathers marking Mexico’s national
colors (Fig. 2.2). She wears a quiver, a reference to indigenous culture,
17
Anna (1998) 81–82.
18
Anna (1998) 95–97.
affections of the heart
Fig. 2.2 Anon., Alegoría de la Independencia. 1834, oil, approx. 169 × 196 cm., Museo Casa de Hidalgo, Centro INAH-Guanajuato,
Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura
59
Fig. 2.3 Louis Charles Routte and Jacques-Louis Copia, after Louis-Marie Sicardi,
La Liberté, Patrone des Français, after Louis-Simon Boizot. 1795, etching, S.P. Avery
Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.
and she holds the Phrygian cap on a stick, which signifies liberty
through its reference to the hat worn by French insurgents that
became a symbol of the French revolution. The metropolitan model
for this allegorical figure of Mexico is exemplified by La Liberté Patrone
des Français (Fig. 2.3). This 1795 French etching illustrates Liberty
dressed in a simple tunic wearing the Phrygian cap and a French
revolutionary tricolor sash around her waist.19 Allegorical Mexico,
unlike our French example, is seated between two male figures:
Miguel Hidalgo, who crowns her with a laurel wreath representing
victory, and Agustín Iturbide, who clutches broken chains repre-
senting the break from Spain and subjugation.
Such metaphorical images of Mexico as an elaborately bedecked
female would be repeated in other paintings and prints throughout
the early part of the century as independence from Spain became
a reality.20 Always dressed in flowing robes, these figures are also
often associated with a bow and arrow and a cornucopia that overflows
with fruits and vegetables, denoting the natural fecundity of the land,
along with tri-colored feathered costume elements such as skirts and
headpieces. An eagle, a flag, drums, and an indigenous weapon,
which refer to different aspects of Mexican independence as cata-
lysts of national identity, sometimes surround the figure as well. No
longer referent to the body of the Virgin of Guadalupe, these alle-
gorical figures indicate instead that a new phase of Mexican corpo-
real imagery has dawned. What is particularly distinctive about these
new female bodies is the seductive, somewhat erotic, dimension to
their presentation.
In her research on the female body in the iconography of the era
of revolution and the erotic dimension of patriotism, Joan Landes
offers important insights into the significance of this early nineteenth-
century female imagery in Mexico. Landes explains that with the
dissolution of the ancien régime in France, female representations of
Liberty, derived from ancient Greek and Roman goddesses, appeared
19
I am not suggesting that this particular print was available in Mexico during
this period. A comprehensive scholarly study of foreign prints available in Mexico
during the nineteenth century is not available. Given the fact that banned French
writings were circulating in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mexico,
however, it is likely that European or French prints like the one represented in Fig.
2.3 were available.
20
Such allegorical images were derived from colonial period imagery of the
Americas; see Acevedo (2003).
in opposition to the older order of authority, the king’s body. “[By]

physically depicting incorporeal values, female imagery helped to
consolidate French citizens’ loyalties to their nation and to discrim-
inate against those considered outside the body of the Republic.” As
such, the female figure of Liberty was not opposed to male politics
but set against historically tainted forms of the old body politic.
Liberty anchored the nation’s legitimacy, operating as a metaphor
for the sovereignty of the people.21
The female virtue inherent in these images was linked to the female
role in the republican family, a passive one that emphasized mod-
esty, propriety, and respectable silence. In this domestic association,
females were to be under the care of males, fathers and husbands,
and, most importantly, capable of producing republican citizens. By
analogy the very role of the male republican citizen was the care,
maintenance, and reproduction of the nation. The female body of
the nation, therefore, became an object of desire. The “repetitive
presence of a seductive (metaphorical) female in the imaginary place
of the nation may lure men to attach deep romantic longings to the
state.” Landes concludes that the deployment of the female body
was aimed at creating “new affective solidarities and political publics
to express popular energies or to anticipate and forestall political
dissent.”22
Republican citizenship offers men a role as guardian of the alle-
gorical body of the nation as it incites and conceals the seduction
of patriotic love. And this is the very role we see in the Alegoría de
la Independencia as the guardian figures of Mexico, Hidalgo, and
Iturbide crush her enemies, free her from Spanish chains, and crown
her. The seductive attraction of this metaphorical image of Mexico,
the need for protection of Alegoría/Mexico, are essential qualities
needed to lure citizens to love, protect, and even give up their lives
for the nation. In contrast, the Virgin of Guadalupe, as a sacrosanct
figure, was not able to play this role. She could not take on the
human traits needed to allegorize the love of nation; that is, while
she might represent the construct of patria, she could not give rise
to the sexual allure required for nationalist patriotism. And as a vir-
gin, she could not be associated with allegorical Mexico’s most impor-
21
Landes (2001) 18, 32, 81.
22
Landes (2001) 22, 38, 110.
tant role: giving birth to citizens. The Virgin of Guadalupe marked

the process of independence but she did not and could not have the
requisite qualities to represent nation. Thus, female corporeal imagery
was a critical element of expanding nationalist imagery in the early
nineteenth century. However, while the Virgin of Guadalupe marked
a transitional boundary, as New Spain becomes Mexico, the alle-
gorical figures of Mexico marked the transformation of Mexico into
a nation.
Locating the National Body
In the following decades, as Mexico continued to experience the

social, economic, and political turmoil of nationalist construction,
there was an ongoing search to come to terms with the meaning of
sovereignty and nation and, as a result, the image of Mexico also
changed. In 1847, Mariano Otero wrote
In Mexico there has not been, nor could there have been, a national
spirit, for there is no nation. . . . [because a] nation is nothing more
than a great family, and in order for it to be stable and strong it
means that all of its members must be closely united with ties of inter-
est and affections of the heart.23
Otero’s words, which introduced this essay, certify the continuing
focus on the seductive power of national affection. His words also
express the extreme frustration of this young liberal politician and
political theorist with the inability of Mexico, thirty-seven years after
Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores, to stabilize itself politically and economi-
cally. While Hidalgo was attempting to gather the power of senti-
ment for nation for his cause against bad government, Otero recognized
that independence did not automatically result in nation and that a
political regeneration of the society was required. To promote these
reforms the Congress proclaimed a new Constitution on February
5, 1857. Mexico was once again organized as a federal republic
under a document that specified freedom of education and the press
and the guarantee of individual and judicial rights. Due to contin-
ued political struggles and the subsequent French intervention to
23
Otero (1975) [1847] 45.
impose the regime of Emperor Maximilian, it would be another

decade before this Constitution of 1857 was implemented.
In this context a new image of Mexico appeared: She is Constitución
de 1857 (Fig. 2.4). Painted by Petronilo Monroy, the panel was the
result of a call from the director of the National Academy of Fine
Arts in 1869 for national art and especially history painting.24 The
panel illustrates a young woman hovering among the clouds who
holds an olive branch and a stone tablet inscribed with the words
“Constitución de 1857.” This 1869 figure may be seen as a coun-
terpoint to the tumultuous conditions of Mexican politics.25 French
intervention had established Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico from
1863 until his defeat and execution in 1867. Maximilian reverted to
absolutist iconography and even had the 1803 equestrian statue of
Charles IV reset to be part of his Paseo del Emperador, now Mexico
City’s Paseo de la Reforma, as a symbolic link to the Bourbon kings.26
The negative reaction to this second attempt at monarchy was vehe-
ment. Mexican President Benito Juárez, after leading the defeat of
Maximilian’s army, replayed the French Revolution’s tableau of regi-
cide by putting the Emperor to death. He then reinstated the
Constitution of 1857 and instituted a series of political, religious, and
social reforms known as La Reforma.
By looking carefully at the allegorical figure of La Constitución in
Monroy’s painting, however, one realizes that while she bears a
resemblance to the 1834 Alegoría de México through her simple tunic,
this metaphorical female construction has been undressed. Gone are
the feathered clothing and the other narrative attributes. The colo-
nial and early-independence-period iconography has been discarded.
Now this new allegorical figure, holding the Constitutional tablet
while wearing a simple crown, has been re-dressed in a billowing
white gown with red scarf. At the time of its exhibition, some crit-
ics viewed this simplified personage as inappropriate for a history
painting because it lacked imagery that referenced historical narra-
tive.27 Nevertheless, as a symbol of Mexico’s reformist constitution,
24
“Programa de la décimocuarta exposición de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas
Artes de México,” 24 December 1869; in Rodríguez Prampolini (1997) I: 148–152.
25
It should be noted that this expansion of female imagery did not correspond
to expansion of women’s rights.
26
Widdifield (1996) 39.
27
An excellent analysis and complex reading of this painting and its critical con-
text is found in Widdifield (1996) 149–158.
Fig. 2.4 Petronilo Monroy, Constitución de 1857. Exhibited 1869, oil, approx. 170 ×
90 cm., Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City. Reproduction authorized by the
Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura
this icon was understood as an apparition of Mexico. One critic

described the figure in rather seductive terms: her face, open to
thought and love; her black eyes in which sleep the rays of passion;
and her mouth trembling, with promises, caresses. He concludes, “Es
México, es la patria querida, es la glorificación de la razón. . . .” (She is
Mexico, the beloved motherland, the glorification of reason . . .).28
Constitución, then, does not narrate a history because she is meta-his-
torical, a continuation of the visual configuration of a deep discourse
on sovereignty and the corporeal imagery of the nation as a body
that seduces and enamors citizens. Her allegorical form as the
Constitution of 1857 indicates the continued appropriation of the
female body to mark the shifting site of sovereignty.
Along with their appearance in visual culture, the affective asso-
ciations of females and nation appeared in nineteenth-century liter-
ature as well. For example, politician and writer Ignacio Altamirano’s
1869 novel Clemencia tells the story of two soldiers.29 Fernando Valle,
a swarthy and physically unattractive captain in the army, is a prin-
cipled and honorable man who is ready to give up his life for his
country. His antithesis, an army colonel, is Enrique Flores, an attrac-
tive, light-skinned man, who is conceited, dishonorable, and a cad.
Both soldiers’ amorous interests are taken up by Isabel and Clemencia,
beautiful cousins. Initially, the cousins have no time for Fernando,
as they focus their affections on the handsome Enrique. They come
to realize, however, that Enrique has deceived them and taken advan-
tage of them. Unfortunately, this realization comes too late because
Fernando dies with valor and honor, a hero and martyr for his coun-
try. Clemencia realizes that her affections should have been reserved
for Fernando because true beauty is based not on appearances but
on honor, valor, dignity, and love of country.
In this moralizing story, Altamirano envisions Mexico like Clemencia,
needing to avoid the superficial attractiveness of certain politicians
who only serve the country out of self-aggrandizing interest. She
should turn her attention toward the virtuous citizen who serves out
of loyalty and selflessness. The novel demonstrates once again how
28
“Crónica Charlamentaria” from El Monitor Republicano, núm. 4162, México, 17
January 1869. In Rodríguez Prampolini (1997) I: 141.
29
Altamirano (1990) [1869].
Mexico is allegorized as a woman who must be carefully guarded

and guided.
With the rise of President Porfirio Díaz in the late 1870s, the
metaphorical image of Mexico would change yet again. Díaz sought
to establish Mexico as a nation respected among nations. He wanted
to bring Mexico into modernity through programs of economic and
social development. There was also a realization that a “compre-
hensive nationalist history was the sine qua non both for the consoli-
dation of the nation and as a proof of stability and civilization.”30
Consequently, in 1887 the first comprehensive overview of Mexican
history and culture appeared as México a través de los siglos . . . edited
by Vicente Riva Palacio. This five-volume work was profusely illus-
trated. Most interesting for this study is the frontispiece of the vol-
umes, which again represents a young woman as the metaphorical
image of Mexico (Fig. 2.5). With a bust of Liberty above her, Mexico,
holding writing utensils, is seated on a throne in front of a banner
showing the Aztec founding image of the eagle alighted on a nopal
cactus with a snake in its mouth. Her feet rest on a low pedestal
with a band of low relief. The distinctive tropical, semi-arid and arid
vegetation filling the corners of the print denote the distinct geo-
graphic areas of Mexico.
Within this regional staging, Mexico is surrounded by imagery
that visually presents a condensed history of Mexico. Four carved
relief plaques set in the metopes, the open spaces between the triglyph
dividers of a Doric frieze across the back wall, identify critical episodes
of national history.31 Various objects and four standing figures fur-
ther elucidate these national milestones. Designating the indigenous
origins of Mexico are the antique sculpted vessels, the pedestal relief,
and two statuesque Indian warriors resplendent with feathered cloth-
ing, shields, spear, bow, and arrows. The metope with the profile
relief image of Moctezuma, the leader of the Aztec-Mexica at the
time of sixteenth-century Spanish contact, is placed in the frieze in
a position farthest to the left of the throne. Next to this portrait is
that of Hernán Cortés who, along with a heavily armored conquis-
tador to the right of Mexico, represents the epoch of the Spanish
30
Tenorio-Trillo (1996) 68.
31
For the standard terminology of the Doric frieze, including triglyphs and
metopes, see Janson (2004) 125.
Fig. 2.5 Frontispiece. Color lithograph. In Vicente Riva Palacio, ed., México a través
de los siglos . . . vol. I (México: Ballescá, 1887–1889), n.p.
Conquest and the subsequent Viceroyalty. The Mexican insurgency

and independence movements of the early nineteenth century are
indicated by the profile portrait of Miguel Hidalgo, which appears
in the frieze to the right of the figure of Mexico. The fourth stand-
ing figure may be read as a criollo, a former Spanish subject who
is now a Mexican citizen. Finally, the frieze’s profile image of Benito
Juárez denotes his dismantling of the French intervention and initi-
ation of the Reforma movement. Within this frontispiece, historical
episodes that would be elucidated in the five volumes of México a
través de los siglos are encapsulated visually.
México a través de los siglos is a history written from the present in
order to secure the future. It sought to exhibit Mexico’s rich past
and impending potential for modernity. The female figure of its fron-
tispiece is related to the 1834 Alegoría as well as the 1869 Constitución
by her simple costume elements. Notably different, however, is the
fact that this image of Mexico neither wears a Phrygian cap nor
holds a massive stone tablet; instead, she is poised with a small writ-
ing tablet and quill pen. She is Mexico, a nation ready to write her
history. She is Mexico prepared to claim parity with other nations
by virtue of having a deep history, that is, a complex national nar-
rative complete with an originating indigenous culture and nation-
forging events such as colonization, civil war, and wars of independence
as enacted by the male intercessors. Here, Mexico is invented again:
Her seductive powers are intact as the allegorical nation on the stage
of national history.
Conclusion
At once, in place of the particular individuality of each contracting

party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body,
composed of as many members as the assembly contains voices, and
receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its
will. . . . The Sovereign, being formed solely of the individuals who
compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs . . .32
As he read these words from Du contrat social by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
Don José Antonio de Villanueva tried to fit them into his own
32
Rousseau (1996) 52–53.
understanding. He looked out of his coach window as it rumbled

along the rough road to Mexico City on this chilly day in late
December 1794, and his lips silently repeated the words again.
Don José picked up his bookmark, a small printed image of the
Virgin of Guadalupe with the words “non facit taliter omni natione,”
stamped on it, marked this page and slipped the book back into its
regular hiding place under the coach seat. Turning his attention to
the passing scenery, gazing at the rolling landscape with serpentine
rivulets of dark smoke rising on the horizon indicating small Indian
villages, his heart was filled with affection for his patria. He loved
his motherland—its beautiful countryside, its colorful land, its wide
skies, its imposing mountains, and its people. Once more, Rousseau’s
words hummed in his head: “. . . a moral and collective body . . . the
Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals . . .,” and a glim-
mering of their meaning shone in his mind but, more significantly,
Don José felt Rousseau’s words in his heart as he continued to gaze
at his patria. “How incredible!” he thought.
This fictional narrative is based on Inquisition records held in
Mexico’s national archive. These proceedings indicate that in May
1795 an Inquisition prosecutor brought a case against Licenciado
Don José Antonio de Villanueva, a miner from the royal mines of
Taxco, for owning and reading forbidden books, including “El con-
trato social por Juan Jacobo Rousseau.”33 The documents focus on
Don José’s ‘crime’ and, of course, do not indicate his thoughts about
his readings. Nevertheless, this case, along with others similar to it
found in the archive, illustrates that despite Spain’s extensive efforts
to prohibit and banish them, revolutionary political writings were
circulating in New Spain among educated men.34
Spanish authorities had considerable concern about the implica-
tion of the ideas in Rousseau’s work and similar writings. Indeed,
these worries were well founded because the absolutist understand-
ing of sovereignty was dismantled in Rousseau’s lines and located in
a new body. These words offered ideas that disassembled the known
33
El señor inquisidor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra el Lic. D. José Antonio de
Villanueva, minero del real de Tasco [sic] por leer libros prohibidos . . . AGN-
201768, Inquisición, 1795, vol. 1326, Exp. 3, fols. 1–11.
34
Gaceta de México (29 August 1801), n. p.; AGN-202749, Inquisición, 1795, vol.
1361, Exp. 1, fols. 1–184 and AGN-204162, Inquisición, 1803, vol. 1414, Exp. 2,
fols. 280–289, 309–328.
reality of New Spain and assembled a truly new world, that is, the
often fragmented and complex nation of Mexico.
While new constructs of sovereignty would collide with older under-
standings, they continued to exploit the affective relationships for-
merly associated with absolutist sovereignty and its associated corporeal
imagery. Nationalist affections of the heart would be visualized through
female images of Mexico throughout the nineteenth century. As inde-
pendence became a reality for New Spain and throughout the nine-
teenth century, Mexican citizens like my fictional Don José would
find love of nation a powerful and alluring emotion moving them
to fanatic dedication, incredible feats of bravery, and heart-wrenching
sacrifices.
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CHAPTER THREE
THE VIRGIN OF THE ANDES:

INKA QUEEN AND CHRISTIAN GODDESS
Carol Damian
In 1532, the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his army

of 62 horsemen and 102 foot soldiers conquered the Inka empire
called Tawantinsuyu, the “Center of the Four Quarters,” with its cap-
ital at Cuzco, Peru. The Spanish Conquest ended more than one
hundred years of Inka domination over the indigenous Andean pop-
ulation. The Inka dynasty began, according to Inka legend, with
eight brothers and sisters. After achieving the dominant position of
leadership and to guarantee the purity of the ruling family, the Inka
Manco Ccapac, who called himself the son of the Sun God, Inti,
married his sister Mama Ocllo. Inti instructed Manco Ccapac and
Mama Ocllo to teach the people of the earth to worship the Sun
and the Moon (Quilla) and thus prosper. Mama Ocllo, the Coya (or
queen), was the woman most venerated among the Indians. She was
a goddess, the descendant of the Moon. She was the queen, the
wife/sister of the Inka king. They ruled in parallel duality. The Coya
wore and displayed her particular attributes and insignia, as did the
Inka, and was associated with the symbols of her role (Fig. 3.1).
Among these were weaving implements, feathers, birds, flowers, tipi
pins, and other ornaments. When the Spaniards conquered the Inka
Empire, the reverence to the Inka Coya would persist in Christian
images of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic Queen (Fig. 3.2).
For centuries, people throughout the world have revered the Virgin
Mary. But nowhere is she more beautiful and more mysterious than
in Cuzco, Peru, where she is portrayed as a distinctive image that
fuses Christian and Andean concepts. Around this image, the indige-
nous artists of Cuzco created a school of painting, the first in the
so-called New World and known as the Cuzco School, where they
could portray her in multiple ways, with many titles and identifying
attributes, few of which are Spanish in inspiration. By the seven-
teenth century, these artists earned commercial fame for their paint-
ings and their devotion to the Virgin Mary endures to this day.
74 carol damian
Fig. 3.1 Anon., School of Cuzco, Coya or Ñusta. 18th c., oil on canvas, 75” × 47”,
Museo Arqueológico, Cuzco, Peru.
the virgin of the andes 75
Fig. 3.2 Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata. 18th c., oil on
canvas, 78” × 51”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.
76 carol damian
Although art historians traditionally describe the paintings of Cuzco

as ‘syncretic,’ a combination of Spanish and Andean concepts, the
actual meaning of that term is seldom explained. In this paper, ‘syn-
cretism’ refers to the reconciliation, or attempted reconciliation, of
differing beliefs as evidenced in the syncretic images of Cuzco which
intertwine Andean and Christian beliefs and painting techniques.
While the Spanish artists who came to Peru to train the native peo-
ple were informed by European or ‘Western’ artistic techniques based
upon Renaissance figurative and naturalistic imagery, native artists
were unconcerned with such formal or outward appearances. For
the Andean artist, with over two thousand years of a rich artistic
heritage behind him or her, the most important aspect of a created
object was its essence, or spirit. He sought to create a visual expres-
sion of his beliefs and that of his community through art. The images
that he portrayed did not represent particular deities in the same
sense as those by the European artist who created paintings of the
Virgin Mary to represent her on earth. In contrast, the object cre-
ated by the native artist for veneration was the deity or one of its
manifestations, and it spoke through a language of signs and symbols.
By deciphering the symbols found in the syncretic image of the
Virgin as she was painted in Cuzco it is possible to distinguish what
was Andean from what was Christian and to explain how they
worked together. Identifying the Christian symbols is easy and famil-
iar; identifying the Andean, however, is a complex process that
reaches back into the pre-Hispanic past, well before the arrival of
the Inka and his Queen, the Coya. Indeed, the Andean archaeo-
logical record has provided images and objects that date before 1000
BCE and continue through the period of the Inka Empire (ca.
1400–1535 CE) that help to explain the post-contact Andean ven-
eration of Mary as a new female deity.
The role of female deities in the Andes was reaffirmed in the
native myths and legends recorded by the Spanish chroniclers of the
early conquest period. By incorporating the imagery and symbolism
associated with these female deities and other royal personalities, the
colonial image of the Virgin Mary assumed new significance as an
Andean, rather than a purely European/Western, deity. Her Christian-
Spanish iconography coexisted with its counterpart inspired by such
deities as the Earth Mother, called Pachamama, and the Goddess
of the Moon, Quilla. She was also a Queen to the native peoples—
an Inka Coya. She was revered on multiple levels as fertility god-
dess, lunar goddess, agricultural goddess, mother, and queen. She

became the perfect embodiment of an Andean cosmology that empha-
sized the all-encompassing unity that exists between human beings,
spirits, and the land. At the same time, the Virgin Mary of Cuzco
was also created to adapt to the imposition of an alien religion with
its own symbols. She became a means of insuring, in a fractured
world, the survival of ancient ritual. Although her Cuzqueño image
may be inimitable, it is, when seen through Andean eyes, but one
more link in a long chain of ritual objects and nature worship that
connects the Inka past with the viceregal period.
It is important to understand that complex religious organization,
such as that which developed in the Andean region, produces a com-
plexity of symbols that impedes the rigid categorization of images
into exclusive models. Furthermore, the very nature of the Cuzco
School defies traditional methodology based upon a chronology of
clear stages of artistic development or perfectly defined styles. Moreover,
there are no set definitions of how the Virgin should look for each
avocation, whether painted or sculpted. In other words, not all
“Virgins of the Rosary” or “Immaculate Conceptions” look exactly
alike: within each ‘category’ of images of the Virgin Mary, there are
many variations and combinations.
The paintings of the Virgin from the School of Cuzco are com-
plicated combinations of a multitude of iconographic themes. However,
the one consistent feature that appears as a dominant stylistic and
iconographic trait is the triangular shape of the Virgin’s dress as a
reference to the shape of a mountain and to her role as Pachamama,
the Earth Mother.* Whether the subject relates to her role as pro-
tector of the Earth, the Moon Deity, or a royal queen, the Virgin
Mary is always dressed in an elaborately decorated gown of trian-
gular form. So pervasive is this motif among Cuzco images, it appears
not only on canvases but on murals and statues as well. The Virgin
in her identification with Pachamama maintains the Inka people’s
great reverence for nature, which they worshipped on a daily basis.
Whereas in traditional Western society the world is human-oriented
and grounded in the individual, the indigenous worldview regards
the universe as nature-based. No differentiation between Man and
Nature is made. The worship of the Earth dominates the lives of those
* On female association with the earth/mountain construct in precontact Mexico,

see M. E. Bernal-García, Ch. 6 this text.
78 carol damian
who revere everything in nature as sacred. In the paintings of Cuzco,

then, the artist replicates the earth-mountain in the shape of Mary’s
dress, and pays tribute to nature’s abundance with birds and flowers.
By considering the most popular images of the Virgin as she is por-
trayed as the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata, the Pastoral Virgin,
the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Spinning, or the Virgin of
the Candlestick with their many variations, this constant reference
to Earth Mother becomes evident. To look at the Virgin of the
Andes is to look at a complex of symbols and concepts. The shape
of her dress; the dress itself with its golden ornamentation and rich
array of flowers and jewels; the offerings of Andean flora and fauna
that accompany her; the presence of feathers as decorative additions
and a host of other attributes, including the moon, contribute to the
image of the Virgin of the Andes as a distinct product of her envi-
ronment, natural and spiritual.
Pachamama is a comprehensive deity, identified with the Earth,
worshipped on numerous levels and in numerous manifestations as
the protector of the crops and giver of life for over two thousand
years. Pachamama and her agricultural counterparts became identified
with particular iconographic attributes related to fertility rituals and
astronomical and calendrical cycles. These included ritual dressing,
feathers, solar radiances, birds, and offering objects. She represents
the physical world, paired with (and in certain opposition to) the
Sun. Thus, everything on earth and in it is, or is sustained by,
Pachamama. She does not have concrete form as a human deity.
Her force is contained within the earth, a rock in the field, a stream,
a mountain. The Spanish writers state repeatedly that: “They wor-
ship the Earth because they say it was their mother and they had
to make her form and her offerings; and they also said she was the
mother of fire, and corn and other seeds and the sheep and cattle,
and the chicha [a fermented corn beverage].”1 For this reason, they
“worshipped the summits of all peaks and mountain passes, and
offered maize and other things” to their Mother the Earth.2
One Andean legend portrays Mother Earth’s all-encompassing
nature by describing the sexual/reproductive parts of her body as
Lake Titicaca, her torso as Quito, her heart in Cuzco, and her
mouth in Lima.3 The entire Andean world of the Inka was con-
1
Molina (1968) 76.
2
Molina (1535) 59.
3
Randall (1987) 267.
tained within Mother Earth. The mountain became a metaphor for

life and existence in the Andean world. The extraordinary reverence
for the Earth was manifested in shrines throughout the Andean ter-
ritory. From the simple paga a la tierra (pay the earth), which offers
something (usually chicha) to the earth before every agricultural and
significant activity, to the placement of stones and other ritual objects
on roadside locations and grand pilgrimage shrines, often in inac-
cessible and isolated locations, worship of the Earth was the most
persistent of Andean rituals. It was also the most difficult to iden-
tify, eradicate, or replace. Within a 20-mile radius of the city of
Cuzco alone, the archaeologist John Howland Rowe counted 350
earth shrines mentioned in the Spanish chronicle descriptions, most
of them along the ceques, the ritual lines of demarcation and procession.4
This Andean tradition of Earth worship manifests in a number of
ways in the Christian art of the Andes. The images of the Virgin
Mary in a wide bell-shaped dress replicate Pachamama as Earth
Mother, in the form of a mountain or as the ‘body-mountain’ itself,
and as she symbolizes Nature in the fertility of the pastoral land-
scape. The image of the Virgin as the mountain is most evident in
those works that actually describe her as or in the mountain. One
of the best-known paintings and a striking example to illustrate the
Virgin as the Mountain and worshiped within the context of a royal
Inka and Christian presence comes from Alto Peru. In La Virgen
María con el Cerro de Potosí (The Virgin Mary with the Mountain of Potosiama)
(Fig. 3.3), the face and hands of the Virgin are actually within the
conical shape of the mountain of Potosí. In the celestial level above,
God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost hold a crown
over the mountain peak (the Virgin’s head). Within her moun-
tain/gown are described roads and trees and animals, with native
people going about their daily activities. They are totally integrated
within the landscape beneath the protection of the Mountain. The
landscape is transformed into a ritual of man and nature whose com-
patibility is dependent upon the beneficence of Mother Earth. The
Virgin Mary is intimately identified with the Andean countryside in
similar paintings of numerous titles in which she dons the moun-
tain-shaped dress strewn with flora and fauna distinctly Andean, not
Spanish.
4
Rowe (1946) 183–130, and (1979) 1–80; and Zuidema (1964). Chroniclers
Bernabé Cobo and Cristóbal de Molina also describe the ceque system.
80 carol damian
Fig. 3.3 Anon., Alto Peru, La Virgen María con el cerro de Potosí (The Virgin Mary with
the Mountain of Potasiama). 18th c., oil on canvas, 53” × 41 ½”, Casa Nacional de
Moneda, Potosí, Bolivia.
This concept of ‘oneness’ with the land is symbolized in images

of La Divina Peregrina (The Virgin of the Pilgrims) from Cuzco. In
them, the Virgin wears a shepherd’s hat and a gown profusely dec-
orated with flowers. For the Spaniards, the broad-brimmed shep-
herd’s hat identifies the Virgin as La Divina Peregrina. Sacred pilgrimage
is also an essential aspect of Andean religion. The people make pil-
grimages to sacrosanct locations, mountains, rocks, and caves to pay
tribute to the nature spirits who dwell there and they leave offerings
while pledging their servitude to the spirit of the land. The image
of the Virgin of the Pilgrims combines all of these elements: agri-
cultural protector, pilgrim, and humble servant. She wears a dress
that is a tapestry of floral brocade patterns and golden details and
borders. In becoming a carpet of flowers and jewels, she symbolizes
the beneficence of Mother Nature. In the Andean tradition, flowers
were associated with the cult to Pachamama. For the Inka, flowers
were harbingers of the harvest; even men placed flowers in their
hats or behind their ears during harvest celebrations. The Coya had
her own specific flowers, which were offered to her on agricultural
feast days.
The reverence for Mother Earth is complemented by the worship
of the Moon as a female deity associated with the cycles of nature
and of women. Just as the Spanish incorporated the moon into
images of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception who
trounces the forces of evil, the Andean artist also used the moon as
a symbol of ancient veneration. In numerous paintings from Cuzco,
the moon has special meaning beyond that of Christian symbolism
for an audience that had long worshipped the Moon Goddess. The
Spanish chronicles describe the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco with
its gold figure of the Sun God Inti and silver figures of the Moon.
They also describe how the figure of the Moon was carried in pro-
cession during the month of November and revered as Queen, Mama
Quilla. The Andean artist, far from the strict guidelines imposed by
the Church in Rome, incorporated the moon in numerous images
of the Virgin Mary, confusing and conflating its meaning as pre-
scribed in European images associated with the Immaculate Conception
and Assumption of the Virgin. As a result, the symbolism of the
Andes enhances that of Christianity, and vice versa.
The paintings of the Virgin that describe her association with the
moon were popular subjects for Cuzco artists. For the Andean believer,
the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, so important an image
82 carol damian
of reverence for the Spanish, was the perfect foil for their devotion
to the deity of the Moon who was also the Queen of the Inka, the
Coya, and the Consort of the Sun Inti. Unchanging and precise, yet
in constant flux, the moon vividly symbolized the idea of eternity
for the Andean peoples. They realized that the moon also moved
the tides to ebb and flow, and the deity of the Moon became the
eternal mistress of the waters, the protective deity of life, and espe-
cially the patron of women in childbirth.
The generalized devotion to the moon of pre-Inka societies was
elevated to royal status by the Inkas who identified the lunar deity
with Mama Ocllo, the wife/sister of the first Inka, Manco Ccapac,
and with their reverence for her as Mama Quilla, the Moon and
the Consort of Inti. The wak’a (sacred object) of the Moon was
brought out from the Temple of the Sun during the month of
November for the Feast of the Lord Inka.5 The veneration of the
Moon as Queen coincides with the regal image of the Virgin of the
Immaculate Conception and of Mary as the Queen of Heaven.
Triumphantly soaring above her earthly subjects on the crescent
moon, Mary was easily appropriated by the Indian artisan into an
amalgamated image representing an Andean/Christian lunar goddess.
The image of the Immaculate Conception as painted by indige-
nous artists demonstrates the manner in which Andean artists, who
were taught to copy from Spanish models that were plentiful in post-
contact Cuzco, incorporated their own distinctive artistry and Andean
details and iconography into the subject. Although the Cuzqueño
interpretation of the Immaculate Conception defines this image,
indigenous artists borrowed liberally from other European avocations
of the Virgin, including Mary as Queen of Heaven and the Virgin
in Glory. Specific elements from each of these European sources
were re-arranged and re-interpreted by the native artist to create
distinctive Andean constructions of the Virgin-on-the-moon motif.
These idiosyncratic images produced by artists of the School of
Cuzco, especially, were given a variety of titles, including the Virgin
of the Candlestick, the Virgin of the Rosary, and the Virgin of
Bethlehem.
5
Molina (1535) 36. Passa-Mama means moon in Collao dialect; in Kechwa it is
Quilla.
In addition to the painted image of the Virgin of the Immaculate

Conception, she was also represented as a dressed statue (imágen de
vestir) on the crescent moon, a particularly popular form in colonial
Cuzco. These statues were carried in processions and dressed for
special occasions in elaborate garments. Although some of these
sculpted images were European in origin, many more were produced
by native artists who used European images as models. These Andean
statues, like paintings of the Virgin, also incorporated Andean sym-
bolism and meaning.
Andean peoples had long used textiles and other objects as sacred
additions to adorn idols, and the clothing of the Virgin Mary may
indeed have become a substitute for the traditional ritual accorded
the wak’as of their ancestors. In addition, symbolism associated with
the placement of gold and jeweled attributes, scepters, headdresses,
and other offerings on the anda, or “processional litter,” of the Virgin
of the Immaculate Conception, for example, recreates the symbolic
offerings of the pre-contact past. In this manner, the images of the
Virgin Mary painted or sculpted by Cuzco’s colonial artists replicate
the dressed and adorned statues and mummies of their ancestors.
Splendidly arrayed in the finest brocades and tapestry cloths, she
represents not only the Queen of Heaven, but also the native Queen
of the Andean peoples.
The documents of the visitas during the campaigns against idola-
try of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries describe
Indians weaving a mantle for the Virgin and simultaneously one for
the wak’a.6 The idolatry documents also relate that on numerous
occasions wak’as were hidden beneath the litters or within the dresses
of the statues. Father Pablo Joseph Arriaga recounted the Corpus
Christi Procession in 1620, during which the native peoples cele-
brate Oncoymita, a Festival to the Sun: They have “slyly hidden a
wak’a on the very platform of the monstrance of the Holy Sacra-
ment . . . and wak’as in the hollow niches of the saints in front of
the holy altar, and others below the altar.”7
6
Arriaga (1620) 68.
7
Ibid., 70. Dr. Ávila discovered that in Huarochirí, the Feast of the Assumption
was used to disguise the festival to the idols of the woman called Chupixamor and
Mamayoc. This provoked him to undertake massive campaigns to search out and
destroy the wak’as; see Salomon and Urioste (1991) 26. For other such surreptitious
events, see also Polo de Ondegardo (c. 1559–1571).
84 carol damian
During the idolatry campaigns, the use of fine Inka cloth on the
statues of the Virgin and saints was the subject of investigation.
Father Arriaga wrote:
I know a place where a cloak was made for the image of Our Lady
and a shirt for their wak’a from the same cloth. They feel and even
say that they can worship their wak’as while believing in God the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus, for the worship of Jesus Christ
they generally offer what they offer their wak’as.8
The symbolism of cloth is further enhanced by its golden threads
and golden details identified as Inka insignia that take on new mean-
ing in the painting of Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga, ca. 1737, by
the indigenous artist Luis Nino of Alto Perú (Fig. 3.4). She com-
memorates a Spanish event but is depicted in the characteristic lav-
ish style of the Cuzco School. The Virgin stands beneath an elaborate
European baroque arch decorated in sculptural relief profusely orna-
mented in patterns of gold. Her crown and radiant halo display the
native artist’s metallurgical skills. She also wears the flat triangular
gown of gold and tapestry brocade tooled in gold stencil, a tech-
nique called estofado, so elaborate that the Christ Child is lost in its
patterns. The interesting semi-circular design on the bottom of her
dress contains references to the moon. Its abstract form appears to
have been inspired by the form of the tumi, the ceremonial knife of
the Inka and pre-Inka peoples. Many of these knives have been
found in tombs, most notably in those of the Chimor Civilization
(which was conquered by the Inka), and relate to regal warrior sta-
tus. In a colonial portrait painted by an anonymous artist of an Inka
warrior princess, La Ñusta Chanan Cori Coca, the lunar-shaped knife
is used as a tupu pin to fasten her cape. It is exactly like the pins
that fastened the dressings of the Nasca women depicted on pottery
over one thousand years before. In the Inka portrait, the princess
stands beside an Inka warrior and triumphantly displays the head
of her victim. The Ñusta Chanan Cori Coca is the descendant of
the Inka warrior Coya, the ‘vicious’ Mama Huaco. The knife is a
warrior-specific object of victory and conquest.9 As a decorative device
8
Arriaga (1620) 72.
9
Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) Ch XI: 45. The warrior princess of Inka legend
was one of the four legendary sisters/founders of the Inka dynasty, Mama Huaco
(“who was fierce and cruel”). The description of this vicious female comes from
Spanish accounts to discredit the Inkas (and there are discrepancies between the
Fig. 3.4 Luis Nino, Alto Peru, Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga. Ca. 1735, oil
on canvas, 59 ½” × 43 ¾”, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.
86 carol damian
within the patterns of the dress of the Virgin of Málaga, the tumi
relates to the moon and to Mary as the victorious Queen of Heaven
and Queen of the Andes. When the form of the tumi is turned
upside down, it resembles a flower bud, specifically the bud of the
ñukchu lily, the sacred flower of the Inka. The compressed flat pat-
terning of the entire arrangement of figural and decorative devices
reveals other solar forms, including the radiant aureola behind her
crown and the semi-circular crescent form above her shoulders.
Within the masterful application of gold leaf and estofado patterns,
the artist repeats the circular and semi-circular forms of the moon
to produce a composition of great elegance and complexity.
The image of the Virgin Mary in association with Pachamama
and the Moon is clearly revealed through signs and symbols incor-
porated within the Christian iconography. With the symbolism accorded
the Royal Consort of the Inka, the Coya, the Virgin Mary acquires
another level of meaning. This symbolism relates particularly to
respect for the Coya and her responsibilities to women, as well as
to pre-Inka and Inka traditions associated with cloth and clothing.
“The Coya, or Queen, took care to teach the women to spin and
weave wool and cotton, as well as other tasks and occupations of
their profession.”10
Descendants of the sister co-founders of the Inka dynasty, the
women of royal Inka blood commanded the same respect as did
the men: both were progenitors of the Inka race and responsible for
the founding of the first ten ayllus (kinship groups) of Cuzco. As such
they owned land and their mummies were retained as wak’as and
venerated with great ceremony. In the Temple of the Sun, on
either side of the figure of the Moon were the bodies of the dead
queens, arranged in order of antiquity. Mama Ocllo, the mother of
Huaina Ccapac, was placed in front of the Moon and face to face
with her, being thus distinguished from the rest as the mother of such
a son.11
identification of the sisters and their roles); however, women did play a role in Inka
conquest according to Inka legend. See Dransart (1987) 62.
10
Cobo, History of the Inca Empire (1653) Book II, Ch 4:108.
11
Vega (1609) Part I, Book III, Ch XXI:182.
The Inka queen and princesses (Ñustas) played their most important
roles in the agricultural festivities and in the production of the sacred
cloths worn by the Inka and given as offerings to the idols. They
were also identified by regal insignia and dress and given titles.12
The Inka Coya wore a very specific costume, not unlike that of
the Virgin Mary (Fig. 3.1). She was revered as the descendant of the
Goddess of the Moon and the Consort of the Sun God Deity.
The similarities accorded the ritual dressing of both the Virgin and the
Coya, as well as the specific items of clothing repeatedly associated
with their portrayal, are quite remarkable. The Coya wore a long
dress called an anacu that was tied many times with a wide sash
called chumpi. Over this dress she wore a cloak called an iliclla that
was put over her shoulders. Bringing the corners together over her
chest, she fastened it with a pin, tipi. The pins that were used to
fasten the clothes of Inka women were very specific to each Coya
in shape and size. The head was made of a small metal plate in a
variety of shapes relating to a basically semi-circular form, its edges
so thin and sharp that many things were cut with them. Some of
these tipis had many little gold and silver bells hanging from them.
The Coyas adorned their hair by wearing it long and loose or braided
or bound with a band called a vincha. For their headdress they wore
a piece of rich cumbi (very fine) cloth called pampacona, folded sev-
eral times to a width of about 5 1/2 inches. One edge dropped
down over the forehead and the rest hung over the hair down the
back of the head. Across the chest, from one shoulder to another,
they wore strings of certain beads, called chaquira, made of bone and
seashells of various colors.13
As recorded in post-conquest portraits of the Inka Coyas and Ñus-
tas painted in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries and in the
12
Ibid., Book One, Ch XXVI:63.
13
Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 2:188.
88 carol damian
drawings of Guaman Poma de Ayala,14 the costume of the Inka

queens appears to be quite consistent and to have survived with lit-
tle change for many years. There is little reason to doubt that the
costumes in the post-conquest portrayals were very different from
those of the reigning Inkas of the pre-conquest and conquest peri-
ods. Their survival with little change throughout the colonial period
in portraiture attests to the significance of noble Inka dress as a dis-
tinct trait of status worn with great pride for generations. Furthermore,
the Inka objects on which Inka dress is depicted—the dressed stat-
ues, pottery vessels, and keros—affirm that Inka women wore dresses
with capes and tipis (or tipkis, pins that actually fastened the gar-
ment and were worn horizontally) and tupus (pins that hung verti-
cally from the capes).
To view the image of the Virgin Mary as part of the structure of
ideological sign systems of Inka and pre-Inka ritual objects imparts
new meaning to its form and function. The Inka appropriated specific
Andean symbols and developed their own vocabulary of ritual iconog-
raphy. The language of Andean ritual was well established by the
time of the arrival of the Spaniards. The native artist maintained its
efficacy by incorporating it into Christian imagery.
Images of the Virgin Mary Spinning relate to the role of the Coya
as the teacher of women and to Mary as a humble domestic maiden
called by God. In these paintings, Mary is dressed in a combina-
tion of noble Spanish and Inka costumes. The golden patterns of
the cloth incorporate both the floral brocades of European origin
and the geometric patterns of the Inka. The frame of flowers is an
allusion to the rites of fertility and abundance presided over by the
Coya. The young Virgin wears a headband (llautu) of golden thread
around her head with a curious curl on her forehead. European
images of the Virgin Mary consistently describe her hair parted in
the middle. This unusual rendering of a curl in the Andean version,
however, suggests the bang of hair that descends below the King’s
and Queen’s royal headband. To the Spanish observer, the curl is
a delightful addition of the native artist. To the native viewer, the
headband and curl are royal insignia. The Child Mary is the equiv-
alent of the Inka princess (Ñusta) and the Chosen Women (elite
women in the service of the Inka). Also, for the Andean observer,
14
Guaman Poma de Ayala (1614).
the golden radiances behind her head are symbolic of Inka royalty’s
homage to the sun. The Child Virgin holds the spindle aloft and
twirls out the thread, as Indian women do throughout the day,
throughout their lives, to this day. Undoubtedly copied from Spanish
models of the Virgin learning to sew, the Virgin Spinning exemplifies
the significance of the weavers of the Andes, especially the Chosen
Women, and the strength of their traditions. In the Andes, weaving
was a ritual act for devotional purposes developed over centuries.
Cloth was also a “chief article of tribute given for the service of the
Inka and of religion” and “large quantities were made up for sacrifices,
for in all the festivals much cloth was offered up.”15 The Spanish
chroniclers marveled at the ability of the people to weave. Bernabé
Cobo wrote:
In ancient times, they made five different kinds of textiles. One, called
abasca, was coarse and ordinary; another, called cumbi was fine and
valuable; the third was made with colored feathers . . .; the fourth was
like cloth of silver and gold embroidered in chaquira; and the fifth
was a very coarse and thick cloth used for various rugs and blankets.16
Special attention to the clothing of the Inka and to ceremonial and
offering cloth was given by the Chosen Women responsible for its
production. These garments were for the Inka himself and would be
worn only once, then burned. The Spanish describe storehouses and
tombs full of cloth, and ancestor mummies wrapped in cloth and
accompanied by folded textiles brought out to the public square on
special feast days. They took special note of the elaborate costumes
for every ceremony and festival. To the Andean believer, the image
of the Virgin Spinning was more than that of a humble schoolgirl
learning a domestic chore. Her responsibility to maintain the tradi-
tion of Andean weaving, in the service of the gods and the Inka
himself, was tantamount.
Images of the Virgin and Child are particularly endearing to the
people of Cuzco and the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata is among the
most characteristic and beautiful (Fig. 3.2). Sentimental and mater-
nal, her representation as a queenly figure adorned with flowers and
jewels elevates the position of the Virgin to that of a queen and the
Child becomes a miniature king. She holds lilies (Christian symbols
of purity and the flower of the Virgin) and the rosary. Both the
15
Polo de Ondegardo (1571) 167.
16
Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 11:225.
90 carol damian
Virgin and Child wear elaborate brocade dresses with garlands of

pearls secured by jeweled flower broaches. The swags of pearls are
characteristic of the Virgin of Pomata. Pearls were Spanish symbols
of perfection, admired as jewels of great beauty and luxury. They
were also prized ornaments for Andean idols dressed by pre-Hispanic
coastal peoples that were buried in elite tombs as accompaniments
to the mummies.
The Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata combines a number of interest-
ing iconographic attributes: jewels, mountain-shaped gown, and, dis-
tinctively, feathers. The use of feathers in images of the Virgin Mary
was particularly associated with Cuzco. They are especially linked
with the Virgin of Pomata and can be found in her crown and in
that of the Child Jesus. Although feathers may have adorned hel-
mets worn by the Conquistadors, and in some Spanish images of
the Virgin of the Pilgrims she dons a wide-brimmed felt hat with a
feather (in the style of European pilgrimage hats), feathered crowns
are not found in the royal iconography associated with the Virgin
as Queen of Heaven in European representations. It is significant to
note, however, that feathers, long associated with ritual in the Andes,
signify royalty in Inka iconography.
Feathers were used on female idols as early as the period of the
Nasca civilization (circa 200 BCE–600 CE) as symbolic attributes of
the fertility figures. Elaborate feather garments and headdresses clothed
the mummies of Chimu royalty who continued to occupy the north
coast of Peru upon the arrival of the Spanish. Their original sym-
bolism appears to relate to birds and winged mythical creatures. The
association of birds with communicators to the spirit world is a well-
established trope in the Andean world. Birds were present as guardian
figures at Chavín de Huántar (circa 400–200 BCE) where they are
incised in the architectural ornamentation of the portico of the prin-
cipal pyramid. Birds are important iconographic elements in the
many culture areas of the Andes. They can be found on pottery,
textiles, and stone and wood objects. Winged figures were guardians
of the deity called the “Gateway God” (Viracocha?) in the culture
of the Peruvian-Bolivian altiplano city of Tiwanaku (ca. 1100 CE).
The Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata relates to the spirits and birds of
the mountains. Added to the mountainous shape of her dress, the
feathers also place her in a royal Inka context, affirming the Inka
appropriation of Earth Mother for their own aggrandizement. The
Virgin bears the attributes of Inka royalty, in particular of Mama
Ocllo who taught the women how to plant and harvest the agri-
cultural fields. Feathers, spondylus shells, and tupu and tipi pins were
distinct attributes of Inka royalty and were not worn by ordinary
people. Feathers had significance for the female members of the Inka
nobility, especially. Furthermore, over the years and with the destruc-
tion of the Inka state religion, feathers survived in association with
women. Feathers assumed the position of both agricultural and royal
symbols, as appropriate for the Queen of Heaven, the new Coya,
as they once had been for the Inka royalty. The Virgin of the Rosary
of Pomata pays tribute to the royal lineage of Pachamama and the
Inka at the same time. In this image, the combination of pearls and
feathers is a synthesis of regal imagery. Vestiges of the belief system
of popular and state ritual assume new authority within this specifically
Andean/Christian interpretation of the Virgin.
The Virgin of the Candlestick with Tunic of Feathers, one of the most
extraordinary subjects of the School of Cuzco, incorporates a vari-
ety of Andean symbols within its Christian imagery, including the
moon, solar rays, gold ornamented fabric, and qantu and ñukchu
lilies among the flowers (Fig. 3.5). The Virgin and Child are atop
a pedestal, a statue painting framed by a border of flowers and
drawn curtains. The crescent moon is described in the hem of her
gown. She holds a lit candle to symbolize Christ as the light of the
world and as a reference to Candlemas celebrations. She wears a
crown with radiances that form a halo above. The Christ child also
wears a crown and is held to her breast and wrapped tightly in
white lace in the manner of Andean babies. Garcilaso de la Vega
found such tight bundles peculiar:
They brought up their children in a strange way, both Inca and com-
mon folk, rich and poor, without distinction, with the least possible
pampering. As soon as the infant was born . . . it was swaddled in
shawls . . . Their arms were kept inside the swaddling clothes for more
than three months, because it was thought that if they were loosened
earlier, they would grow weak in the arm.17
In this painting, the Child Jesus is swaddled in white cloth; only his
little hand protrudes in a gesture of peace. The Virgin is clothed in a
red brocade dress and cape elaborately ornamented with gold patterns.
The gown has lace sleevelets and she wears a lace veil, decoration
17
Vega (1609) Book IV, Ch XII:212.
92 carol damian
Fig. 3.5 Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Candlestick of Tenerife with Tunic of
Feathers. Ca. 1680–1700, oil on canvas, 61” × 45”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima,
Peru.
inspired by Spanish noble dress. Over her gown, however, she wears
a tunic of red, blue, and white feathers edged in lace. The addition
of feathers to the gown of the Virgin Mary is a specifically Andean
feature with regal and ritual connotations dating back two thousand
years.
Feathers were signs of religious authority. Father Blas Valera de-
scribes, with an accompanying drawing, the Huampar chucu, a crown
of sheets of gold encrusted with semi-precious stones worn by the
supreme sun priest, Vilahoma. A solar disk was inscribed on the front.
A diadem of feathers from “large parrots called guacamayas was across
the top, with the three feathers of the Inka insignia at the center.”18
The presence of feather crowns and feather garments in the tombs
of warrior-priests and other important religious and administrative
leaders affirms their significance for numerous culture areas in the
Andes.
Feathers adorned the imagery of anthropomorphic and fantastic
deity figures from as far back as Chavín de Huántar. Feather cloths
were first produced in ancient Peru by the south coast Paracas peo-
ple (circa 500 BCE) and subsequently by the Nasca, Tiwanaku, Wari,
Chimu, Chancay, and Inka peoples, as well as in northern Chile
and northwest Argentina. Amazingly preserved in the dry desert
tombs of the Andean people, feather tunics, breast cloths, loincloths,
purses, masks, and fans adorned the mummy bundles and were
placed as offerings in the elaborately prepared tombs of the noble
elite or priestly class. There is little doubt that these cloths were used
in life as well as in death, but always reserved for a specific class of
people. Feathers come from a variety of coastal, highland, and jun-
gle birds native to the Andean culture area. The feathers were col-
lected and stitched to the natural or dyed cotton backing with
horizontal threads called hileras. Feathers were also glued to masks
that covered the faces of mummy bundles. There are a few exam-
ples of feather textiles decorated with gold and silver ornaments.19
The colors of feather tunics run the full color range of native birds,
from reds and blues to brilliant yellows and greens. Their designs
18
Blas Valera (c. 1590) 363. Guacamayas are also described in the origin myths
by Molina (1535) 8.
19
Reid (1990) 2.
94 carol damian
are primarily simple geometric color patterns (stripes and checker-

boards, especially). However, some exhibit the simplified forms of
birds, monkeys, deities, and snakes. The designs of feather cloths
were associated with mythology and diverse ancestral personalities
and their legends. The majority of these stories tell of birds and
flying creatures or humans turned into birds.
For the Inka peoples, feather textiles were first and foremost cer-
emonial decorations and tribute offerings given to the royal family
and their ancestors or to the Temple of the Sun. Great quantities
of feather cloths were made for the Inka nobility and collected in
royal storehouses for use on special festival days, in initiation cere-
monies or in death rituals. When the Spanish arrived, they discov-
ered these storehouses filled with abundant supplies of both feathers
and feather cloths:
Almost all of the feathers were iridescent, with an admirable sheen
which looked like very fine gold. Another kind was an iridescent golden
green. And there was an immense amount of those tiny feathers which
are found on the chest of the little birds that we call tominejo (hum-
mingbird).20
The cloths were made by the Chosen Women and specific tech-
niques and feathers determined their use and symbolic value. Certain
festivals demanded special colors or patterns, similar to the pattern-
ing of Inka garments. Although the secrets of this symbolic vocab-
ulary are now lost, the feather cloths and ornaments were always
highly prized for their aesthetic beauty, while the documentation of
their value and use by the Spaniards affirms their significance. The
description of Don Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-yamqui of a grand
feast for the birth of Yahuar-huaccac Inka Yupanqui, the son of
Inka Ruca, is illustrative of the Inka use of feathers: “The square
and all the streets were filled with arches of feathers, and the house
of Coricancha was entirely covered with rich plumes, both within
and without.”21
Feathers were also used on the parasols that were held above the
litters of the Inka and his Queen. Ceremonial cloth constructed with
20
Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 11:226.
21
Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua (c. 1620) 89. See also Pizarro (1571) 242.
Molina (1535) 19, describes feathers strewn before the path of the Inka; and the
placement of feathers on the wak’as and image of the sun, 25.
feathers is symbolic of Inka royalty and significant for the mainte-

nance of Andean traditions. According to Cobo:
Feather cloths were the most esteemed and valued, and this was quite
reasonable because the ones that I have seen would be highly regarded
anywhere. They were made on the cumbi, but in such a way that the
feathers stand out on the wool and cover it like velvet. The material
that they had for this kind of cloth was extensive because incredible
numbers and varieties of birds are found in this land with such excel-
lent colors that it is beyond belief.22
The Andean believer attempting to reconcile Christian ideology with
ancient concepts identified with the birds of Catholic doctrine. Wings
were the symbols of divine mission for the Catholic Church. The
Holy Ghost as the white dove was the communicator for the Christian
god. Angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, with their feath-
ered wings, were the guardians of the Christian world and residents
of heaven.23 The Catholic priests taught that Lucifer was the prince
of the fallen angels in revolt against God, defeated by the Archangel
Michael, and tumbled from his place in heaven. Angels with feath-
ered wings were not difficult for the Andean people to understand.
Winged creatures were part of their heritage:24 the bird of the Coya
was easily transferable to the symbolism of the Virgin Mary.
The feather tunic covering the beautifully embroidered garment
worn by The Virgin of the Candlestick with Tunic of Feathers exactly repeats
the pattern found on feather tunics interred with mummies on the
desert coast of Peru. Feathered garments (notably not worn by the
Virgin in European representations) were the valuable property of
Andean nobility and of their mummified ancestors. By dressing the
Virgin in a feather tunic, she becomes the special vehicle for the
Andean artist to pay homage to ancient customs of ritual and royalty.
In the numerous representations of the Virgin in the Andes, indige-
nous artists created a locus from which to battle the trauma of con-
quest and the subsequent loss of identity. In these images they inflected
22
Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch II:226.
23
There is no doubt that another interesting subject of the Cuzco School, the
paintings of the Archangels with their elaborate Spanish costumes, weapons, and
wings, was inspired by the Andean fascination with birds and their ease of iden-
tity with feathered creatures.
24
Las Plumas del Sol y los Ángeles de la Conquista (1993).
96 carol damian
pre-contact symbols and meaning—the sacred landscape, implements

of war, ritual textiles, feathers—in the body of the most revered
woman in Euro-Christian belief. At the same time, they preserved
ancient female deities, especially Pachamama and the Moon Goddess,
and recorded, to a degree, the position of royal women in pre-con-
tact Inka society by imbuing some of the Virgin’s traditional attributes
with new (that is, ancient) symbolism and by adding indigenous rit-
ual objects and motifs to her litany of traditional ones. The Virgin
of the Andes was both Inka Queen and Christian Goddess.
Bibliography
Arriaga, P. J. de (1620) The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru, trans. L. C. Keating

(Lexington: 1968).
Blas Valera, Fr. (c. 1590) “Relacion de las costumbres antiguas de los naturales del
Piru,” Revista del Archivo Histórico del Cuzco 4 (1953) 363.
Beach: 1994).
Cobo, Fr. B. (1653) History of the Inca Empire, ed. and trans. R. Hamilton (Austin:
1978).
—— (1653) Inca Religion and Customs, ed. and trans. R. Hamilton (Austin: 1990
[1653]).
Dansart, P. (1987) “Women and Ritual Conflict in Inka Society,” in Images of Women
in Peace and War, eds. S. Macdonald, P. Holden, and S. Ardener (London: 1987).
Gisbert, T. (1980) Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: 1980).
Guaman Poma de Ayala, F. (1614) Nueva corónica y buen goberno, facsimile (Paris:
1936).
Las plumas del sol y los ángeles de la Conquista (1993), ex. cat. (Lima: 1993).
Mesa, J. de, and T. Gisbert (1982) Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vols. 1 and 2 (Lima:
1982).
Molina, C. de (1968) “Cosas acaescidas en el Perú,” in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles,
ed. F. Esteve Barba (Madrid: 1968) 76.
—— (1535) “An Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas,” in Narratives of the
Rites and Laws of the Yncas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 59.
Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua, Don J. de Santa Cruz (ca. 1620) “An Account of
the Antiquities of Peru,” in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, ed. and
trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 89.
Pizarro, P. (1571) Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los Reinos del Perú (Lima:
1986).
Polo de Ondegardo, Lic. J. (ca. 1559–71) “Informaciones acerca de la religión y
gobierno de los Incas” part 2, in Colleción de libros y documentos referentes a la histo-
ria del Perú, tomo IV (2a serie), ed. H. H. Urteaga (Lima: 1917) 151–158.
—— (1571) “Report by Polo de Ondegardo,” in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of
the Yncas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 167.
Randall, R. (1987) “La lengua sagrada,” Alppanchis XIX: 29–30 (1987) 267.
Reid, J. (1990) Feather Masterpieces of the Ancient Andean World (London: 1990).
Rowe, J. H. (1946) “An Account of the Inca Shrines of Cuzco,” Ñawpa Pacha
17:1–80.
—— (1946) “Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest,” in Handbook of

South American Indians, vol. 2., ed. J. H. Steward (Washington, D.C.: 1946) 183.
Salomon, F., and G. L. Urioste (1991) trans., The Huarochirí Manuscript (Austin: 1991).
Sallnow, M. J. (1987) Pilgrims of the Andes (Washington, D.C.: 1987).
Sarmiento de Gamboa, P. (1572) History of the Incas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham
(London: 1907).
Vega, El Inca, G. de la (1609) The Royal Commentaries of the Inca, part I, trans. H. V.
Livermore (Austin: 1987).
Zuidema, T. R. (1964) The Ceque System of Cuzco: The Social Organization of the Capital
of the Inca (Leiden: 1964).
CHAPTER FOUR
WOMEN AND MEN AS COSMIC CO-BEARERS AT

OAXTEPEC, MEXICO, ABOUT 1553
Richard E. Phillips
Introduction
During the course of the sixteenth century, over two hundred monas-
teries were built in the central and southern Mexican countryside.
Many of them still stand and function as parish churches, museums,
or monastic establishments. They were constructed for the male
Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars by their post-conquest
native charges. Many of these monasteries featured large churches
that accommodated hundreds of parishioners. Many also had capa-
cious cloisters, complete with such dependencies as refectories and
chapter rooms. The cloisters were almost always square and con-
sisted of four roofed, often vaulted ranges supported by piers or
columns called ‘cloister walks’ that opened onto a central unroofed
garth. Most of these monasteries, including the cloisters, had at least
some mural painting, and much of this painting survives on site.
Where sixteenth-century paintings on cloister piers persist in central
Mexico, they always represent groups of saints, one saint per pier
surface opposite the viewer in the adjacent cloister walk.1
No surviving Mexican sixteenth-century pier cycle attaches nearly
as much importance to female saints as that of the cloister of the
Dominican monastery of the town of Oaxtepec in the modern State
of Morelos (Fig. 4.1). This sequence of saints on piers was painted
about 1553, some thirty-two years after the Spanish conquest.2 Given
1
Kubler (1948) 231–359, 363–72, 378, 450–94, 503–35; McAndrew (1969)
121–67; Angulo Iñíguez et al. (1945–56) 1, passim; Edgerton (2001) 5–6, 35–38,
40–60, 129–53; Sartor (1992) 95–191, 206–29; Edwards (1966) 66–112; and Phillips
(1993) 16–27, 210–18, 361–77, 466–72, 478–79.
2
Kubler (1948) 348–49; Mullen (1975) 76–77; Dávila Padilla (1625) 617–18; and
Santiago (1540–87) fols 35v, 40, 45v, 46. I am grateful to the then Directors of
100 richard e. phillips
Fig. 4.1 Schematic iconographical diagram, first floor of the cloister, Dominican
monastery of Oaxtepec, State of Morelos, Mexico, ca. 1553. Drawing courtesy of
Prof. James Dutremaine.
women and men as cosmic co-bearers 101
the profound misogyny at the heart of the Dominican intellectual

tradition discussed below, what caused the friars residing at Oaxtepec
to permit icons of female saints next to those of male saints on the
four corner piers? These images indicate that both men and women
are fundamental as the symbolic cornerstones of the Catholic Church
and by extension the cosmic order.3 The Dominicans would not have
allowed such an allegory simply out of their own good will without
substantial pressure for this affirmation of women on the part of
Oaxtepec’s populace.
The intent of this paper on one level is to demonstrate that the
evangelization and acculturation of Mexico, and therefore the cre-
ation of what is now modern Mexican civilization, cannot be envi-
sioned simply as the triumph of a superior Spanish and European
civilization over inferior and defenseless indigenous conglomerations
that led to the supposed obliteration of the native peoples’ pre-
Columbian traditions. The Spanish, including the friars, wielded enor-
mous but not complete power. In the first decades after the conquest
of Mexico the Spanish were a tiny minority in the midst of a sea
of autochthonous peoples. They had to make some concessions to
gain the natives’ sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes grudging com-
pliance. Once the intrinsic but limited puissance of the native masses
in viceregal Mexico is realized and the defective model of mono-
lithic European imposition is discarded, it is then possible to
perceive indigenous women’s power to shape the cultural discourse
as revealed by their influence on the Oaxtepec cloister image con-
figuration.4
the Fondo de Microfilm of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Víctor E. Urruchúa Hernández,
and J. J. González Monroy, for allowing and assisting me to consult Santiago
(1540–87).
3
For the metaphor of the saints as columns or cornerstones of the Church as
applied in Europe, see the Bible, Revelation 21, 14, Galatians 2, 9, Ephesians 2,
19–20; see also Irenaeus of Lyon (1969–82) 3:2: 160–63; Migne (1844–91) 108:
177, 111: 394, 403–4, 165: 896, 172: 316, 176: 439, 1167–68, 198: 694, 707;
Panofsky-Soergel (1979) 104–05; Durandus (1906) 17, 21; Sauerländer (1972) 471–72;
Transformations of the Court Style (1977) 17–18; Schapiro (1985) 20 and fig. 24; and
Forsyth (1986) 76. For this same metaphor as used by sixteenth-century Mexican
friars or clergy in their writings, see Motolinía (1971) 19; Cuevas (1975) 67; and
Paso y Troncoso (1905–42) 8: 19.
4
This view of the Mexican colonial intercultural dynamic is in accord with that
demonstrated by the eminent historians Lockhart (1992) and Burkhart (1989).
The Oaxtepec Cloister’s Murals: Style, Function, and Constituencies
To prove this thesis, first it is necessary to establish that the Tlalhuica

and Xochimilca women and men who constituted the population of
Oaxtepec and its district had access to the monastery’s cloister and
that they constituted the primary audience for whom the murals
were painted.5 A multitude of colonial Mexican sources proves that
the mendicant friars routinely conducted their parishioners on pro-
cession through cloisters. In the mid-sixteenth century the vast major-
ity of these parishioners were Native Americans, many born before
the Spanish conquest of 1521. Sometimes the colonial records even
specify that the claustral processional participants were ‘indios’ or
‘naturales.’6
Among its other functions, the Oaxtepec cloister served as a pro-
cessional theatre. In each of the four outer corners of the cloister is
5
The Valley of Morelos was occupied by two Nahua-speaking groups after 1200
CE, the Tlalhuicas and the Xochimilcas. Although the sources indicate that the
valley towns of Oaxtepec and Cuernavaca had both been conquered by the Tlalhuicas
before the latter were subsequently subdued by the Aztecs, Oaxtepec was surrounded
to such an extent by Xochimilca towns that it is unclear which of the two ethnic-
ities was really predominant there. The Aztecs from the Valley of Mexico con-
quered the Valley of Morelos in the middle of the fifteenth century, but they did
not bring any great cultural or demographic change. The Tlalhuicas, Xochimilcas,
and Aztecs were all closely related culturally under the subsuming Nahua ethnic-
ity, and followed most of the same religious practices. See Maldonado Jiménez
(1990) 26–32.
6
Fondo Franciscano 47: 151v, 132: 37v, 209, 214v, 260v. For further proofs
that the native Mexican peoples were the principal intended audience and ritual
users of the sixteenth-century claustral mural paintings, see Edgerton (2001) 108
and 210; and Phillips (1999) 227–50. I am grateful to Dr. Ángel J. García Zambrano
for translating this essay. See also Phillips (1993) 140–404; Cervantes de Salazar
(1953) 51, 54; de la Rea (1643) fols. 84v–85v; Ordinarivm Sacri Ordinis Heremitarum . . .
(1556) fols. 14–14v; Estatvtos generales de Barcelona . . . (1585) fol. 17; Constitvtiones . . . Augustini
(1587) fol. 12v; Fondo Franciscano 39: fols. 57–57v, 47: fol. 121v, fols. 148–154v,
48: fols. 21–29v, 49: fol. 17, 132: fols. 37v, 39v, 106, 150v–153, 207–9, 214v,
257v–260v, 139: fols 107–107v, 180: fol. 20; Fondo Lira, 10: 65. My thanks to Dr.
Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, then Chief of the National Museum of Anthropology,
and to the then Director of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Sra. Estela González, for per-
mitting me to use the Fondo Franciscano, the Fondo Lira, and other bound vicere-
gal collections of documents there. For proof that lay women participated in claustral
processions, see Aramburu Cendoya (1966) 50–51; and Barry (1942) 54–59. For
proof of Early Modern processions with secular folk to claustral stations in Europe,
see . . . Liber Processionum . . . (1494) fols. 6v–11v, 39–47; Jiménez de Cisneros (1965)
2: 516, 596; Processionarium . . . (1519) fol. 126; Sigüenza (1907–9) 2: 425, 479, 540–44;
Browe (1933) passim; and Heitz (1963) passim.
a large niche whose ledge functioned as a temporary altar to receive

the Host, where it was incensed and revered during the course of
a processional station (Fig. 4.2). The back walls of the niches still
display their damaged mural paintings, meant to serve as retables
for the altar ledges.
The first station’s altar niche painting represents The Mocking of
Christ, the second The Flagellation, the third The Way of the Cross, and
the fourth The Crucifixion.7 Following the biblical narrative, the sequence
of stational images at Oaxtepec is chronological, so there is no doubt
as to the counterclockwise processional route, marked with Roman
numerals I through IV in Figure 4.1.
Normally there were only four friars resident at Oaxtepec in the
sixteenth century.8 They alone could not have constituted anything
like a ritually acceptable Catholic procession. The Oaxtepec pro-
cessional theatre, with its four niche-altar stations of Christ’s Passion
facing the four spacious cloister walks, was obviously intended for a
throng, not for a few (Fig. 4.2). Further evidence that the native
neophytes were the primary intended audience for the Oaxtepec
cloister murals is revealed by the stylistic testimony of the paintings
themselves. The indigenous or mestizo cultural upbringing of the mas-
ter who painted the murals of the cloister stands out clearly in com-
parison to those by the European or Europeanized master of the
Oaxtepec refectory only a few steps away. This Refectory Master’s
representation of Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes embodies the
standard Renaissance, Western repertoire of gradual shading and
illusionistic volume (Fig. 4.3). It stands in stark contrast to the paint-
ing of Saint Peter that begins the cloister’s pier cycle (Fig. 4.4).
Peter’s patterned and flattened figure is elegantly contained in an
irregular calligraphic oval that is repeated in such subsidiary ele-
ments as the oval folds of his right leg. This demonstrates that the
pier cycle painter was substantially influenced by his or her pre-
Columbian artistic heritage, because that tradition was generally
7
The author established the identity of the pier and corner niche images dur-
ing field work at Oaxtepec and subsequent study of the photographs and notes in
conjunction with consultation of Réau (1955–59) and Schiller (1966).
8
Acuña (1982–) 6: 211. Oaxtepec was never the site of a Dominican Chapter
meeting for the whole Mexican Province, nor, apparently, was it ever used as a
seminary. No such distinction is listed for the monastery in Santiago (1540–87), in
Dávila Padilla (1625), or in Cruz de Moya (1954–55).
much more abstract and conceptual in nature than the Renaissance

artistic legacy of Europe. The more conceptual an artistic tradition
is, the more it tends to fit the human figure and all other objects
into pre-established conventional patterns.9
The same pre-Columbian-inherited tendency toward abstraction
and schematization can be observed in the figure of Blessed Osanna
Andreasi on the ninth pier (Fig. 4.5).10 Her white Dominican dress,
indicating where her legs and hips should be, occupies fully three-
quarters of her total height, meaning that the painter was not very
concerned with Western European standards of credible human pro-
portions. The pre-Columbian art of Mesoamerica, other than that
created at times by the Maya, was also not bound to a set natu-
ralistic canon of human measurements. This lack of submission to
naturalism allows the cloister master to think of the bottom three-
quarters of the saint’s white dress in geometric terms as a kind of
steep pyramid or flattened cone. This enhances the saint’s iconic
impact as an abstract, geometric force or presence.
The folds of Osanna’s white dress are schematic. They lack the
customary gradual Renaissance modulation of shade as employed by
the Refectory Master a few feet away and are therefore not com-
prehensive enough to detract from the geometric icon of the dress.
The white pyramid is reiterated and reinforced by the second pyra-
mid of the surrounding black Dominican cloak, whose straight, tri-
angular edges only become curvilinear at the saint’s shoulders to
provide the minimum necessary reference to human form. The whole
figure has been visualized through prior convention, not as an inte-
gral human anatomy, but instead as an interlocking composition of
only four silhouettes: the two pyramids of drapery, the oval face,
and the circular halo.
9
For the non-Western stylistic imperatives and Kunstwollen of the Mexican pre-
Columbian heritage as it subsisted into the viceregal era, see Robertson (1959), and
Boone and Smith (2003).
10
Osanna was born in 1449, entered the Third Order of Penitence of St. Dominic
in 1501, and died in 1505. Her cult was approved in 1515 but she was never can-
onized. One of the traditional attributes of her image is the Christ child according
to Lechner (1968–76). The Dominican nun saint Rosa of Lima is often shown with
the Christ child in her hands, but she lived 1586–1617, long after the Oaxtepec
cycle was painted, so she could not be the saint who is depicted on pier surface
9. By a process of elimination, since a book is not a recorded attribute of Osanna
Andreasi, while the Christ child is used as an attribute of both St. Agnes of
Montepulciano and Osanna, then the Dominican nun holding a book on pier face
16 must be Agnes, following Timmers (1968–76); and Réau (1955–59) 3, 1: 38–39.
women and men as cosmic co-bearers
Fig. 4.2 Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. View toward the east down the south cloister walk, with the
mural paintings of Sts. Paul and Catherine of Alexandria on the southwest pier. Photo by the author.
105
Fig. 4.3 Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec,
first floor. West end wall of the refectory, south side. Photo by the author.
Fig. 4.4 St. Peter. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister.
First image of the pier cycle. Photo by the author.
Fig. 4.5 Blessed Osanna Andreasi. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of
the cloister. Ninth pier face of the cloister arcade cycle, south cloister walk. Photo
by the author.
One of Osanna’s typical symbolic attributes is the figure of the

Christ child toward whom she channels her maternal love. Little
children are of course much smaller than grown adults but they are
not nearly as small in relation to a normal adult as the Christ child
is to Osanna in the pier nine mural. Many non-Western artistic styles
such as the pre-Columbian are not overly concerned with the verac-
ity of scale that was one of the central tenets of Western art begin-
ning with the Renaissance. When the importance of symbolism and
meaning overrides the importance of realism in any given artistic
tradition, figures may be depicted in larger-than-normal scale in rela-
tion to others in order to indicate their relative importance.11 Such
is the case here. Osanna is in larger-than-normal scale vis-à-vis the
child to indicate that she is the principal figure toward which atten-
tion is to be channeled on this particular pier within the logic of a
cycle of saints representing the pillars of the Church, although within
the grander scheme of Christianity she is infinitesimally as impor-
tant as the Christ child is. The tiny size of the Christ child only
reinforces her power for him as a kind of maternal mountain of nur-
turing refuge.
The features of the child himself, with his dark hair and dark
brown face, are characteristically Mexican. The native women on
procession through the cloister certainly would have felt affirmed by
this image of the protective mother and her Mexican-looking charge,
whose small size only enhances the viewers’ empathetic desire to
protect and cherish him.
This author suspects that a Mexicanizing or indigenizing master
was chosen to paint the cloister, even though a Europeanizing mas-
ter did the refectory, due to the preferences of the indigenous masses
to whom the Dominicans had to respond. Within the Western monas-
tic tradition the Oaxtepec refectory was a more corporate, private
space, reserved for the prerogatives of the Dominican friars them-
selves, while the cloister in the Western tradition was commonly
shared by the regular clergy with the laity ever since early medieval
times for processions.12 Consequently, the Oaxtepec cloister was
11
See the discussion of the ‘heirarchy of scale’ in Kleiner, et al. (2001) xxvii–xxviii.
12
See footnote 6.
decorated in a style that resonated more with the natives. It is plau-

sible that they had a say in the ultimate choice of the Cloister Master.
These assertions are supported by the fact that the people of Oaxtepec
and its district had a fundamental impact on the symbolic program
of saints on piers that the Dominicans chose for the first floor of
the cloister, as shown presently.
The Dominican Tradition and Its Redirection
The images of the saints on the claustral piers serve as ciphers for
several sets of complex interrelated messages that the Dominican fri-
ars wished to communicate about themselves and their religious
Order. The schematic representation of the mural cycle in Figure
4.1 identifies the saints whose images were chosen to embody the
pillars of the universal church. In addition, each icon represented
one of three essential categories of saints into which the Oaxtepec
pier cycle can be subdivided. Each saint had been either a member
of the Dominican Order, the founder of a religious Order, or a saint
from Antiquity (before 500 CE).13 These basic categories are indi-
cated in Figure 4.1 with the letters D, F, and A, respectively, recorded
on the piers next to the saints’ names.
13
It is nearly certain, by analogy, that the two destroyed images of the first,
western range of the Oaxtepec claustral piers, faces 2 and 3, were of male saints.
Besides the factor of overall agreement with the exclusively masculine third range
on the east, this conclusion about the missing figures of the first range is reached
by noting that the middle piers of the remaining three sides represent the three
most prestigious Dominican male saints other than Dominic: Thomas Aquinas on
face 8, Peter Martyr at 13, Vincent Ferrer at 18. Since the image of Francis, the
founder of one of the three mendicant orders active in Mexico when these murals
were painted, is on pier face 4 and because Dominic, the founder of the Dominican
Order that built this monastery, is the only saint unaccounted for in the subset of
major male Dominican saints on the four central piers, then logically he was depicted
on the third face. We can be sure that the saints once represented on piers 2 and
3 were Augustine and Dominic because the two figures that frame the first range
are Peter and Paul, the two most eminent disseminators of the faith. Francis, still
visible on face 4, is equated with Peter and Paul as a proselytizer of the religion
carried by his minions to the New World. Augustine and Dominic therefore com-
pleted the first range as counterparts of Peter and Paul in spreading the faith.
As could be expected in a Dominican cloister, ten of the twenty

depicted saints are Dominicans. The Dominican friars who inhab-
ited the cloister made sure to laud their Order as an especially august
body in upholding the fabric of the Catholic church. The resident
friars meant to imply that they themselves were the successors of the
Dominican saints in a hoary pedigree that upheld the fabric of the
In the second range the feminine counterparts to Peter and Paul of the first are
Catherine of Alexandria on face 6 and Catherine of Siena on face 10. They shared
both their names and comparable positions within the traditional Dominican hagiog-
raphy. Catherine of Alexandria was the most famous woman saint after Mary and
Mary Magdalene and the preeminent of the four Virgin Patronesses of the uni-
versal Church, following Jameson (1895) 2: 458–60. Catherine of Siena was the
primordial female saint of the Dominican order before the emergence of Rosa of
Lima in the early seventeenth century. She is also represented opposite Dominic
on the main portal of the monastery church at Tepoztlán near Oaxtepec, dating
from about 1560. At Oaxtepec Catherine of Alexandria is identified, despite the
destruction of two-thirds of her image, by her royal crown and the hilt of the sword
by which she was martyred, following Jameson (1895) 2: 461–65 (cf. Fig. 4.2).
Catherine of Siena is shown holding a crucifix and her heart, which she exchanged
with that of Jesus when she betrothed him, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 1, 273–74.
Between the ‘bookends’ of the Catherines are the images of one female and two
male saints. On face 7 is a saint who holds a banner with a cross. The most famous
saint (other than Christ) to sustain such a banner is St. George, so perhaps the
image represents that military saint. This saint must bear armor, however, and it
was not ascertained during field work if the saint of face 7 is so outfitted. Portly
Thomas Aquinas holds his book at number 8 as the preeminent Dominican scholar.
The ends of the fourth pier range are signified on analogy with those of the sec-
ond, in that Agnes of Montepulciano, like Catherine of Siena opposite her a
Dominican female saint, is paired with a legendary female virgin martyr saint from
Antiquity, Lucy at surface #20, just as Catherine of Siena is linked with Catherine
of Alexandria, following Jameson (1895) 2: 57.
Under the spell of the female termini of the corner patronesses of the fourth
claustral pier range are three males for the intermediate piers. At face 17 is a
Dominican pope, perhaps Benedict XI, 1303–4, on the analogy of pier face 3 of
the lower cloister of nearby Dominican Yautepec, following Kaster (1968–76). At
number 18 is a Dominican saint with wings and a crucifix, Vincent Ferrer, fol-
lowing Jameson (1901) 412. At number 19 is a saint with a wallet hanging from a
pike atop his staff. This is James the Greater, known in Spanish as “Santiago,” the
patron saint of Spain, who appears in pilgrim garb such as this from the thirteenth
century onward due to the fame of his relics at his pilgrimage Cathedral of
Compostella in northeast Spain, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 2: 695.
The first corner of the third range, face 11, presents a monk with a book, per-
haps Benedict with his Rule. The other framing face, 15, displays a Dominican
who wears an archbishop’s cloak over his monastic habit, holds a palm of mar-
tyrdom in one hand, and three oranges in the other: St. Antoninus of Florence,
following Réau (1955–59) 3, 1: 123–24, and Strnad (1968–76). Between these two
figures are Andrew, Peter Martyr, and Dominic.
church, the latest inhabitants of the Christian cloister, guaranteeing

to the denizens of Oaxtepec that a religious Order that has pro-
duced so many saints is a trustworthy guide to heaven for the believer.
From the information so far presented, it is obvious that the
Tlalhuicas and Xochimilcas were not the sole audience for whom
this cloister cycle was intended, for it lauds and boosts the greatness
of the Dominican institute whose friars occupied this residence. It
was also meant for the occasional important Spanish guests and
Franciscan and Augustinian friars who, along with the Dominicans,
evangelized the tightly packed mission field of the Valley of Morelos.14
Because of this, Saints Augustine and Francis flank St. Dominic on
the western piers where visitors would first enter the cloister (Fig. 4.1).
They are in turn bracketed by Saints Peter (Fig. 4.4) and Paul, the
apostles of the Jews and Gentiles, respectively, who symbolize between
them the totality of the universal Christian Church.15 The founders of
the three mendicant orders of friars that were involved in the sixteenth-
century proselytization of Mexico—Augustine, Dominic, Francis—
were thus equated with the princes of the apostles as their successors,
which in turn means that the Christian mission in Mexico was
intended to be seen as apostolic.
None of the symbolic permutations of the cloister pier program
as so far described can be characterized as a concession to indige-
nous pressure. However, there is another element at work here. It
is the prominence of the female saints in this pier cycle, unprece-
dented in any other extant Mexican sixteenth-century cloister. It can-
not be explained simply as the product of a voluntary decision on
the part of the friars oblivious to native preferences. By way of com-
parison, only fourteen kilometers away at the monastery of Yautepec,
Morelos, whose cloister was built and painted about 1555–59, the
14
If a Franciscan ventured east from his monastery in Cuernavaca on his way
to the Franciscan-dominated valleys of Atlixco and Puebla, he could not get there
in one day and could only find monastic accommodation in Dominican or Augustinian
houses. Such was the case with the Franciscan Ciudad Real, who stayed with his
Commissary General Alonso de Ponce at the Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec
in 1586 during the course of the latter’s tour of inspection of Franciscan houses.
Ciudad Real (1976) 1: 125. Doubtless they found the image of Francis on pier face
4 to be a welcome, ecumenical sight. The Augustinian friars had monasteries only
eight and seventeen kilometers by modern road to the north of Oaxtepec, at
Tlayacapan and Totolapan, respectively.
15
Jameson (1895) 1: 179–80; Clement (1971) 250; and Mâle (1984) 384.
corners are held by male Dominican saints, save for Catherine of

Siena, who is paired with the non-Dominican Lucy on the fourth
corner pier. Consequently, at Yautepec only one of the four metaphor-
ical columns upholding the universe declares the female principle,
and there is no configuration exalting women and men working
together as co-sustainers of the faith as at Oaxtepec. Thirty-seven
kilometers away at Dominican Tetela del Volcán, Morelos, painted
about 1560–63, Catherine of Siena is the only woman in the whole
claustral pier cycle. In the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery
of Acolman, State of Mexico, painted about 1560, none of the saints
on any of the sixteen pier surfaces is female.16 In the Oaxtepec clois-
ter, unlike the others above, a female is paired with a male saint on
each corner pier to show that each cornerstone of the Catholic
church is sustained equally by both women and men (Fig. 4.1).
At Oaxtepec care was taken that each range of piers begin and
end with saints of the same sex, bracketing each walk and endow-
ing it with a male or female numen. In this way the first and third
sides are defined by male totems, the second and fourth by female
ones. The male ranges, one and three, are unanimously male, while
those patronized by female terminals are diluted by the inclusion of
men on the intermediate piers. Fifteen saints are male, five are female.
This relative numerical disparity of females to males at Oaxtepec is
no surprise given the degree of male over female dominance in
indigenous Mexican society before and after the conquest and in six-
teenth-century Spain and Western Europe. Those were the two cul-
tural heritages coming together at Oaxtepec. The fundamental question
is why women were given relative prominence at all in a men’s clois-
ter at Oaxtepec and in no other known Mexican claustral pier cycle.
16
It is important here to be very precise. We are talking about images of female
saints on the piers that support the cloisters’ four arcades on the garth. Female
saints are very prominent in the Tetela cloister and the Acolman first cloister, but
only on the continuous walls of the interiors of the cloisters that form the proces-
sional theatre, and not on the claustral piers as they are at Oaxtepec. The four
corner niche-altars at Tetela have mural-painted retables displaying pairs of female
saints from Antiquity, and the continuous walls of the Acolman first cloister display
a cycle of six processional corner paintings dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For the
dating of the Yautepec and Tetela claustral mural cycles, Franco (1900) 139–40,
165–67, 517; Santiago (1540–87) fols. 26, 31, 38, 45v, 52, 56v, 67–68, 77–77v,
96v; and Acuña (1982–) 7: 260. For the dating of the mural cycle of the first
Acolman cloister, see Chapter 12, this volume.
The attitude toward women was relatively more positive and

empowering in indigenous Mexico both before and after the con-
quest than it was in the minds of the Dominican friars who super-
vised the construction and decoration of the Oaxtepec monastery.
Autochthonous pressure toward the recognition of a powerful rôle
for women resulted in concessions toward femininity via the Oaxtepec
cloister piers that the Dominican friars did not permit in other artis-
tic commissions of the time in Mexico or Europe. There is little
precedent for this recognition of feminine power in the Dominican
or monastic subcultures or in the dominant trends of early modern
European thought and behavior, as will now be demonstrated.
The Dominican Thomas Aquinas has been the single most influential
Catholic theologian since the thirteenth century,17 and of course was
revered by the members of his own order as the ultimate authority.
He defined Woman as a misbegotten male who was created solely
to remove the burden of procreation from men so that the latter
could devote themselves to the higher intellectual pursuits worthy of
‘the superior sex.’ For him women were morally, mentally, and phys-
ically defective; on earth they were raised to the dignity of men only
by repudiating their sexuality and embracing chastity.18
With Thomas Aquinas’ Summa as its foundation, this view of the
evil ineptitude of women dominated Dominican thought through the
period of the Oaxtepec murals’ creation. The friars at Oaxtepec
were doubtless aware of their famous contemporary Spanish Dominican
intellectual Domingo Soto, who held that women were naturally unfit
for the priesthood, in general poor in reason and soft in mind. In
1484 Pope Innocent VIII appointed Dominicans to conduct the cam-
paign against witches, which led to the burning of thousands of self-
assertive, independent-minded women in transalpine Europe in the
following two hundred years. These Inquisitors wrote “that witches
are more likely to be female than male” because of women’s more
damnably evil nature. The mendicant orders of Dominican, Franciscan,
and Augustinian friars were created to promote an active public min-
17
Reuther (1991) 222, writes that Thomas Aquinas “remains the normative the-
ologian for the Roman Catholic tradition.”
18
Børreson (1981) 157, 172; Bullough et al. (1988) 49 and note 42; and Ranke-
Heinemann (1990) 178, 187–88, 190.
istry outside of the monastery, but stringent measures were taken to

deny this to mendicant nuns, who remained largely sequestered.19
The Implacable Feminist Dynamic at Oaxtepec
At Oaxtepec female saints share with males the task of upholding

the four corners of the universal Church. There is no precursor for
this specific quadrangular bisexual partnership in either Christian or
pre-Columbian cosmology. In the former, the bearers of the four
corners of creation are the Evangelists, who carried the Word to the
four corners of the earth. In late medieval and early modern European
sculptural cycles, the only woman to appear regularly with men as
a metaphorical pillar of the Church is the Virgin Mary. In central
Mexican Nahua cosmology the four male Tlaloque, helpers of the
rain god Tlaloc, were at the four cardinal points of the earth.20
Nevertheless, there is ample precedent in Nahua religion, and not
in Christianity, for the pairing of male and female deities as at
Oaxtepec and for their world-bearing function, if not in a geomet-
ric square disposition. Aztec philosophy maintained that the origin
of all things was a single dual principle, masculine and feminine.
Most of the major gods and goddesses of the Nahua pantheon were
members of male-female pairs believed to be engendered by the
duality above all creation. One of the vocations of the Lord of
Duality was Tlallamánac, “She who sustains the earth.”21
This paper does not assert that the people who marched through
the Oaxtepec cloister necessarily carried memories of specific pre-
Columbian goddesses with them, only that they bore into the colo-
nial period their general pre-Columbian heritage of respect for the
feminine principle as an ineluctable component of creation. The
importance and necessity of female sexual gratification were clearly
recognized by Aztec mores, and the sexual act was accepted as a
19
King (1991) 102–3, 144–46; Carmody (1979) 125–26; Mclean (1980) 9; Bullough
et al. (1988) 175, 191; and Ranke-Heinemann (1990) 229–31, 236–37.
20
St. Irenaeus of Lyon (1969–82): 3, 2: 160–63; Migne (1844–91) 217: 804;
Durandus (1494) fol. 30v; Sigüenza (1907–09) 2: 551–52; Rossi (1981) 25–26 and
note 38; Messerer (1964) 103–5; Wind (1976) 52; Transformations of the Court Style
(1977) 17–18; and López Austin (1988) 57–58.
21
León-Portilla (1956) 149–55, and 174; and Fernández (1983) 52–56.
legitimate delight for both genders. These attitudes are diametrically

opposed to the general Christian and particularly Dominican disgust
with sexuality as a necessary evil and with women as the erotic
enticement that lures men away from the heavenly path of intellec-
tual activity and celibacy.22 Pre-Hispanic central Mexican women
owned property, were traders, priestesses, and healers, and partici-
pated on near-equal footing with men in several craft industries.
They could obtain divorce for lack of support or for physical mis-
treatment and could seek legal relief in other matters.23
In some respects, the power of indigenous Mexican women with
regard to men even increased after the Spanish conquest in com-
parison to pre-Hispanic times. With the Spanish destruction or weak-
ening of much of the regional ruling class of indigenous males, native
culture retreated to a local, popular level in which women became
crucial repositories for traditional ritual behavior.24
The most powerful and respected women in Aztec society were
older women, who were profoundly occupied with the propagation
of the cult.25 Their power and their involvement with ritual contin-
ued under the friars, surrogates for the pre-Columbian priests, into
the viceregal period. This is because a relative handful of invading
Spaniards and friars could only deflect and redirect, not destroy, the
social momentum of pre-Columbian times. The colonial matrons’
management of Christian cult activities had ample precedent in mul-
tiple pre-Hispanic rituals that were primarily or solely enacted by
and for women.26 The extremely important and perceptive Franciscan
chronicler Mendieta proves that active autochthonous female par-
ticipation in the cult bridged the gap between the pre-Hispanic and
viceregal periods. In 1596, after four decades in New Spain, he noted
the unusual power of older native women compared to those in
Europe, stating
. . . these beatas [saintly women] or matrons have served and helped
like mothers in founding and guiding the confraternities that [the natives
22
Ranke-Heinemann (1990) 121.
23
Clendinnen (1991) 157–58, 162–67, 206; Soustelle (1970) 183–84; and Vaillant
(1966) 125–26.
24
Gonzalbo (1987) 44–45.
25
Clendinnen (1991) 206–7; Soustelle (1970) 185; and Motolinía (1971) 74–75.
26
Clendinnen (1991) 163; and Sahagún (1989) 1: 91, 113–14, 131–32, 138–40,
195.
in monastery towns] have of the Holy Sacrament and of Our Lady,

which are common everywhere. . . . All of these confraternities in some
towns are managed to a large degree, or even principally, by these
matrons instead of by men. And it seems that this leadership suits
them in this land . . . because in this climate the feminine surpasses, in
its way, the masculine sex.27
It is now possible to understand why the Dominican friars of Oaxtepec
commissioned a mural cycle in the cloister that would represent
women to such advantage. It was necessary to recognize and moti-
vate the importance of native women in organizing and strengthen-
ing the Christian cult by providing female role models for them and
their male companions to view as they went on procession with the
Host to the four corner stations. Presumably this was done to curry
favor with the local women and men, accustomed to a bisexual
model for the duality of the universe, and motivate their continued
enthusiasm for ritual activity. Perhaps indigenous women activists
demanded this painted recognition of the essential importance of
Woman in the Christian cosmos. The friars would not have per-
mitted this unless they were subjected to pressures that outweighed
the momentum of their Dominican intellectual tradition anchored
by Thomas Aquinas.
But why did this relatively liberal concession to femininity occur
more strikingly in the Oaxtepec cycle than in other contemporary
Mexican claustral pier cycles or altarpieces? One precedent is pro-
vided by the Relación geográfica of Oaxtepec dated 1580. It was com-
piled from the testimony of three indigenous headmen and two elders
who indicated that, prior to the Spanish Conquest, there was only
one public temple in Oaxtepec’s ceremonial center. It displayed the
idol of Ichpuchtli Quilaztle, which can be translated “the Maiden of
Regeneration.”28 Quilaztle is simply another of the many manifesta-
tions of the great Mother Goddess of pre-Hispanic Mexico. She is
identical with Cihuacóatl, who the key Dominican anthropological
chronicler Durán states was also called Quilaztli, the goddess of the
Xochimilcas, the principal goddess of all of the Nahua cultures.29 It
must be recalled that the Xochimilcas and the Tlalhuicas were the
27
Mendieta (1971) 4: 420–21. This citation was translated by the author.
28
Acuña (1982–) 6: 196–97, 202, and note 20.
29
Durán (1971) 210; Markman and Markman (1992) 87–88; and Clendinnen
(1991) 177.
two main ethnic groups living together in the Oaxtepec district. Since
the Great Goddess was the only major deity in Oaxtepec immedi-
ately before the conquest, the ‘only show in town,’ it is no wonder
that due obeisance is paid to femininity in the supplanting temple’s
cloister mural program.
This paper does not assert that the inhabitants of Oaxtepec nec-
essarily still recalled or revered Quilaztli as they filed through the
cloister, only that there is ample local pre-Columbian cultural prece-
dent there for the prominent ritual recognition of feminine powers
that inevitably conditioned the claustral program. On the other hand,
it is not impossible that they still worshipped her, or made a syn-
cretical association of her with the new Christian veneer, for there
is substantial evidence that pre-Columbian goddesses continued to
be invoked by native peoples throughout central Mexico in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries.30
Conclusion
Framed by the images of the saints who signified that they were in
the metaphorical paradise of the universal Church, the predomi-
nantly indigenous throng on procession in Oaxtepec, following doc-
trine, embodied the pilgrimage on this earth toward the salvation
purchased by Jesus’ self-sacrifice. At the four corners of the cloister
they were ideally driven to fervor by images that equated Christ’s
suffering with its fruit, the Host in its monstrance that they beheld
with awe on the altar ledge. Chants, incense, and ephemeral deco-
rations or tableaux at these stations enhanced the momentum toward
altered states of consciousness.
Facilitating the natives’ ardor was a sense of belonging fostered
by Dominican concessions toward an indigenizing pictorial style with
which they could identify more strongly and the inclusion of female
saints in an empowered configuration more in accord with pre-
Columbian tradition than with the prevailing Euro-Dominican atti-
tude. The cycle communicated to the women of Oaxtepec that they
too, by emulating the female saints, were intrinsic supports of the
New Church in the New World.
30
Báez-Jorge (1988) 166–71.
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Morelos prehispánico (Cuernavaca, Mexico: 1990).
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1984).
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1844–91).
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Art Bulletin 58 (1976) 521–27.
PART TWO
TAKING POSSESSION: APPROPRIATIONS

OF THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY
CHAPTER FIVE
ABUSED AND BATTERED: PRINTED IMAGES AND THE

FEMALE BODY IN VICEREGAL NEW SPAIN
K. Donahue-Wallace
An 1806 Mexican etching (Fig. 5.1) features a young woman lying

dead in an open field. The eyes of her severed head gaze up to
Heaven. Her body is splayed diagonally across the foreground with
her remaining attached hand upraised in a gesture of supplication.
The skirts of her fashionable gown are pushed up and her bodice
is unbuttoned. A dead child suckles at her breast. The inscription
at the bottom of the print reads, “This pitiful woman was killed and
destroyed in a field for resisting the brutal desires of (rebelling Haitian)
Blacks and the child died of hunger at her side seeking his mother’s
dead breast.”1
The gruesome etching, which appeared in the Mexican edition of
the story of Haiti’s slave rebellion (1791–1803), offers a vivid exam-
ple of the exploitation of female bodies in viceregal prints. Its pres-
ence in the text was designed to strike fear in the hearts of elite
Mexicans for two reasons. First, the image employed a female body,
a familiar and potent symbol of civilized society, destroyed in an act
of outrageous brutality. Second, the print was executed using a
medium that colonists recognized and accepted for embodying truth,
which helped the image to transcend the realm of artistry and become
a supposedly trustworthy document. Seen in this context, the female
body in the print screamed of the breakdown of social order in the
loudest possible voice.
The following paragraphs interrogate the circumstances surrounding
the use of prints of female bodies as symbols of sacred and secular
principles and metaphors of social order deployed by civil and eccle-
siastical elites to promote a normative concept of womanhood. The
1
[Dubroca] (1806) n.p.
126 k. donahue-wallace
Fig. 5.1 Manuel López López, Fue muerta y destrozada. . . . 1806, etching. Courtesy
of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin.
abused and battered 127
study assumes that in colonial New Spain, as elsewhere, the body

functioned as the point of intersection between society and the indi-
vidual, and that due to its universality, representations of the body
were deployed as an effective mode of communication by both par-
ties.2 It does not attempt to recover the realities of lived existence,
but only the prescriptive visions of bodies promoted by the prints’
patrons. The investigation likewise explores the role of printedness
and the potency of the printed medium for communicating such
messages. The essay specifically examines how representing the abuse
of—or actually abusing—female bodies in prints offered the oppor-
tunity to make a spectacular statement about religious, political, or
social values due to the meanings associated with both women’s bod-
ies and printed materials.
Early modern Latin American art participated in a gender dis-
course that inscribed upon women’s bodies a narrow definition of
ideal femininity. Voluptuous bodies operated as personifications of
abstract secular and religious principles. Dressed in nuns’ habits or
modern gowns, the bodies became female saints who obediently
acquiesced to the will of God as brides of Christ or martyrs for the
faith. Portrait sitters decked in modest or lavish fashions embodied
feminine virtue, motherhood, and family wealth. And while the nude
bodies that occupied European canvases for the pleasure of their
male viewers were rare in Latin America, women’s bodies in casta
paintings provided fertile territory for the creation of new races of
people—the fecund wombs of colonization. The casta paintings like-
wise deployed women’s bodies as signs of racial and economic sta-
bility, illustrating New Spain’s orderly heterogeneous colony by their
(usually) good behavior, work ethic, and love for their children.
Wealthy, chaste, fecund, pious, and virtuous, the female body embod-
ied the principles upon which colonial society rested; colonial scholar
Kristine Ibsen has gone so far as to claim that women’s bodies were
considered the colony’s most precious natural resource.3 While of
course actual women presented more diverse identities than works
of art portrayed, viceregal artists and their patrons repeatedly employed
the visual arts to communicate a normative notion of womanhood
2
This understanding of the body is informed by my reading of Porter (1992);
and Stallybrass (1986) 123–42.
3
Ibsen (1998) 254.
that promoted the social and political status quo; this was as true
of prints as it was of paintings.
Printed images arrived in the Americas with the conquistadores. By
the mid-sixteenth century, Mexican artists added their own efforts
to the imported woodcuts and engravings circulating in the viceroy-
alty. The volume of local prints increased steadily over the course
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By 1767, Mexico City
alone had at least a dozen print publishing firms operated by inde-
pendent printmakers and book publishers.4 Near the end of the colo-
nial era, artists from the Royal Academy of San Carlos contributed
their brand of classicizing and ennobling images to the market.
The vast majority of prints sold in Mexican shops displayed sacred
themes, as Mexican ecclesiastics, like their contemporaries in Europe,
exploited the didactic potential of the printed image. The cheap
paper prints embodied the principles of the Catholic Reformation,
and carried carefully crafted messages of the faith into intimate
domestic spaces. The medium’s low cost and inherent multiplicity
allowed ideas and images to circulate quickly and broadly. Printed
images appeared in luxury publications, on popular broadsheets hung
in public, and on small, single-leaf prints. Although many of the
ephemeral works have been lost to history, documentary evidence
demonstrates that woodcuts and engravings belonged to colonists
ranging in stature from imprisoned slaves to wealthy merchants and
from beggars to creole ladies. These colonists hung them on walls
in their homes, pasted them in books, wore them on their bodies,
and carried them in their clothing.
Church records reveal that ecclesiastical authorities were aware of
the print’s broad appeal, and exploited its potential to reach a wide
audience. Myriad indulgence-granting prints produced in the name
of the ecclesiastical hierarchy provide a case in point. A handful of
additional examples suffice to demonstrate how Church officials
deployed prints in their interests. The sixteenth-century printmaker
Juan Ortiz worked for Dominican patrons in 1572 when he created
the Virgin of the Rosary that would soon cause him to appear before
the Inquisition.5 The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe likewise owed
4
See Donahue-Wallace (2001) 337–44.
5
See Ortiz’s trial in Fernández del Castillo (1982) 142–216.
part of its popularity to the codified iconic and narrative images

made in the seventeenth century for texts by Miguel Sánchez and
Francisco de Florencia. The Jesuit-operated press at the Colegio de
San Ildefonso printed thousands of religious images until its 1767
closure. In 1776, publisher José Antonio de Hogal produced one
thousand illustrated pamphlets that the Bethlemite order distributed
to promote devotion to Saint Francis of Paula.6 And although the
ecclesiastics occasionally expressed misgivings about placing sacred
images in popular hands, the regular and secular clergy nevertheless
embraced the potency of the printed medium and sought every
opportunity to introduce prints of sacred themes into Mexican homes
and intimate contact with pious individuals.
Printed images were powerful tools. As William MacGregor has
noted in the European context, Church and state printing programs
led people to trust the authority of their printed images.7 Inquisition
records demonstrate that Mexicans believed in and trusted their
woodcuts and engravings. A 1773 Mexican edict noted that com-
mon folk “believe to be just and holy all that is printed and stamped.”8
A 1784 Inquisition document furthermore warned of the misuse of
this gullibility, claiming that unorthodox works might ‘seduce the
ignorant’ who placed such trust in their prints.9 Secular records sim-
ilarly reveal a concern for maintaining the authority of prints. Most
significant among these were the multiple attempts viceregal author-
ities made to regulate printed images. From 1627 until the end of
the colonial era, the Laws of the Indies included language that placed
printed images under the jurisdiction of censoring laws primarily
directed at texts.10 Although evidence suggests that neither secular
nor ecclesiastical edicts had much affect on Mexican printmakers
whose first responsibility was to the market, their repetition demon-
strates that civil authorities, like their ecclesiastical peers, recognized
the power of prints.
It consequently comes as little surprise that when colonial author-
ities and elite colonists sought to communicate the ideals of wom-
anly behavior and the normative notion of womanhood through the
6
Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Inquisición, vol. 1333, fol.
108.
7
On European prints, see MacGregor (1999) 389–420.
8
AGN, Inquisición, vol. 2, f. 27.
9
AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1285, exp. 18, f. 155v.
10
See Donahue-Wallace (2000) 18–23.
female body, the printed image’s trustworthiness and ubiquity proved

handy. Images of holy women numbered among local and imported
prints and supported Church agendas. The most common female
subject, or any subject for that matter, was the Virgin Mary in her
various advocations. Of particular frequency were portraits of local
cult figures such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of los
Remedios. The prints operated, of course, as reminders of their holy
prototypes and also spread interest in cult figures that Church author-
ities promoted as pan-colonial devotions.11
Part of the print’s attraction for ecclesiastics was its ability to join
text and image to direct more effectively the viewers’ experience of
the cult figure. The most frequent inscription simply identified the
holy subject, thereby avoiding ambiguity and misunderstanding.
Inscribed messages of indulgence, requests for donations, and solic-
itations of prayer also commonly appeared on Mexican prints. The
earliest known print of the Virgin of Guadalupe, for example, engraved
by Samuel Stradanus in 1615, raised funds for construction of a
shrine to be erected in her honor. Its inscription promised forty days
of indulgence for purchasing the print and making a pious contri-
bution to the shrine’s coffers. A later Guadalupana instructed view-
ers to recite the Ave Maria before the engraving in exchange for
three hundred days of indulgence. Other inscriptions identified pious
patrons or cited passages from sacred texts, all of which augmented
the apparent truthfulness of the printed images by associating them
with recognized authority figures.12
Beyond such explicit instructions, the images of the Virgin and
female saints bore implicit messages of a normative womanhood that
also served the purposes of Church and State. The Virgin of Guadalupe
and other cult objects represented stereotyped gender and racial iden-
tities. She and other holy women found in printed images were silent
and subservient.13 They were kind, gentle, and self-sacrificing. They
were childbearing vessels who bore no stain of sin. They simulta-
neously preserved peninsular traditions and represented the aspira-
tions of a new nation.
11
See Gruzinski (1995) 53–77.
12
Interestingly, very few images bore inscriptions identifying royal approval. It
seems Mexican printmakers found no economic advantage in gaining royal approval,
and civil authorities felt no need to enforce laws requiring authorization.
13
Peterson (1992) 40.
The representation of ideal femininity found in printed images of

holy women agreed with the definition of womanhood promoted by
viceregal and ecclesiastical authorities. As much recent scholarship
has established, both Church and State exploited printed and spo-
ken means to promote a normative womanhood.14 Women were to
be either pious and chaste mothers responsible for the Christian
upbringing of their children, or virginal nuns who dedicated their
lives to God. Either model preserved family honor and promoted
social stability.15
The battleground in the struggle to preserve female virtue was the
body—one kept chaste, enclosed, and physically restrained. According
to Christian tradition, all bodies were sinful, women’s bodies most
of all. Early modern behavioral manuals advised readers to employ
the mind to train this disobedient and dangerous mortal shell.16 As
women were seen to lack sharp minds, their bodies posed a great
threat to the social order. Disorderly female bodies performed a host
of undesirable and counter-productive behaviors, from ostentatious
dress that challenged the social hierarchy to out-of-wedlock sex that
burdened the State with illegitimate children. Consequently, the men
in their lives—their fathers, husbands, and confessors—were to pro-
tect women, not so much for the women’s benefit, but for family
honor and the greater social good. Likewise, women had to be trained
how to use their bodies appropriately by fathers and confessors, who
could use physical force when necessary. Once properly educated,
women deployed their bodies in the interest of family honor, remain-
ing chaste and dressing modestly, for example.17 Hence, the treat-
ment of women’s bodies may be understood to have operated as the
public face of family honor and the visual sign of social status and
respectability.
Colonial ideas about the proper (mis)treatment of women’s bod-
ies appear in printed portraits of Mexican nuns, which relied on the
power of printedness and the print’s function as model for emula-
tion to construct ideal images of Christian femininity. The engraved
14
The scholarship on women in colonial New Spain is rich. In addition to the
works cited in this essay, see Muriel (1992); Lavrin (1978); and Socolow (2000).
15
Here I use ‘honor’ according to both of its Spanish definitions: honor meaning
“social status,” and honra meaning “virtue,” as defined by Johnson and Lipsett-
Rivera (1998) 3.
16
Porter (1992) 217.
17
Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera (1998) 12.
portraits appeared in biographies published by male ecclesiastics. The

clerical authors based their texts on the vidas (autobiographical jour-
nals) nuns wrote for their confessors.18 The published versions, abridged
by their male authors, operated as models of emulation for other
nuns and lay readers; they also functioned as documentation for can-
onization efforts when the need arose. Formulaic and repetitious, the
printed biographies embodied and reinforced the notion of ideal
Christian womanhood: obedient, pious, cloistered, and, above all,
chaste.
The nuns’ printed biographies emphasized the strategies the exem-
plary nuns employed to overcome the perceived moral weaknesses
of the female sex. From the first chapter addressing her childhood,
the text demonstrated that even in her youth the future nun did not
succumb to temptation. On the contrary, her body remained care-
fully controlled as the girl, almost from birth, denied and violently
abused herself. Starvation, self-mortification, and a bizarre host of
behaviors proved her faith and supposedly preserved her chastity.
Even when her confessor, whom she otherwise obeyed completely,
demanded that she moderate her abusive actions, the future nun
persisted. Once in the convent, her self-abuse usually intensified as
her body provided the opportunity to demonstrate physically her
piety. As Ibsen explained, “the manifestation of devotion through
the manipulation and, often, the self-inflicted pain of the body
was . . . the most tangible—albeit equally dangerous—means of assert-
ing sanctity.”19 And while it has been suggested that bodily self-abuse
described in vidas represented the women’s attempts to assume some
control over their lives,20 and they may very well have operated as
such in life and in the manuscript autobiographies, the printed biogra-
phies did not describe the behaviors as transgressive. Textual and
visual representations of self-abuse solely operated in the biographies
as signs of pious devotion and obedience to God. The fact that all
printed nuns’ biographies included lengthy and explicit passages
describing these behaviors suggests that this type of bodily abuse was
widely accepted as the path to ideal Christian womanhood, even if
confessors and Church authorities publicly condemned it.
18
On vidas, see Arenal and Schlau (1989).
19
Ibsen (1998) 252.
20
Ibid., 259–62.
The printed portraits that accompanied the biographies likewise

refashioned the realities of the nuns’ lives and likenesses into images
of ideal Christian femininity. The engravings, which presented the
nun in bust- or full-length views, offered the opportunity to give
visual form to the model described in the text that followed. Hence
it is more productive to understand the portraits as allegories rather
than specific likenesses, even if they generally captured the physi-
cality of the sitter.
Instruments of self-abuse appear in several printed portraits of
Mexican nuns. José Mota’s engraving of Madre Gerónima de la
Asunción (Fig. 5.2), found in her 1713 biography, places the gaunt
and tortured sitter in the center of the composition. Her sunken eyes
gaze heavenward and her hands are clasped before her breast. On
the table before her rest the symbols of her devotion: The Crucifix,
the skull, and the hour glass, the last two items representing medi-
tation on death and the passage of time all mortals suffer. Between
the nun and her devotional items lie four instruments of self-abuse:
a scourge, shackles, a crown of thorns, and a belt with spines.
Gerónima’s biography, compiled by Fray Ginés de Quesada, nar-
rated Gerónima’s extreme self-abuse as she tore the flesh of her back,
stabbed herself with knitting needles, and wore a wire shirt that
made the skin fall from her body.21 In a similar example, Josepha
Antonia de Nuestra Señora de la Salud’s 1750 portrait by José
Morales places the sitter beside a table bearing a cross, skull, prayer
book, and scourge that again bridges the distance between the holy
woman and her devotional aids.
In the engraved portrait accompanying her 1765 biography, Sor
Sebastiana Josepha de la Santísima Trinidad (Fig. 5.3) kneels in
prayer before a table that likewise bears instruments of self-abuse.
In this case the scourge and spiny belt rest on the table in front of
an image of a prone Christ child in an ornate niche. At the same
time, Sebastiana’s portrait, like several printed nuns’ portraits, emphat-
ically identified its sitter’s cloistered status. The large grated window
piercing the wall of her cell prohibits her exit from the Convent of
San Juan de la Penitencia where she was enclosed.
21
The descriptions of Gerónima’s abuses appear throughout Ginés de Quesada
(1713).
Fig. 5.2 José Mota, Madre Gerónima de la Asunción. 1713, engraving. Courtesy of
The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Photo by the author.
Fig. 5.3 José Morales, Sor Sebastiana de la Santísima Trinidad. 1765, engraving.
Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
It is important to note that instruments of bodily self-abuse and

obvious signs of cloistering rarely appeared in painted nuns’ por-
traits. Hence we must consider these devices as strategies privileged
in the printed medium. It would seem that as printmakers and bio-
graphers reconstructed the nuns’ likenesses for widespread printed
distribution, they had the opportunity to exercise greater artistic
license than could portrait painters because the printed portrait spread
well beyond the nun’s colleagues and relatives. Or perhaps the nature
of the printed portrait accompanying the biography demanded that
engravers bring together a variety of signs to summarize an entire
life, rather than the painted portrait’s moment—usually profession—
of the sitter’s history. Whatever the reason, the engravers augmented
the range of attributes found in painted nuns’ portraits (table, book,
Crucifix, habit), summarizing further the symbols of ideal Christian
womanhood. Like the biographer, the engraver reinvented his sitter
to represent notions of pious femininity in a widely understood visual
language.
Seen in this light, the scourge operated not only as a preview of
the bodily abuses described in the text, but also as a sign that func-
tioned in support of the portrait’s allegorical role. Whereas Gerónima,
Sebastiana, and their biographers described self-flagellation as penance,
allowing the nuns to suffer as Christ suffered for them, the artistic
tradition of the scourge referred to sexuality. The scourge repre-
sented chastity in the language of book illustration inherited from
early modern emblem books. Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia recommended
representing Castità as “a modest, honest-faced woman, holding a
whip in one hand as if she would correct herself . . . on her Girdle
is written CASTIGO CORPUS MEUM, I chastise (sic) my body.”22
Substantial scholarship exists proving that colonial artists were fully
familiar with the language of emblems and that their literate view-
ers appreciated emblematic references.23 Hence it stands to reason
that the scourge assumed more than one meaning in the printed
portraits, and conveniently permitted the representation of the largely
invisible virtue of chastity while it simultaneously referenced aspects
of the narrative it accompanied.
22
Ripa (1709) 12. Italics original.
23
Sebastián (1995) 56–82. See also Chapter II by Michael J. Schreffler in this
volume.
Abusing themselves behind the convent walls meant that Gerónima,

Sebastiana, and other nuns’ bodies no longer posed a danger to the
colonial social order. Yet the similar placement of the scourges
between the holy women and the tools of their devotion seems
significant as well. It appears that this location emphatically stated
that self-abuse and chastity were part and parcel of normative Christian
femininity; to reach God, the nuns first had to abuse their bodies.
In Sebastiana’s case, bodily abuse was also her ticket to intellectual
activity, as represented by the quill pens, ink pots, and books on the
shelf above her. The grate over the window (or the key sticking from
a locked door in the engraved portrait of María Ignacia Azlor de
Echeverz, founder of the Holy Company of Mary convent, known
as La Enseñanza, in Mexico City) vividly exemplified the ideal dis-
position of female bodies. It also permitted access to Sebastiana’s
scholarly life and María Ignacia’s administrative responsibilities.
At the same time, the printed portraits employed inscribed pas-
sages to describe their sitters. Sebastiana’s portrait, for example, reads,
“True Portrait of the Venerable Mother Sor Sebastiana Josepha de
la Santísima Trinidad of the Black Veil of the Convent of San Juan
de la Penitencia of Mexico where she was born, died October 4,
1757, at 48 years old.” The declaration of truthfulness, which was
also employed in painted portraits, partnered with the assumptions
regarding printedness to convince viewers of the veracity of the ideas
embodied by the image. The illustrations therefore served as efficacious
and authoritative opportunities to embody the normative notion of
Christian womanhood and to disseminate this vision widely among
literate colonists whose internalization of its message was essential to
preserving the status quo.
While self-abuse in the name of religion was accepted, and even
promoted, by colonial authorities, violence in civil society was a trick-
ier issue. Violence was a potent tool for the imposition of order in
the viceroyalty, as it was in Europe. Colonists lived under the threat
of physical force, from the Spanish armies dispatched to quell indige-
nous uprisings to the Inquisition’s autos de fe that threatened public
humiliation and, occasionally, death for crimes against the faith.
Creole men had the right to carry swords and, by implication, the
right to use them when provoked. Even violence against women had
its place in colonial culture. Like the ecclesiastic and civil authori-
ties who raised their metaphoric hand to unruly colonists, husbands
disciplined their wives for perceived transgressions against family
honor. Richard Boyer has shown that this behavior was sanctioned
in confessional manuals so long as it was moderate and corrective.24
In other words, like the nuns’ self-abuse, a disciplinary beating brought
a disorderly wife into alignment with her expected role. On the other
hand, abusive behaviors that violated the normative idea of wom-
anhood—either by or against women—were roundly condemned,
and colonial authorities punished assailants, rapists, and other trans-
gressors against women’s bodies.25
It is within this context that the print described at the beginning
of this discussion must be understood. The woman’s dismembered
body appeared in the Mexican edition of Louis Dubroca’s Vida de
J. J. Dessalines, which chronicled the 1791 Haitian slave rebellion,
the establishment of the independent Haitian republic in 1804, and
Dessalines’s bloody reign through 1805. The history was published
in 1806 by Mexican newspaper editor Juan López Cancelada as a
special supplement to his Gaceta de México.
The book contained ten etched illustrations by Mexican printmak-
ers. Four are José Simón de la Rea’s reproductions of portraits of
Haiti’s revolutionary leaders: Toussaint L’Ouverture, Henri Christophe,
Georges Biassou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Six narrative illustra-
tions, drawn and etched by Mexican academic Manuel López López,
chronicle historical moments, including Dessalines’s imperial coro-
nation, L’Ouverture contemplating his deeds, and the French gen-
eral Heudoville addressing a rebel leader. Three of the narrative
etchings represent attacks on white colonists. The first shows
Christophe’s assault on Cape François, with French men surrender-
ing while their wives and children cling to their upraised arms. The
second illustration represents the woman killed by rebel troops and
the dead baby at her side. One aggressor remains after her brutal
attack, peaking out from behind a rock and brandishing his weapon.
The third image (Fig. 5.4), which accompanies a chapter titled
“Portrait of J. J. Dessalines,” portrays the rebel and emperor him-
self holding aloft the head of a white woman and brandishing a
sword. Her severed hand and discarded clothes, suggestive of her
pre- or post-mortem rape, lie on the ground behind him.
López Cancelada, in his prologue and introduction to Dubroca’s
racist and sensationalized tale, explained the nature of the illustrations.
24
Boyer (1989) 256.
25
Lavrin (1978) 71.
Fig. 5.4 Manuel López López, Desalines (sic). 1806, etching. Courtesy of the Nettie
Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the
author.
He acquired the portraits from a Mexican merchant and commis-

sioned Rea to reproduce them for inclusion in the text. This was
necessary, he said, so that Mexican readers might get to know the
‘monsters’ it described.26 He also hired López to place the portraits
of L’Ouverture and Dessalines into different narrative scenes.27 In
other words, Cancelada and his engraver selected the passages to
illustrate according to their readings of and aspirations for the text.
Hence, to understand their selections, we must interrogate their inten-
tions for the book.
López Cancelada published Dubroca’s text as a warning to New
Spain’s Spanish population. The Haitian blacks rose up against their
oppressors and employed horrific violence toward French colonial
authority. As Oscar Castañeda Batres has noted, Cancelada’s intro-
duction to the history clearly admonished creoles and peninsular
Spaniards to take care, because they too were outnumbered by
Indians, blacks, and castas.28 López Cancelada feared that squabbles
between creoles and gachupines (peninsular-born Spaniards) left New
Spain vulnerable to rebellion. The text’s lengthy descriptions of the
Haitian rebels’ bad behaviors and internal squabbles vividly illus-
trated the degradation that would befall the colony and its Spanish
residents if non-European rebels were to assume power.
The editor’s choice of passages to illustrate comes as little surprise
when seen in this light, as López Cancelada appealed to his read-
ers’ ideas about women’s bodies to demonize the Haitian rebels. The
raped and dismembered women had not transgressed against soci-
ety and did not require spousal discipline; the violence against them
was not socially condoned. In fact, with her child at her breast, the
woman lying in the field embodied the ideal of Christian woman-
hood—the good mother who cared for her child until her last
moments—even if she was French. Dessalines’s attacks on white
women were heinous acts not only for targeting the weakest mem-
bers of society, but for their violation of the idea of womanhood in
26
Juan López Cancelada, “Prologo,” in [Dubroca] (1806). The portraits likely
came from European editions of Dubroca’s text, such as the 1802 Paris edition
with L’Ouverture’s portrait engraved by Francois Bonneville.
27
The disparity in levels of participation explains why Rea inscribed only grabó
next to his name, identifying his merely reproductive role, whereas López identified
his activities as designer and engraver, inscribing each of his narrative scenes “Manuel
López López lo dibujó y grabó en México.”
28
[Dubroca] (1806) 17.
racial and economic terms—as a black man attacking white women,

as a poor man raping rich women, as a slave turning against his
masters. And even though these scenes are vastly outnumbered in
Dubroca’s text by a host of other military and political events, the
editor and his artist dedicated one third of the narrative images to
violence against women. The destruction of female bodies not only
embodied the innate brutality López Cancelada and colonial elites
attributed to non-white peoples, but also visualized the destruction
of civilized society. Raped and dismembered, the women’s bodies
personified the dishonor and destruction of the State; the dead child
left no room for redemption.
To appreciate fully the impact of López Cancelada’s horrific nar-
rative illustrations we must again consider their context: the images
appeared in printed form, added at great expense to the typographic
story. Clearly the Mexican editor relied on the popular perception
of prints as bearers of truth as he placed his illustrations in the text.
He furthermore exploited this naiveté by conflating reproductions of
likenesses, made ostensibly either from life or first-hand accounts,
with narrative illustrations made from his own reading and under-
standing of the text. The portraits lent credibility to his invented
images of brutalized women. This is particularly true for the illus-
tration of Dessalines holding aloft the woman’s severed head, as it
was placed at the beginning of the chapter presenting a portrait of
the Haitian rebel. The illustration’s inscription reads simply “Desalines
(sic),” as if the brutal deed summarized Dessalines’s character. López
Cancelada therefore doubled the truthfulness of his image, appeal-
ing to the belief in prints and in the supposed truthfulness of por-
traits. At the same time, this and other illustrations lent credibility
to the text by elevating the story to something that Mexican read-
ers could see with their own eyes. And since the images with which
he chose to reinvent the story disproportionately privileged violence
against women, the prints operated as spectacular and convincing
illustrations of the destruction of civilization and the innate incivil-
ity the editor attributed to non-white peoples.
With the national welfare resting on the popular internalization
of constructed images of the female sex, it is not surprising that the
Holy Office of the Inquisition became involved when Mexicans
directed decidedly irreverent behaviors toward prints of holy female
bodies. To end this interrogation of abused female bodies in prints,
therefore, we shall turn the tables and examine not the representation
of violence against women’s bodies, but violence against prints them-

selves—against images of the female bodies that presented the nor-
mative vision of Christian womanhood and, by extension, the very
values upon which the colonial state rested.
Mexicans abused printed images of holy persons, both male and
female, in many bizarre ways. They ripped them, whipped them,
threw them, burned them, dismembered them, used them in scato-
logical acts, and wore them on their bodies. A recent survey of 211
Inquisition trials revealed that irreverent behaviors directed toward
paintings and sculptures included many of the same practices.29 The
study identified the most frequent target to be paintings and sculp-
tures of Christ on the Cross and, in a distant second place, the
Virgin Mary. In Inquisition cases specifically addressing abusive behav-
iors directed toward prints, on the other hand, the most frequently
identified subject was the Virgin of Guadalupe. If we assume that
the attacks were shaped, in part, by the availability of images, the
disparity makes sense from a material perspective. Simply put, Mexicans
were surrounded by Crucifixions and prints of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
making them handy targets. Unfortunately we must set aside the
question of whether the frequency of attacks on prints of the Virgin
of Guadalupe reflected the volume of Guadalupana prints or aggres-
sion directed specifically against this icon of Mexican religiosity.
Currently available documentation is insufficient to penetrate the
attackers’ intentions to this degree. We may, however, interrogate
how the ideas of womanhood and the power of prints may have
played a role in these iconoclastic outbursts.
Three Inquisition cases involving the abuse of prints of the Virgin
of Guadalupe reveal the nature of the attacks. The first involved a
mestiza maid named Antonia, whose creole employer, Ana Gertrudis
de Ortega, denounced her before the Holy Tribunal in 1745.30
According to Ortega’s testimony, one night Antonia made blasphe-
mous statements about the saints. Suddenly the maid produced a
print of the Virgin of Guadalupe and spit on it. Horrified, Ortega
called a friend to assist her. In his own testimony, Ortega’s friend
confirmed her account, noting that he of course was not present for
the actual moment of spitting. He felt free, however, to explain that
29
Ramírez Leyva (2000) 177–178.
30
AGN, Inquisición, vol. 892, fol. 348v.
Antonia’s act was likely motivated only by Antonia’s womanly pas-

sions, not her misunderstanding of the faith.
In a 1783 case, Juana Mansilla, described as a parda, or “mixed-
race woman,” was sent to the tribunal by her confessor. Juana had
received a pair of shoes as a limosna (alms) from a merchant named
don Felipe. When she took the shoes to be repaired, the shoemaker
discovered an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Fig. 5.5) tucked
inside one of the shoes.31 The print, not surprisingly, was sweaty and
damaged. When the cobbler brought the print to Juana’s attention,
he told her that only a Jew would stick an engraving of the Virgin
of Guadalupe in a shoe. Juana immediately turned the paper image
over to her confessor who sent her to the Inquisition. The ecclesi-
astics were predictably very concerned that the print of the Holy
Patroness of New Spain was damp and ripped, and made special
note of this fact in their records.
The third example involved a native or mestizo man named
Romualdo Sierra from Tacuba. In 1795, María Desideria Alarcón
asked for an audience with the Inquisitors, at which she testified that
she had second-hand knowledge of a most unpleasant occurrence.
María had been told that Romualdo used an engraving of the Virgin
of Guadalupe to clean excrement from his body. As if that were not
sufficient affront to the sanctity of the Mother of the Mexican nation,
Romualdo spoke blasphemous words against her.
The behaviors described in these and other Inquisition cases were,
for obvious reasons, clear deviations from the implicit and explicit
code of conduct in viceregal New Spain. And they certainly trans-
gressed against the normative behaviors associated with women’s bod-
ies, both in person and in print. Here was the model of femininity
treated more like a battered wife than the Mother of the Mexican
nation. How are we then to understand the acts within the discourse
of ideal womanhood and the authority of print?
Analyzing the events is complicated by questions surrounding
whether the outbursts truly occurred or constituted tales invented to
discredit enemies before the Inquisition. None of the cases progressed
beyond witness testimony, and—perhaps fortunately in light of the
nature of the crimes—only the print from the shoe remains as phys-
ical evidence of abuse against an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
31
AGN, Inquisición, vol. 928, exp. 7, fol. 324v.
Fig. 5.5 José Morales, The Virgin of Guadalupe. 18th c., engraving. Courtesy of the
Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City.
But even if the denunciations were invented, the fact remains that
someone, either the accused or the accuser, understood that abus-
ing a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe made for a spectacular oppor-
tunity to garner attention, as evidenced by the accusers’ complaints
and the Inquisition’s interest. Attacking a printed image as part of
a general heretical outburst provided Inquisitors with a tangible and
physical act to investigate: whereas words vanished as soon as they
were spoken, a ripped or soiled print remained to testify to the
heresy. And when the damaged image represented the icon of Mexican
national identity, the stakes were even higher.
Whether the abusive displays were real or invented, they never-
theless reflected the body discourse described in earlier paragraphs,
but this time with a new wrinkle. The attackers (or their accusers)
understood the potent associations of printed images of this female
body as supposedly truthful symbols of colonial womanhood and, by
extension, of an orderly and divinely sanctioned colonial society.
They abused the images in bodily terms, spitting on one, wearing
the second against a dirty foot, and smearing the third with excre-
ment. Hence we may understand these acts as the confrontation of
Bahktin’s classical body—the perfectly formed representation of abso-
lutist (or colonial in this case) ideals—and the grotesque body, which
celebrated raw humanity and opposed reasoned civility.32 The abu-
sive events therefore became the violent confrontation of the ideal
and the real, whereby the constructed image of womanhood was
assaulted by the inescapable earthiness of lived existence as frustrated
colonists lashed out against this symbol in bodily terms.
The images of the Virgin of Guadalupe were brought into this
mundane realm, and therefore made available for these grotesque
displays, by their material, and it stands to reason that the nature
of the printed images contributed to the attacks. First, the print’s
ubiquity meant that this holy image transcended the boundaries of
normal art-viewing contexts and came into intimate contact with a
decidedly unschooled body of art collectors. The Mexican Church
encouraged individuals to keep prints in their homes and on their
persons, and to form emotional bonds with the intercessors they rep-
resented. This fostered a level of intimacy between viewer and print
that necessarily resulted in close contact between the image and the
32
Stallybrass (1986) 124.
body. Not surprisingly, the line between acceptable and unaccept-

able behaviors toward the printed image was easily crossed in this
context. If the Church promoted wearing a printed image next to
one’s heart as a sign of faith, certainly placing it below the foot
made a potent statement of displeasure.
Second, the printed image’s perceived truthfulness and official aura
undoubtedly contributed to the nature of the (real or invented) assaults.
Lashing out against prints may be understood as the desperate act
of the impotent peon, whose interactions with the institutions the
print represented were invariably oppressive and denigrating. The
maid, the mixed-race man, and the (supposed) Jew existed on the lower
rungs of Mexico’s socio-ethnic hierarchy, with little or no true oppor-
tunity to improve their condition. Hence, like the nuns who perhaps
abused their own bodies to assume some margin of control over
their regulated lives, the prints’ assailants turned against their own
images to vent their frustrations. And while Inquisition authorities
recognized these abuses as attacks on holy art and the traditions of
the Church, they also acknowledged that there was little they could
do. The prints were simply too small, too cheap, and too easily con-
cealed to permit enforcement—and perhaps that too figured into the
assailants’ acts.
Let us now return to the etching of the dismembered woman in
the field. The preceding paragraphs have demonstrated that this illus-
tration gets at the very heart of colonial ideas about women’s bod-
ies and about the nature of prints. Both may be best understood as
potent symbols that were available for deployment in support of per-
sonal or institutional agendas. Ripped, cut, shredded, and violated,
the bodies and prints embraced the normative notion of woman-
hood and manipulated it. Playing upon colonists’ loyalties, beliefs,
and fears, the prints of abused female bodies communicated a host
of meanings that reinforced the colonial status quo in an intimate
and at the same time hugely public way.
Bibliography
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(Albuquerque: 1989).
[Dubroca, L.] (1806) Vida de J. J. Dessalines: Gefe de los negros de Santo Domingo; con
notas muy circunstanciadas sobre el origen, carácter y atrocidades de aquellos rebeldes desde el
principio de la insurrección en 1791 . . ., ed. J. López Cancelada (Mexico City: 1806).
Donahue-Wallace, K. (2000) “Prints and Printmakers in Viceregal Mexico City,
1600–1800” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 2000).
——. (2001) “Nuevas aportaciones sobre los grabadores novohispanos,” in Barroco
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2001).
Gruzinski, S. (1995) “Images and Cultural Mestizaje in Colonial Mexico,” Poetics
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Trinidad and the Hagiographic Representation of the Body in Colonial Spanish
America,” Colonial Latin American Review 7, no. 2 (1998) 251–270.
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Violence in Colonial Latin America, Diálogos series (Albuquerque: 1998).
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History 22, no. 3 (1999) 389–420.
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Art Journal 51 (1992) 39–47.
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P. Burke (University Park, PA: 1992).
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(Mexico City: 2000).
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Joseph de la S[antísima] Trinidad . . . (Mexico City: 1765).
CHAPTER SIX
RECLAIMING TLATILCO’S FIGURINES

FROM BIASED ANALYSIS
In 1953 the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera unveiled a mosaic

mural for the façade of the Teatro de los Insurgentes in southern Mexico
City, The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History.1 On the upper right
corner a dance group moves freely in uncluttered space. The ensemble
is composed of three svelte women holding hands, their long braids
flying in the air as a result of their lively movements (Fig. 6.1). From
hips to toes they sport skin-tight decorated trousers or leotards that
approach body-painted designs in appearance. For the average mod-
ern observer, the trio is reminiscent of a women’s chorus line, a
form of entertainment popularized in Mexico by 1930s Hollywood
movies. For a specialist in the preclassic period (2500 BCE–250 CE)
of Mesoamerican art history, the dancers are clearly modeled after
the small solid 8 to 15 cm. high clay female figurines unearthed
mainly at Tlatilco during the 1940s.
Rivera and his friend Miguel Covarrubias were two of the many
Mexican artists and collectors who first saw and bought these pieces
from the workers at the brick factory set, half-knowingly, over the
pre-Hispanic site of Tlatilco in the suburbs of Mexico City. Due to
their high aesthetic quality, their diminutive size, and the uncon-
trolled looting of the privately owned lot, hundreds of whole figurines
and thousands of fragments soon found their way into innumerable
personal collections in Mexico, the United States, and Europe.2
For the Insurgentes dance ensemble, Rivera borrowed the bodily
features of the Tlatilco Type D1 figurines along with the extended
arms, earplugs, and long braids of a pair of sculptures apparently
1
El teatro en México, una historia popular. Mosaic, 12.85 × 42.79 m., Teatro de los
Insurgentes, 1951–1953, México, D. F. For this mural see Rochfort (1993) 175–79.
2
Covarrubias (1943) 40–41; and Covarrubias (1957) 24.
150
maría elena bernal-garcía
Fig. 6.1 Diego Rivera. The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History. Mosaic, 12.85 × 42.79 m., 1951–1953, Teatro de los Insurgentes,
Mexico City. Detail. Drawing by the author at the site.
reclaiming tlatilco’s figurines from biased analysis 151
found together and believed to represent ceremonial dancers (Figs.

6.2 and 6.3).3 For the tri-faced dancer in the middle, the muralist
mixed Greek mask prototypes with two-headed figurines found at
Tlatilco and other Mesoamerican sites in the Valley of Mexico and
outside it. When it came to depicting the dancers’ lively movements,
Rivera was undoubtedly influenced by an outstanding piece then in
Covarrubias’s collection (Fig. 6.4). The figurine represents an extremely
wide-hipped woman spinning about her own axis. She wears a short,
almost horizontal skirt below her waist as do many other Tlatilcan
female figurines. The dance pose and the skirt prompted Covarrubias
to conceptualize this piece as a dancer. Soon other artists and schol-
ars followed suit and began addressing this piece as a ‘ballerina.’4
Rivera used Type D1 female figurines as the main source for the
dance group for two dissimilar but complementary reasons. The first
was aesthetic, the figurines’ plastically naturalistic style and dynamic
qualities; second, the biased gender views inherent to most 19th and
20th-century academic writing in Mexico, the United States, and
Europe. Because professional and non-professional alike labeled the
figurines ‘pretty ladies,’ Rivera surely thought this an apt pre-Hispanic
category to parallel the representation of twentieth-century women,
particularly those working in the entertainment business.5 The sticky
tag became the lens through which most specialists came to see and
address the D1 figurines until today, simultaneously suggesting that
the sculptures—and Tlatilcan women by extension—represented ideals
of female beauty manufactured largely to satisfy ancient and mod-
ern male desires and tastes. Thus the many feminine representations
found in Tlatilcan burials were assumed to represent ‘companions
for the dead’ for the remains of male individuals. In reality female
figurines were interred more often with female than with male
skeletons.6
The next step in this progression of erred sexist assumptions was
to consider most of these female figurines as of mothers representations
3
Anton (1969) 5 first reported that the two ‘dancing’ figurines had been unearthed
together.
4
Covarrubias (1943) 45, (1950), plate without page or number, and (1957) 24.
In 1950 Covarrubias labeled her ‘danzarina.’ After Covarrubias’s death, this figurine
made its way into the Museo Nacional de Antropología. Rivera (1949) in Cardona
Peña (1981) 110; Bernal (1950) 16; Piña Chan, Romano Pacheco, and Pareyón
Moreno (1952) 111; Westheim (1980) 192, 204; Furst and Furst (1980) 26.
5
The Literary Review (1936) 20–21.
6
Piña Chan (1955) 68; and Laporte (1971) 343.
152 maría elena bernal-garcía
Fig. 6.2 Tlatilco. Type D1 Female and Male Figurines. Clay with paint, 1500–300
BCE Drawing by the author after C. Thomson (1971) Fig. 14.
Fig. 6.3 Tlatilco. Pair of Female Figurines. Clay, 15.5 cm. high, 1500–300 BCE
Drawing by the author from the originals in the Museo Nacional de Antropología
e Historia, Mexico City.
Fig. 6.4 Tlatilco. Whirling Type D1 Female Figurine. Clay with red, white, and
yellow paint, ca. 11 cm. high. Drawing by the author from the original in the
Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.
Fig. 6.5 Zacatenco. Burial 19. Drawing by the author after George C. Vaillant
(1931) “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of
Natural History 32 (New York: 1931) 189.
and then earth-fertility symbols. By painting with such a broad brush,

scholars preempted space for alternative inquiries that might better
clarify the Tlatilcan figurines’ aesthetics, functions, and iconography.
It also propitiated a myriad of other truly fantastic and obtuse labels
like ‘naked feminine figure,’ ‘nude girls,’ ‘topless girls and women,’
‘Venus of Tlatilco’ and ‘Lady of Tlatilco.’ Not surprisingly, this dis-
course never affected the analysis of Type D1 male figurines for which
rather discrete, accurate, and proper appellations were employed,
like ‘man,’ ‘male figure,’ ‘chief,’ ‘shaman,’ and ‘sorcerer.’” In truth,
the counterparts to the epithets applied to the female figurines were
never used. There were no ‘pretty lords,’ ‘handsome gentlemen,’
‘Apollo of Tlatilco,’ ‘Lord of Tlatilco,’ nor even ‘nude men,’ although
some male figurines display as little clothing as many of the female
sculptures (Fig. 6.2). Nonetheless, the treatment granted to the female
representations eventually affected the study of the male figurines.
To explain the phenomenon of gender discrimination behind the
screen provided by the ‘pretty lady’ tag imposed on the Tlatilcan
female figurines, I will trace and examine the label’s introduction in
modern scholarship, the reasons behind its acceptance in some of
the most prestigious academic circles, and its profound negative
impact on the study of the preclassic cultures that occupied the Valley
of Mexico. Finally, I will propose a different path to better under-
stand Tlatilco’s exceptional artistic manifestation in Mesoamerican
history.
Emergence of the ‘Pretty Lady’ Tag
Even though Tlatilco is believed to have been the first “cosmopoli-

tan town in the Valley of Mexico, the richest and most important,”
it was the last of the basin’s preclassic settlements to be found and
studied. Others in its vicinity, and influenced by it, like Zacatenco,
Ticomán, and El Arbolillo, were excavated in the 1930s by several
Mexican and American archeologists. In fact it was the figurines’
presence that led archeologists to discover these preclassic sites.
Tlatilco’s figurines were unearthed in the 1930s and early 1940s from
a field near San Juan Tlatilco, a town in the Municipio of San Bartolo
Naucalpan, state of Mexico. Tlatilco is a Nahuatl toponym mean-
ing “Place of Mounds,” apt for a site located on the western pied-
mont of the Sierra Las Cruces, over a set of natural alluvial terraces.
In 1942 Covarrubias was finally able to convince the Mexican gov-

ernment’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) to control
the looting and start excavations at Tlatilco.7
Tlatilco’s origins are puzzling because the town seems to have
appeared suddenly as an already sophisticated and well-organized
community. Ochoa Castillo sets its occupation to the early and mid-
dle preclassic periods (1800–400 BCE), and its most productive phase
between 1300 and 900 BCE.8 Given that three quarters of the
Tlatilcan figurines were not found in a burial context, it remains to
be seen if they were also related to house construction or agricul-
tural fields.9
In 1922 Nuttal described a high-quality ‘sub-gravel’ preclassic
Valley of Mexico female figurine with ‘delicate’ features, first cata-
logued by Hay in 1918–19, as Type D1. In 1928–32 Vaillant, an
archeologist who became highly influential, excavated the sites of
Zacatenco, Ticomán, and El Arbolillo, all near Tlatilco, while he
refined Hay’s figurine classification. Vaillant accumulated thousands
of heads and whole figurines to better understand the chronology of
the Valley’s preclassic period. Hay and Vaillant initiated the misla-
beling of Type D1 female figurines. For his 1923 article Hay chose
photographs of an intact D1 female figurine, as well as a broken
torso, to represent the fine artistic production of these newly found
cultures. When in 1931 Vaillant published his first excavation in con-
text of a type D figurine at Zacatenco, he wrote: “The charm of
this type, according to European aesthetic ideals, has brought it con-
siderable attention, and it is known vulgarly as the ‘pretty lady type.’ ”
As Hay before him, Vaillant chose a D1 female figurine, this time
a head fragment, to illustrate his article on Zacatenco.10
When in 1943 Covarrubias wrote the first article in the literature
exclusively dedicated to Tlatilco, he lifted Vaillant’s 1931 ‘pretty lady’
7
Covarrubias (1950) 155; Covarrubias (1943) 41, translation corroborated by
John Sullivan, personal communication 14 February 2005; García Moll and Salas
Cuesta (1998) 15. The excavated site measures about 8000 m. square. From 1942
to 1969 INAH undertook four periods of excavation at Tlatilco. Covarrubias pro-
moted the first two; García Moll (1991) 10–15.
8
Séjourné (1952) 55; Romano (1962) 415; and Ochoa Castillo (1982) 2, 160,
194–95.
9
This point cannot be clarified unless the Tlatilco reports for seasons I, II, and
III are published.
10
Nuttall (1922) 4–5; Reyna Robles (1971) 23; Vaillant (1934) 24; Noguera (1975)
72–74, 102; Hay (1923) 259–71; and Vaillant (1931a) 34.
phrase to single out Type D female figurines. Writing in English for

Paalen’s brilliant and internationally important magazine Dyn, Covar-
rubias states that type D,
. . . by far the most abundant at Tlatilco, shows a people with delicate
features—large slanting eyes, small turned up noses and fine mouths—
that have earned them the name of ‘pretty lady type’ by which it was
known to Mexican archaelogists.11
From then on nearly every specialist would quote an indeterminate
group of archeologists to defend the classification’s accuracy. Covar-
rubias failed to cite Vaillant’s 1931 article while vaguely attributing
the phrase to a group of suddenly Mexican archeologists. However,
because the artist spoke and wrote English, he quoted Vaillant’s
phrase exactly as it had been written twelve years earlier. In con-
trast and in the same year (1943), Noguera examined the Gulf Coast
Olmec manifestations in the preclassic Valley of Mexico, writing that
“among these [objects] the ‘pretty woman’ type, or Vaillant’s D1,
prevails.”12 Although here Noguera acknowledges Vaillant’s work, he
not only changes the phrase’s noun from ‘lady’ to ‘woman,’ but fails
to fully credit Vaillant for its invention by omitting his colleague’s
publication date and title.
In his second 1950s article on Tlatilco, Covarrubias mistranslates
‘pretty lady’ into ‘pretty woman.’ That same year Westheim cites
Covarrubias’ 1943 essay, applying the ‘pretty lady’ classification to
all Type D figurines. Covarrubias’ posthumous 1957 book coined a
third rescension, ‘pretty girl.’13 Thus, in just twenty years of acade-
mic communication the Tlatilcan female figurines diminished in rank
and age. The trend climaxed in 1976 with Gendrop’s graciosas mujerci-
tas, “charming little women.”14 Violating all proper art historical
methodologies, he singled out a reclining D1 female figurine as
‘Venus.’ Although Gendrop was a sufficiently well-trained art histo-
11
Covarrubias (1943) 46. The first ambitious survey of Mexican pre-Columbian
art, written by Toscano and published in 1944, had no coverage of Tlatilco.
12
Mujer bonita in the original Spanish text; Noguera (1943) 511–512.
13
Covarrubias (1950) 159; Westheim (1950) 169, 173; and Covarrubias (1957) 28.
14
The translation of the very subjective Spanish word graciosas into English is
imprecise. Depending on the context, it can mean amusing, funny, charming, attrac-
tive, or cute. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003) s.v. gracioso. In Gendrop’s phrase
the meaning is obviously shaded toward charming, attractive, or cute.
rian to know that his Tlatilco ‘Venus’ and its preclassic artistic tra-
dition could not have been known to the Spanish painter Goya, he
let his lyrical exaltation for the female nude get the best of him by
positing the tiny figure as an eternal ideal of beauty latent in the
mind of man and therefore an atavistic antecedent of Goya’s Naked
Maja.15 Gendrop should have heeded Bandi and Maringer, who had
long before asserted that to label the Paleolithic Woman of Willendorf
‘Venus’ is ‘plainly absurd.’16 The same observation applies to the
Tlatilcan female figurines so tagged.
After 1950 this ‘Pretty Lady’ construct morphed into many other
forms, each more inaccurate and demeaning than the preceding.
The allusion after each such reference to unnamed ‘archeologists’
cloaked the label with the aura of scientific accuracy.17 Notable excep-
tions to this discourse are Nuttall, Porter, Adams, and Kubler.18
The Implications of Western Feminine Stereotypes

for the Misinterpretation of Type D Figurines
In 1962 Kubler declared, with most scholars tacitly agreeing, that

the ‘finest examples’ of Valley of Mexico preclassic figurine art come
from Tlatilco. He proceeded to illustrate his assertion with a D1
double-faced female effigy. Three years later Coe, a Yale colleague,
stated that types D1and D4 were “among the most beautiful objects
of their size in all of the New World.”19 Compared to Type D1,
Type D4’s most salient characteristics are its spherical buttocks and
round face. Hence the two types usually illustrate most books and
articles to represent the twenty-six formal varieties of figurine found
at the site, even though Type D2 hollow figures appear in greater
15
Gendrop (1970) 10–11, and Fig. 16.
16
Bandi and Maringer (1953) 28
17
Westheim (1950) 173; Westheim (1962) 34; Piña Chan, R., A. Romano Pacheco
and E. Pareyón-Moreno (1952) 42; Séjourné (1952) 59; Barba de Piña Chan (1956)
89; and Coe (1962) 55. More recently Tate (1996) 51, García Moll and Salas Cuesta
(1998) 33; and Ochoa Castillo (2004) 10.
18
Bernal-García (1988) 177–184. Uriarte (2003) 135–140 substituted the ‘pretty
lady’ label with ‘feminine figurine.’ Also see the highly technical archeological report
on Season IV Tlatilco burial excavations by García Moll, et al. (1991).
19
Kubler (1984) 48 and Fig. 3; and Coe (1965) 26.
quantities, and the rare K-abstract is just as beautiful as are D1 and

D4.20 Moreover, K-abstract has not been found anywhere else in
Mesoamerica and could be as representative of Tlatilco as Types
D1, D2, and D4. According to Ochoa Castillo, D and K with their
variants define the Tlatilcan tradition, with types D more than dou-
bling the amounts extant of types K.21
Types D1 and D4 were hand-modeled with details applied as bits
and fillets of clay, a technique commonly known as pastillaje or appliqué.
They generally show slender bodies, short arms, and wide thighs.
Sometimes hands and feet are indicated by folding the clay at the
tip of arms or legs, or by incision to characterize fingers or toes.
Both men and women display exotic coiffures, with women usually
wearing long hair-strands, braids, knots, or bangs; the male figurines
frequently display shorter hair.22 Apparently the tiny sculptures were
modeled to be seen from the front where most details appear, even
though their backs show great mastery in handling relationships
between line and volume. At times pigments (white, red, yellow,
black, and violet) were applied to different parts of the body and/or
garments. Women are often shown nude or wearing skirts or pants,
latticed headdresses or hats; most men wrap themselves in loincloths
although some may sport fuller garments and wear helmets, hats, or
wigs. Both sexes adorn themselves with earplugs but women more
often use necklaces. It is not known if the figurines were meant to
stand or recline, but in burials they were usually found lying down
on their backs or chests. Some were set standing inside a tall ves-
sel, others reclined over a bowl.23
As expressed by Kubler and Coe, the main reason why Type D1
female figurines became so appealing to those who first saw them
20
Type D2 figures measure 15 to 50 cm in length and are generally made of
hollow clay. These are not considered in this study.
21
Ochoa Castillo (1982) 74–88, 193. In her sample of 738 figurines, 83.57%
belong to types D and K. Of these, more than twice as many, 454 or 60.18%,
were classified as Type D compared to 174 or 23.39% for Type K. Variant D1A
was represented by 114 pieces with variant D2 at 192. Ochoa’s sample agrees with
Covarrubias’s earlier observation about Type D2 being the most abundant at Tlatilco;
Covarrubias (1950) 159. This type is also the most abundant in Laporte (1971) 162:
1530 out of 2640 or 58.8%.
22
There are exceptions and it is sometimes very difficult to classify figurines
according to their sex. For example, men wearing loincloths also show a long braid,
or a skirted figurine may lack breasts.
23
For example, García Moll, et al. (1991) Burial 93, items 7, 8, 9; and García
Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 38.
was their naturalistic appearance with regard to other types, and a

favorable comparison with familiar concepts of beauty. Vaillant
thought Type D figurines deserved the ‘pretty lady’ label due to their
congruence in form and proportion with ‘European aesthetic ideals,’
and Covarrubias believed “the majority [in the Type D1 category]
are pretty, even by European standards, and often they are remi-
niscent of early Greek art.”24 Since neither man could know how
handsome Tlatilcan women or men actually were, their models came
specifically from classical Greek and Roman statuary and commonly
accepted European notions of feminine beauty. Hence, since all of
the authorities had been inculcated with the ideals of beauty per-
taining to Western Antiquity, throughout the following decades most
scholars confirmed Vaillant’s and Covarrubias’s appreciations.25
Other less serious specialists took the already stretched compari-
son between Tlatilcan and European women to the limit. Gutierre
Tibón, an Italian philologist whose work is still much admired in
Mexico, believed Tlatilco D1 figurines looked like “little French,
English, or Scandinavian” females, much unlike the “traditional cliché
portrait of the Mexican Indian woman” (emphasis mine).26 Of the
large group of scholars who envisioned ideals of human beauty in
the figurines’ bodies, only Ignacio Bernal sought an autochthonous
model for Type D female figurines. It is a passage from the Historia
Tolteca-Chichimeca, where Huémac, last king of Tula, orders the
Nonoalcas to bring him a woman “with hips four palms in width.”
While the Nonoalcas reported that they could not find one single
female of such girth, Bernal asserted Tlatilco’s wide-hipped figurines
could have amply satisfied the king’s wishes.27 Examined more closely,
the archeologist’s observation about this episode rather corroborates
that wide-hipped indigenous women were hard to find in Huémac’s
time (1200 C.E.), and most likely the same was true during the pre-
classic era.28
24
Vaillant (1931a) 34; and Covarrubias (1943) 46.
25
E.g. Barba de Piña Chan (1956) 169; Gendrop (1970) 11; and Reyna Robles
(1971) 23.
26
Tibón (1967) 17.
27
Bernal (1976) 132; and Kirchhoff, et al. (1976) 133–134.
28
Besides, there are other sources for pre-Columbian canons of beauty such as
Sahagún’s informants’ description of the god Tezcatlipoca’s impersonator for the
Toxcatl festivities; Sahagún, (1981[1582]) I: 114–15, 153.
These inadequate labels concealed socially accepted stereotypes

about women. To address these ingrained formulas, five English dic-
tionaries published over the course of the last eighty years were con-
sulted.29 In two of these the word ‘pretty’ refers to those things and
persons “beautiful in a dainty or diminutive way,” especially “said
of woman or children as opposed to handsome.” The word is par-
ticularly applied to ‘beautiful women’ according to two of the four
dictionaries, where the concept of ‘beautiful’ defines “a combination
of qualities, such as shape, proportion, color, in human face or form,
or in other objects, that delight the sight and other senses, includ-
ing the intellect and the moral.” An alternative adjective to describe
a beautiful person is ‘handsome,’ an adjective that bespeaks ‘dignity’
and ‘stateliness.’ For this reason, the word ‘handsome’ is applied
more often to humans than to animals, and most commonly to men
than to women and children. The contrast between these three terms
produces an aesthetic hierarchy whereby ‘handsome’ finds its place
on the highest step and ‘pretty’ on the lowest. Hence the term ‘pretty’
returns grown-up women to the dependent status of children. Today
these terms have been redefined but still reflect much the same
schema. In the 2005 Pocket Oxford Dictionary ‘beautiful’ and ‘pretty’
become rather neutral adjectives, but a ‘beauty’ names a woman,
not a man, and as an adverb ‘pretty’ means ‘to a certain extent’ or
‘fairly,’ reiterating the traditionally relative inferiority of the desig-
nation ‘pretty’ next to other standards of beauty. ‘Handsome’ may
be said of a man when he is ‘good-looking,’ but a woman needs to
be “striking and impressive rather than pretty” to deserve the adjec-
tive.
The reason why dictionaries link the concept of ‘beauty’ with
women more often than with men is that women need to rely on
their physical beauty for success and survival to a greater extent than
men do. According to linguist Robin Lakoff, attractiveness is essen-
tial to a woman because “in every aspect of her life, a woman is
identified in terms of the men she relates to,” and most men desire
a beautiful woman for both ideal and realistic purposes.30 Beauty is
considered unnecessary to male bodies because the concept of woman
as a beautiful artifact is a metaphor that serves a particular purpose
29
Fowler and Fowler (1925), Little, et al. (1955); Stein (1966); American Webster
(1981); and Soane, et al. (2005).
30
Lakoff (1975) 31.
in male idealistic thinking. The rationale is summarized in a cou-

plet written by seventeenth-century poet James Sheffield, Duke of
Buckingham: “Beauty is Heaven’s most bounteous gift esteem’d,
Because by love men are from vice redeem’d.” This is a Neo-Platonic
vision fabricated to counteract what were feared to be overly sen-
sual perceptions of an act or person. It is related to Virgil’s formu-
lation that ‘love conquers all,’ that is, spiritual love vitiates animal
passion. Stewart, quoting Sheffield’s verse, asserts that English sev-
enteenth-century female portraits were ambiguously seen as pin-ups
or virtues, as goddesses or bawds, by nineteenth-century English
society.31
This concept of the spiritual love that ‘conquers all’ inspired
Goethe’s Faust. In the story, Gretchen’s pubescent love for old Faust
leads her to premature death so that her lover’s mistake, selling his
soul to the devil in exchange for scientific knowledge and glory,
could be pardoned by the Almighty. In spite of the play’s inter-
pretation of the ‘eternal feminine’ as the loving sacrificing spirit
of women, several twentieth-century Mexican scholars misapplied
the poetic but nonetheless patriarchal idea to the supposedly never-
ending vanity of women as seen in the preclassic figurines. One
example should suffice. In 1976 Bernal wrote:
happily for us, the figurines were produced in incredible numbers . . .
naked women are shown—eternally feminine—with hands and bodies
painted, and adorned with nose and earrings, necklaces and head-
dresses.32
If the word ‘pretty’ places women in a dependent situation, the word
‘lady’ does almost nothing to reverse the situation. Although the
word ‘lady’ may in certain contexts correspond to ‘gentleman,’ and
even address a ‘ruling woman,’ it more often denotes a woman sub-
ject to a man’s attentions, whether a wife, a mistress, or a prosti-
tute. In fact, any woman may be called a ‘lady’ while not every
man may be called a ‘lord.’ Lakoff notices that in professional rela-
tionships, the more demeaning the job, the more the person hold-
ing it is apt to be called a lady, hence a ‘cleaning lady’ but never
a ‘cleaning gentleman’; ‘lady doctor’ is today considered an insult.
Thus, “if in a particular sentence both ‘woman’ and ‘lady’ might be
31
Stewart (1974) 3–8.
32
Bernal (1976) 101. My translation from the Spanish.
used, the use of the latter tends to trivialize the subject matter under
discussion, often subtly ridiculing the woman involved.” Politeness
may be advanced as an explanation for the use of the term ‘lady’
in such a given context, but most often this type of “politeness is
used to imbue with dignity a person or concept that normally is not
thought of having dignity.”33
Given these fluctuations in meaning, over time the word for ‘lady’
has lost its specificity, a process called ‘universalization,’ one that
occurs to women’s titles with overwhelming insidiousness if compared
to those applied to men. Schulz also shows that basically all female
nouns have degenerated in one way or another into ‘prostitute’ since
“in common language, the word’s pejorative connotations override
those of its politeness.”34 These are surely the reasons why most
scholars studying the Mesoamerican preclassic period have found no
contradiction in applying the ‘pretty lady’ denomination to the
Tlatilcan female figurines. Moreover, the term ‘lady’ not only became
universalized to represent all women (including those inhabiting the
Valley of Mexico three thousand years ago), it also has become
homogenized since “it refers to females of any status or age,” as
McConnell-Ginet proposes. By universalization and homogenization,
female terms generally lose their gender or role specificity while
words to designate men seldom degenerate in such manner.35
In the case of the Tlatilcan figurines, the language employed to
describe those females in the Type D1 group is not applied to their
male counterparts, which are never called ‘boys’ or ‘pretty boys.’
Thus it was easy for Covarrubias and Coe to exchange the phrase
‘pretty lady’ for ‘pretty girl’ and ‘little ladies,’ respectively.36 Hence,
the ‘pretty lady’ label situates even Tlatilco’s adult high status women
within a blurred social and human condition that denies them the
power to make decisions or exercise control over the forms, con-
texts, and quantities of the statuettes through patronage.
Under this narrow ‘pretty within beautiful’ construct, it is not sur-
prising that Covarrubias believed that Tlatilcan figurines were “mod-
els of feminine coquetry, displaying a variety of hair and headdress
styles, and body paint,” while Bernal affirmed that “in grace and
33
Lakoff (1975) 20–25.
34
Schulz (1975) 65.
35
McConnell-Ginet (1980) 9.
36
Covarrubias (1957) 28; Coe (1984) 54.
simple sophistication nothing in Mexico compares with these repre-

sentations of an ideal feminine beauty.”37 In his patriarchal igno-
rance, Westheim concocted this chain of errors and unsubstantiated
assumptions:
These figurines almost always represent women, naked women. For
the men who modeled them in clay, and for the public who would
admire their art—also a masculine public—woman, naked woman was
the phenomenon that before all, excited and fulfilled their fantasies.
Erotic fantasy, erotic dream, adopting form and character . . . [the
female figurines] had no other meaning than the expression of the
desires and yearnings which were the goal of the other sex . . .38
Unfortunately, the ‘Pretty Lady’ pathology stains not only the figurines
but also the understanding of the women that they may have rep-
resented or the conceptions they symbolized. By considering the
sculptures trivial in function and subject matter, scholars assumed
that Tlatilcan society discriminated against women in the same man-
ner that traditional western civilization has. The end product of such
a discourse is that both figurines and women become unworthy of
more than superficial study.39
Distortions in the Iconographical Interpretation
Coe affirmed in 1965 that the tiny sculptures did not “function
beyond serving as company for the dead in a future life, and for
that reason they represented the good things in life, like pretty
women.” The statement assumed that the protagonist skeletons in
all of Tlatilco’s burials were male, even though the one burial illus-
trated and documented in 1957 by Covarrubias was of a female
accompanied by twenty figurines, nineteen females and a feline, dis-
tributed in three heaps around her body. Later, Season IV’s exca-
vations would demonstrate that more female than male burials
contained female figurines.40 In spite of such data, the natural sequel
37
Covarrubias (1957) 24; Bernal (1969) Fig. 4.
38
Westheim (1950) 171–172. My translation from the Spanish.
39
McConnell-Ginet (1980) 10.
40
Coe (1965) 45; Covarrubias (1957) 23, Fig. 5; and Laporte (1971) 309–324.
García Moll, et al. (1991) lists a total of 213 burials found in Season IV. Of these,
only a small percentage, 9.38% (20 individuals) were buried with figurines. Within
these twenty, eight corresponded to female skeletons (40%), three to male (15%),
to the generalized assumption about the female figurines as com-

panions for the dead male produced further hamstrung interpreta-
tions. Mostly these entailed women’s reproductive functions as mothers
and fertility symbols, a predictable outgrowth from nineteenth-cen-
tury anthropological thought, which seldom studied ‘primitive’ women,
and then only to highlight their maternal instinct.41 Consequently,
from a sample of ninety-six publications that appeared between 1911
and 1985, fifty-seven mention ‘mothers’ as the preclassic figurines’
principal referent.42 However, until this day there is no count of how
many statuettes represent pregnant women or hold children in their
arms. Of the fifty-nine obviously female figurines in Season IV’s
excavation reports, there is not one female figurine holding a child,
although three appear to be pregnant.43 Nonetheless, the sentimen-
tal Victorian-resonating presence of pregnant or child-sustaining
feminine images has determined their inclusion in most books and
museum exhibitions, creating the false impression that they were
archetypal of the preclassic.
The motherhood theme and the figurines’ exuberant forms, together
with the lack of more precise data from Tlatilco’s excavations, led
68% of the fifty-seven publications to assert that the female figurines
functioned as fertility symbols.44 Lately the idea has become contro-
versial. Two recent publications adhere to it, but a third questions
the scientific bases for a fertility cult at Tlatilco.45 As early as 1952,
however, Séjourné had proposed that D1 female figurines repre-
sented maize in its human form. The Mesoamerican belief that maize
flour was the main stuff out of which the folk were created has been
amply documented in the academic literature. Séjourné compared
the figurines’ red manes with corn’s red filaments, and their bodies’
another two belonged to adult individuals too deteriorated to determine their sex
(10%), one to a child (5%), four to infants (20%), and two to fetuses (10%).
41
Fee (1973) 30, n. 11. Following Schlegel (1977) 7, the emphasis on female
figurines as representations of mothers is due to the highly valued role of women
as the medium through which men reproduce themselves and enrich their patriar-
chal connections.
42
Bernal-García (1988) 14 and Fig. 2.
43
Count based on García Moll, et al. (1991). The burials and items are: 8–6,
121–14, and 128–3.
44
Bernal-García (1988) Fig. 2.
45
Uriarte (2003) 137 and Ochoa Castillo (2004) 10 in distinction from García
Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 34–35.
different colors with those of maize grains.46 Naturally then, the dou-
ble-headed figurines would stand for the double-ear of corn, a sym-
bol of abundance and regeneration in Mesoamerican cultures. Another
feasible interpretation of the double-headed figurines is that they may
stand for the person’s companion spirit emerging from its earthly
state in shamanistic practices.47
Aside from the fertility symbolism, the majority of scholars believe
that female figurines wearing hip-height skirts, and sculptures of both
sexes wearing pants with tiny spheres clustered around their legs
(compare Figs. 6.3 and 6.4), depict ceremonial dancers.48 The spheres
would represent seed rattles providing a musical beat to accompany
the dancers’ motions. Versions of this costume survive to the pre-
sent. They are used in religious occasions, most famously the feast
of the Virgin of Guadalupe (whose antecedent is the Aztec goddess
Tonantzin, “Our Mother”). Such dances and the music that accom-
panied them were normally very compelling. According to Fray Diego
Durán, the natives believed that both sound and dance miraculously
enabled those bones made of sweet paste to turn into Huitzilopochtli’s
‘own flesh and bones’ during the December feast of Panquetzaliztli.49
Participants in such choreographed prayers dispel Anton, Dockstader,
and Westheim’s gratuitous self-gratifying secular fantasies of ‘bac-
chante-like dancers’ in
a dance which is not social, individual nor sacred [but performed
to] . . . entertain [a] public, undoubtedly masculine, to fascinate it with
the [grace of feminine] movements as well as with their sexual appeal.50
An Alternate View
Given the scant data that exists about Tlatilco, it is tempting to

study the figurines’ iconography within the all inclusive “female is
46
Séjourné (1952) 55. Later, Furst and Furst (1980) 26 also linked the figurines
with maize farming. Covarrubias (1943) 45 had already noticed the near constant
of the figurines’ red hair.
47
Stone-Miller (2004) 59. In Central Mesoamerica the most famous two-headed
female is the deer-goddess Itzpapalotl (Obsidian Butterfly).
48
Piña Chan (1955) 29.
49
Durán (1967 [1550]) I, 29.
50
Anton and Dockstader (1968) 15–16; and Westheim (1980) 192. My transla-
tion from the Spanish.
to nature as male is to culture” paradigm.51 Nevertheless it is pos-

sible to advance some tentative correctives. Despite what some schol-
ars envisioned based on modern parameters of artistic behavior and
production,52 the first step is to recognize that whatever their sexual
or gender attributes, the Tlatilcan figures were not produced solely
to satisfy the artisans’ individual yearnings for self-expression. To the
contrary, Furst notes how the careful disposition of vessels, jewels,
seals, mirrors, and figurines about an interred body suggests a com-
plex ritual fit for persons of rank. The practice also reveals that cer-
tain Mesoamerican mythic and religious concepts were already well
established by at least 1200 BCE.53
Cognizant of the profound ritual implications of the Tlatilco
figurines, an iconographic analysis of the wide-hipped female figure
revolving on her own axis will now be attempted (Fig. 6.4; the rest
of this essay will simply characterize her as ‘the whirling dancer’).
Relationships for this object will be established with other local and
distant preclassic cultures, and with postclassic and early modern
Mesoamerican beliefs. Although this diachronic span is indeed enor-
mous, studies generally agree that a common thread links the basic
belief systems of these disparate cultural periods. This wide-ranging
iconographic sweep is obligatory in a case such as Tlatilco’s, where
the preponderance of the information is provided only by the visual
appearance of the statuettes themselves and the scant data from the
site.
The whirling dancer was purchased by Covarrubias before the
first official excavations began at the site, and hence lacks a proper
context. It was surely one of the artist’s favorite pieces, for it did
not fail to appear in every one of his publications about Tlatilco.54
Like most Tlatilcan figurine sculpture, if seen from the front it pro-
jects, despite its diminutive size, a monumental volume that trans-
mits a vitality equaled only by the site’s zoomorphic vessels and
globular ollas, and twenty-four centuries later by Aztec stone sculp-
ture.55 This tectonic power necessarily harmonizes with the fluid, lyri-
cal quality of the contour line. It is the smooth transitions between
51
See Ortner (1974) for a discussion of this overall classification.
52
Covarrubias (1950) 159–160; Covarrubias (1957) 30; Westheim (1950) 169;
Westheim (1972) 12; and Bernal (1979) 14.
53
P. Furst (1998); and Romano (1962) 415.
54
Covarrubias (1943) plate IX.
55
See Kubler (1984) 48–49, 105–107.
line and volume that grant this, and other figurines, the sense of
spontaneity for which they gained their deserved renown. As with
most types found at Tlatilco, the figurine’s round forms turn rather
flat if seen from the sides. Hence most scholars believe they were
meant to be seen from the front, even though their backs are as
exquisitely modeled and sometimes contain abstract symbolic designs.
Covarrubias describes this figurine as “an exceptionally fat woman
. . . in a dance pose,” and further speculates about the possibility
that her white skirt was ‘worn for dancing.’ Decades later Kubler
observed how the figure seems to ‘dance and caper.’56 Indeed the
figurine spirals from feet to raised arms in a continuous upward
movement akin to a top revolving upside down. That the figurine
projects such a lively pose becomes ever more surprising when one
observes that her forms are arranged based on interlocking triangles,
some of them restraining the illusion of movement rather than lib-
erating it. Her legs, two massive triangular pillars set on their axes,
precariously support her voluminous body. A third triangular nega-
tive space between the legs acts simultaneously to fix her to the floor
and lighten her weight until the massed flesh propels her into the
air like a conical volcano with its wide horizontal base along the
line of her hips and navel. From that base, accentuated by her nar-
row, fluttering skirt, the fleshy abdomen thins out until it reaches
her neck and mouth. At this point, the head, topped by a hair-knot,
sharply deflects the movement to the viewer’s left, transmitting and
dissolving the weight into the crossed arms above that accentuate
her twirl. The head itself becomes a shuttlecock moving round and
round. Such a complex combination of static and dynamic move-
ment, positive and negative space, around a central axis may be
unique in the history of art.
Three other Tlatilco figurines show the same pose albeit with
cruder formal resolution (not illustrated). Fortunately, one was found
in context, but unfortunately its sexual determinants are rather ambigu-
ous. García Moll and his colleagues classify it as a male. The figurine
appears to be wearing a zoomorphic mask and a loincloth together
with an atypical ‘skirt,’ apparently made of several soft, hanging
stripes. It was found interred with a nine-month-old baby. The sculp-
ture formed part of a fourteen-figurine lot arranged in three groups
56
Covarrubias (1943) 45; and Kubler (1984) 48.
about the infant’s body. The masked whirling figurine was placed
by itself over the baby’s ribs as if to preside over the other three
figurine clusters.57
Masks pertained to the shamanistic milieu, and many male figurines
from Taltilco wear them. They were also found in burials, and many
appear associated in a life-dead dichotomy as several authors have
observed. The whirling dancer (Fig. 6.4) may be wearing a mask,
similar to many found in tombs. If not, she certainly reveals ‘Olmec’
style cloud-like decorations under her eyes. These signs may be asso-
ciated with crying rituals associated with rain-making.
Replication of postures, as in this subset of whirling figures, must
have meant something to preclassic societies. For example, an ensem-
ble of seven miniature figurines, most likely part of a necklace, dis-
plays five squatting, one sitting with legs extended, and one standing.
Each one rests its hands on different parts of the face or body. This
necklace was placed as an indirect offering to a young adult. This
person must have been important since its burial contained other
luxurious items: Eleven jadeite and one rock-crystal beads, plus other
fine objects like a bottle and several clay tecomates. Other miniature
figurines found at Tlatilco during Season IV stand with their hands
covering their ears, or sit with hands over their thighs, abdomen,
hips, or shoulders.58 Two of these poses, in particular, show cross-
legged seated personages with hands over each knee, or seated and
standing with arms across the chest.
More striking postures are displayed by certain Tlatilco vessels.
These represent back-bending male shamans in extreme poses endured
in the quest toward alternate states of being. This dorsal inclination
“acts to position the shaman between states, preventing gravity from
claiming him in any definitive way and allowing him to participate
simultaneously in human bodily verticality and animal corporeal hor-
izontality.” Besides representing shamans in transformation, the ves-
sels most likely were used to hold psychotropic drinks to hasten or
strengthen the trance.59
57
García Moll, et al. (1991) Burial 86, items 5 and 15, pp. 49, 113 and 215;
and Masterworks of Mexican Art, from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present (1963) 5; and
Reyna Robles (1971) pls. 41–9.
58
García Moll, et al. (1991) 66 and 151, Season IV, Burial 8, item 6, Burial 27,
item 15, Burial 86, item 6, Burial 93, item 17, Burial 95, items 21, 24, 25, and
26, Burial 104, item 27, Burial 108, item 1, Burial 117, item 3, Burial 121, item
14, Burial 128, items 2–3, Burial 130, item 2, and Burial 144.
59
P. Furst (1967); P. Furst (1968); Reilly (1989); Tate (1996) 47–49; and Stone-
Miller (2004) 56–57.
Tlatilco provides one of the finest exemplars of these containers,

found near the hip of a middle-aged male skeleton. Furst, who has
long studied the use of psychotropic substances in Mesoamerica,
believes that Tlatilco shamans used them, since a pipe made of clay
was found at the site, surely to smoke wild tobacco (Nicogena rustica),
another psychotropic plant.60 There is evidence of this practice also
at contemporary San José Mogote, Oaxaca. In Structure 6, proba-
bly a men’s gathering house, archeologists found a
centrally placed, lime-plastered storage pit incorporated into the
floor . . . filled with powdered lime, perhaps stored for use with a rit-
ual plant such as wild tobacco . . . jimson weed . . . or morning glory
[datura].61
In the 16th-century, the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Maya used wild, pul-
verized tobacco mixed with powdered lime for divining, curing, and
increasing physical strength before raids. Marcus and Flannery believe
that tobacco had the same functions and uses throughout Mesoamerican
history. Although there is a span of more than two millennia between
the middle preclassic and the postclassic/early viceregal periods,
shamanistic beliefs and practices have proven to be extremely con-
sistent in Mesoamerican cultures through the centuries and in places
as distant from each other as the Valley of Mexico and Oaxaca.
It is still one of a shaman’s principal duties to keep the world’s
forces in balance, expressed by the Tlatilco back-bending male ves-
sel, with head at the center of spread arms and legs in the form of
a diagonal cross. All scholars agree that this bodily configuration
represents a cosmic figure for the center and four cardinal and/or
solstitial directions. It is a quincunx symbol that manifested itself
throughout Mesoamerican history in different forms, called “move-
ment” or ollín by the Aztec and other classic and postclassic Central
Mexican peoples. This diagram was symbolic of the mythical fifth
era, the one in which we live after the Fifth Sun first rose and lit
the earth. The glyph was therefore inextricably associated with the
60
García Moll, et al. (1991), Burial 154. Similar practices were apparently car-
ried out in preclassic Western Mesoamerica, an area that produced a large quan-
tity of contorted male sculptures as discussed by P. Furst (1967) 131 and P. Furst
(1998). The pipe is reported to have been found at Tlatilco: P. Furst (2005). According
to the same scholar, this kind of tobacco is highly potent and addictive.
61
Marcus and Flannery (1996) 87 and 247, based upon several authorities.
sun, the spatial configuration of the universe, and the ideal layout
of a Mesoamerican settlement.
Shamanistic visions were also induced by dancing and a sharp
turn of the head,62 traits displayed by the whirling dancer (Fig. 6.4).
This movement may have pertained exclusively to female shamans
since no male figurines show this position—the masked whirling
figurine from Burial 86 does not turn his head sideways. In Tlatilco,
ritual positions may have been differentiated by gender, male shamans
bending their backs and related to drinking vessels, females whirling
and represented by clay figurines. Nonetheless, nothing conclusive
may be stated about these proposed categories, since a clay figurine
from the Covarrubias collection is of a back-bending female, while
a figurine made of stone, apparently found at the Olmec site of La
Venta (800–400 BCE), also represents a dorsally inclined woman.63
Considering this information, it is highly probable that both women
and men practiced as shamans in Tlatilco, although it remains to
be seen if there was gender differentiation based on prescribed rit-
ual movements or poses.
At Tlatilco and other preclassic sites in the Valley of Mexico, not
only were contorted figurines buried with the dead but the dead
themselves were buried in contorted positions. According to Romano
and Ochoa Castillo, Tlatilco’s skeletons are in straight and flexed
postures in all sorts of positions, with no two burials exactly alike.
Burial 122 yielded a male skeleton with legs sharply flexed back-
wards,64 just like many back-bending male vessels and figurines. There
are also interred individuals with positions resembling those of the
gesturing miniature figurines described above: Burials 62, 63, 64,
70, 165, 189, 192, and 202. However, the contorted skeletons from
Season IV’s excavations contain no figurines and no skeleton arranged
in the whirling position.65 Nearby Zacatenco, a settlement within
Tlatilco’s zone of influence and time period, did nevertheless yield
one skeleton of an elderly adult torso of indeterminate sex whose
arms cross above its sharply turned head like the twirling female
62
Stone-Miller (2004) 51, 58.
63
Illustrated in Covarrubias (1950); and Covarrubias (1957) Fig. VI.
64
Romano (1962) 365–366, and Ochoa Castillo (1982) Fig. 4.
65
My thanks to Keith McElroy for his suggestion to compare the figurines’ body
postures to the interred skeletons.
figurines from Tlatilco (Fig. 6.5).66 Because Zacatenco’s burials dis-

play other postures similar to those present in the figurines found in
context at Tlatilco, it may be reasonable to assume that Tlatilco and
Zacatenco shared a common belief about these postures’ meaning.
The site of Ticomán, which like Tlatilco and Zacatenco belongs
to the preclassic Valley of Mexico horizon, yielded six skeletons dat-
able to 300 BCE–CE 250 with legs bent backwards. Two belonged
to elderly women, one to an elderly male, another probably to a
middle-aged man, and one to a child of seven or eight years.67
Contrasting Tlatilco, Ticomán’s data suggests that women were
identified with dorsal inclination as much as males in the late pre-
classic period.
A correspondence between skeletal positions and figurines in buri-
als was found by Marcus and Flannery in Oaxaca’s San José Mogote
from the period when it had attained a chiefdom’s level of social
organization (1150–850 BCE). In a small cemetery at the site those
flexed may represent people of higher rank in comparison with those
prone and fully extended, who may stand for people of lesser social
distinction. Outside of cemeteries, the figurines at San José Mogote
were arranged to enact small ritual scenes like the one buried beneath
a lean-to attached to House 17’s entrance. Three were interred supine
and fully extended below the shed, their arms crossed over their
chests. A fourth was seated with hands on knees on top of the other
three. All four figurines wear pendants and ear-spools as symbols of
rank. The people who lived in the house and gathered under the
lean-to may have had contacts with Tlatilco, since pottery vessels
from the preclassic Valley of Mexico were unearthed there. Some
of the figurines illustrated by Marcus and Flannery also show extremely
similar positions to those of Tlatilco.68
Another indicator of shamanistic traditions among Mesoamerican
early and middle preclassic sites is the presence of mirrors in buri-
als, houses, or public buildings, since mirrors facilitate the experience
of seeing into a reality different from common experience.69 Of the
66
See Vaillant (1931a) 189, illustrating skeleton number 19.
67
Vaillant (1931b) Map 1, Figs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 16.
68
Marcus and Flannery (1996) 97–99, 104, and Figs. 92 and 93.
69
Stone-Miler (2004) 60–61.
213 burials excavated during Tlatilco’s Season IV, only twelve con-
tain mirrors, all made of hematite. These burials’ most salient char-
acteristic is their numerous and sometimes rich offerings, a clear
indicator that the individuals interred held a high-ranking position.
Of these twelve interments containing mirrors, six belong to adult
males, three to adult females, two to adults of indeterminate sex,
and one to a young person. This information suggests that fewer
women than men were associated with mirrors and possibly shaman-
istic activities. Although the three female burials all contained female
figurines, none of the male burials with mirrors did. This data would
indicate a preponderance of female figurines as the agency for female
corpses’ success in the afterlife. To this sample may be added the
woman’s skeleton illustrated by Covarrubias, for one small hematite
mirror was found under her skull, another close to her hip.70
At the contemporary site of Tlacolula, also in Oaxaca, a tomb
contained a couple with offerings differentiated by sex. The woman’s
burial contained an iron ore mirror and the man’s a bowl carved
with a depiction of the lightning-serpent. Moreover, in a small neigh-
borhood cemetery at San José Mogote, most were buried fully
extended, face down, with one or more pottery vessels and a single
jade bead in their mouths. However, only men’s vessels were dis-
tinguished from the rest by showing a lightning-serpent decoration
like the one present with the male at Tlacolula. At Tomaltepec,
another Oaxacan site, “one high status woman . . . was buried with
a magnetite mirror.”71 Hence, in preclassic Oaxaca women appear
to be associated with mirrors and men to vessels showing the light-
ning serpent, a relationship absent at Tlatilco. Mirrors and lightning
serpents are both related to sparkling light, the faculty of sight,
reflected images, and shamanistic connections reached through light-
ning forces and reversed similes.72
Mirrors were also worn as pendants at Tlatilco, as was custom-
ary among people of rank in preclassic cultures. Two of the three
young adult female cadavers were buried with a perforated mirror
at their side. This indicates that they were worn during life. One of
these burials, Number 27, contained four female figurines, the major-
ity with voluminous bodies, wearing obsidian and hematite mirrors
70
Count based on García Moll, et al. (1991); and Covarrubias (1957) 23, Fig. 5.
71
Marcus and Flannery (1996) 96–97 and 102.
72
Stone-Miller (2004).
on their chests, another indication that the woman interred wore the
mirror as a pendant when alive. Another hematite mirror fragment
was placed near a jade earplug belonging to a middle-aged Tlatilcan
male, forty to forty-five years-old. The contorted white-slipped male
clay figure in the quincunx pose later known by the Aztecs as their
cosmic model of ollín is outstanding among the offerings. It is no
coincidence that the burial also contained two small mushroom-
like sculptures made of clay, forms sometimes interpreted as phallic
symbols. No other burial excavated during Season IV contains this
kind of sculptural form, a fact that marks this man as a special indi-
vidual, probably a shaman and ruler. In classic and postclassic
Mesoamerican myths, the sun’s first appearance in the eastern hori-
zon is preceded by a ritual where deities consume hallucinogenic
mushrooms and alcoholic beverages, pulque in Central Mexico, and
leaders in Mesoamerica’s history were intrinsically associated with
the sun of the Fifth Era.73
A pattern emerges that connects extreme bodily positioning and
the use of mirrors by people of rank at Tlatilco. At least some of
these may have practiced as shamans. With the information pro-
vided here it is impossible to discern a gender division in the prac-
tice of wearing mirrors, but it is clear that only a female burial
contains a pendant mirror and female figurines wearing them. Finally,
the association between a dorsally inclined male figure vessel, the
presence of mirrors worn as symbols of rank or shamanistic practice,
and phallic or mushroom-like sculptures, strengthens the probability
that the quincunx spatial determinant characteristic of Mesoamerican
town planning was already present at Tlatilco.
Tlatilcan Female Figurines and Earth Fertility Symbolism
The generic ‘fertility’ or ‘earth fertility’ symbolism adjudicated to

most Type D figurines is accurate as far as it goes. However, upon
further investigation the fertility concept becomes much more com-
plex than that envisioned by much of the academic literature until
now. Figurines of Type D1 may not only have acted as a representation
73
García Moll, et al. (1991) 33, 68–69, 184–185, and burials 27 and 154, items
5 and 14; and Bernal-García (in press), based on J. Furst (1978) 204–205. Pulque
is made from the agave’s sweet, milky juice.
of corn-cobs, as Séjourné suggested,74 but as fertility charms to increase

food production. In the early seventeenth century, indigenous peo-
ples in New Spain still believed that small stone figures placed inside
granaries had the power to augment the year’s maize crop and keep
it from spoiling while in storage. The small figures, made of stone
or clay, were considered extremely valuable possessions, so much so
that they were passed from parents to children through generations,
and their owners risked severe punishment by zealous Spanish priests
if caught with them. Sometimes these figurines came in groups of
five and were wrapped in cloth inside a box. The number here is
important because it represents the pre-Columbian quincunx model
of the universe. For this reason it was the custom to place the
figurines at the four corners of a corn field or a house for its ded-
ication ceremony.75
The wide-hipped, whirling female figurine may have also sym-
bolized the mythical earth/mountain when it flowered and became
bountiful.76 One of the vegetal metaphors for this stage of the earth’s
flourishing appears to be the large calabash related to today’s pump-
kin (Cucurbita Pepo). In the 17th-century manuscript cited above,
Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón, Catholic priest and extirpator of idola-
try, describes the occasion when a woman saw him coming while
she was cooking. She immediately hid two of her fertility sculptures
inside a nearby calabash pile.77 The episode may be dismissed as
irrelevant if it were not for the metaphors relating women’s buttocks
to large calabashes in Mesoamerican lore. Obscure to us and the
Spanish chroniclers, these indigenous tropes appear rather incom-
prehensible at first sight. For example, Huemac’s demand for a
woman with “hips four palms in width” becomes understandable
only when the phrase is treated within the pre-Hispanic system of
metaphors. Such is the reason why in the twelfth century the Toltec
king’s assistants could not find a single woman to meet his seem-
ingly flamboyant desires. None existed, and only the educated king
could understand his trope. Huemac’s petition coincides with the
Toltecs’ quest for a new place to live, a reborn city channeling the
74
Séjourné (1952) 55.
75
Furst and Furst (1980) 26; and Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 1: 377,
2:32, 105; and Duran (1967) vol. 1, 247–248.
76
On female association with the earth/mountain construct in Peru, see C.
Damian, Ch. 3, this volume.
77
Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 2: 33.
mythical and bountiful earth/mountain settlement imperatives.78

A clue to the riddle is found in the Maya Zuyúa incantations, a
series of symbolic formulae for religious and political initiation in
question and answer format recorded in the Chilam Balam de Chumayel.
One of these compares a large calabash to “an old woman . . . whose
buttocks are seven palms” in width, even wider than the four palms
requested by Huemac. According to the same Maya document, the
old woman was a ‘maize-field keeper.’79 Given the function of ‘fer-
tility’ figurines to guard granaries and cornfields in Central Mexico,
the role of the old, wide-hipped woman in Maya society comes as
no surprise. Back in Central Mexico, Huemac’s riddle may be solved
when the Nahuatl word for a “certain kind of calabash, edible and
very good,” tamalayotli, is analyzed.80 Etymologically, the compound
noun literally means “calabash like a maize bun,” from ayotli, “cal-
abash,” and tamalli, “maize bun wrapped in dry maize leaves and
cooked in an olla.” Moreover, tamalli is the qualifying noun in the
word for “buttocks,” tzintamalli, literally “the seat’s maize buns,”
where the word tzintli names the hips, anus, and/or a woman’s vulva.
In general the word denotes the “seat” or “beginning” of something.
For example, when tzintli is paired with tetl, “stone,” it names the
foundations of a house, tzintetl.81
The relationship between a woman’s buttocks, more adipose and
rounded than a man’s, and the concept of ‘beginnings’ is not sur-
prising given women’s procreative function, which Mesoamericans
associated with the earth’s and the bounty of seeds a calabash holds
in its interior. In fact, the word for turtle, ayotl, is almost identical
to ayotli, calabash. The turtle was one of the Maya zoomorphic
metaphors for the bountiful earth/mountain,82 a metaphor also pre-
sent in Central Mexican images. It is therefore theorized that the
wide and round-hipped female figurines classified Tlatilco D1, together
and in particular with Type D4, functioned in the preclassic belief
system as metaphors for calabashes and the bountiful earth. This
metaphor leaves unexplained, however, the iconographic basis for
78
Bernal-García (1993) 178, 356; and Bernal-García (2001, in press).
79
Mediz Bolio (1952) x, 56.
80
Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 2: 105); and Molina (1977) 3v.
81
From tzintli, anus; Molina (1977) 3v, 90v, 152v; López Austin (1996) I: 128;
and John Sullivan, personal communication, 22 September 2005.
82
Taube (1988). The turtle-earth also appears in the Codex Borgia: Seler (1980
[1904]) III: 18.
the D1 male figurines with wide hips and thighs—although they are
not as ample as those of the female figurines—unless one considers
that the bountiful earth/mountain was also attributed with certain
masculine traits. For example, the earth/mountain Tlaltecuhtli could
be addressed as Lady or Lord of the Earth.
Conclusion
It is necessary to set aside the ‘Pretty Lady’ dialectic used by the

pioneering scholars of preclassic Mesoamerican art if progress is to
be made toward the real appreciation of the figurines and their con-
texts, both female and male. The traits of Type D1 and D4 sculp-
tures have led to their monopolization of the aesthetic discourse to
the detriment of diverse other preclassic Valley of Mexico statuette
types. By assuming that the female effigies and the women of Tlatilco
existed principally to gratify their male counterparts’ ideals of fem-
ininity, the function of the sculptures was distorted into the para-
digm of female afterlife companions for complacent deceased males.
Due to the biased preferences of the critics, the relatively rare rep-
resentations of pregnant or child-holding women were illustrated in
publications as typical.
Within the context of twentieth-century linguistic usage, the word
‘pretty’ (or in Spanish, bonita) demeans adult women into the status
of children. United with the perfidiously apparent ‘dignity’ of the
word ‘lady,’ its deleterious impact is magnified. The tag also pre-
vents careful distinctions between role and class that must be made
if the analysis is to be truly professional and exhaustive. Lumping
all feminine representations together under a term, ‘lady,’ that became
universalized in western civilization to characterize all women without
distinction, blinds specialists to questions of female patronage or par-
ticipation in the statuettes’ creation. The interpretation of the male
figurines also suffered from the gynecic stereotypes. They were envi-
sioned as avatars of inactive individuals waiting to be served and enter-
tained in a society where diligent and caring men were rather scarce.
The figurines are related to questions of fertility, but the ‘Pretty
Lady’ model blunted more profound investigation by assuming that
‘fertility’ simply equates with female capacity to produce children.
The effigies of both sexes are likely linked with maize and its pri-
mal Mesoamerican resonances of survival and revival. Details of their
attire plausibly refer them to shamanistic dance and ritual practices

that are a far cry from the patriarchal vision of female dancers in
a chorus line for purely male titillation. This shamanistic imprint
appears to result in statuette postures that are not casual but instead
are semaphores transmitting significance. Dorsally inclined anthro-
pomorphic hollow vessels that are part of the Tlatilco figurine com-
plex, aided by the psychotropic beverages that they may have
contained, could indicate the shamans’ quest for superior states of
consciousness. It is suggestive that preclassic Valley of Mexico cadav-
ers were arranged in contorted postures that appear to mimic the
shamanistic configurations of the effigies.
The whirling dancer’s motion with her tilted head may also refer
to the alternate states of being and linkage with the divine sought
by shamans. This is one piece of evidence among several that points
toward the impact of both female and male shamans on Tlatilco
art. Another is the prominence of mirrors associated with high class
female and male burials in the preclassic Valley of Mexico, rein-
forced by their predominant or perhaps exclusive association with
women in preclassic Oaxaca interments. Mirrors signify the capac-
ity to peer into alternate realities and are thus crucial apparel for
shamanistic practices.
Just as placement of the effigies in just the right configuration was
likely believed to ensure the regeneration of the buried corpses, it is
theorized that they were also held to protect the perdurability of the
house upon its dedication or of the maize crop in the granaries and
the fields. The ample hips and mountainous shape of the whirling
female statuette’s torso probably held associations with the regener-
ation implicit in the figure of the flowering earth/mountain, while
her buttocks may have connoted the prodigiously fertile calabash
containing its plethora of seeds. In this dialectic, wide and round-
hipped female preclassic figurines in the Valley of Mexico would
have served as metaphors for calabashes and the bountiful earth.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
EL ENCUENTRO DE CORTÉS Y MOCTEZUMA:

THE BETROTHAL OF TWO WORLDS IN
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NEW SPAIN
Introduction
During the Spanish viceregal period in the Americas, historical rep-

resentations played a prominent role in fueling the imaginations of
Americans and thus participated in the formulation of identity and
its expression, in particular, among creole and mestizo elites. Colonial
art historians have long recognized the active presence of historical
images in New Spain, most recently by noting that secular painting
was dynamic and reactive to the shifting socio-political environments
of the viceroyalties.1 According to John Urry,
how societies remember the past particularly reflects transformations
in and of the present . . . what is thus the past is constructed in the
paramount reality of the present . . . while the present is viewed as real,
the past and future are ideational or . . . representational.2
By stating that perceptions of the past and future are ideational,
Urry points out that memory’s basis is in the imaginary. The idea
that present concerns determine how one perceives and/or recon-
structs the past speaks of history as a metaphor. Historical narra-
tives, then, although constructed around actual events and figures,
are malleable and can take numerous forms, particularly when deal-
ing with multiple authors working at different times and places. If
history is determined, in large part, by the present, what kinds of
references would be included, how would they be configured, and
why? For instance, which aspects of lived experience and/or dominant
1
Carrera (2003) xvii.
2
Urry (1996) 46–48.
182 ray hernández-durán
ideologies in New Spain inform the visual references in viceregal his-

tory paintings?
An anonymous eighteenth-century painting titled El encuentro de
Cortés y Moctezuma is an ideal case for discussion because it presents
a distinct interpretation of a ubiquitous historical subject in the
American viceroyalty. The image depicts the initial meeting between
the Mexica leader, Moctezuma, and the Spanish conquistador,
Fernando Cortés (Fig. 7.1). This event was documented and repre-
sented in both written and pictorial forms throughout the Spanish
viceregal period. Beginning with the eyewitness account by the con-
quistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, references to this meeting include
such things as the pictorial illustration in Diego Durán’s Historia de
las Indias de Nueva España (1579–81), the later description by Antonio
de Solís in Historia de la conquista de México (1684), and Juan Correa’s
late seventeenth-/early eighteenth-century painted version on the
Biombo del encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma. Representations of this
encounter typically portray the leaders facing one another and sur-
rounded by their respective entourages. In certain cases, the two
men are depicted in close proximity as they exchange introductory
gestures. In the pictorial record, Doña Marina, one of Cortés’s indige-
nous interpreters and his concubine, is present only in certain instances;
for example, we find her image in manuscripts, such as the sixteenth-
century Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Florentine Codex. In the historical
narrative of the Conquest, however, she is understood to have been
a constant presence at pivotal moments in the succession of events,
including the initial encounter. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recalling the
precise moment of the historic meeting, wrote:
When Cortés was told that the Great Montezuma was approaching,
and he saw him coming, he dismounted from his horse, and when he
was near Montezuma, they simultaneously paid great reverence to one
another. Montezuma bade him welcome and our Cortés replied through
Doña Marina wishing him very good health. And it seems to me that
Cortés, through Doña Marina, offered him his right hand, and
Montezuma did not wish to take it, but he did give his hand to Cortés
and then Cortés brought out a necklace which he had ready at
hand . . . and he placed it round the neck of the Great Montezuma and when he
had so placed it he was going to embrace him, and those great Princes who accom-
panied Montezuma held back Cortés by the arm so that he should not embrace
him, for they considered it an indignity.3
3
Díaz del Castillo (1933) 273. The emphasis of text in italics is my own and
describes the exact moment depicted in the anonymous eighteenth-century painting.
EL ENCUENTRO DE CORTÉS Y MOCTEZUMA 183
Fig. 7.1 Anon., El encuentro de Cortes y Moctezuma, fragment. 18th c., oil on
canvas, Priv. Col.
If we compare the latter section of this excerpt to the painting, we

note a discrepancy between the sequence of events described by Díaz
del Castillo and the anonymous artist’s depiction of the same event.
The two leaders, portrayed in full length, occupy the central picture
space and stand in extreme proximity; they face one another and
gaze into each other’s eyes. Cortés, without Marina by his side,
exhibits a deferent posture as he embraces the Nahua leader, who
holds the necklace in his right hand. A mixed crowd of Spanish con-
quistadors and members of the Mexica monarch’s entourage flank
the principal characters, creating a balanced composition.
Jaime Cuadriello identified the emblem Concordia, which signifies
a conciliatory, diplomatic gesture, as an iconographic source for this
image.4 In the compilation of emblems by Andrea Alciati, ‘Concordia’
is represented by two men on a battlefield, who stand in the fore-
ground of a landscape populated by tents and banner-wielding sol-
diers on horseback.5 The men stand face to face, as equals, and
shake hands. Other than this physical gesture of friendship, no items
are exchanged, although the act can be seen as an exchange of
mutual recognition and understanding. The emblematic image is
accompanied by an epigram, which reads as follows:
Of kings, and Princes great, lo, Concord joins the hands, and knits
their subjects’ hearts in one, and wealthy makes their lands. It bloody
broils doth hate, and Envy down doth thrust, and makes the Soldier
learn to plow, and let his armor rust.6
Quoting Otto Vaenius, Cuadriello notes the significance of the
embrace as a spiritual fusion that “renounces personal interests for
the benefit of understanding the diversity of the other and accept-
ing that in two distinct bodies, one soul and will can reside.”7 The
postures of these two men, Cuadriello adds, too, recall Judas’s kiss
and his betrayal of Christ, in light of the melancholic expression on
Moctezuma’s face, attributed to his recognition of the prophesied
downfall of the Aztec empire and his own demise.
If we understand the joined hands in Concordia as a form of
agreement that establishes not only a truce but a new alliance, the
4
Cuadriello (2001) 263–292.
5
Alciati (1608).
6
The English translation comes from The English Emblem Book Project, located at
the following website: http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn076.htm
7
Cuadriello (2001) 277–278.
encounter painting’s quotation of the emblematic model underscores

its reading as a contractual agreement that produces a new socio-
political body. This type of gesture can also be compared to instances
in which tokens are offered, which, if accepted, seal a social con-
tract with the added significance that acceptance of a gift obligates
the recipient to the giver.8 Such exchanges can occur in a variety
of settings, which include diplomatic introductions, signings of peace
treaties, investment ceremonies, and betrothal rituals. In spite of the
multiple contexts in which these kinds of transactions occur, visual
representations of such acts may evince formal and symbolic com-
monalities. With colonial visuality and the act of gifting as common
foundations, I suggest that this encounter scene can be viewed as a
symbolic union with formal correspondences to betrothal depictions.
I propose, furthermore, that interpreting this image as such reveals
what appear to be references to what we recognize today as condi-
tions that constitute identity, namely class (or rank), race (i.e. phe-
notype), and gender.
Although a female presence is clearly absent in the image, refer-
ences to gender and gendering play a dominant role in this paint-
ing via codified depictions of ideas of masculinity and maleness. The
gendered aspect is not one necessarily, or solely, tied to biology but
to certain social practices and iconographic conventions that reflect
contemporary ideas of power and its expression. Certain elements
in the painting also possess racial allusions, most evident in the vary-
ing phenotypes among the figures depicted. Given these two imme-
diate iconographic features, I ask if the manner in which the subject
is represented corresponds to a developing socio-political identity and
the manners in which it was socially or culturally manifested in eight-
eenth-century New Spain. The painting, approached with these ques-
tions in mind, serves as a point of departure for a discussion of four
aspects of Novohispanic culture that engage the issue of identity.
These include the following: 1) the practice of marriage and its rep-
resentation; 2) the conceptualization and performance of gender; 3)
ideas revolving around ‘race’ and miscegenation; and 4), the inter-
section of all of these elements as part of an emergent American,
particularly creole, (proto-) national awareness and agency.
8
Appadurai (1986) 3–63; and Mauss (1990).
The Act and Representation of Betrothal in New Spain
Any consideration of this image must recognize that we are dealing

with two separate yet related things: the first, an actual historical
event, primarily documented in narrative form; and the second, an
image that, although referencing the historical event, draws from a
larger visual language. Although based on a meeting between two
leaders, the depiction can be read in relation to pictorial conven-
tions that structure certain representations, in this case those deal-
ing with exchanges, contracts, and/or unions. In terms of unions,
we turn to established iconographic vocabularies. Although Adam
and Eve represent the primordial couple as the parents of the human
race, Mary and Joseph exemplify the act of marriage in the Christian
context. Representations of this sacred union were codified in medieval
Europe and are found in painted form as well as in print format.
Examples of the latter, which found wide currency in the Americas
as compositional models during the colonial period, include works
by such artists as Albrecht Dürer. An engraving by Dürer that depicts
the marriage of the Virgin and Joseph situates the ceremony in a
temple. Standing in profile and facing one another, the union is
officiated by a rabbi, who, positioned between the couple, faces the
viewer as he guides the exchange of vows. A Novohispanic exam-
ple of the same subject is The Betrothal of the Virgin by the seven-
teenth-century painter Sebastián López de Arteaga (Fig. 7.2). The
bride and groom stand in quarter turn and face each other. A token,
symbolizing their mutual contract or agreement, is passed from Joseph
to Mary under the watchful eye of the rabbi, who is presented in
a frontal pose. The exchange is publicly proclaimed to a commu-
nity of one sort or another. In López de Arteaga’s painting, angelic
hosts witness the ritual. Paintings of this subject by other artists, in
spite of stylistic variations, include the same iconographic motifs,
which are ever present in standard depictions of this episode from
the Life of the Virgin. The formal elements in this image, which
signify a contractual exchange, are also present in the encounter of
Moctezuma and Cortés: a complementary dyad, an intermediary,
witnesses, and a gift. But for whom would such a symbolic union
have been relevant?
The encounter painting, given its secular content and compared
to commensurate historical representations, such as those found on
biombos, was most probably displayed either in a private residence
Fig. 7.2 Sebastian Lopez de Arteaga, Los desposorios de la Virgin, 17th c., oil on
canvas, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.
or in a government or civic building (Fig. 7.1). Paintings of the

betrothal of Mary and Joseph would have been embedded in altar-
pieces situated in religious spaces such as churches or convents, or
perhaps private chapels. Betrothal scenes, as all religious images, rep-
resented an ideal to be emulated. This is of special significance given
that marriage tended to be a social act which was primarily con-
tained within the upper echelons of Novohispanic society. Beyond
the Church’s promotion of marriage as the legitimate coupling and
proper context for sexual activity and procreation, elites had vested
interests in carefully regulating marriages among their sons and
daughters.
Society in eighteenth-century Mexico City was composed of a
highly diverse ethnic population, stratified by social rank and color.
The vertical hierarchy was dominated by peninsulars and creoles,
followed by mestizos or individuals of mixed blood. At the bottom
of this caste system were indigenous peoples, blacks, and presum-
ably Asians. Although racial mixing was prevalent between Spanish
men and native women in the early colonial period, once the viceroy-
alty was established and Iberian women migrated to the Americas,
a white upper class began to emerge. This elite class sought to main-
tain distance from the darker, impoverished segments of the popu-
lation for two main reasons: to maintain limpieza de sangre, or purity
of blood, and to preserve and increase wealth and status. Since mar-
riage to lower castes would not offer any socio-economic benefits,
kinship ties became vital for the augmentation and transmission of
wealth and property, as well as whiteness. As such, virginity was a
highly valued commodity for elite white women as it was through
them that these networks flowed. Although chastity was promoted
as an ideal for all women, it was of utmost import to elites. For the
lower classes, neither chastity nor marriage appear to have been
significant; rather, plebeians mocked what they perceived to be Spanish
values and behaviors.9 Attitudes towards marriage, however, were
not fixed throughout the viceregal period. During the first century
or so of Spanish rule, individuals possessed some freedom in select-
ing their marriage partners with little external influence. Over time,
as the boundaries separating color and class became increasingly
9
See Cope (1994) 68.
blurred, parents, with the support of the Church, took more active
roles in choosing their children’s spouses, motivated not by affection
but by economic and social interests.10 What becomes evident is that
through marriage, the relationships among members of a certain
class were strengthened, producing a more cohesive group in terms
of enhancing networks, preserving socio-economic power, and defining
social identity. The recognition of marriage, and consequent kinship
ties, as a contributing factor to a sense of communal identity among
elites is vital to our understanding of the reception of the historical
encounter as a union that symbolized the point of origin to a specific
segment of the Novohispanic population.
The Performance and Representation of Gender
An inversion is evident in the encounter painting, distinguishing it

from conventional representations of the same scene in which Cortés
is normally the object of veneration instead of the Aztec monarch.
This observation implies that the painting may possess some kind of
subversive design, raising further questions concerning typical illus-
trations of this meeting, the significance of such (re)ordering, and the
possible relation of such symbolism to larger social values and prac-
tices.11 Jaime Cuadriello considers this shift by looking at similar colo-
nial depictions of the encounter, where Cortés expresses awe and a
respectful demeanor in the presence of Moctezuma and his court,
and suggests that the patron, given the choice of subject matter and
its form of representation, was noble and indigenous, thus explain-
ing the painting’s ‘vindicatory and celebratory’ nature.12 Another
approach in considering what an inversion of representations of
Moctezuma and Cortés implies includes looking at this image through
the lens of gender, not in terms of sex but of power relations, as cul-
turally conceived, socially experienced, and, most importantly, pic-
torially rendered.
The perception and expression of gender is distinguished, first, by
biological sex and evident morphological traits, followed by signifiers
10
Seed (1988) 1–13. On marriage among Spanish elites in Mexico, also see
Barteet, Ch. 15, this volume.
11
See Cuadriello (1999) 80.
12
Cuadriello (2001) 282–284.
located outside of and framing the body, such as dress and behav-
iors demonstrating adherence to ‘appropriate’ cultural values. In the
early modern period, these values would have included virginity,
chastity, honor, virility, loyalty, and bravery. Gender categories defined
social status and guided social relations, determining the power dynam-
ics between individuals. Such categories and the relationships they
framed were viewed as natural and/or divinely ordained phenom-
ena. The culturally constructed nature of gender in the colonial social
field, however, can be seen in those exceptional instances where gen-
der coding appears fluid and not a simple issue of biology. Exemplifying
this phenomenon is Catalina de Erauso, otherwise known as the
Lieutenant Nun.13
In 1599, Catalina de Erauso escaped the confines of a Basque
convent in Spain and altered her appearance by cutting her hair
and dressing in men’s clothing. He then migrated to the Americas,
where he traveled throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru, including both
Peru and Chile. After a trip to Spain, he returned to the Americas,
settling in New Spain, where he lived until his death. Catalina served
the Spanish crown, fought in battles, dueled with men, killing sev-
eral in the process, as well as seducing women along the way. The
interest on behalf of mixed race individuals in marrying their daugh-
ters to Catalina expresses the significance ascribed to his perceived
status, not only as male, honorable, and courageous, but as Basque
and white. An important element in Catalina’s social identity was
his clothing. As Marjorie Garber notes in the foreword to the trans-
lation of de Erauso’s memoirs:
One thing that is very striking about the memoir is the materiality of
clothing, and its value. Recall that this is a time period far removed
from the mass production of garments and the availability of ready-
to-wear. Clothing was wealth and even identity . . . Catalina’s payment
from benefactors and employers is frequently a suit of clothes, and she
describes these gifts with distinct pleasure and gratitude. They help to
transform her, again quite literally, into another person with a new
status as well as a new gender.14
Even after his true biological sex was revealed, two facts facilitated
the continued acceptance of his anomalous male status: As a bio-
13
Erauso (1996).
14
Erauso (1996) ix.
logical woman, her virginity, and thus her honor, was intact; and as
a Spanish subject in the Americas, he had been loyal to the Crown
and its imperial interests abroad. Thus we have an individual in this
case whose gender was not determined by his physical reality but
by a combination of personal choices, reflecting his resistance to
accepted gender norms for women and his subsequent election to
adopt male forms with the appropriate performative realignments.
Such gendered elements are only legible when contrasted with their
difference.15 As such, of greatest import in the performance of gen-
der was its exercise in terms of power relations, whereby power and
expressions of power are anchored to a polar configuration. Within
this framework, power was synonymous with maleness and mas-
culinity, while its lack was not female or feminine, as one might
expect, but embodied in the form and practice of the passive homo-
sexual.16
In heterosocial contexts, variations in status were made evident
through the recognition of sex differences which were augmented by
cultural signs, such as the formal characteristics constituting overall
appearance, i.e. clothing, adornment, posture, and behavior. All of
these coding mechanisms, alluding to physical traits, were culturally
predetermined and socially inculcated into individuals from child-
hood. In cases where we find homosocial contexts, relations between
men were defined by status differences linked to such things as region-
alism, socio-economics, and ethnicity. Other codes and attributes had
to be present in order to distinguish and manifest power differences
between individuals, who, presumably, shared the same natural sta-
tus and privileges. From a contemporary perspective, three things
are evident in considering the significance of gender in Novohispanic
social dynamics: One, when gender and its expression are at issue,
what we understand today as racial and class status are also pre-
sent; two, power, or its imbalance, was the basic matrix through
15
Judith Butler suggests that the signification of gender exists only in relation to
oppositional constructs, whereby gender is a relation or set of relations and not
individual attributes. She adds that persons only become legible as gendered when
they conform to recognizable standards of gender intelligibility in any given his-
torical-cultural context, producing what she calls a ‘matrix of intelligibility.’ According
to Butler, within this matrix, then, one is one’s gender to the extent that one is
not the other gender, which presupposes and enforces a binary configuration. This
kind of formulation appears to describe, in part, the kinds of gender constructions
found during the early modern period in the Americas; see Butler (1990).
16
Behar (1989) 181–184.
which gender was perceived, understood, and exercised; and three,

the male-female dichotomy was employed as a conceptual or sym-
bolic framework, which could be applied to any subject, regardless
of biological sex, as a way of imbuing social identity with certain
values, thereby determining appropriate exchanges. The binary of
dominant-superior and submissive-inferior can be viewed as gendered
in various instances, where gender signifies power differentials, just
as ‘race’ can be seen as standing in for social rank. The codes
employed to mark identity in its gendered state in social practice
find parallels in the realm of images.
In colonial visual cultures, such ideas and values were captured
by pictorial references to visible, recognizable expressions, which can
be read as constituting what Judith Butler terms a ‘matrix of intel-
ligibility,’ in this case, iconographic. This matrix included such things
as costume, gesture or behavior, and relationships between individ-
uals, suggested by appearance, posture, setting, and placement in the
composition. The use of gendered pictorial constructs to convey cul-
tural and racial power differentials developed fairly early in the post-
contact Americas. A late sixteenth-century image, which has been
discussed in terms of gender and colonialism, is an engraving by
Johannes Stradanus, titled Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America
(see Fig. 10.2). The print depicts the Italian explorer, who, having
reached shore and disembarked, comes upon a nude female reclin-
ing in a hammock. The recumbent figure, stirred by this intrusion,
is situated in a wild, exotic environment identified as such by trop-
ical flora and fauna and the presence of cannibalism, an ancient
trope for the barbaric Other.17 The female figure, unlike the explorer,
is not a portrait of an individual but an allegorical or generic rep-
resentation of the Americas. The nude female body, presented in an
anonymous, dormant, and primal state, is vulnerable to the European’s
gaze and to his intrusive presence. This kind of gender identification,
extending to include all things indigenous and later American, con-
tinued throughout the viceregal period, where we find visual refer-
ences to the gendering of Europeans in relation to the Americas as
masculine, dominant, and active, while indigenous peoples were
configured as feminine or childlike, submissive, and passive.18 If we
17
See Rabasa (1993) 23–48; and Schreffler (2005) 295–310.
18
Tzvetan Todorov notes that Ginés de Sepulveda, the Spanish philosopher who
compare an earlier representation of Cortés with the later encounter

painting, we note how the later artist re-inscribed traditional picto-
rial formulae of this historical figure in a way that can be inter-
preted as a gendered form of expression.19
An anonymous portrait of the conquistador from the seventeenth
century portrays him according to established elite male portraiture
conventions. The viewer’s low perspective, the subject’s full-length
stance in three-quarter turn, his martial attire, his posture, and the
conspicuous presence of military accoutrements convey a sense of
authority and action. Dressed in armor, his left hand rests on the
hilt of his sword while his right grasps a rod signifying militant
authority. Typical of such portraits is a table situated directly behind
the subject on which rest gauntlets and a plumed helmet. Floating
above this arrangement is a heraldic emblem displaying his coat of
arms as proof of noble status. The subject’s stance with left foot for-
ward and the armor with weapons project a sense of military and
political prowess. This power can be interpreted as masculine author-
ity, a gendered form of power reified by the phallic qualities of the
rod and hilt. Viewed in comparison to the image of Cortés in the
eighteenth-century history painting, the contrast is striking. The
difference can be attributed in part to the status of one image as a
debated the Dominican bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de las Casas, in Valladolid

in 1550, concerning the nature of the ‘Indians,’ following Aristotelian thinking, struc-
tured his perception of difference along a simplistic duality of good and bad, whereby
the Spanish were identified with fathers and husbands, i.e. male/good/superior, and
Amerindians with women/bad/inferior. Todorov states: “It is futile to speculate
whether the image of woman has been projected on the foreigner or the foreigner’s
features on woman . . . what matters is their solidarity;” see Todorov (1984) 151–154.
19
The development of pictorial conventions to signify gender, and their subtle
realignments to suggest multiple gender roles, can be found in other viceregal works,
as in Miguel Cabrera’s mid-eighteenth-century portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la
Cruz. Cabrera’s portrayal of Sor Juana, renowned for her intellectual prowess and
exemplary life, is not of a novice about to enter a convent nor is she deceased; she
is an accomplished intellectual and community leader. The nun is seated in her
study, surrounded by her immense collection of tomes. The painting has been inter-
preted as masculinizing the scholar-nun, even denaturing her, in light of the fram-
ing space normally reserved for male figures. Such an interpretation, however, reifies
the male-female dichotomy, eliding the fact that convents and a religious life pro-
vided many women an alternate space and lifestyle ordinarily denied them. As such,
scholarly pursuits were not entirely outside the sphere of women but represent one
dimension within a wider range of women’s social lives in colonial society. For a
recent discussion of the significance of gendered settings in portraits of clergy, see
Donahue-Wallace (2005) 103–135.
portrait of the conquistador, following the conquest, while the other

is a historical representation of events that preceded it (Fig. 7.1).
What is unmistakable is the passive posture of Cortés in the later
work, in which case a distinct power dynamic is implied. In the
anonymous painting, the conquistador places his arms around
Moctezuma’s shoulders while the Aztec monarch stands in a mas-
culine and dignified manner. Moctezuma does not wear the token,
as observed by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, but clasps it in his right
hand. The Spaniard’s deferential attitude and his gift suggest the
voluntary relinquishing of his authority, at that moment, to the
Mexican leader; however, the contractual significance of the exchange,
authorized by the acceptance of the proffered necklace, implies an
unspoken obligation to the conquistador, foreshadowing the Aztec
ruler’s hospitality and eventual submission.
In various conquest period portrayals of this scene, Doña Marina
is also present, not only as Cortés’s interpreter, but also as his indige-
nous female complement. This pairing, over time, becomes symbolic
of their status as the progenitors of the mestizo population, an
American version of Adam and Eve. Marina’s absence in the encounter
painting, where she normally mediates contact between the men,
emphasizes the phallus-centered aspect of the historic meeting. This
is an event defined by men and the image emphasizes its masculine
character.
Marriage, ‘Race,’ and Miscegenation
In spite of Marina’s absence in this painting, where her presence

commonly suggests mestizaje as a byproduct of her intermediary role,
the artist appears to have embedded contemporary conceptions of
difference in the image through the phenotypic variation of three
principal figures, suggestive of miscegenation. Although in terms of
narrative and historical significance Moctezuma and Cortés take cen-
tral stage, there is a third figure who stands out from the crowd
based on his interaction with the primary dyad. This figure is the
Aztec nobleman, who, standing directly behind Moctezuma, protec-
tively places his hand on the monarch’s right arm. This figure, as
has been suggested, may represent one of Moctezuma’s nephews—
Cuitláhuac or Cacamatzin—who belonged to the group of princes
Díaz del Castillo described as rebuffing Cortés’s advances to the
emperor due to their impropriety. In terms of racial distinction, what

stands out are two specific features: one, the gradation in coloring
among the unidentified Aztec, Moctezuma, and the Spanish con-
quistador, and two, the coloring of the crowd surrounding the fore-
grounded figures. Such references to phenotype were not unique in
eighteenth-century New Spain. A genre of painting reflecting this
interest, which has recently been receiving much attention is caste
painting, or pinturas de casta. Viewed as reflecting the racial make-up
of the viceroyalty, caste paintings are valued, in part, as documents
that seem to provide some idea of Novohispanic clothing, trades,
and leisurely activities. Although it was a painting genre whose pro-
duction spanned a century and evinces changes over time, especially
in response to the gradual effects of Bourbon reforms, at its foun-
dation caste painting pictorially reifies an ideology of difference which
is anchored to stereotyped traits viewed from the top down, and
often from the outside in. As such, caste paintings do not necessar-
ily represent what one would actually see in the streets of Mexico
City as much as an elite perspective focused on social rank and qual-
ity, and a deviation from these traits through the progressive dilu-
tion of presumably pure, white, Spanish blood.
Typical caste representations consist of 16 distinct vignettes com-
prised of a formulaic blending of two parents of differing racial sta-
tus. The series are either painted on separate canvases or in a
chart-like configuration on one panel, where the vignettes follow a
developmental trajectory. The process begins with the union of a
white, Spanish male and an elite, Christian, Indian female, produc-
ing a mestizo/a; this union is opposed to mating with the nomadic
‘barbarians’ from the northern provinces of New Spain, Apaches,
Comanches, Chichimecas. The next stage in the sequence is the mix-
ture of the product of the previous pairing, the mestizo/a, with a
white Spaniard, producing a castizo/a.20 Often, within this pattern,
the more diluted and darker the blending becomes, the poorer and,
occasionally, the more violent and criminal the offspring turns out.
The inclusion of a male and a female, along with the presence of
a child who is phenotypically different from its parents, naturally
suggests biological reproduction, alluding to the complementarity of
such a pairing and its proper reflection of the natural order of things.
20
Estrada de Gerlero (1996) 42–57.
Iconographically, these images are reminiscent of representations of

the holy family, specifically those depicting Joseph, Mary, and the
Christ child in the carpenter’s workshop, a subject, too, found in
colonial religious painting.21 This observation can be linked to more
recent interpretations, such as those made about the history paint-
ing in question, of religious overtones in secular works of art. The
formulaic designations in these images, based on a pre-existing nomen-
clature, confirm that the depictions are not portraits of individuals
but exemplars standing in for larger generic groups. What this con-
veys is that caste paintings were mediated pictorial expressions of
ideas that pre-existed the paintings. These ideas were themselves
anchored to and reified by language, which was an interpretation of
certain aspects of an observed and/or lived social experience. Of
significant import to this body of material is reception. Who was the
intended audience? Many of these series were commissioned by penin-
sulars and taken back to Europe as examples of American types;
however, many also remained in the viceroyalty and in the homes,
one presumes, of elite creoles and mestizos. Would such images have
possessed similar meanings in both contexts? Consideration of the
conceptual elements underlying many of the caste series in the
Americas would suggest a possible, if not probable, function as agents
in an increasing awareness of a communal identity and shared his-
tory among Americans of a certain class. Although caste paintings,
at first glance, seem to represent difference, based on their frag-
mented taxonomies, the presence of miscegenated offspring who are
components of successive hybrid categories clearly implies a link
between all of the artificial groups, illustrating not simply a con-
catenation of distinct types but a deeper ontological continuum.22 By
21
María Concepción García Sáiz and Ilona Katzew have identified European
prints and genre scenes as subject and compositional sources for caste paintings.
However, some sources could have been more local in nature; see García Sáiz
(1996) 30–41; and Katzew (1994) 729–740.
22
Although race is a continual process and not a state, caste paintings portray
each racial category as discrete and static, where A plus B always equals C, with
no variation. Additionally, caste paintings, given their taxonomic configuration, not
only privilege the white Spaniard male with an Indian female, as the point of ori-
gin for American reproduction, but they also present the illusion of an equal dis-
tribution of types throughout colonial society. For a more sophisticated analysis of
race, which, although centered on the United States, is useful as an interpretive
paradigm for the study of castes, see Omi and Winant (1994) 53–69.
picturing all segments of Novohispanic society, simultaneously, could

it have been possible that a sense of community was engendered in
the American imaginary of viceregal elites in Mexico City?23 A caste
painting by Luis de Mena, dated approximately 1750 and thus fairly
contemporary to the encounter painting, speaks to this tendency
(Fig. 7.3).
De Mena’s painting is divided into four registers. At the very top,
we note two scenes depicting areas in the environs of Mexico City:
to our left, we see a group of matachines (native dancers who per-
form during religious celebrations) dancing in front of a church; to
our right, we see individuals from different social classes partaking
in leisurely activities. The two central registers portray 8 of the usual
16 caste categories. At the bottom we see a colorful still life com-
posed of local American fruits. The Virgin of Guadalupe silently
watches over this amalgam, privileging this location and its inhabi-
tants by her presence. Not surprisingly, de Mena chose to begin the
caste sequence with the union of a Spaniard and an Indian; how-
ever, and quite suggestively, the Spaniard in this representation is
not a white male but a white female who has coupled with an Indian.
The Indian, however, is not depicted as a civilized or Christianized
indigenous male but in the form of the barbarian nomad derived
from earlier allegorical depictions. This move produces an inversion,
yet again, of a dominant mode of representation, as well as inte-
grating a normally marginalized category. The entire composition
speaks to an experience tied to time, place, and socio-cultural iden-
tity, an identity which was not Spanish or European but distinctly
American, possibly indigenous and noble. Given the sensitivity to
phenotype and social rank in the Novohispanic mentality, manifested
as such in social practice, language, legal discourse, and imagery,
could there exist a correspondence between the anonymous encounter
painting and the concept of a caste structure that reflects a com-
mon concern of time and place?
Unlike caste paintings where the presence of complementary male-
female pairings and miscegenated offspring denotes biological repro-
duction, in the case where we have two males represented, as in the
encounter depiction, how could such an idea have been conveyed?
Although Moctezuma was Nahua, his skin color appears to fall,
23
Anderson (1991); and Rama (1996).
Fig. 7.3 Luis de Mena, Cuadro de Castas con la Virgen de Guadalupe. Ca. 1750, oil
on canvas, Museo de America de Madrid.
following caste formulae, somewhere between Cortés’s paler hue and

the unidentified Aztec nobleman’s darker skin tone. Three additional
features are noteworthy of consideration: One, the linking of the
three male bodies by the hands that are placed on the central figure’s
arm; two, the presence of a basket of native fruits, presumably an
offering to the strangers within the historical narrative but possibly
a reference to American fertility and reproduction, as in de Mena’s
work; and three, the symmetrical placement and similar coloring of
the Aztecs and Spaniards in the background, who, in spite of their
contrasting garb and ethnicities, can be seen as a single collective.
This conjoining of forces seems to be further emphasized by the
crossed weapons positioned directly above the figure of Moctezuma,
whose representation resembles a mestizo, unlike the Spaniard and
Indian of lesser rank. Additionally, the configuration of the central
figures positions Moctezuma’s body as a site of disputation between
the Mexicans and the Spanish; however, his body also appears to
become a site for the merging of difference. Finally, by focusing on
the event unfolding before their eyes, the spectators in this scene call
attention to their shared experience and thus the new social body’s
raison d’être. If we consider the emblematic association in the encounter
painting and look at the epigram appended to the concord emblem,
we find that the message contributes to this reading of the back-
ground figures as constituting a nascent community. The first sen-
tence, and relevant excerpt, of the epigram reads as follows: “Of
kings, and Princes great, lo, Concord joins the hands and knits their
subjects’ hearts in one.”24 The phrase, as has been noted, suggests
the formation of a single community as a result of the symbolic ges-
ture made by the two leaders. This appears to be the primary mean-
ing that the emblematic association contributes to our reading of the
encounter painting, validating its interpretation as a union, and thus,
its comparison to the conceptually and formally similar betrothal
scene. However, what was the significance of this sixteenth-century
event in the eighteenth-century?
24
See The English Emblem Book Project website.
History, Mestizaje, and American Identity
In the seventeenth century, reflecting many of his compatriot’s opin-

ions, the creole intellectual Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora expressed
his disdain for the mixed race, plebeian masses of Mexico City; how-
ever, he admired the Americas’ pre-Hispanic past. The appropria-
tion of a glorious Aztec historical legacy became a rhetorical device
utilized by the creoles as an argument for their sovereignty as a class
and a nation. Exemplifying this pride in the indigenous past as essen-
tial to the expression of a Mexican identity was the adornment of
a triumphal arch, documented by Sigüenza, built to mark the entrance
of the Spanish viceroy into Mexico City, not with portraits of European
monarchs or Classical allegorical figures but with images of Aztec
rulers.
The argument for creole sovereignty stemmed in large part from
what had been the longstanding marginalization of American-born
whites and elite mestizos from top imperial administrative and eccle-
siastic posts, as well as from various commercial ventures. A limited
education also contributed to a lack of preparation, guaranteeing the
creole classes’ marginalization in its own homeland. It was main-
tained by peninsulars that, with few exceptions, the American char-
acter was weak and expressed a certain intellectual lethargy. The
creole response to peninsular critiques was varied. In 1755, as a
reaction to Spanish accusations of the creole’s lack of accomplish-
ment, Juan José Eguiara y Eguren published Biblioteca Mexicana, a
bibliographic dictionary of Mexican authors. Although Eguiara focused
on the biographies of specific individuals to prove the degree of intel-
lectual development among creoles, an important element in this
publication was the inclusion of indigenous cultural achievements.
The creoles’ confidence in their identity as Americans and in their
cultural accomplishments resided, in part, in the growing awareness
of Mexican antiquity and its perception as an important foundation
for Mexican culture.25 New Spain also had a brilliant classical past
of its own, the Aztec, just like Europe had the Greek and Roman
civilizations.26 The cultural blending that occurred between native
25
Brading (1973) 27–37.
26
This is not unlike eighteenth-century European academic art production, where
the ancient Greek and Roman past becomes a model for the representation of con-
temporary national virtues and patriotism, primarily in the Neo-Classical style.
cultures and that imported by Iberian and other immigrants yielded

an experience and worldview distinct from the European. The co-
opting of pre-Hispanic symbols provided the tools with which American
elites could disassociate themselves from Spain and thus more ably
defend their rights. The apparition of the Virgin, furthermore, val-
idated the Americas as a sovereign creole homeland, justifying that
class’s resistance to continued Spanish control. The concentration of
power in the peninsular class was intentionally orchestrated in order
to prevent a possible insurrection by the subjects in the American
kingdoms, as well as to increase and preserve the Crown’s author-
ity and wealth in the Americas. The result was a continual sense of
frustration among Novohispanic elites that motivated much tension
between them and the Spaniards. What began as a distinct American
experience in the sixteenth century, by the eighteenth century had
become a fully developed identity with political aspirations.
Significantly, since most Novohispanic intellectuals were members
of the clergy or were educated by them, colonial thought was often
expressed in religious terms, such as in Sigüenza y Góngora’s pro-
motion of the idea identifying Saint Thomas with Quetzalcoatl.27
Given the alleged prophecies of the return of the god in the guise
of a white man, Cortés’s arrival in the same year dedicated to the
Mexican deity legitimized the belief that these events—the arrival of
the Spanish, the conquest of Mexico, and the formation of a new
society—had been mandated by divine providence. Although mesti-
zaje, in terms of racial mixing, was viewed as something to be avoided
by white elites in the later viceregal period, the idea of blending,
particularly as a historical fact of the sixteenth century, seemed to
capture the unique properties of the American experience. For elite
intellectuals the growing interest in sovereignty stemmed from the
dream of a Mexican nation, composed of a noble indigenous past
and a distinctly American yet westernized present, led by creole inter-
ests.28 The expression of this creole-cum-American identity in paint-
ing was accomplished in a variety of ways that demonstrate what
Although in the Americas the reigning pictorial idiom continued to be Baroque, a

focus on history as a source for national identity and pride is similar and conveys
common, growing interests in political sovereignty.
27
For a sustained discussion of Cortés and Quetzalcóatl, see Lafaye (1976).
28
Benítez Grobet (1982) 127–140.
T. H. Breen, discussing colonial U.S. portraiture of the same period,

describes as “the business of constructing a visual imagination out
of the materials and experiences of everyday life.”29 Although clearly
engaging established narrative and iconographic vocabularies, the
anonymous artist of the encounter, consciously or not, generated
forms that conveyed new meanings, revealing a combination of his
own, his patron’s, and his society’s cultural assumptions and desires
in that process of self-fashioning.
Conclusion
Mestizaje, in the eighteenth century, served as a link that bridged

the pre-Hispanic past with the elites of the then present. From the
late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, mesti-
zaje was gradually reoriented and reconnected to miscegenation and
transculturation, which was now presented as central to Mexico’s
experience and status as a free and modern nation. It wouldn’t be
until the early twentieth century, however, that the mestizo rubric
would be expanded to embrace all native-born Mexicans, regardless
of color, becoming the lynchpin for modern Mexican identity. An
early expression of this idea took form in the work of the historian
Justo Sierra. In 1916, Sierra wrote:
The descendants of the Indians and Spaniards were the mestizos or
castes, more numerous each day, of an unsettled and active nature,
and destined, over time, to become the true owners of the nation.30
Claudio Lomnitz Adler, presenting a more recent, critical approach,
addresses nineteenth-century racial politics in Mexico’s early national
development, the discussion of which presents striking similarities to
some of the ideas pictorially rendered in eighteenth-century caste
painting but with certain modifications indicative of later cultural
politics:
29
Breen (1990) 326–327, refers to the selective construction of identity via rep-
resentations as ‘self-fashioning.’
30
See Sierra (1925) 64.
Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of liberalism, the ideal of whiteness did

not disappear in nineteenth-century society. The dissolution of the cas-
tas into a ‘mestizo race’ . . . did not detract from the idea that white-
ness was still the only position where wealth and high status were in
homeostasis . . . the use of the term ‘Indian’ became synonymous with
a combination of material poverty and cultural ‘backwardness.’ Class
distinction was again framed in racial terms, so that poor mesti-
zos . . . were called ‘Indians’ by the upper classes, while rich mestizos
were ‘whitened.” Thus, the complex racial dynamics of the colonial
period were simplified in the nineteenth-century into a bipolar model
(Indians/whites) with an intermediate class of ‘mestizos.’31
In modern Mexican national discourse, the historic encounter between
the Old and New Worlds yielded a hybrid modern Mexican iden-
tity, typically conceived of as the product of the male-female cou-
pling of Cortés and Marina. In the anonymous eighteenth-century
history painting, this mythologized union was captured in the bod-
ies of the two male leaders. Such a focus on the masculine nature
of Mexico’s political power appears to reflect, too, concurrent ideas
of gender. Following Independence, during the early years of Mexican
nationalism, we find the gradual production of a national history.
Within the emerging narrative, one of the approaches to distinguish
the historical periods framing the pivotal moment surrounding the
birth of Mexico as a nation was a gendering process, whereby the
colonial, Spanish, Baroque was perceived as decadent and/or femi-
nine, while the Mexican, academic, and national was masculine and
modern.32 We see the continuation of power relations in this configura-
tion, where gender symbolically conveys the inevitable dominance
and superiority of one over the other. The male figures expand the
idea of reproduction and mestizaje, beyond that seen in images of
Cortés and Marina, to include power and authority by highlighting
the masculine character of the event.
Of relevance is a more recent pictorial precedent that validates
the reading of the anonymous history painting as a symbolic union
with shared iconographic references to betrothal paintings. The work
in question is a representation of the encounter by Diego Rivera,
dating from the first half of the twentieth century, which is located
in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Recognizing the broader valences not only
31
See Lomnitz Adler (1992) 276.
32
See Widdifield (1996).
of images but of representations of the encounter, Rivera painted

the historic scene utilizing the compositional arrangement found in
European and viceregal betrothal images. The painting, a grisaille
mural at the Palace of Cortés, depicts Moctezuma and Cortés in
profile and full-length perspective, facing one another. Standing
between them, in a full-length frontal pose, we find Marina. Like
the rabbi in the betrothal paintings this panel so closely resembles,
Marina, through her intermediary role, unites the two men, who
clasp hands as she gesticulates. Although this modern work clearly
quotes viceregal betrothal images, it must be noted that the earlier
eighteenth-century painting, although not a betrothal representation
per se, contains the relevant iconographic elements that allow it to
be read as a union, suggesting a shared pictorial vocabulary stem-
ming from a common conceptual foundation. What we can discern
in this remarkable eighteenth-century image is a transposition of
emphases via the inversion of pictorial conventions, suggesting an
intentional re-visioning of this pivotal historical event. Quite telling
is that the coeval, layered references to identity that emerge in the
reading of this Novohispanic painting recall contemporary discourses
of intersectionality, which propose that the discernible grounds for
identity, such as gender, race, class, etc., are interpolated and must
be viewed in relation to one another.33 Whether or not Rivera knew
the anonymous history painting is uncertain; however, what is cer-
tain is the shared idea of the historical joining of two cultural-polit-
ical powers, which through the course of time would give rise to the
modern Mexican state. Upon closely examining the anonymous paint-
ing, we find ourselves, once again, being drawn in as witnesses to
the solemn union of ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds with its implications
of confrontation, negotiation, new alliances, and permanent changes.
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Painting (Tucson, AZ: 1996).
CHAPTER EIGHT
NURTURE AND INCONFORMITY: ARRIETA’S IMAGES

OF WOMEN, FOOD, AND BEVERAGE
Jenny O. Ramírez
It is the custom among the Chatino Indians of Juquila, in the south-

ern Mexican state of Oaxaca, that at birth, newborn boys are given
a machete by their fathers, and girls receive a metate and malacate (the
stone base and stone instrument used to grind maize) from their
mothers.1
This tradition not only establishes the future economic and social
role of the male and female, but confirms the gendered separation
of the masculine world of the outdoors, public, and active life from
the feminine arena of indoors, private, and ‘passive’ existence. It
reinforces the concept of man as the provider and embodiment of
culture and woman as nurturer and symbol of nature. The empha-
sis on the maternal role of woman is traditionally anchored to her
home, supposedly a place of enclosed, safe space. As the public work-
place outside the home became the domain for men, women found
themselves consistently relegated to the private, domestic sphere.
Certainly the virtuous good wife and mother exemplified not only
her own moral integrity but also that of her family, village, and
polity. The kitchen was most notably the quintessential internal space
that defined the culminating qualities of woman. The locus of nour-
ishment and nurture, the kitchen, as well as the related spaces of
taverns, banquet tables, and market, could be interpreted as the spa-
tial manifestation of the fecundity of the female.2
1
Chassen-López (1994) 27.
2
Tuñón (1998) Cap. 3, “Las mexicanas en el siglo XIX,” 97–99; Navarro and
Korrol (1999) 66, 68–69; Marroni de Velázquez (1994) 219–23; and Lewis (1972
[1951]) 98, 319–22. All of these sources emphasize the gulf between the traditional
late viceregal and nineteenth-century Mexican male’s prototypical ideal of female
domesticity and subservience, as imagined by Arrieta in his paintings, and the social,
lived reality.
208 jenny o. ramírez
Nineteenth-century Mexican painter José Agustín Arrieta explored

this traditionally feminine realm. Finding inspiration for his subject
matter in his Puebla homeland, Arrieta repeatedly depicted food,
drink, and their close connection to women. Exploring Arrieta’s world
of females and food not only reveals the artist’s interest and con-
cern for the nineteenth-century Mexican woman, but also for the
traditional religious, social, and sexual connotations of the indige-
nous symbols of maize and pulque.3 By constructing genre scenes of
women shown cooking, buying, and serving food, Arrieta not only
confirmed the feminine secular role of nourishing mankind, but often
elevated it to iconic status, as exemplified by his china poblana images.
Embracing European models, especially the themes of Dutch and
Spanish genre and still life, Arrieta meticulously and realistically ren-
dered his poblano ambient.4 The verisimilitude of his works was a
conduit for beliefs and values, particularly about women, in his mid-
nineteenth-century provincial setting.5
Arrieta was born in 1803 in Santa Ana Chiautempan, state of
Tlaxcala, Mexico, and grew up in a family of humble means. He
moved to the nearby city of Puebla to attend its Academy of Fine
Arts, where he was schooled in the European academic painting
style. European works, most commonly available in graphic repro-
ductions or plaster casts of sculptures, provided models to be emu-
lated in both technique and subject matter. Key for Arrieta were
reproductions of Dutch and Spanish genre and still life paintings, in
which interest and portrayal of local customs and people were empha-
sized. Perhaps these European models were the impetus behind his
rejection of the Neoclassic allegorical academic mode. Instead he
chose to turn inward to paint subjects found in the local Puebla
3
The word maize refers to Zea Mays, a tall, annual cereal plant that in American
English is normally called “corn” but is not the same plant as the “corn” men-
tioned in the English translations of the Bible. Maize has been the single most
important staple food in Mexico since early pre-Hispanic times. Pulque is “a thick,
white, Mexican alcoholic drink made from fermented maguey juice . . .” Stein (1966)
under “corn” (first meaning) and “maize,” and Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003)
under “pulque.”
4
The adjective poblano/poblana refers to something of, from, or characteristic of
the Mexican city of Puebla de los Ángeles or the surrounding state of Puebla that
takes its name from the capital city. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003).
5
References to illustrations of Arrieta’s oeuvre in this essay are to those in Castro
Morales (1994), who provides the most extensive treatment of the artist in text and
plates.
nurture and inconformity 209
barrios around him.6 Arrieta also painted many religious images of

saints to adorn church interiors as well as portraits for the aristoc-
racy, but it is in his cuadros de costumbres, his works featuring the folk,
that we can appreciate his true originality and affinity for everyday
man and woman. There was not much money to be made in genre,
but Arrieta seems to have sacrificed potential wealth and notoriety
for the pleasure of painting the world he knew, immediately around
him, until his death in 1874.7
In this discussion of Arrieta’s images of females, food, and drink,
a selection of these paintings will first be surveyed and related to
European models. Once defined, key differences between scenes by
Arrieta and their European counterparts will be stressed to demon-
strate how Arrieta’s scenes grew out of Mexican cultural history,
both pre-contact and early modern. Arrieta painted many still life
works that immediately connect him to the Dutch and Spanish tra-
ditions. In Europe these cuadro de comedor and mesa revuelta (dining
room and variegated table) scenes typically feature meticulous real-
ism and concern with surface textures, color, light, and shade as well
as themes of the transitory nature of wealth, abundance, and worldly
pleasures.8 Arrieta’s depictions of heavily laden tables, by contrast,
evidently do not imply underlying messages of the passage of time,
transience of the human body, futile materialism, or the vanitas sub-
text so frequently conveyed in Dutch discourse.9 Nevertheless, they
do connect with seventeenth-century Dutch interiors of women as
they sew, cook, and circulate within the domestic sphere.
Arrieta’s Cocina poblana or “Puebla Kitchen” of 1865 reveals the
activities and hierarchies of women within the social construct of
food preparation.10 It can be compared to the Dutch work by Hendrick
6
Barrio is the Spanish word for a distinct neighborhood in a town or city.
Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003).
7
Ortiz Angulo (1995) 137–40, informs us that the artist died in poverty, likely
due in part to the fact that “he did not make a living by painting portraits of the
wealthy, but dedicated himself to painting taverns, still lives of flowers, typical
poblano interiors, especially the famous kitchens of the area.”
8
For example see Jordan and Cherry (1995).
9
Van Lil (1998) 431, 460–74; and Janson and Janson (2001) 568–70.
10
No illustrations or plates of Arrieta’s paintings will be published with this essay.
His paintings are well known and accessible in the public domain, especially in
Castro Morales (1994). Permission was sought for the reproduction of the Arrieta
paintings discussed in this essay, but it was not granted by the governing authorities.
Sorgh, Portrait of Jacob Bierens and His Family (1663). In the latter var-
ious provisions tumble across the floor in the foreground—fish, veg-
etables, cooking utensils, and a shopping pail. The family members
industriously occupy their traditionally prescribed gender roles. The
husband holds a plate of fish, symbolizing his obligation and ability
to provide sustenance for the family. The wife and daughters pre-
pare the food: they judiciously manage the bounty provided by the
breadwinner.11
In Arrieta’s kitchen we see only females, but the sexual hierarchy
prevails here as well. As in the Dutch work, provisions and utensils
occupy the foreground, providing a still-life vignette. Two women
on the left prepare food while the woman on the floor grinds corn
with the metate and malacate. On the right is the interesting tableau
of a lighter skinned blonde woman who holds a tethered turkey while
an elderly lady tugs at her shoulder and appears to whisper a pri-
vate matter to her. On one level this may indicate, as Stacie Widdifield
has convincingly argued with regard to another Arrieta creation, an
“awareness of racial heritage.” She asserts that the juxtaposition of
white skin and youth to age and darker skin could be read as “the
process of mestizaje—that is, the increasing presence of the mestizo in
Mexico—which brought to the surface, and to representation, an
inevitable re-picturing of the national.”12
Cocina poblana can also be interpreted to represent mother-in-law
hegemony, a long-standing custom involving the daughter-in-law’s
servitude to her in-laws. Due to patrilocal residence, the mother-
and daughter-in-law relationship was highly compelling. A young
bride often went to live with her husband’s family, assuming the role
of a grown daughter in respect and obedience to her surrogate par-
ents, the in-laws. The mother-in-law assigned chores to her, mainly
the labor-intensive and burdensome tasks of grinding corn, making
tortillas, washing and ironing clothes, and apparently in this case
butchering and cleaning the turkey.13 Her dress, fair skin, and stance,
however, suggest she is de jure the mistress of the house, although de
facto she is beholden to the older woman. This dynamic is also patent
in Arrieta’s undated Vendedora de frutas y vieja (Fruit Vendor and Old
Woman).
11
The theme of Dutch women and domesticity is cogently treated by Franits
(1993).
12
Widdifield (1996) 122–32.
13
Stern (1995) 92, 207; Socolow (2000) 150–51; and Navarro and Korrol (1999) 12.
The famous Dutch drinking scenes or “merry companies” relate

to Arrieta’s subject matter. For example, in his La pulquería of 1851
the predominantly male members of the barrio celebrate a political
and military victory of a Mexican faction, as signified by the broad-
sheets that lampoon the opposition.14 As compared to Dutch merry
companies, this work contains a more political narrative, to be sure,
but is congruent with Dutch scenes that celebrate men with alco-
holic beverages. Here, a woman joins in the raucous singing and
celebration, suggesting a female incursion into the political, public
male domain.
Along with Dutch influences, Arrieta was aware of prints of Spanish
works as well. In his undated Interior de una pulquería, men enjoy their
sisal elixir in the familiar tavern setting while the two women serve
them food and beverage. On the wall, Arrieta appropriated Velázquez’s
Feast of Bacchus (1629), a suitable mythological scene for a drinking
establishment and a marker pointing toward one of the influences
on the poblano painter. Velázquez created a number of genre scenes
in the early seventeenth century that were called bodegones, a Spanish
term to denote genre pictures with figures, food, and beverage, deriv-
ing from the word for a humble eatery.15 Velázquez’s Old Woman
Cooking Eggs (1618) and The Water Vendor of Sevilla (1620) carefully
capture arranged objects with extraordinary realism and virtuosity.16
The chiaroscuro, predominance of earth tones, interest in varied tex-
tures, and elevation of common people to the subject of fine art are
reflected in Arrieta’s output, particularly his El mendigo (The Beggar).
Arrieta did not describe the meanings of these bodegones other
than to indicate that they were simply visual transcriptions of the
poblano world around him. Nevertheless, the fact that his protago-
nists for this genre tend most frequently toward the downtrodden—
lepers, beggars, the poor, children, attendant maids—suggests, if not
concern for their plight, at least a championing of their suitability
as subject matter. Guillermo Prieto, the nineteenth-century liberal
politician and writer, visited Arrieta in his studio in 1849 and was
amazed to find that, after spending a day making the rounds of the
14
Pulquería in Mexico literally means an establishment that serves pulque, but it
came to mean any plebeian bar or saloon serving alcoholic beverages including
pulque.
15
Tufts (1985) 23; and Wind (1987) 1–19.
16
Brown (1998) 86–87, 108–109, and Pl. 150.
city of Puebla, the artist was indeed painting what he encountered

on a daily basis. Prieto concluded that “Arrieta’s paintings of the
local customs and folklore were examples of his true genius,” judg-
ing them straightforward yet very intricate and picturesque.17
It is appropriate to compare Arrieta’s bodegones to Dutch and
Spanish prototypes because he was clearly influenced by them. The
European antecedents, however, do not completely account for the
motifs depicted in his oeuvre. Despite his skillful ability to paint in
a Neoclassic manner, his popular paintings of poblano denizens have
a particularly archaizing strain. This can be verified simply by com-
paring them with the virtuoso academicism that he demonstrated in
such paintings as the undated Mesa revuelta that displays the porce-
lain figure of the nearly nude Christus patiens next to a marble or
plaster medallion with a high-relief male bust. In his paintings of
folk customs and behavior, the artist consciously seems to have set
aside what he learned at the academy to produce images that were
more provincial and naïve in technique and closer to the folk tra-
dition of the private religious votive panels called ex-votos or retablos.
In this deliberate determination he strangely prefigures the artistic
choices of Frida Kahlo, María Izquierdo, and other prominent Mexi-
can artists one century later.
Arrieta’s interest in the lives of poblanas and their inseparable
connection to food and drink further reinforces his conscious rejec-
tion of what was academic, Neoclassic, and thus perceived at the
time by the Mexican ruling class as “modern,” “constructive of bet-
ter morals,” and “progressive,”18 pointing instead to the past, espe-
cially the pre-Columbian past. Two undated works that demonstrate
this are Un matrimonio feliz (A Happy Marriage) and Agualojera (Woman
Water Vendor).19 In these the woman is the dominant subject of the
painting and the man is the chief benefactor and receptor of her
fare. Both women hold either a food item or a drink, either a tamal,
primarily made of maize, or a glass of pulque. Tamales and pulque
17
Cabrera (1963) 69.
18
For this endorsement of academic art by the Mexican nineteenth-century elite,
see Fernández (1983).
19
Both of these paintings are reproduced in color plates in Castro Morales (1994),
Pl. 11, p. 34, and Pl. 52, p. 100, respectively. Neither oil-on-canvas painting is
dated and both are in private collections. Un matrimonio feliz measures 143 × 95 cm.
Agualojera measures 115 × 89 cm.
appear throughout Arrieta’s popular paintings and refer to his indige-

nous roots. Both derive from the pre-conquest history and mythology
of the Mexican people. Maize was domesticated in the Puebla-
Oaxaca region, likely around 4300–3500 BCE. It was prepared for
consumption by boiling it with lime, then grinding the kernels with
a metate to form a dough or masa that could be toasted to make
flat cakes known as tortillas or steamed and boiled to create tamales.
Maize, then, for at least the last six thousand years has been the
staple of the Mexican diet, the bedrock of Mexican civilization itself.20
The Aztecs believed that the god Quetzalcoatl fittingly climaxed his
creation of humanity by providing it with the means of its survival,
maize.21 Women received the god’s gift and took over its prepara-
tion, confirming the paradigm of male as provider and female as
nurturer.
Conversely, the mythical roots of pulque were more predominantly
feminine. The principal pre-conquest alcoholic drink throughout cen-
tral Mexico, pulque is drawn from the maguey plant. This large cac-
tus requires eight to ten years to mature and then produces sixty to
ninety gallons of juice for pulque over a period of a few months.
The juice is extracted and allowed to ferment in vats to produce a
frothy brew with an alcohol content of about four percent. Pulque
was held to be invented by the gods, and consequently its pre-
contact use was reserved primarily for festivals and rituals in service
of these gods.22
A close association between maguey-pulque, fertility, and agricul-
ture is suggested by the importance of Mayahuel, the goddess of
pulque, who appeared in earth-mother form with four hundred
breasts.23 The association of pulque with divine femininity was repeated
and assimilated into the symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who
was proclaimed the mother of the maguey. In viceregal times pulque,
although never completely estranged from its religious past, began
to be drunk more frequently and in a more secular context. From
its ancient origins, then, the beverage was associated with the female
20
Coe and Koontz (2002) 12 and 30–33.
21
Brundage (1982) 93–95; Nicholson (1985) 80–81; Brundage (1983) 78; and Coe
and Koontz (2002) 30.
22
Taylor (1979) 32–34.
23
Brundage (1983) 158; and Nicholson (1985) 68.
and with fertility. This nexus persisted in the nineteenth century on

a broader economic and social scale. Women played an important
role in the sale and distribution of pulque. They were typically the
ones in charge of distributing the drink, either at a pulquería or
from the doorways of their homes. Although women drank pulque,
particularly during fiestas, in general ritual and social drinking were
reserved for men. The women would serve the brew, but the men
were the recipients of it. The association of female attributes with
pulque also carried over to its medicinal use by pregnant women.
Women who had just given birth received the drink in order to
regain strength and lactate. They also may have used it during the
menstrual period to achieve cessation of the blood flow.24
By consistently associating maize and pulque with women, Arrieta
confirmed the fecundity of the female and connected her to the
ancient Mexican past. His images were a deliberate construction of
feminine virtues appropriate to domesticity. The naturalism and con-
spicuous placement of food and beverage invite the viewer to appre-
ciate these items in their detailed realism and contemplate their
meanings as signs of female attributes and virtues. Despite their delib-
erately archaizing technique, seen in the vibrant local color, stage-
like setting, and shallow space, Arrieta’s depictions of kitchens, taverns,
and markets were shaped by a firmly established system of beliefs
and values concerning women and their function and placement
within the patriarchal social order of the day.
Nevertheless, Arrieta moves subtly beyond simple confirmation
of women’s subservient social position. By depicting predominantly
women in his bodegones, he not only revealed a keen interest in the
female realm, but also sympathy or at least cognizance of their plight
within their prescribed roles. In China poblana (c. 1865) and La sirvienta
(The Servant Woman, undated) a single standing woman holding a plat-
ter of food looks out either coyly or beseechingly at the viewer. By
minimizing the background, particularly in China poblana, the female
takes on a near iconic role.25 Frozen in time, she eternally serves.
Like twentieth-century female symbols who sell products, Aunt Jemima
on pancake mix boxes and the St. Pauli and Miller Life girls who
24
Taylor (1979) 30–45, 53–54, and 57–63.
25
China poblana is dated to ca. 1865, oil on canvas, 90.5 × 71 cm., priv. col. See
Castro Morales (1994), Pl. 142, p. 223.
proudly purvey beer, the female body is turned into a commodity

or even sanctified. The china poblana was a local Puebla folk type
and distorted generalization that was assuming national significance
as a social cynosure embodying essential traits of Mexican woman-
hood precisely during Arrieta’s lifetime.26 She was popularly known
as a seductress, possibly a prostitute. Arrieta has elevated this ques-
tionable figure to iconic status while simultaneously confirming the
feminine role as server and nurturer of man. The subject of La
sirvienta, unlike the China poblana, expresses a sense of weariness and
is thus perhaps a sympathetic portrayal of the downtrodden, sub-
servient position of the maid in waiting. Prieto recalled of his 1849
visit to Puebla City that the citizens in the town square would say
to him “don’t tire yourself . . . the attendant maids will take care of
everything.” He concluded “Here, everyone has an attendant maid.”27
Arrieta’s scenes of women in their domestic environ confirm the
male ideal of the traditional roles of women in the poblano coun-
tryside, but on another level they consciously probe the edges of
those roles. La pensativa (The Pensive Woman, 1851) reveals a crowded
and cramped space where a soldier and village man converse, flanked
by three women and a child and the obligatory food platter. In the
center, a young woman stares off into space. Arrieta marked her as
the principal protagonist of the composition by her centrality, her
distinction from the discourse followed by everyone else, and in the
work’s title. She does not listen to the men, nor does she pay atten-
tion to the women or child, as if nostalgically imagining herself into
a new female paradigm to escape and transcend the expected sub-
servience. Several paintings such as Puesto de agualoja (Water Vending
Stall, 1860) and Interior de una pulquería depict busy scenes of men eat-
ing and women serving, but always there is one woman who acknowl-
edges the presence of the viewer, either obsequiously or pitifully. She
seems to invite the spectator through complicity to critique the scene
rather than simply take it for granted as a display of consecrated
customs.
The most disarming example of this exchange is Arrieta’s La
borracha (The Drunken Woman, undated).28 Like the China poblana, this
26
Gugliotta (1989) 68–70; and Tuñón (1998) 65.
27
Cabrera (1963) 70.
28
La Borracha is an oil on canvas, 95 × 77 cm., priv. col. See Castro Morales
(1994), Pl. 157, p. 242.
woman is depicted in an indeterminate enclosed blank space, accom-

panied by a young woman who simultaneously presents and attempts
to remedy her nudity, and a boy whose pose is more ambiguous.
The woman has been partaking of the pulque that she is only sup-
posed to serve. Her torn dress, braided hair, wrinkled and flawed
face, and obviously disheveled appearance with one breast exposed
reveal her to be of the lowest classes. Still, she stands in a pose sim-
ilar to that of the iconic China poblana. Here Arrieta is ironic: The
accoutrements of her womanhood, the breast and the pulque, are
offered mockingly to the viewer. Nevertheless, she beholds the observer
directly, challenging the stereotype of females, food, and fertility. She,
like the biblical Eve, has partaken of the forbidden fruit. Arrieta’s
drunk woman confronts and challenges the viewer and, by exten-
sion, patriarchal society, mocking and even eclipsing her fertility and
thus overthrowing the female role in the contemporary social struc-
ture of the day. She is a pelada, the female counterpart of Octavio
Paz’s Mexican pelado, literally “the peeled, the revealed, the deflowered
one,” who denies, flees, or demolishes the accepted mores in order
to achieve the freedom within chaos.29 For her, “Freedom’s just
another word for nothin’ left to lose . . .”30
Arrieta’s images of females, food, and beverage offer a fascinat-
ing window onto the lives of the folk in the state of Puebla in mid-
nineteenth-century Mexico. Influenced by European models of still
life and domestic interiors combined with the pre-contact connota-
tions of maize and pulque, Arrieta invented a complex construction
of ideal femininity, fertility, and domesticity. His popular cuadros de
costumbres confirmed the role of women as subservient nurturers of
men, but also subtly probed this very convention. Unfortunately
Arrieta’s motivations for these works are not known, but his por-
trayals of women and sustenance offer compelling food for thought
through careful formal analysis.
29
Paz ([1950] 2000) 19–23, uses the term pachuco rather than pelado, but it is the
term pelado that has maintained its archetypal hold on the Mexican folk imagina-
tion for more than a century, not pachuco.
30
Dalton (1971) 190–92, lyrics from the song “Me and Bobby McGee.”
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1972 [1951].
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PART THREE
CONSOLIDATION: THE QUALIFYING AND TAMING OF

THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY WITH SIGNIFIEDS
CHAPTER NINE
CLOTHING WOMEN: THE FEMALE BODY IN

PRE- AND POST-CONTACT AZTEC ART
If, as Anne Hollander writes, “The more significant clothing is, the
more meaning attaches to its absence,” then for both Spaniards and
Nahuas, who went about in everyday life dressed, the lack of cloth-
ing was significant indeed; accordingly, occasions for nudity were
charged with meaning. However, this meaning differed in the two
cultures. Hollander continues: “Occasions for nakedness often have
to do with sex, and so among those for whom sex was associated
with shame, a sense of the shamefulness of nudity could arise.”1
Indeed, Christian Spaniards associated sex and its corollary naked-
ness with shame, but not so the Nahuas. These opposing views clearly
came into conflict in sixteenth-century New Spain.
For Spanish clergy, who tended to see things in terms of moral
absolutes, sexuality was identified with sin and the devil himself.2 In
a system in which abstinence was promoted, temptation had to be
combated. And as the main force of temptation, women were par-
ticularly feared for what was believed to be their seductive natures.
For Christian Spaniards, then, the sight of a nude woman was a
shameful thing because it had the power to inspire lascivious thoughts
and behavior. In short, the exposed female body leads to immorality,
a short step from heresy. Thus, for Spaniards, clothing for women
was not considered protection from the elements; instead, it was a
way for women to cover and thereby protect themselves from the
1
Hollander (1978) 83–84. Some of the reports on the indigenous peoples from
the 1580s, known as the Relaciones geográficas, mention that the natives of Central
Mexico went about ‘desnudos,’ but this seems to be a projection. The early chron-
iclers often compared the clothed natives of Central Mexico to the naked peoples
of the Caribbean; Alves (1996) 118; and Herren (1991) 174.
2
Tentler (1977) 165; and Burkhart (1989) 26, 100.
222 lori boornazian diel
sexual gaze of men.3 For this reason, images of the naked female
body were rare in Spanish art of the Medieval and early Renaissance
periods, especially when compared to the art of other European
nations.4 An image of an unclothed woman acts on the perceptual
level and provides the illusion of a real woman; therefore, it has the
power to morally corrupt just as an actual nude woman would.5
Moreover, the naked female body is most closely associated with Eve
in contrast to the clothed and virtuous Mary. As Mary Perry points
out, the Spanish clergy’s promotion of Mary as the idealization of
female purity and antithesis of the evil Eve was an attempt to deny
female sexuality and promote the belief that it was sinful. In short,
the naked female body was seen in negative terms because of its
association with sin, sexual lust, and evil.6 In contrast, the Nahuas
had a more ambivalent perspective. For them, sex was considered
a gift from the gods, necessary so that life continue. Nevertheless,
to keep balance and stop chaos, moderation was key.7 Thus, in this
system, the exposed female body also communicated sexuality, but
at the same time it carried a more ambivalent meaning, having both
positive and negative associations. On the one hand, the exposed
female body suggests the positive notions of motherhood and fertil-
ity, while on the other hand, it carries the negative connotations of
fertility unfulfilled and even death and defeat.
Advocating abstinence, the Spanish clergy were concerned with
what they considered the sexual excesses of the Nahuas.8 Therefore,
the issue of sexuality became a focus in the conversion process. As
a symbol of sexuality in both cultures, the female body became an
area of contestation in this process.9 In this article, I examine repre-
3
Alves (1996) 109.
4
For more on the rarity of the naked female body in Spanish art, see Brown
(1998, 179); Moffitt (1999) 158; and Prater (2002).
5
Due to the sexualized nature of the breast, I treat exposed breasts as instances
of nudity throughout this paper. See Yalom (1997) 74 and (1986) 201.
6
Perry (1990) 41; Hollander (1978) 84; and Miles (1989) 81.
7
Quezada (1994); and Burkhart (1989) 150.
8
Burkhart (1989) 150.
9
Many scholars have written on the Spanish clergy’s concern with sexuality in
colonial Mexico. For examples, see Arvey (1988); Burkhart (1989); Gruzinski (1989);
Lavrin (1989); Herren (1991); Quezada (1994); Klein (1995); and Alves (1996). Also,
Silverblatt (1998); Harrison (1994); and Graubart (2000) deal with the same issue
in terms of Viceregal Peru. For more on issues of sexuality and the conquest of
the Americas, see Trexler (1995).
clothing women 223
sentations of women and goddesses created by indigenous artists in

the early colonial period, and I show that some Nahua artists either
obscured nudity in their works or clothed women and goddesses who
were traditionally seen uncovered. By comparing these representa-
tions to their pre-conquest counterparts and then placing them in
their colonial contexts, I argue that a new Spanish view of the female
body as a source of evil and temptation was picked up by some
artists and melded into their pictorial writings. At stake here is a loss
of the traditional symbolic significance of the exposed female body
to the Nahuas, from an ambivalent meaning of both life-giving poten-
tial and the problems of that potential unfulfilled to the largely neg-
ative Christian meaning of sinfulness, barbarity, and evil. Thus, in
both the Spanish and Nahua worlds, the female body was a potent
symbol of transgression and potential power, but for the Spaniards
this power had to be neutralized so that a successful Christian con-
version could take place.
Sacrificial Women
As the Mexica people, future leaders of the Aztec empire, migrated

to the Valley of Mexico, forces from more established cities attacked
them, taking their tribal leader(s) and his daughter(s) captive and
sacrificing them. A sixteenth-century pictorial history called the Tira
de Tepechpan (Fig. 9.1) shows these events in episodic fashion. In the
middle, we see the outbreak of war. Reading to the left, warriors
take a male and female captive, leading them by the hands. Footprints
then guide the narrative sequence to the upper right and end at a
representation of a man and woman, presumably the two who were
earlier captured. The man is identified by a name glyph as Huitzilihuitl
(Hummingbird Feather), tribal leader of the Mexica migrants, and
the woman is his daughter Tozpanxóchitl (Banner Flower). A number
of pictorial conventions communicate their impending sacrifice. For
example, both wear heron feathers in their hair and black bands around
their eyes, symbolic of sacrifice in the Aztec iconographic system.
Moreover, Huitzilihuitl wears only a loincloth and Tozpanxóchitl
wears only a skirt; the huipil, or “tunic,” she wore when taken cap-
tive has now been removed and her breasts are exposed.
224
lori boornazian diel
Fig. 9.1 Capture and Sacrifice of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughter, Tira de Tepechpan (after Aubin 1848–1851).
clothing women 225
These same events are seen in the Codex Azcatitlán. In this manu-
script, Huitzilihuitl is shown with two daughters, and warriors more
forcefully grab the Mexica migrants by the hair, indicating their cap-
ture (Fig. 9.2). Whereas earlier in this manuscript Huitzilihuitl wore
a full-length mantle, now he wears just a loincloth, and the captured
daughters wear only skirts and no shirts. Again, their lack of cloth-
ing suggests defeat, as it did in the Tira. It is important to note,
however, that the painter of the Azcatitlán poses the figures so that
their backs are to the viewer, in an apparent attempt to shield the
bare breasts of the women from our view. On the next page, the
three captives are presented to the leader of Culhuacán (Curved
Hill); however, this event is depicted in a confusing manner (Fig. 9.3).
Costumed as a “Snake Woman” which elicits the name Cihuacóatl,
the ruler is shown in profile and kneeling in front of a palace next
to the curved hill place glyph of Culhuacán. The Culhua ruler faces
the captives, but they appear to turn away from him because the
painter shows them in a rather awkward dorsal pose. Striving for
easy intelligibility, Aztec artists usually show figures from their most
identifiable angles; hence the dorsal view is relatively rare in Aztec
art.10 I believe the painter of the Azcatitlán specifically chose this view
so that he would not have to draw the bare breasts of the women.
In contrast, elsewhere in this manuscript the painter does not obscure
male nudity, which suggests that his modesty was targeted specifically
at women.
In short, the painter of the Tira betrays no sense of reserve in
showing the female captive’s exposed breasts, whereas the painter of
the Azcatitlán presents a more modest representation. The Tira de
Tepechpan and the Codex Azcatitlán were both created sometime dur-
ing the second half of the sixteenth century.11 However, the artist of
the Tira works closer to the pre-conquest style, while the painter of
the Azcatitlán shows more European influence in his work. Stylistically,
Aztec artists favor conceptual representations where the message takes
precedence over naturalism. Donald Robertson identified four main
10
The dorsal view is seen in some representations of deities associated with the
earth; however, these deities are easily identifiable because their typical attributes
are included; see Klein (2000) 11.
11
Diel (2002) 81–82; and Graulich (1996) 16.
226
lori boornazian diel
Fig. 9.2 Capture of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
clothing women 227
Fig. 9.3 Presentation of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo
courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
features of the Aztec painting style that work on this conceptual

level.12 First, the human form is not visually unified; component parts,
depicted from different points of view, create a whole. Second, line
is used simply to frame areas of color; it is not expressive. Third,
there is no attempt to show depth; therefore, no modeling or shad-
ing is used. And finally, space is undefined; figures are not placed
in naturalistic settings. All of these features promote an art that is
highly conventionalized, where information is conveyed in a clear
and succinct manner. Accordingly, the primary artist of the Tira de
Tepechpan uses a uniform frame line and presents figures in a rigid,
twisted perspective, creating an image with a flat appearance. Moreover,
the Tira was created in the rather minor city of Tepechpan; there-
fore, it is likely that its artist had little contact with Spaniards. In
contrast, European artists prefer more perceptual works that appear
to mimic the natural world. Stylistically, the Codex Azcatitlán reveals
European influence; the figures are placed in more naturalistic poses
and settings, and a broken frame line is used to show the contours
12
Robertson (1994) 15–23.
of the human body and the naturalistic folds of clothing. Based on

the style of his work, the painter of the Azcatitlán surely had more
contact with Spaniards, which I believe led him to obscure female
nudity in his work.
Before the conquest, Aztec artists showed no restraint in depicting
female nudity. For example, placed at the bottom of the main tem-
ple of Tenochtitlán, the colossal Coyolxauhqui Stone was clearly intended
for public view, yet there is no sense of reserve in representing the
goddess’ naked and dismembered body. Indeed, in the symbolic sys-
tem of the Aztecs, her naked body serves a communicative function,
signifying the goddess’ defeat and relating this defeat to female sex-
uality.13 In contrast, for Spaniards art is a mimetic exercise. An image
of an unclothed woman acts on the perceptual level and provides
the illusion of a real woman; therefore, it has the power to morally
corrupt just as an actual nude woman would. Thus the shift we see
when contrasting the representations in the Tira and Azcatitlán is most
likely explained by Spanish Christian influence. The artist of the
Azcatitlán presents the female captives with their backs to us so that
we may not see nor be corrupted by the sight of their bare breasts.
This shift parallels a change in artistic technique. With a more per-
ceptual representation, the power of the female body to corrupt is
intensified.
Although he obscures their bare breasts from our view, the artist
of the Azcatitlán does maintain the symbolic implications of the female
sacrificial victims’ nudity in his work. Their exposed breasts then
communicate on multiple levels, which is typical of Aztec art. On one
level, they indicate defeat: If to be clothed indicates civilized society,
then to be stripped of clothing is to be stripped of such status. On
another level, their bare breasts suggest the maternal role of women,
which in their case will remain unfulfilled and cause a break in the
Mexica royal line.
Moreover, the nudity of the Mexica women is typical of the
sacrificial act in which victims were stripped of their clothing.14 On
one level, lack of clothing eases the act of sacrifice, but on another
level, it brings the victim to a more natural state, the better by which
to approach death.15 However, in illustrations of sacrificial rituals in
the Primeros memoriales and the Florentine Codex, the female victims are
13
Klein (1988) 241–242, and (1993) 42.
14
Anonymous Conqueror (1963) 175; and Durán (1971) 92.
15
Alves (1996) 111.
clothing women 229
now fully dressed. These manuscripts were created under the guid-
ance of the famous Franciscan missionary, Fray Bernardino de
Sahagún.16 The paintings in the Primeros memoriales, the earlier man-
uscript of the two that was compiled by Sahagún between 1558 and
1561, are for the most part stylistically similar to pre-conquest works;
however, Ellen Baird does note some European influences in these
illustrations, both in terms of style and iconography. Though subtle,
these influences lead Baird to conclude that the artists responsible
for this work were educated by Franciscan friars at the College of
Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco.17 Painted at a later date, between 1575
and 1580, the images in the Florentine Codex are stylistically very much
influenced by European perceptual techniques and iconography.
Moreover, as Jeannette Peterson writes, many of the images in the
Florentine Codex “were passed through a Euro-Christian filter.”18
Accordingly, in both works the female sacrificial victims maintain
their clothing. For example, during the feast of Huey Tecuilhuitl,
impersonators of the goddesses Xilonen and Cihuacóatl were sacrificed.
In the associated representation in the Primeros memoriales, the red at
their chests indicates that these impersonators have been killed by heart
extraction, yet each is shown fully dressed.19 Similarly, in the Florentine
Codex representation of events associated with the Tecuilhuitontli fes-
tival, the female sacrificial victim is fully dressed, forcing the priest
to cut rather awkwardly through her huipil to get to her heart.20 If
in the Spanish view the exposed female body indicates barbarity and
even the devil, then these goddess impersonators, though sacrificial
victims, are still presented in a more civilized light. Moreover, by
clothing these victims, the artists ensure that the sight of the female
body will not corrupt viewers of these illustrations. Indeed, through-
out these same two manuscripts, a group of goddesses who are often
shown with exposed breasts in their pre-conquest representations now
also become clothed.
16
See León Portilla (2002) for an analysis of Sahagún’s life and his compilation
of these manuscripts.
17
Baird (1988) 226.
18
Peterson (1988) 291–292.
19
Sahagún (1993) folio 251r. According to Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 99, the imper-
sonator of Xilonen was decapitated and then her heart was excised.
20
Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 49r. Another example from the Florentine Codex (Sahagún
(1979) 1, folio 18r) is rather ambiguous. According to the text, a woman was
sacrificed during ceremonies in honor of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue. In the asso-
ciated representation, however, the victim very clearly wears a skirt and is topless,
yet no breasts are indicated.
Cihuateteo
The Cihuateteo (Women Gods), who are alternatively known as

Cihuapipiltin (Women Nobles), represent deified women who died
in childbirth.21 On five specific days every year (in the 260-day Aztec
calendar, the days 1 Deer, 1 Rain, 1 Monkey, 1 House, and 1 Eagle),
these supernatural women descend to the earth and lurk at crossroads,
waiting to snatch or possess children to make up for those they had
originally lost. Thus, on these days, the Cihuateteo were considered
dangerous, malevolent creatures associated with discord.
The pre-conquest divinatory manuscript called the Codex Borgia
illustrates each of the five Cihuateteo associated with the days on which
they descend to the earth.22 Although each Cihuateteo varies in detail-
ing, they all wear skirts but not shirts. Their breasts are clearly
exposed, as are wrinkles at their abdomens, which signify that these
are mature women who have given birth. A similar representation of
these same goddesses appears in plates 77 to 79 of the Codex Vaticanus,23
also of a pre-conquest date, which suggests that this was a standardized
depiction. Although the exact provenance of these two codices remains
unclear, a group of five sculptural examples of Cihuateteo, all exca-
vated in Mexico City in 1907, share iconographic similarities with
their pictorial counterparts, which suggests that the Mexica concep-
tualized the Cihuateteo in much the same way as the artists of these
pictorials (Fig. 9.4).24
Securing the identification of these stone sculptures as Cihuateteo
is the fact that on each of their heads is inscribed one of the days
on which the Cihuateteo descend to the earth; these dates match
those in the pre-conquest codices.25 Also, each has the face of a
death mask and sits in a kneeling posture with clawed hands raised.
21
Barnes (1997) 21, differentiates the Cihuateteo from the Cihuapipiltin and a
group of apotheosized women called Mocihuaquetzqui (One Who Raises Herself
Like a Woman) who had the additional role of ferrying the sun across the sky from
zenith to its arrival in the underworld.
22
Codex Borgia (1993) Pls. 47–48.
23
Codex Vaticanus (1972) Pls. 77–79.
24
Four of these sculptures are now housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología,
and the fifth is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
25
The four at the Museo Nacional de Antropología have the dates 1 Deer, 1
Eagle, 1 Eagle, and 1 Monkey, and the fifth in New York has the date 1 House;
for some unknown reason, the date 1 Rain is not included in this group; Umberger
(1981) 78–79.
clothing women 231
Fig. 9.4 Cihuateteo (Pasztory 1998: plate 186).

They wear skirts and belts but are otherwise topless, with their breasts
exposed. Therefore, in both the pictorial and sculptural examples,
the bare breasts must be a diagnostic trait of these supernatural
women and most likely communicate the life-giving potential of wom-
anhood, in this case womanhood gone wrong, as emphatically com-
municated by their skeletal faces.
In contrast, images of the Cihuateteo in the Primeros memoriales and
the Florentine Codex look neither like the pre-conquest stone idols nor
the Borgia or Vaticanus pictorial representations.26 With their hair
wrapped and braided in the traditional coiffure and wearing both a
huipil and a skirt, these Cihuateteo simply look like noblewomen.
Missing are their skeletal faces and exposed breasts, which based on
their standardized depiction in the pre-conquest examples must be
diagnostic traits. Because one of Sahagún’s goals here was to elucidate
and record the accoutrements of the various deities depicted, it may
not be surprising that these Cihuateteo are completely covered. Never-
theless, Book 4 of the Florentine Codex contains more narrative repre-
sentations of the Cihuateteo along with their stone representatives,
and they too are shown fully clothed.27
For instance, according to the text, on the day 1 Eagle the Cihua-
teteo descend from above to possess small children.28 The associated
illustration shows a woman who descends upside down from the
clouds above, while a young girl runs away (Fig. 9.5). This descending
woman is clearly a Cihuateteo, though she shows no supernatural
features nor exposed breasts. On this same day, priestly attendants
covered the stone representations of the Cihuateteo and made offerings
to propitiate the goddesses. These events are also illustrated; how-
ever, the stone idols are shown fully dressed and again look simply
like noblewomen, not the monstrous stone creatures excavated from
the capital city (Fig. 9.5).29 In fact, one wonders if the synonymous
nature of the words Cihuateteo (Female Gods) and Cihuapipiltin
26
Primeros memoriales, Sahagún (1993) folio 266r; and the Florentine Codex, Sahagún
(1979) 1, folio 11r. The Florentine Codex representation of the Cihuateteo was clearly
based on the representation in the Primeros memoriales, although here the artist adds
three smaller goddesses (perhaps to more fully capture the multiplicity of this super-
natural category).
27
Klein (2000), 10, has noted this same clothing of these supernaturals in Sahagún’s
manuscript.
28
Sahagún (1950–1982) 4, 107.
29
The Florentine Codex also illustrates the descent of two Cihuateteo on the day 1
Rain, but again the goddesses are shown fully dressed; Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 28v.
clothing women 233
Fig. 9.5 The Cihuateteo on the Day 1 Eagle, Florentine Codex

(after Sahagún 1950–82 4: Figs. 78–82).
(Female Nobles) provides these artists an excuse to show them as

noblewomen rather than as a ‘demons,’ as would be communicated
in a Spanish worldview by their exposed breasts.
Earth/Fertility Goddesses
The Cihuateteo are one facet of a larger group of goddesses who

share iconographic features relating them to motherhood, fertility,
the earth, and death. H. B. Nicholson categorizes these goddesses as
the Teteoinnan Complex, which he relates to maternal fertility.30
More recently, Cecelia Klein and Elizabeth Boone have argued that
these goddesses can be subsumed within the tzitzimime category.31
Predominantly female, the tzitzimime play important roles in Aztec
cosmogony and, like many Aztec supernaturals, have both positive
and negative characteristics. Essentially, if they are appeased, they
ensure that life continues; if they are not, they threaten to become
devouring demons.32
The goddesses identified as Coatlicue (Serpent Skirt), Cihuacóatl
(Woman Serpent), Itzpapalotl (Obsidian Butterfly), and Tlazoteotl (Filth
Eater) are members of this deity complex, and one of the features
these goddesses share in their pre-conquest representations are their
exposed breasts, which relate their maternal aspect and signify life,
juxtaposed with references to death, such as skulls and snakes. For
example, the colossal Coatlicue sculpture, housed at the Museo Nacional
de Antropología in Mexico City, shows the goddess wearing her sig-
nature skirt of serpents, yet she is otherwise topless. Her breasts are
clearly indicated under her gruesome necklace of hands and hearts.
In this sculpture, Boone sees the exposed breasts as a diagnostic trait,
symbolic of a mature woman who has given birth.33 Likewise, the
goddess Cihuacóatl appears on the pre-conquest Tizoc Stone and
Moctezuma Stone.34 In both examples, the goddess wears a long skirt
with a tied belt and a skull at the back, but she does not wear a
30
Nicholson (1971) 420–422.
31
Klein (2000); and Boone (1999).
32
Klein (2000) 20.
33
Boone (1999) 190.
34
Wicke (1976) 217. For a full discussion of representations of goddesses in Aztec
sculpture, see Magali Carrera’s (1979) dissertation study. For a discussion of god-
desses within the Aztec religious pantheon, see Nicholson (1971) 420–422.
clothing women 235
shirt. In these examples, Cihuacóatl’s exposed breasts work on mul-

tiple levels. On one level, they identify her as a member of the
Earth/Fertility cult, and on another level, they signify her defeat (in
this case at the hands of the Mexica leaders).
So diagnostic are the exposed breasts of these goddesses that Mary
Parsons identifies a number of hollow figurines from the Teotihuacán
Valley as members of this Earth/Fertility cult. These figurines rep-
resent women dressed in skirts and headdresses but without tops,
thereby leaving their breasts exposed. Parsons specifically identifies
a variant within this group as Xochiquetzal (Precious Flower), based
on her distinctive skirt and exposed breasts, which may relate her
role as patroness of the sexual arts.35 However, one of the Xochiquetzal
figurines from Parsons’s sample does wear a shirt. This shirt has a
high collar that is typical of Spanish clothing; therefore, Parsons sus-
pects that this is a representation of Xochiquetzal created in the
post-contact period.36 By clothing the goddess, her association with
sexuality is lost.
The same is true in representations of these same goddesses cre-
ated at the behest of Spanish friars. Again, the goddesses become
clothed. For example, in the Florentine Codex representation of Coatlicue
giving birth to the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli, the goddess
wears her signature skirt of serpents, but she also wears a huipil,
which effectively negates the symbolic implications of the exposed
breasts seen in the pre-conquest sculpture.37 Moreover, in her Primeros
memoriales representation, she is shown fully dressed, as are Cihuacóatl
and Tlazoteotl in both of these manuscripts.38
The Codices Magliabechiano (folio 45r), Tudela (folio 27r), and Ixtlilxóchitl
(folio 102r) also contain representations of Cihuacóatl, and these are
35
Parsons (1972); see esp. p. 83. See also McCafferty and McCafferty (1999)
103.
36
Parsons (1972) 111.
37
In fact, in the pre-conquest divinatory codices (commonly known as the Borgia
Group) and in the Mixtec pictorials, when goddesses or women are shown giving
birth, they are often shown topless. Moreover, the Tlazoteotl sculpture owned by
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., shows the
goddess completely naked and grimacing in pain or exertion as she gives birth.
38
Sahagún (1993) fols. 263v–264v; Sahagún (1979) 1, fols. 10v, 11v. In the Primeros
memoriales example, the goddess Tlazoteotl is called Teteoinnan, which is another
name by which she is known; Sullivan (1982) 7.
so similar that they must have been copied from a common but now
lost source.39 Made at the behest of Spanish friars, these three rep-
resentations show a more sanitized view of the goddess’ bodies. In
each, Cihuacóatl wears both a quechquemitl and a huipil. A high-sta-
tus garment, the quechquemitl is rectangular in form but when worn
resembles a triangle and does not provide much coverage. Typically,
the quechquemitl is worn as the sole upper-body garment, as seen
throughout the Borgia Group codices, and often the garment is worn
such that the breasts are still exposed.40 Such a style is seen in the
Codex Telleriano-Remensis representation of the goddess Itzpapalotl,
another member of the Earth/Fertility cult, who wears a quechquemitl
that still leaves a breast as well as wrinkles on her abdomen exposed.
These pictorial elements communicate that she has given birth.41 As
Patricia Anawalt and Stephanie Wood point out, the Spanish friars
were troubled by the ‘immoral’ dress of the indigenous peoples and
promoted the wearing of the huipil, which was considered more
modest.42 Thus, by pairing the quechquemitl with the huipil, these
colonial artists may attempt to more modestly clothe the goddess,
while retaining the identifying attributes of the quechquemitl.
Fray Diego Durán’s illustrations for his Book of the Gods and Rites also
shows Cihuacóatl fully dressed. In one image she wears a huipil and
skirt, and her only supernatural feature is her open and fanged
mouth. In a more narrative representation of sacrifices made to the
goddess, she (or more likely, her stone representative) sits in the sum-
mit of her temple, but she is again fully dressed and exhibits no
supernatural features.43 Thus in these illustrations the symbolic impli-
cations of the goddess’ exposed breasts are now obscured. In fact, as
Klein points out, many Spanish chroniclers focused on the lascivi-
ousness of this goddess, perhaps in reaction to her pre-conquest rep-
resentatives with exposed breasts, which the Spaniards would so
39
Boone (1983) 134.
40
Anawalt (1981) 164.
41
The exposed breast here suggests that this manuscript, though made after the
conquest, may have been copied from a pre-conquest source. In fact, another man-
uscript known as the Codex Ríos (1964) folio 31v, includes this same representation
and is either a copy of the Telleriano-Remensis or its original source; however, the
artist of the Ríos fails to show this goddess’s breast.
42
Anawalt (1981) 216; and Wood (2003) 52.
43
Durán (1994) pls. 20 and 21.
clothing women 237
associate.44 By clothing the goddess, however, these Nahua artists

may deny her barbarity according to a Spanish worldview.
The Codices Magliabechiano and Tudela also provide illustrations of
the more generalized tzitzimitl. These depictions share features with the
colossal Coatlicue statue. The Codex Magliabechiano (folio 76r) illustra-
tion shows a supernatural with monstrous clawed faces at the joints
and wearing a necklace of hands and hearts. In this case the super-
natural wears a skirt from which descends a snake, as is also seen
on the Coatlicue sculpture. However, in the colonial representation
the artist fails to indicate the bare breasts of the goddess. Also, in
its cognate the Codex Tudela (folio 46r), the tzitzimitl is shown in a
similar manner. This tzitzimitl wears a necklace of hands and a
heart, and her chest is ripped open to reveal the inner rib cage, but
above there is no indication of bared breasts.
Noting this same lack, Klein has argued that the tzitzimime were
slowly masculinized in the colonial period and eventually equated
with the Christian devil. According to Klein, the lack of breasts
should not be surprising as female skeletons would lack breasts.45
Nevertheless, in the Megliabechiano and Tudela examples, the inclusion
of a skirt reveals that the painters of these representations considered
the tzitzimitl as fundamentally female. However, the scribe of the
Codex Megliabechiano identifies the creature in an alphabetic notation
as a masculine deity. I would argue that this process of masculinization
is enabled by the fact that the painters fail to include the breasts of
the goddess, not because they considered the goddess masculine but
because of a colonial disinclination to reveal her bare breasts.
Colonial Representations of Female Nudity
Not all colonial Nahua painters avoided nudity in their work, and I
suspect that when nudity does appear in colonial works, the intended
meaning varies depending upon the artist’s contact with Spaniards.
Those artists with little contact with Spaniards may maintain the
more ambivalent meaning typical of pre-conquest art, whereas those
in closer contact with Spaniards, and especially Spanish clergy, likely
use female nudity to express more negative connotations. For example,
44
Klein (1988) 248.
45
Klein (2000) 3.
the latter is likely the case in an illustration that accompanies a dis-

cussion of the patlache, or “hermaphrodite,” in the Florentine Codex.46
According to the text, “The hermaphrodite is a detestable woman,
a woman who has a penis. She has carnal relations with other
women.”47 In the associated illustration, a figure wears a mantle in
such a way that exposes her breasts, but she somewhat modestly
covers what presumably is her penis with her hand. A speech scroll
comes from her mouth, while she gestures towards a seated woman,
indicating the overtures she must make to the other woman, as is
recounted in the text. In this case, I suspect the exposed breasts
relate the ‘detestable’ nature of such women, which symbolically is
conveyed according to a Spanish worldview.
In contrast, in other sections of this same manuscript, the now
modestly covered Aztec goddesses are not presented in a ‘detestable’
manner; these goddesses are thereby elevated to a more civilized
state. In fact, Margaret Arvey has shown that images of ‘licentious’
women in the Florentine Codex were based on European prints and
thereby reveal a high degree of acculturation for these indigenous
artists.48 She questions if the censorious attitudes expressed here accu-
rately reflect Nahua views on women and sexual morality. This asser-
tion may be supported by the fact that some of the European prints
to which Arvey refers show women with exposed breasts, in con-
trast to the fully dressed Aztec prostitutes of the Florentine Codex.
Perhaps the Nahua artists did not wish to show these women in a
‘demonic’ light in contrast to the patlache and more in keeping with
their own traditional values.
Another intriguing example of female nudity is found in Fray Diego
Durán’s illustration that accompanied the tale of the battle between
Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco.49 According to Durán, knowing that he
was losing the battle, the Tlatelolcan leader Moquihuix used a feint
to distract the Tenochca armies:
46
Sahagún (1979) 3, folio 40v. Furthermore, illustrations in the Florentine Codex
(Sahagún (1979) 3, fol. 105r) that accompany a discussion of medical ailments,
specifically those associated with breast milk production, do reveal exposed breasts.
Perhaps the medical nature of this chapter made such representations appropriate.
Moreover, the artist of these illustrations works in a more traditional style that
reveals less European influence.
47
Sahagún (1950–82) 10, 56.
48
Arvey (1988).
49
See Klein’s 1994 treatment of this episode for a more detailed analysis.
clothing women 239
a large number of women were gathered, stripped of their clothing,

and formed into a squadron. They were made to attack the Tenochcas,
who were fighting furiously. The women, naked, with their private
parts revealed and their breasts uncovered, came upon them . . . The
Tenochcas, dismayed by such crudity, were given orders by King
Axayacatl not to harm any of the women but to take them prisoner.50
The accompanying illustration shows the naked Tlatelolcan women
attacking the Mexica. Told from the Tenochca viewpoint, this story
was meant to humiliate the Tlatelolcans, and I suspect that the inclu-
sion of the exposed breasts of the women further associates these
Tlatelolcan women with barbarity, in both a Spanish and Nahua
worldview. In the Tlatelolcan version of these same events, however,
the women are described as true soldiers fully dressed in war gear.51
The Pictorials in Their Colonial Context
The conversion of the Nahuas fell to the mendicant orders, and a

key tool in the conversion process was education. Indeed, the two went
hand-in-hand, as the earliest teachers were also friars. Thus, many
Nahuas, mostly of an elite status, were taught to read and write,
speak Latin and Spanish, and most importantly to live according to
proper Christian moral precepts, especially concerning sexuality.52
Indeed, many scholars have noted how important the issue of sex-
ual morality was for the medieval church in Spain, which sought to
curb licentious thoughts and behavior and blamed women for elic-
iting such thoughts in the minds of men.53
Trained in this Christian medieval theology, the friars who came
to the New World could not help but be concerned with what they
considered a rampant sexuality in New Spain, especially because
polygamy was common among the elite indigenous population.
Therefore, establishing the sacrament of marriage became a key focus
50
Durán (1993) 260.
51
Klein (1994) 114. Interestingly, when Juan de Tovar later copied Durán’s illus-
trations, he clothed these women and put them in a different chapter altogether;
Klein (1994) 143–144.
52
See Ricard (1966) 207–216, for a full discussion of the role of education and
its relation to the missionary efforts in the New World.
53
Alves (1996) 109; and Perry (1990) 44. For more on this issue, see Tentler
(1977) 134–232; and Lavrín (1989).
of the church and its mission of conversion.54 Thus, the early friars
spent much of their time teaching the new Christian converts the
sanctity of marriage as well as the “degrees of carnal and spiritual
relationship permitted.”55 To further control the morals of their new
charges, the Church imposed the sacrament of confession, which also
targeted the issue of sexuality.56 Furthermore, the Inquisition was
established in New Spain shortly after the conquest and focused pri-
marily on offenses against Christian morality committed by the newly
converted indigenous populations.57 Indeed, the first trial of the
Inquisition in New Spain occurred in 1522 and was held against a
Nahua man accused of concubinage.58 Though the Inquisition was
soon suspended for the indigenous inhabitants of New Spain, Nahuas
were still punished for religious offenses, and throughout the colo-
nial period, an office called the Tribunal of the Faith of Indians was
dedicated to this very problem.59
That women were particularly feared and targeted for their seduc-
tive natures is suggested by the first bishop of Mexico, Juan de
Zumárraga, who decreed that women not serve in his house, pre-
sumably because he did not want to risk temptation.60 Moreover,
Sahagún explicitly warns young women to protect their bodies and
not to take sweatbaths in front of men, and he tells young men not
to stare at women.61 These admonitions further suggest that a belief
in the power of women to seduce men was communicated to the
indigenous peoples. Indeed, that the mere sight of a naked woman
was considered sinful was suggested by Fray Andrés de Olmos in his
sermon on lust; for him, lustful thoughts were just as sinful as lust-
ful deeds.62 That the stakes were high is revealed by the Relación con-
tra los alcaldes y regidores in the Codex Osuna.63 Here, indigenous officials
were brought to court to face accusations that they had taken sweat-
baths with women and that all were desnudos en cueros, or “stark
naked.” The implication is that the sexes should not mingle in this
54
Ricard (1966) 110; and Lavrin (1989) 49.
55
Greenleaf (1961) 47.
56
Gruzinski (1989); and Harrison (1994).
57
Peters (1988) 99; and Greenleaf (1961) 8.
58
Greenleaf (1961) 8.
59
Moreno de los Arcos (1991) 23.
60
Torquemada (1986) 3, 450; and Maura (1997) 188.
61
In Burkhart (1989) 136–137.
62
In Baudot (1976) 42–44.
63
Codex Osuna (1947) 14.
clothing women 241
fashion and that one would be punished for such infractions.64 In

short, the concern with ‘temptations of the flesh’ as manifest in the
body of woman was a constant challenge for Spanish clergymen in
the Americas, one that they clearly projected onto the indigenous
peoples.65
Conclusion
Ultimately, as Louise Burkhart puts it, the friars “surrounded sexu-

ality with such an aura of filth and wickedness that the overall mes-
sage was one of condoning an ethic of abstinence rather than one
of moderation.”66 The two messages then sent by the exposed female
body in Spanish Christianity were barbarity and sin, messages indige-
nous artists did not want to send about their own culture. Therefore,
as the above examples make clear, some Nahua artists, especially
those artists working under the Spanish friars and those working clos-
est to the capital city, picked up this new Christian morality and
either obscured nudity in their work or used it to convey a new and
negative Christian meaning, one that denies the more positive aspects
of the female body relating to fertility and motherhood.
Nevertheless, not all indigenous artists modified their representa-
tions of female nudity to conform to Christian values. Spanish con-
ceptions of morality spread unevenly throughout the New World,
just as Spanish material culture and customs did.67 Therefore, artists
further removed from the Spanish world, such as the artist of the
Tira de Tepechpan, do not exhibit such a clear Christian conservatism
in their work. Moreover, when nudity does appear in colonial works,
its significance may change based upon contact with Spaniards. For
an artist with little contact with Spaniards, such as the artist of the
Tira de Tepechpan, the naked female body signifies much as it did
before the conquest: it communicates defeat and fertility unfulfilled.
64
In their defense, these indigenous officials responded that the naked women
in question were their wives and that they took the sweatbaths for health reasons;
Codex Osuna (1947) 35.
65
Maura (1997) 190.
66
67
Cline (1993) 75. Sousa (1998) 438, makes a similar point regarding the spread
of Christian attitudes towards sexuality, which she says spread more slowly to the
provinces like that of the Mixteca.
In contrast, when an artist exposed to Christian teachings includes

the exposed female body in his work, the nudity is more likely asso-
ciated with barbarity and shameful behavior, much like the Tlatelolcan
women in the story told by Durán.
The disinclination to show the female nude works on multiple lev-
els, both as an indigenous reaction to Spanish standards of modesty
and also as an act of mimicry, which Homi Bhabha has argued is
a common strategy in struggles for power in colonial systems.68 In
efforts to gain power, the colonized mimic their colonizers, a process
that has been documented for material and stylistic appropriations,
but not as much for moral ones. In essence, by mimicking the
Spaniards, the indigenous hope to gain Spanish power for themselves,
and by following Christian moral precepts, indigenous artists depict
themselves in a more civilized light. Thus, Aztec goddesses are shown
fully clothed, the ‘moral’ state for Spaniards. The change we witness
in indigenous representations stems not only from an imposition but
also an appropriation of Spanish cultural values by some indigenous
artists who modify their representations to promote their own civi-
lized status to Spanish eyes. If the exposed female body came to
symbolize barbarity, then for Nahua artists trying to send the mes-
sage that they too are civilized to a Spanish audience, it was essen-
tial that their women and goddesses be clothed.
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CHAPTER TEN
SAVAGE BREAST/SALVAGED BREAST:

ALLEGORY, COLONIZATION, AND WET-NURSING
IN PERU, 1532–1825
Carolyn Dean
In a remarkable late eighteenth-century Peruvian painting, America is

allegorized as a richly dressed, voluptuous female suckling two youths
(Fig. 10.1). To judge by hair and skin color, the boys feeding at her
breast are clearly Spanish, as are most of the cadre of children who
surround her. There is also one child of African descent. In the fore-
ground, several distressed indigenous American boys witness the scene
hungrily. One of them even wipes a tear from his eye. Flanking the
indigenous youths are two native couples. The Indian men draw
attention—one by gesture, the other by gaze—to their sad, hungry
offspring. This painting, like many images from the colonial period,
suggests that the Americas are like a woman who willingly offers up
her bounty to the colonizing Europeans. In this particular allegory,
breast milk serves as the metaphor for indigenous land, labor, and
natural resources, some of which are pictured in the lush and verdant
background. Unlike most representations of allegorical America, how-
ever, this painting acknowledges those in the New World who don’t
feed, who don’t grow wealthy and prosper: The Indians, America’s
native offspring.
This essay considers the exposed breast of the more typical savage
allegorical America, and how both its visibility and availability rep-
resented the conquest of American land and people. Such consid-
erations enable us to read the singular breastfeeding America of the
painting described above as a call, couched in allegory, for Peruvian
independence from Spain. Further, I will show how this America
figure derives from the Virgo Lactans, the traditional European image
of Mary breastfeeding Jesus, and how that derivation influences the
reading of the allegory. Finally, the paper reflects on the predica-
ment of real Indian women who were employed as wet nurses for
Spanish infants in colonial Peru. While they are never pictured,
248 carolyn dean
Fig. 10.1 Anon., An Allegory of America Suckling Foreigners (called An Allegory of Spain and
Her Treatment of Her South American Colonies). Ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 32” by 23 ½”,
Cuzco, Peru. Priv. Col. Photo courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library.
savage breast⁄salvaged breast 249
archival documents identify them as the lowliest employees, often

forced into servitude by husbands and guardians. Their breast milk
was salvaged as the only ‘thing’ of value that these impoverished
native women could sell. In the end, the allegorical American breast
can be said to both represent and misrepresent the unrepresented
indigenous American breast.
In early modern European imagery, allegorical America is a woman
who almost always displays her naked breasts. Often she is scantily
clad, adorned with feathers and carrying a bow and arrow, signify-
ing her savage state.1 She is usually surrounded by native New World
flora and fauna: avocados, armadillos, alpacas, and the like. Often
America wears feathers and is surrounded by parrots and other col-
orful tropical American birds that were associated with the steamy
and wild jungles of the New World. In such imagery, allegorical
America represents the Renaissance explorer’s view of the New World;
she is, as Marilyn Yalom puts it, “virgin territory awaiting the pen-
etration of a robust male.”2 In this type of allegorical representation
of America, the male gaze is implicit, as is the suggestion that the
female body is ripe not only for exploration but possession. Moreover,
such allegorical pictures follow and further contemporaneous alle-
gorical prose. The metaphorical relationship between the female body
and the territories that were to be conquered and possessed was well
rehearsed by the time European explorers reached the Americas.3
Christopher Columbus, for example, compared aspects of the new
land he was discovering and claiming for Spain to a woman’s nip-
ple (una teta de muger).4
In many images, such as the late sixteenth-century drawing by the
Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus, entitled Discovery of America: Vespucci
Landing in America, America appears to offer herself, and by exten-
sion her lands and resources, to the European explorer (Fig. 10.2).5
1
Miles (1989) 81. Miles argues that nakedness in the Christian West has tradi-
tionally been a negative indicator, the mark of powerlessness and passivity, and that
female nakedness in particular has served as a symbol of sin, sexual lust, and dan-
gerous evil. For analysis of allegorical America in imagery, see Le Corbellier (1961);
and Honour (1975) 112–122.
2
Yalom (1997) 81.
3
Yalom (1997) 81; see also Montrose (1993).
4
Sale (1990) 176.
5
Johannus Stradanus was also known as Jan van der Straet or Giovanni Stradano.
Prints based on the Stradanus drawing, engraved by Theodore and Philippe Galle,
were widely distributed. The Folger Library, Washington, owns one of the Galle
engravings (93Cso31.3). Also see the essay by Hernández-Duran in this volume, ch. 7.
250
carolyn dean
Fig. 10.2 Johannus Stradanus. Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America. 16th c., pen and ink on paper.
Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art [Gift of the Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959 (1974.205)].
In the image Amerigo Vespucci encounters America, her nearly naked

body cradled in a hammock, apparently just rising from millennia
of slumber. Several scholars including José Rabasa and Marie Tim-
berlake have offered insightful readings of this image. Timberlake
points out that America’s proffered hand appears to invite the sexual
exploitation of her body and, by extension, the economic and polit-
ical exploitation of the land and people pictured in the background.6
Since the term allegory literally means “about something else,”
the nature and form of the allegory tell us more about the artist
and spectators than the subject, for interpretation depends upon con-
textual knowledge. In the case of allegorical America, early modern
European viewers were expected to know that continents, like all
manner of lands, could be rendered as females in picture, verse, and
prose. Further, like females they could be conquered, explored, and
possessed (and perhaps even exist for this purpose). Like the fickle
female of common stereotype, they could be compliant or resistant,
attractive or repellent, amicable or hazardous, rich or poor. Additionally,
without some expectation that the female body necessarily refers to
male actions upon it, these images lose significance.
The painting that prompted this discussion departs significantly
from the typical allegorical figure of America. The body of the lady
in our painting is well covered and richly adorned instead of being
dressed in the scant loin coverings that conventionally betray both
America’s availability and uncivilized character (that is, her need to
be tamed). She dresses as European royalty might: She wears a crown
and sits on a throne.7 In pose and appearance she commands respect
rather than inviting domination. This painting, then, employs only
certain accepted visual tropes for allegorical America. It also differs
in significant ways. Early in the eighteenth century, many decades
before this painting was created in the ‘New World,’ French literary
scholar Abbé Dubos criticized allegorical imagery, which was con-
sidered when he wrote to be a noble and learned art form, precisely
because interpretation depended entirely on the spectator knowing
6
Rabasa (1993) 23–48; and Timberlake (1999), esp. p. 589.
7
Also note that America’s breasts are small and high, the European ideal. This
is interesting because in European imagery of this and earlier periods wet nurses,
like witches, were often depicted with pendulous breasts. See Yalom (1997) 75, who
notes that in early modern European representations “Few women, except for wet
nurses, peasants, and witches, are portrayed with very large or pendulous breasts.”
252 carolyn dean
what was in the artist’s mind. While Dubos recognized that widely
known and accepted allegorical figures (such as, I would suggest, the
nude America surrounded by New World flora and fauna) were intel-
ligible to most viewers, he called those allegorical figures that var-
ied from accepted models or were entirely of the artist’s invention
“ciphers to which nobody has the key, not even those who search
for it.”8 Dubos further observed that painters rarely succeed in what
he called purely allegorical compositions, that is, imagery that con-
tains no historical figures, such as our richly dressed and enthroned
lactating America surrounded by imaginary people. He maintained
that the purely allegorical composition was both obscure and opaque
and thus doomed to confuse even the most intelligent of spectators.9
Confusion of the sort anticipated by Dubos has indeed charac-
terized some interpretations of the Peruvian canvas. Because of its
difference from allegorical norms, its unexpected presentation of
America’s body, its meaning has been misconstrued in modern times.
Owing to a misreading of the central allegorical figure as ‘Mother
Spain,’ the painting currently bears the erroneous title An Allegory of
Spain and Her Treatment of Her South American Colonies. Even though in
1952 the renowned art historian of colonial Latin America, Martin
S. Soria, correctly re-identified the allegorical figure as that of America,
the painting retains its mistaken tag.10 Soria’s argument relies heavily
on the painting’s poetic caption that reads as follows in translation:
Where has it been seen in the world
That which we look at here:
Her own sons lie groaning
And she suckles the foreigners.11
If we identify the suckling youths as European (specifically, Spanish)
and the abandoned, hungry babes of the foreground as Indian, then
the identification of the figure as ‘Mother Spain’ makes no sense in
8
Dubos (1967) 55 [I, 193]: “Ils sont des chiffres d’ont personne n’a la clef, & même peu
de gens la cherchent.”
9
Dubos (1967) 55–58 [I, 190–203].
10
Soria (1952). Teresa Gisbert, the renowned Bolivian scholar of colonial Andean
art, also identifies the enthroned figure as America; see Gisbert (1980) fig. 74.
11
The Spanish inscription, difficult to decipher, reads:
Donde se ha visto en el Mundo
Lo que aqui estamos mirando
Los Hijos propios gimiendo
Y ella nodriza a los forasteros.
light of the inscription. The painting’s inscription, when read in com-

bination with the image, acts like an anchor, a caption that attempts
to fix the sense of the scene, allowing the spectator to interpret the
figures in a way selected by the artist among many other possible
interpretations. Without the lines of poetry, the picture floats free
from any precise meaning, but without the ability to interpret the
figures sharing the canvas with the allegorical America, the poem
itself becomes opaque.
Given the daunting task of intelligibility, we return to the canvas
to consider how the Peruvian painter worked to ensure clarity of mean-
ing. Although the artist discarded the notion of the familiar nude
and savage America, he incorporated iconographic codes familiar to
colonial Andean audiences that may well have helped anchor the
meaning of his allegorical scene. The Indian couples who represent
the indigenous populations of the Andes are clearly recognizable
types that follow well-known colonial models. On the pictorial left
are the Incas, recognizable by the royal headdress worn by the male
member of the couple. The headdress features a crown and double-
headed eagle, a symbol of the Hapsburg dynasty that was adopted
by Inca nobility as a sign of its own royal heritage and was featured
on their colonial-period coats of arms.12
The feathers added to the Inca’s crown identify the wearer as
indigenous, as do the bow and quiver of arrows he carries. The
Indian couple to the right are jungle-dwellers identified by the parrot
in the man’s right hand and his circular crown of colorful feathers.
In the colonial period, Indians of the heavily forested eastern slopes
of the Andes were thought of as savage and wild in contrast to the
indigenes of highlands and coastal regions: the former were often
referred to as Indios de guerra (hostile Indians) as opposed to Indios
amigos (friendly Indians), the latter term by which the Incas and other
indigenous ethnic groups of the Peruvian coast and highlands were
known. These two native couples, then, represent the indigenous
peoples of the Andes, from the highly stratified Inca empire founded
in the mountain highlands to the loosely organized, acephalous Indians
of the tropical lowlands to the east. Although the clothing worn by
both indigenous couples little resembles pre-Hispanic costume, the
12
Charles V, King of Spain at the time of the conquest of Peru, was a Hapsburg.
For a discussion of the Inca headdress, see Dean (1999) 128–155.
254 carolyn dean
artist employed visual tropes well known to colonial-period audiences

to identify the Indian couples whose offspring are denied sustenance.
Once the identity of the foreground Indians is secured, the European
dress and lighter skin of the suckling children can be used to iden-
tify them as the inscription’s foreigners who nurse at the expense of
America’s indigenes. Only when armed with a combination of text
and context—that is, the lines of poetry and some knowledge of the
cultural milieu from which the imaginary Indians derive—can we
interpret the otherwise opaque, ‘pure’ allegory.
If interpretation is always a problem of pure allegory, as alleged
by Dubos, we might well wonder why the Peruvian artist abandoned
allegorical norms—those that according to Dubos had “acquired cit-
izenship among human beings” (le droit de bourgeoisie parmi le genre
humain).13 Indeed, it is clear that the artist’s decision responds to and
furthers his political agenda. Whereas the allegorical Americas of
earlier periods suggested through pose, demeanor, and attributes the
necessary civilizing presence of Europe, in this painting America is
already civilized and Europeans are explicitly characterized as profiteers.
The post-infancy age of the still suckling Europeans emphasizes their
inappropriate possession of America’s breasts. Consequently, this alle-
gory critiques its forebears through conscious difference.
Significantly, the Peruvian painting’s female America and her
resources are still characterized as male property. In this case, however,
it is ‘property’ that has yielded to the wrong master. The breast and
its milk are pictorially characterized as properly belonging to the
mother’s own offspring, those born in the Americas, who are here
deprived of both health and wealth. The critical message inherent
to this work, then, allows us to date the painting to the late eighteenth
or early nineteenth century, a period characterized in the Andes by
rebellions against Spanish colonial authority. It speaks to Andean
audiences yearning and fighting for independence from Spain, achieved
in 1825. Congruently, stylistic characteristics prompt us to locate the
geographic origins of the canvas in the southern Peruvian Andes,
the locus of considerable rebellious sentiment and activity.
Abandoning traditional (European) representations of America, the
Peruvian artist looked to other models, other well-known images of
women from which he could secure a sympathetic reception for his
13
Dubos (1967) 55 [I, 193].
new allegorical America. He found such a model in the well-estab-

lished iconography of the Virgo Lactans, Mary breastfeeding the Christ
child. Images of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding, called La Virgen de la
Leche in Spanish, were as popular in the colonies as they were through-
out much of Europe at this time. Representations of the Virgo Lactans
can be found in Christian art as early as the second century. The
theme of the nursing Madonna reached its height of popularity in
fourteenth-century Europe, especially in Tuscany.14 For a long time,
such images were encouraged by the Church’s authorities. According
to Saint Bernard (1090–1153), who himself had a vision of suckling
from the Blessed Mother, “a holy image of God, being born, suck-
ling, teaching, dying, resurrecting, or ascending” aids in an individ-
ual’s devotions by rendering these events accessible.15 Images of the
nursing Mary spoke to her nurturing qualities and to the humanity
of both her and Christ. Mary’s breast milk, in particular, was a tan-
gible symbol of her love for her son. As Yalom has concluded, “The
example of the baby Jesus suckling at his mother’s breast became a
metaphor for the spiritual nurturance of all Christian souls.”16 Thus
images of the suckling Christ were, for a period, encouraged by lead-
ing members of the Church. During the Counter Reformation, how-
ever, many Church authorities, troubled by the emphasis on Christ’s
humanity and Mary’s physical body to the exclusion of their divinity,
condemned what they called the ‘indecency’ of artwork that showed
the Blessed Mother breastfeeding.17 In the Spanish colonies of Peru,
as in Europe, however, there is little indication that official Church
views were much heeded, and images of the Virgo Lactans remained
popular.
Artists in colonial Peru, both Hispanic and indigenous, quickly
took up the theme of the Virgo Lactans.18 Colonial Peruvian imagery
14
Yalom (1997) 40–42. See also Holmes (1997); and Miles (1986).
15
Butler (1927) 118.
16
Yalom (1997) 5, 45. Because Mary’s milk was conceptually like Christ’s blood
and was considered capable of producing miracles, innumerable vials purported to
contain Mary’s milk were placed as relics in churches where they were perceived
to have healing properties.
17
Flynn (1989) 125; see also Holmes (1997) 178.
18
The most renowned indigenous artist of colonial Peru, Diego Quispe Tito,
offered his own version of the lactating Virgin in his Visión de la Cruz (1632), which
he may have copied from the Hispanic artist Gregorio Gamarra. Both artists worked
in Cuzco, Peru, in the seventeenth century.
256 carolyn dean
replicates mainly Flemish and Iberian sources. The standard repre-

sentation shows Mary richly dressed in period costume, often crowned,
with Christ at her breast. In many colonial-era representations Mary
dispenses milk not only to her son but also, through ecstatic visions,
to selected saints such as Bernard, Dominic, and Peter Nolasco.
Female saints, who were believed to have been granted the honor
of lactation, also replicate well-established Virgo Lactans imagery. In
one painting from colonial Peru, we see Saint Gertrudis breastfeed-
ing Christ at the behest of the Virgin Mary who is seated in the
clouds above (Fig. 10.3).19 As with Saint Gertrudis, the honor of
breastfeeding the Christ child was also said to have been granted to
Peru’s first canonized saint, Santa Rosa de Lima. In colonial iconog-
raphy, as in European imagery of the same period, the breastfeed-
ing saints are finely clothed, often in period fashion. Their breasts
are barely visible. As Margaret Miles has argued in her study of the
single exposed breast of the Virgin Mary in pre- and early modern
European imagery, the lack of a visible body reveals the goodness
of the lactating character.20
According to the visual characterizations discussed above, to be
breastfed was to be cared for and loved.21 That the sweet saintly
imagery borrowed by the painter of the Peruvian allegory conveys
loving nurturance serves to further the sense of the Spanish exploitation
of America conveyed in this canvas. America, like a saint, gives of
herself willingly; yet the greedy Spanish children pawing at her breasts
suffer by comparison to Christ and Saints who customarily suckle.
We might reasonably conclude that the Peruvian artist borrowed
the imagery of saintly lactation to encourage spectators to interpret
his allegory as a condemnation of Spanish colonial rule. We could,
perhaps, end our discussion here by declaring the artist a Peruvian
19
According to tradition, Saint Gertrudis was never actually granted the honor
of breastfeeding the Christ child. Pál Kelemen suggests that the Peruvian artist con-
fused the Sacred Heart with which Gertrudis is often seen for a breast. For Kelemen’s
argument, see Fane (1996) 211.
20
Miles demonstrates how, in artwork of the early modern period, the Madonna’s
veiled body is the ideal for women and concludes that “The Virgin’s lack of body
reveals her goodness.” We are also reminded of the way Eve’s customary nudity in
imagery conveys her carnality; Miles (1986) 193–208. See also Miles (1989) 139–141.
21
The Church itself was characterized as a succoring mother in writings of the
period. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), for example, described God, Christ,
the Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, and Charity as being endowed with nurturing
breasts; see Yalom (1997) 44.
Fig. 10.3 Anon., (circle of Mauricio García), The Virgin of Mercy with Three Saints (Francis
of Paola, Anthony of Padua, Gertrudis). Mid-18th c., oil on canvas, 37 ⅝” × 26 ⅝”,
Cuzco, Peru. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum [41.1275.181].
258 carolyn dean
patriot. However, his reference to America breastfeeding the Spanish

colonizers suggests an additional avenue of investigation, one probably
not foreseen by the artist, but present nonetheless in his canvas.
Although he created an allegory to speak to something not directly
represented, what is represented had a direct parallel in colonial
Peru. I refer here to indigenous Peruvian wet nurses who did, in
fact, suckle the children of Spanish colonizers. I shall argue that real
Indian wet nurses bore the brunt of the colonial period’s discourse
on saintly lactation borrowed by the allegory’s artist because it was
their milk that sustained the families of colonizers. Although to breast-
feed one higher in status was characterized as an honor, such as
when female saints were permitted to feed Christ, the milk of indige-
nous wet nurses was, in fact, valued less than the labor of maids
and peons. Perhaps this is not surprising for, as Miles has argued,
although representations of the Virgin conveyed the value of the
nourishing, maternal woman, “devotional texts and sermons usually
emphasized the contrasts, rather than the similarities, between the
Virgin and actual women.”22
In early modern European civilization women were much more
frequently compared to Eve or to Eve’s New Testament complement
Mary Magdalene. If lactating European women were seldom com-
pared to the blessed Virgin Mary, how rarely would the compari-
son have been drawn between Mary and the dark-skinned native
women of Europe’s colonies, especially since the latter had not been
declared human until the Papal decree of 1537. I believe we can
fairly characterize the indigenous Peruvian lactating breast as not
just a symbol of Spanish conquest and exploitation but the very
embodiment of it.
Although the allegorical female of the painting discussed earlier is
finely decked out in clothing of rich textiles, the reality of Indian
women who served as wet nurses to Spaniards in the colonial Andes
was much different. Not surprisingly, there are no images of them.
Unlike European seventeenth-century painting that depicts wet nurses
cuddling infants in their care, painters in the colonies did not think
that secular wet nursing was a suitable subject. However, we can
meet these faceless women through fragile yellowing documents in
Peruvian archives.
22
Miles (1989) 21.
In the course of researching this topic nearly 550 contracts for wet
nurses, commonly called amas, were examined. The contracts date from
1650 to 1720 and originated in Cuzco, Peru, former capital of the
Inca empire, the largest pre-Hispanic polity in the Americas.23 Seven
of the contracts referred to amas who were mestizas, that is, of mixed
Spanish and Indian heritage, one was mulata (Spanish and black), one
was an African slave, one was a Spaniard, and nine were of unidentified
ancestry but probably not Indian to judge from their names. The
remainder, well over five hundred and thus greater than ninety per-
cent, were identified in the contracts as Indias.
In addition to race, a typical contract identifies the wet nurse by
name and describes her marital status: whether single (soltera), widow
(viuda), or married (mujer de). The contract also usually identifies the
wet nurse’s parish of residence or community of origin, the time she
is to serve as a nurse (usually between twelve and twenty-four months),
and the amount and manner of payment. Sometimes the sex of the
baby is also indicated.24 The individual hiring the wet nurse is
identified by name and race, the overwhelming number of employers
being Spaniards. The ama Juana Sisa, for example, an Indian woman
from the town of Pacaritambo who had never been married, was
hired in the city of Cuzco on 21 April 1666 by the Spanish Gerónima
de Almendras to breastfeed and care for a little girl for eighteen
months.25 For this service she was given the following: twelve pesos;
two items of clothing, one already made and the other to be agreed
upon later; two skirts, one of wool called Quito cloth, the other of
guanaco baize; sandals; sashes and pins to fasten the garments; and
a half a loaf of bread a day and stew once a week. Úrsula Sisa,
probably Juana’s older sister, guaranteed the service. If the contract
were not completed, no payment would be made.
23
I have examined 548 contracts for wet nurses in the Archivo Regional de
Cuzco. My thanks to a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and faculty research
grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz for making research travel to
Peru possible.
24
Interestingly, wet nursing contracts from colonial Peru are very similar not
only to those in Europe and the Mediterranean region from the same century, but
also to those from many centuries before. For a transcription of a contract for a
wet nurse from Roman Egypt in 13 BCE, see Fildes (1988) 6.
25
Archivo Regional de Cuzco, Escribano Juan Flores de Bastidas, legajo 103, ff.
9r–v (de Indios), 1666.
260 carolyn dean
The service of amas was often guaranteed by a parent, elder sib-

lings, or other relatives. Not infrequently Indian chiefs called caciques
authorized the contracts, especially when the wet nurse was a young
unmarried indigenous woman without family and means of support.
From a survey of the contracts we can conclude that the majority
of colonial wet nurses were young adolescents of indigenous descent
who had given birth outside wedlock. With no husband, they were
considered burdens on their families as well as their native communities.
Their families or sometimes the heads of those communities salvaged
the only thing of value that these unwed mothers possessed: their
breast milk. The husband was the guarantor of service for those few
married women with spouses. He also had to promise to refrain from
sexual intercourse for the period of nursing as it was commonly
believed that semen could spoil the breast milk and harm the infant.26
The vast majority of wet nurses were women who, like Juana Sisa,
had never been married. Just over ten percent were widows. Fewer
than twenty-five percent were married women, and of those half had
been abandoned by their husbands. Given these statistics we can
conclude that women who worked as amas were among the poorest
and most desperate members of colonial society. The vast majority
had given birth to what were called hijos naturales, “illegitimate chil-
dren.” The fate of their own offspring is unknown; what we do know
is that in most places in Europe and in Europe’s colonies wet nurses
were not allowed to care for their own children as well as the nursling
they were hired to feed. In 1537 it was forbidden to employ an
Indian wet nurse in the Spanish colonial area of Tucumán (now
mostly in Argentina) unless the indigenous infant were dead.27 In 1609
the Spanish government prohibited Indian women with live babies from
nursing Spanish infants throughout its colonies. Although this may
26
Fildes (1988) 8; Yalom (1997) 70. Yalom states:
Husbands [during the early modern period] often favored the use of a wet
nurse, since it was believed that couples should refrain from sexual intercourse
while the mother was nursing. It was widely thought that a mother’s milk was
a form of vaginal blood, transformed from blood to milk as it passed from the
womb to the breasts. The agitation of intercourse would have the consequences
of corrupting the milk supply, curdling the milk, and might even kill off any
fetuses that managed to be conceived.
Also, following Yalom, “Nursing was not considered attractive when practiced by
highborn ladies.”
See also Grieco (1991) 18.
27
Fildes (1988) 128.
have been done to protect Indian mothers from exploitation, in prac-

tice the legislation encouraged Indian women to abandon their own
infants to foundling hospitals. It may even have resulted in infanticide,
as happened among impoverished women in Europe when compelled
to use their full breasts to earn a wage rather than sustain the life
of an infant who would grow into a burdensome child.28
It is clear from their contracts that Peruvian wet nurses were the
lowest wage earners in colonial society. Their fees were less than those
of female maids and cooks and much less than the lowliest of jobs
for men (peones), which usually paid at least twice as much. Typically
amas earned less than a peso a month for the period of their employ-
ment as well as a change or two of clothing. Food consisted of daily
bread and one weekly ration of meat, usually served in a stew. The
Peruvian evidence supports Yalom’s observation that “when the body
parts of an underprivileged class of women are purchased by mem-
bers of a more affluent class, the chances for exploitation are very
great indeed.”29 Although the indigenous ama was vital to the survival
of Spanish infants and, therefore, her service was critical to colonial
society, she herself was valued little. Her title ama, which means one
who gives love, was clearly cared for very little in return.
The identity and position of colonial wet nurses differs dramatically
from many of their Spanish counterparts. In contemporary Spain
wet nursing was often a desirable occupation and one that earned
the nurse a decent wage. The wet nurse was a prominent and impor-
tant figure in the towns of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain or
at least in its Castilla region, where she earned a room with full
board and had her salary fixed by law.30 While the wage scales var-
ied from place to place, in every case a Spanish woman could earn
much more as a wet nurse than in any other female occupation.31
In early modern Europe, as in earlier periods, care was given to
hiring wet nurses with the looks and character desired for the child,
as it was generally believed that children inherited the physical and
mental characteristics of their milk source.32 Parents were advised to
28
Fildes (1988) 66, 192; and Grieco (1991) 36.
29
Yalom (1997) 160.
30
Fildes (1998) 37–38.
31
Dillard (1984) 156–157, 164. This cannot be said of all of Europe as per
Grieco (1991) 34.
32
Fildes (1988) 20; Grieco (1991) 27–29; and Yalom (1997) 43, 93. According
to Fildes, from ancient Greece on, Europeans believed that “. . . wet nurses had to
possess particular qualities of age, health, stature, behavior and morals.”
262 carolyn dean
choose a wet nurse very carefully in the hope of finding one who
would not transmit undesirable qualities. There was particular con-
cern in Spain that wet nurses be of the same ethnic group and cul-
tural background as their nurslings. Jews and Muslims were forbidden
to nurse Christian infants (and vice versa).33 However, in the Spanish
colonies it was common for Spanish parents and guardians to hire
Indians as wet nurses.34 In the colonies, where European women
were few, the colonizers took what they could get and took it at lit-
tle cost to themselves.
Although the painted allegorical figure that prompted this discus-
sion critiques colonization explicitly, she bears no resemblance to the
overlooked and unrepresented indigenous women whose bodies bore
the brunt of colonization. In this regard our allegorical America is
not all that surprising, for Peruvian independence was not directly
beneficial to the masses of indigenous commoners but specifically
profited an elite sector of the native population who were heavily
Hispanicized and economically and socially allied to the Peruvian-
born Hispanics who funded and led the movement for independence.
Allegorically speaking, the revolution was about who gets the milk,
not about the milk-givers.
As a postscript, I should note that La Virgen de la Leche is still
one of the most popular icons on sale today in Cuzco, Peru.
Contemporary artists commonly sell imitation colonial paintings to
tourists in which Mary is depicted as a white, European-looking
female dressed in early modern period costume. Some artists, how-
ever, are revising Mary and her suckling infant, wrapping them both
in indigenous textiles, as has the sculptor of the long-necked Mary
seen in Figure 10.4.35 In this image and many like it the modern
sculptor follows a native Andean tradition, begun during the colo-
nial period, of indigenizing Mary and Christ.36 Here the skin, hair,
and eyes of Mary and Christ are darkened. In and through this ver-
33
Between 1179 and 1268 both papal and royal decrees forbade Christian women
to serve as wet nurses to Jews on pain of excommunication; see Fildes (1988) 39–40.
34
Wealthy Spanish colonists who owned slaves also used wet nurses of African
descent. The situation was similar in colonial America and the United States in
which black ‘mammies’ nursed white babies.
35
The popular elongated neck belongs to the sculptural style developed by the
Mendívil family of the parish of San Blas in Cuzco. It is now copied by numer-
ous Cuzqueño artists who sell primarily to tourists.
36
Damian (1995) 55.
Fig. 10.4 Anon., La Virgen de la Leche. Sculpture for sale in Cuzco, Peru, 2001.
264 carolyn dean
sion of Mary are combined the widely celebrated blessed Virgin

Mary and the anonymous and invisible amas who, with little com-
pensation and no acknowledgment, fed the birth of modern Peru.
Bibliography
Butler, E. C. (1927) Western Mysticism: The Teaching of SS. Augustine, Gregory and Bernard
on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd ed. (London: 1927).
Beach: 1995).
Dean, C. (1999) Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru
(Durham, NC: 1999).
Dillard, H. (1984) Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300
(Cambridge: 1984).
Dubos, Jean-Baptiste (Abbé). (1967) Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 7th
ed. (Geneva: 1967).
Fane, D., ed. (1996) Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America (New York:
1996).
Fildes, V. (1988) Wet Nursing from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: 1988).
Flynn, M. (1989) Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca,
NY: 1989).
Gisbert, T. (1980) Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz, Bolivia: 1980).
Holmes, M. (1997) “Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna Lactans in Fifteenth-Century
Florentine Art,” in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, eds. G. A. Johnson
and S. F. Matthews Grieco (Cambridge: 1997) 167–195.
Honour, H. (1975) “The Fourth Continent,” in The European Vision of America
(Cleveland: 1975) 112–122.
Le Corbeiller, C. (1961) “Miss America and Her Sisters: Personifications of the Four
Parts of the World,” The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, N.s. 19 (April
1961) 209–223.
Matthews Grieco, S. F. (1991) “Breastfeeding, Wet Nursing and Infant Mortality in
Europe (1400–1800),” in Historical Perspectives on Breastfeeding (Florence: 1991) 15–62.
Miles, M. R. (1989) Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian
West (Boston: 1989).
—— (1986) “The Virgin with One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious
Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Western
Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. S. R. Suleiman (Cambridge, MA: 1986) 193–208.
Montrose, L. (1993) “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” in New
World Encounters, ed. S. Greenbelt (Berkeley: 1993).
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(Norman, OK: 1993).
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(New York: 1990).
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Timberlake, M. (2000) “The Painted Colonial Image: Jesuit and Andean Fabrication
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Yalom, M. (1997) A History of the Breast (New York: 1997).
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMBLEMS OF VIRTUE IN
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NEW SPAIN
By the eighteenth century, the pictorial folding screen had become

a conventional format for visual representation in the West.1 Such
screens had a long history as bearers of visual imagery in Asia, but
the appearance and circulation of the format in early modern Europe
and the Americas is in large part a function of Spanish imperial
expansion and trade.2 Indeed, enthusiasm for decorative screens (or
biombos, as they were called in Spanish) was particularly strong in
the viceroyalty of New Spain (roughly corresponding to the modern
nation of Mexico), where screens produced in Asia arrived at Acapulco,
the viceroyalty’s Pacific port, aboard the so-called ‘Manila Galleons.’3
The demand for pictorial biombos in New Spain was both satisfied
and fueled by the importation of works from Asia, and by the mid-
seventeenth century painters in the viceroyalty were producing their
own pictorial screens on the model of the Asian imports. The iconog-
raphy of those New Spanish biombos was often similar in genre to
that of the Asian screens, including panoramic views of cities, notable
historical episodes, and allegorical representations of the parts of
the world.4 As objects whose formats and genres emerged in dialogue
with the visual and material culture of Asia, but whose imagery and
1
I am grateful to Jacqueline Carrera, Muriel Rogers, Tracy Bryan, Frederick
Ribble, and Barbara Johnston for their valuable contributions to this paper. I also
thank Jeanne Scott and the Interlibrary Loan office of the James Branch Cabell
Library of Virginia Commonwealth University for locating and obtaining materials
for use in this paper that would have been difficult to consult in person. On the
production of folding screens in Western Europe in the seventeenth through nine-
teenth centuries, see Hemming and Aldbrook (1999) 24–87.
2
On the format in Asia, see for example Grilli (1970).
3
The literature on the Manila Galleons and trade with Asia in early modernity
is vast. Recent studies of the subject include Álvarez Martínez (1993); and Benítez (1992).
4
On the format in New Spain, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río de
Redo (1970); and Curiel (1999).
266 michael j. schreffler
decoration generally drew from Western European sources, New

Spanish biombos of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
artifacts of the ‘conflictive interactions’ and ‘appropriations and resis-
tance’ that characterize the objects and processes that scholars of
early modern Latin America have called ‘colonial discourse’ or, alter-
nately, ‘colonial semiosis.’5
This discursive complexity that takes visible and material form in
these pictorial biombos is seen, for example, in a small corpus of
screens produced in eighteenth-century New Spain that are united
in their appropriation of imagery from the Quinti Horatii flacci emblemata,
an emblem book by Otto van Veen.6 In that early-seventeenth-cen-
tury publication, the artist had selected quotations from the writings
of the ancient Roman poet, Horace, and illustrated them with alle-
gorical images. At least four New Spanish biombos feature Van Veen’s
emblems together with the mottoes and short poems that accompanied
them in the Theatro moral de toda la philosophia de los antiguos y modernos,
a later Spanish edition of the emblem book published by Francisco
Foppens in Brussels in 1669.7 Two of the screens that employ the
texts and images found in that source are currently held in collec-
tions in Mexico, and two more are in collections in the United States
of America.8 The circulation of Van Veen’s emblems through the
Theatro moral in the visual culture of eighteenth-century New Spain
is further suggested by the presence of a set of canvases depicting
5
On the use of prints as sources for the imagery of biombos produced in New
Spain, see, for example, Joris de Zavala (1994); Sebastián (1994); and Navarrete
Prieto (1999). My use of this terminology is derived from Mignolo (1995) 7. See
also Hulme (1986) 2; and Seed (1991).
6
See Van Veen (1979) [1612]. For Santiago Sebastián’s identification of this
emblem book as the source for the imagery of a New Spanish biombo, see Sebastian
(1992) 151–157; and (1993). For an iconographic analysis of Van Veen’s emblems,
see also Sebastián (1983).
7
Van Veen (1669). Henceforth in this essay it will be referred to in abbreviated
form as the Theatro moral.
8
Of the two screens in Mexico, one is in the collection of the Museo Soumaya
in Mexico City. On that screen, see Sebastián (1992) 151–157; (1993); (1995)
276–282; (1999). The other is mentioned in Martínez del Río (1999) 141–142, and
is documented in Museo Nacional de Arte (1999) 416, as belonging to the collec-
tion of the Galería de Antigüedades la Cartuja. On that biombo, see also Castelló
Yturbide and Martínez del Río (1970) 112–113. It is unclear whether or not that
screen is the same one Sebastián referred to as belonging to the “Galerías La
Granja” (1992) 153. Of the two screens in the United States, one is in the collec-
tion of the Dallas Museum of Art; see Venable (1997) 206. Another is in the col-
lection of the Virginia Historical Society. On that screen see Schreffler (2002) 25–27.
emblems of virtue in eighteenth-century new spain 267
some of them in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Virreinato

in Tepotzotlán, Mexico.9
The art historical literature on the biombos that appropriated Van
Veen’s emblems has seen them as evidence for a wider phenome-
non through which emblems and their moralizing messages were
embraced in the eighteenth-century Hispanic World.10 In this paper,
however, I would like to examine Van Veen’s emblems and their
use on the biombos within a more specific historical and social con-
text. Focusing primarily on a screen in the collection of the Virginia
Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, I will argue that as vehi-
cles for the dissemination of carefully selected moralizing emblems,
these pictorial biombos participated in a highly gendered discourse
about ideal conduct and subjectivity that was prominent within a
sector of society in eighteenth-century New Spain. In its accentuation
of a spatial dimension of that discourse about ideal conduct, the
screen, I suggest, demonstrates one of the many ways in which objects
and images intervened in the promotion of ideology as well as in
the production and maintenance of forms and norms of personhood
in early modern Latin America.
Emblems of Virtue
The pictorial folding screen that will be referred to in what follows

as the “Richmond screen” consists of seven panels held in the col-
lection of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.,
and three that belong to a private collection. It is possible that the
screen originally included other leaves that have not yet been located,
but its composition comprising the ten extant panels would have
been characteristic of New Spanish biombos in general, and would
echo the ten-leaved construction of the two screens that appropriate
Van Veen’s emblems in Mexican collections.11 The Richmond screen’s
9
See Pintura novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán (1994) 2, 196–197;
Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (1994) 218–219.
10
See Sebastian (1992, 1993, 1995, and 1999); and Martínez del Río (1994).
11
An examination of the hinges on the Richmond screen suggests that the ten
extant leaves complete the screen’s original state. The seven panels in the collection
of the Historical Society currently exist as two hinged sections, one consisting of four
leaves, and another consisting of three leaves. The end panels of the four-leaved seg-
ment show no physical evidence of their having been connected to other panels.
ten panels are structurally, compositionally, and chromatically similar

to one another (Figs. 11.1 and 11.2), each one being uniformly divided
by red frames into three rectangular sections containing distinct classes
of imagery. The registers at the bottom of each of the panels are the
smallest of the three, depicting gilded swags of leaves and ribbons
against a background painted to mimic the look of a blue-green mar-
ble. The larger, central registers are more varied, representing archi-
tectural niches whose contents alternate between small lamps on tall
pedestals and long-necked vases that hold arrangements of colorful
flowers. The uppermost registers, at the eye level of an adult viewer,
resemble smaller niches housing Van Veen’s emblems simply framed
in bronze-colored ovals. The emblems are identified by mottoes
appearing in the banderoles above them, and they rest on stone sup-
ports inscribed with the poems that accompanied them in Foppens’
1669 publication of the Theatro moral.
With its emphasis on rectilinear shapes, its use of primary colors,
and its mimicking of severe stone architectural features, the Richmond
screen appeals to the conventions of Neoclassical design and, as such,
contrasts with the three other extant New Spanish biombos that
appropriate Van Veen’s emblems. Those screens employ design ele-
ments characteristic of the Rococo style, including shell-shaped medal-
lions and reserves, pastel colors, more delicate and complexly arranged
swags of flowers and ribbons, and gilt chinoiserie decoration.12 The
radical stylistic difference between those three biombos and the Rich-
mond screen suggests a probable chronological sequence for the works
in which the screens in the Rococo style would antedate the more
Neoclassical one in Richmond. The Richmond screen’s appeal to
Neoclassical tastes further suggests that it may have been produced
during or after the final decades of the eighteenth century, when the
In contrast, the three-leaved segment in that collection includes one end panel marked
with holes that, presumably, would have attached to the hinges present on one of
the end panels of the three-leaved segment in the private collection. As such, it is
reasonable to hypothesize that the screen in its original state may have consisted of a
four-leaved segment and a six-leaved segment. The section of the screen in the Virginia
Historical Society Collection, Richmond, Virginia, is catalogued “1948.W.1108.”
12
The screen in the collection of the Museo Soumaya is reproduced in color in
its entirety in Sebastián (1999) 195, 198–200; the screen described in Museo Nacional
de Arte (1994), 416, as belonging to La Cartuja collection is reproduced in color
in its entirety in Martínez del Río (1994) 141. Two panels from the screen in the
collection of the Dallas Museum are reproduced in color in Venable (1997) 206.
Fig. 11.1 Section with the emblems “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si
misma) and “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]).
Fig. 11.2 Section with the emblems “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud
consiste en el medio) and “Virtue is the Target of Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la
emvidia [sic]).
foundation of the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City established

the primacy of the Neoclassical style in the viceroyalty.13
The Richmond screen distinguishes itself from its counterparts styl-
istically, but it also does so in terms of its content. Foppens’ Theatro
moral, the publication that served as the pictorial and textual source
for the screen, reproduces over one hundred of Van Veen’s emblems,
but the designers and/or painters of the screen selected only one of
those emblems for use on each of the biombo’s leaves.14 As such,
those involved in the production of the Richmond screen selected a
total of only ten emblems from the much larger corpus published
in the Theatro moral. This act constitutes a kind of editing of Van
Veen’s emblems, the criteria for which can be hypothesized based
upon an examination of the emblems chosen. An inspection of a four-
leaved section of the Richmond screen, for example, reveals that each
of the emblems chosen deals with the subject of ‘Virtue’ (Fig. 11.2).
One bears the motto “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si
misma), its accompanying image reproducing the seventeenth emblem
in the Theatro moral (Fig. 11.3). That emblem depicts a scene against
the backdrop of classicizing architecture in which a bearded man,
at the center of the image, is guided by a young, half-naked woman
with four breasts toward a table displaying a bag of coins and three
large silver urns. To the viewer’s left a peg-legged female figure dressed
in red lunges toward the man and his companions, her right arm
raised as she prepares to strike him with a whip. In the background,
another scene depicts four figures arranged in two groups whose
actions are not readily legible.
The accompanying poem, painted so as to appear carved into the
depicted stone support on which the emblem rests, similarly emphasizes
the theme of ‘Virtue,’ and is clearly presented as a commentary on
the scene. It reads:
Virtue goes out in search of
He who is good, for she herself is good,
Seeking goodness to obtain.
But the evil man, unfortunately,
She leaves alone in sin.15
13
On the Academy as the arbiter of Neoclassicism in New Spain, see Toussaint
(1948), 405–08, 433–53; Charlot (1962); and González-Polo (1992).
14
The screens in the collections of the Museo Soumaya, the Dallas Museum,
and the Virginia Historical Society reproduce one of Van Veen’s emblems on each
of their leaves. The screen described as belonging to La Cartuja collection repro-
duces two emblems per leaf.
15
This and all other translations in this paper are mine. Whenever possible, I
Fig. 11.3 Detail: The emblem “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma).
Like the emblems that appeared in other media and contexts in the
early modern Hispanic world, the image and its accompanying text
are complex and hermetic, demanding of their audience a sophisti-
cated form of literacy that would allow for the interpretation of eso-
teric imagery as well as the ability to consider the emblem and poem
in relation to one another.16 In the pages of the Theatro moral, however,
the viewer’s comprehension of the ensemble of image and text is
aided by the presence of an additional commentary, presumably writ-
ten by Foppens himself, and titled “Explicación del emblema decimo-
septimo” (Explanation of the Seventeenth Emblem). The text decodes
the imagery and sheds light on its relationship to the poem:
In this emblem we are presented with a group of men of all ranks and
ages, who—incited by corrupted nature—seem to declare their greed
to us through both their eyes and their hands. They are anxious to enter
into the possession of the money and the vessels of gold and silver that
have been placed before them to tempt them. And if some of them do
not take those things, it is not because of their respect and love of Virtue,
nor because of the risk of ignoring the rules of their office and of rea-
son, but rather because of the fear of punishment and vengeance that
threatens them. This vengeance is not that perfect and noble Nemesis
that, according to Pausanias, the Ancients adored with the name of
Divine Vengeance, but rather another more human, less perfect one,
who limps (as she is painted for us) . . . In the other part of the emblem,
we see a man who, enamored of Virtue, greets her, embraces her,
and caresses her, dismissing those who come to him offering undeserved
honors and prizes, and valuing good works more than fame. The painter,
with particular cleverness, put him alone, and in the distance, so as
to demonstrate to us how rare in the world are the virtuous, and how
abundant the wicked.17
have attempted to retain the spelling and diacritical marks used in the Spanish
sources. “La Virtud sale á buscar/ El que es bueno, por ser Buena,/ Pretendiendo la alcan-
zar:/ Pero el malo, por la pena/ Dexa, solo, de pecar.”
16
On emblems in the visual culture of the early modern Hispanic world, see
Sebastián (1995). On emblems in the visual culture of New Spain, see the previ-
ously cited works by Sebastián as well as the essays by Buxó, Sebastián, and
Cuadriello in Museo Nacional de Arte (1994) 30–113.
17
Van Veen (1669) 34:
En este Emblema se nos presenta una tropa de Hombres de todos estados y edades, que
instigados de la naturaleza corruputa, parece que con los ojos, y con las manos nos declaran
su codicia; y no veen [sic] la hora de entrar en la posesion del dinero, y vasos de oro, y
plata, que para tentarlos les han puesto delante: Y si algunos lo dexan de tomar, no es por
el respecto [sic] y amor de la Virtud, no por el riesgo de obligarse à no cumplir con las
reglas de su officio, y de la razon; sino por temor del castigo, y venganza que les amenaza.
No es esta, aquella perfecta, y noble Nemesis, que (segun Pausanias,) adoravan los Antiguos,
The motto above the image exhorts its viewer to ‘Love Virtue,’ but,
as Foppens notes, the allegorical figure of Virtue is accorded secondary
status in this emblem, appearing only in the background, where she
is depicted with a spear and helmet that equate her iconographi-
cally with the mythological figure of Minerva.18 The emblem’s com-
position, however, focuses more intently upon Vengeance’s punishment
of the greedy man and his cohorts, their avarice pictorially enabled
by the four-breasted figure of ‘corrupted nature.’ The poem nevertheless
brings Virtue back to the foreground, contrasting her with the evil
man, personified by the bearded man in the emblem, whom she
‘leaves alone in sin.’
The allegorical figure of Virtue is compositionally de-emphasized
in the seventeenth emblem from the Theatro moral and subsequently in
the corresponding section of the Richmond screen, but she is given
greater compositional prominence on some of the biombo’s other
leaves. For example, the panel adjoining “Love Virtue for Itself ”
bears the motto “Virtue is Steadfast” (La Virtud es Immovible [sic]) and
depicts the figure of Virtue at the center of the composition sur-
rounded by cherubs and several of her attributes (Fig. 11.4). Foppens,
in his commentary on this, the first emblem in the Theatro moral,
explains its imagery:
Here the artist represents [Virtue] for us with rare beauty in her heav-
enly palace, constant, and motionless, trampling with her feet the figure
of Fortune, and scorning the symbols of Honor, Dignity, and Material
Riches, as unworthy of her magisterial generosity . . . Surrounding her
are painted her most noble ideals, which are Piety or Religion, Justice,
Prudence, Fortitude, Magnanimity, and Temperance. From these six
principal Virtues spring all of the others, which are innumerable, just
as from the seven capital sins spring an infinite number of other vices.
The great beauty of the principal Virtues requires that they be loved
and followed.19
con nombre de Divina Venganza, sino otra mas humana, y menos perfecta, que coxea, (como
aqui se nos pinta,) por dos razones: ò porque tarda en llegar à tiempo; ò porque suele
emplearse en el que menos la merece. Por otra parte, se mira un hombre, que enamorado
de la Virtud; la Saluda, la abraza, y la acaricia; despidiendo à los que le vienen offreciendo
honras, y premios no merecidos; y preciando en mas, sus buenas obras que la fama. El
Pintor, (con particular industria,) le puso solo, y à lo lexos; para darnos à entender, quan
raros son en el Mundo los virtuosos, y quan abundantes los malvados.
18
The tradition of depicting Virtue as an armed woman is recorded in Ripa
(1976) [1611] 540.
19
Van Veen (1669) 2:
A qui [sic] nos la representa el Artifice, (con raro primor) en su celestial Alcazar, constante, è
immobile [sic], hollando con los pies à la Fortuna; y menospreciando las Honras, las Dignidades,
Fig. 11.4 Detail: The emblem “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]).
As in the previous image, Virtue is personified by a woman whose

clothing and attributes associate her with Minerva. Here, however,
she stands atop a woman who, according to Foppens, represents
‘Fortune,’ and who is linked compositionally with the laurel wreathes,
crown, scepter, and other objects that litter the ground below her.
Those objects, Foppens notes, represent a variety of ‘Material Riches.’
In contrast, the figure of Virtue is compositionally linked to the six
cupids who surround her and who, according to the commentary,
represent her ‘most noble ideals.’ The accompanying poem casts the
distinction between Virtue and Vice in practical, rather than alle-
gorical, terms:
Virtue is an attribute
By which Men are judged;
And it is the greatest foolishness
[For] he who is not virtuous,
To boast of his quality.20
Adjoining the “Virtue is Steadfast” leaf on the Richmond screen is
a third panel whose emblem also addresses the theme of Virtue.
Bearing the motto “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste
en el medio), the emblem is the tenth in the Theatro Moral, where
Foppens explains that the figure of Virtue appears
in the middle of a circle, of which she occupies only the center. She is
quite beautiful—steadfast and faithful as always, refusing to turn her face
to either of her two sides. In her left hand she holds the abundance
of nature, and in her right, the ruler and measure of apportionment. At
her sides are two vices, who presume to match her, or resemble her.
One of them is insatiable Avarice, with a dry, wrinkled, and yellow
face, longing and dying for the accumulation of money and riches . . . The
other is Wastefulness, who does as much as she can to seem beautiful
to the sight of ignorant Youth, who call her “Magnanimity” ( just as
they call Avarice “Parsimoniousness”). Magnanimity is praised for her
generous spilling of riches, when hers is actually an imprudent profusion
in which she enriches both the deserving and the undeserving, leaving
one as little obligated as the other. This same thing is shown to us by
y las Riquezas Humanas, como indignas de su magestuosa generosidad . . . Al rededor [sic]

della están pintadas sus mas nobles especies, que son la Piedad ò Religion, la Justicia, la
Prudencia, la Fortaleza, la Magnanimidad, y la Templanza. Destas seis Virtudes como prin-
cipales nazen todas las demas, que son innumerable[s], como de los siete vicios capital[e]s,
nazen infinitos vicios. La grande hermosura de aquellas, obliga à que las amen y sigan.
20
“La Virtud es propiedad/ Que a los Hombres califica;/ Y es muy grande necedad,/ El
que a ella no se aplica,/ Presumir de calidad.”
the misfortune of Icarus, who by not guarding the mean—the exam-

ple of his father, Daedalus—he climbed recklessly to one extreme, from
where he fell to another.21
The emblem reproduces many of the details of its model, including
the Icarus scene, which appears in the sky behind the principal
figures (Fig. 11.5). The painter of the Richmond panel, however,
departs slightly from the source by placing the figure of Virtue atop
a natural, grassy landscape rather than, as Foppens writes, ‘a circle,’
the geometric form upon which she stands in the emblem books. In
addition, while the figure of Avarice, to the right of Virtue, is clearly
presented as an elderly woman in the emblem books, her advanced
age is not emphasized on the Richmond screen. In another departure
from the source, she is shown accompanied by a woman who stands
behind her. But despite these differences between the emblem as re-
produced on the screen and its source, the poem that accompanies
the image on the Richmond biombo is loyal to the text upon which
it is based, and to a greater extent than on the previous panels, it
reiterates the principles demonstrated in the emblem:
We do not recognize the vices
For the great similarity
We see between them and Virtue:
For Virtue always
Withdraws from the extremes.22
In addition to these three panels, three more from the Richmond screen
also deal with the subject of Virtue. The panel adjoining the leaf
titled “Virtue Consists in the Mean” bears the motto “Virtue is the
21
Van Veen (1669) 20:
En medio de un circulo, de que ocupa solamente el centro. Muestrase tan Hermosa, como
siempre firme y constante, desdeñando de bolver [sic] el rostro à ninguno de los dos lados.
En su mano siniestra tiene la abundancia de Bienes naturales, y en la diestra, la regla y
medida de la distribucion. A sus dos lados estàn dos vicios, que presumen de igualarla, ò
parecerla: el uno es la Avaricia con rostro Amarillo, arrugado y seco, suspirando y agoni-
zando por acumular dineros y riquezas . . . El otro es la prodigalidad, que haze quanto
puede, para parecer Hermosa à la vista de la ignorante Juventud, que la nombra Magnanimidad
(como à la Avaricia Parcimonia;) esta se alaba de su generoso derramamiento de riquezas,
siendo verdaderamente una indiscreta profusion, con la qual enriquece indifferentemente à los
que lo merecen, y no merecen; dexando tan poco obligados à los unos, como à los otros.
Esto mismo nos enseña la desgracia de Ycaro, que por no guardar el medio, à exemplo de
su Padre Dedalo, subiò desatinado al un extremo, de donde baxò despeñado al otro.
22
“Los vicios no conocemos/ Por la gran similitud/ Que con la Virtud les vemos:/ Pero
siempre la Virtud/ Se aparta de sus estremos.”
Fig. 11.5 Detail: The emblem “Virtue Consists in the Mean”

(La virtud consiste en el medio).
Target of Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la emvidia [sic]) together with

its accompanying emblem and poem, the seventy-ninth in the Theatro
moral.23 The theme of Virtue is also present on two of the three
leaves that belong to the private collection. One reproduces the sixth
emblem in Foppens’ publication and the motto “Virtue is to Flee
from Vice” (Virtud es huir del vicio), while another panel bears the sev-
enty-fifth emblem in the Theatro moral, together with its motto “Virtuous
Work Asks for its Repose” (El virtuoso trabaxo pide su reposo).
The Theatro Moral and the “Mirror of the Prince”
The other panels on the Richmond screen bear similarly moralizing

emblems, mottoes, and poems, but it is remarkable that six of its ten
leaves deal explicitly with the theme of Virtue. This emphasis echoes
that stated by Foppens himself, who, in his commentary to the Theatro
moral, presents ‘Virtue’ as a guiding principal of the book.24 He begins
his explanation of the emblem he presents first—“Virtue is Steadfast”—
with an unequivocal statement on the theme, stating that “This is
a book on Moral Doctrine, whose principal object is Virtue.”25 But
to what end did the Theatro moral and the Richmond screen adorned
with Van Veen’s emblems focus on Virtue as an element of ‘Moral
Doctrine’? Foppens, in his introduction to the book, states that the
Theatro Moral, like Van Veen’s Quinti Horatii flacci emblemata, was
intended as a model for human conduct. He elaborates on the book’s
intended effect on the volume’s first textual page, with its dedication
to “Our Lady, the Queen Regent” (La Reyna Regente, Nuestra Señora).
This was Mariana of Austria who in 1669 was serving as regent for
23
It is curious that this four-panel segment of the screen, which shows no phys-
ical evidence of having been connected to other leaves, reproduces these particu-
lar emblems in this particular order. Read from left to right, the panels reproduce
the seventeenth, first, tenth, and seventy-ninth emblems in the Theatro Moral. Might
this sequence bear some numerological significance? It is tempting, though perhaps
improbable, to interpret the sequence as a date, the “seventeenth” emblem signi-
fying the 1700s, and the others (ten plus one plus seventy-nine) signifying the num-
ber ninety, thus referencing the year 1790, a date that is not an unreasonable one
for the screen’s production. I am not, however, aware of a tradition in which artists
recorded dates in this manner.
24
The emphasis on Virtue in Van Veen’s emblems has also been noted by
Sebastián (1992, 1993, and 1995).
25
Van Veen (1669) 2, “Siendo este Libro de Doctrina Moral, cuyo principal obgeto es la
Virtud.”
her son, the young king Charles II of Spain. In dedicating the book
to her, he reveals his purpose in publishing Van Veen’s emblems in
this format, writing that he hoped they would
Serve as a plaything and amusement in the innocent infancy of the king,
my Lord . . . And since the King is the mirror in which his vassals look at them-
selves, each one endeavoring to imitate his actions, there is no doubt that
if this work is worthy of arriving in the sight of his Majesty, the entire
Court will follow the same example, and will apply to itself the Moral
doctrine, which is the study of Virtue. Virtue is the principal theme of
the holy and Christian zeal of Your Majesty, whose Royal person the
Heavens will guard for many happy years, for the good of the Monarchy,
and as an everlasting example of prudence, piety, and justice.26
On the one hand, Foppens conceived of the Theatro moral as a ‘play-
thing,’ an ‘amusement.’ On the other, however, he suggests that the
study of Van Veen’s emblems of Virtue served the larger, more seri-
ous purpose of providing an example for the behavior of ‘the entire
Court,’ and ultimately of helping to ensure the ‘good of the Monarchy.’
Foppens’ use of metaphor in making his point (‘The king is the mir-
ror . . .’) here draws upon the conceit of the ‘mirror of the prince,’
a philosophy as well as a literary genre in the early modern West in
which the ‘mirror’ and its reflection were metonyms for the qualities
required of a prince and, subsequently, for those qualities which were
worthy of imitation by others.27
The texts accompanying the individual emblems in the 1669 vol-
ume facilitate their operation as models for ideal and imitable behav-
ior through both their rhetoric and their content. Recall, for example,
Foppens’ commentary on the seventeenth emblem in the Theatro
moral—“Love Virtue for Itself.” In that explanation, as in nearly all
of the others, the author uses the first-person plural, writing that,
26
Van Veen (1669) ii–v, emphasis mine:
Para servir de juguete y divertimiento à la inocente infancia del Rey mi Señor . . . Y como
el Rey es el espejo en que se miran los Vassallos, procurando imitar cada qual sus acciones:
no ay duda que si esta obra mereze llegar á la vista de su Magestad, seguirá toda la Corte
el mesmo exemplo, y se aplicará facilmente á la doctrina Moral, que es el estudio de la
Virtud; siendo desto el principal motivo el santo y Christiano zelo de V. Magestad: cuya
Real persona guarde el Cielo largos, y felizes años, para el bien de la Monarquia, y eterno
exemplo de prudencia, piedad, y justicia.
27
On the currency of this concept in the early modern Hispanic world, see
Emmens (1961); and Snyder (1985). The ‘mirror of the prince’ has also been
identified as a trope in the visual culture of New Spain; see Museo Nacional de Arte
(1994) 229–52.
“In this emblem we are presented with a group of men” and, later
in the passage, “as [the emblem] is painted for us.”28 Such rhetoric
has the effect of producing an ‘imagined community’ of readers of
the Theatro moral, a group united in their study of the emblems as well
as, presumably, through their use of them as models for an ideal
form of virtuous personhood.29 Moreover, the author’s commentary
occasionally also elaborates on the ways in which the emblems relate
to the lived experience of the book’s readers. Recall, for example,
that his explanation of that same emblem ends with a remark about
the appearance of the virtuous man in the background of the image:
“The painter, with particular cleverness, put him alone, and in the
distance, so as to demonstrate to us how rare in the world are the
virtuous, and how abundant the wicked.”
In light of this intended function of the emblems in the Theatro moral,
it is reasonable to suggest that the Richmond screen, with its fidelity
to both its source’s texts and images and its thematic emphasis on
Virtue, may have been conceived of as operating in a way similar
to the book—that is, as a demonstration made to some imagined
audience of the components of ideal conduct and personhood.30 This
economy of the screen is promoted through its thematic, iconographic,
and rhetorical adherence to Foppens’ volume, but it is also suggested
by its materiality and its format. As a series of leaves that are phys-
ically connected to one another, the screen approximates the format
of the bound book that served as its source, thus encouraging its
spectator to read it much in the same way that he or she might read
the Theatro moral. The screen, however, is a much larger object than
the book upon which it was based, for each of its ten leaves measures
approximately 185 × 53 cm (73 × 21.25 in.). As such, each of the
panels is roughly life-sized, thus establishing a dialogic relationship
with the ideal viewer who stands before it. Augmenting this effect, the
composition of each panel is generally anthropomorphic, the oval forms
of the emblems appearing on the leaves’ upper registers, at the eye
and head level of the viewing subject whose body is, in turn, sug-
gested by the alternating vessels and columns of the central panels.31
28
Emphasis mine.
29
My use of this term is taken from Anderson (1991), who has written on a sim-
ilar operation of printed works in a later period.
30
As also suggested by Martínez del Río (1994).
31
On the human head as the “symbol of personal and collective honor,” see
Gutierrez (1991) 211.
In this way, the composition of the screen’s panels gives visual

and material form to the dialogic, intersubjective phenomenon through
which it, like Foppens’ Theatro moral, was designed to facilitate a form
of ideal comportment operating through the principle of the ‘mirror
of the prince.’ But while Foppens positioned his book within the social
space of ‘the Court’ and ‘the Monarchy,’ the Richmond screen would
have been seen by a smaller audience in a more compact social
space. While many details of the screen’s provenance remain unclear,
research on the use of painted folding screens in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century New Spain suggests that such objects were luxury
goods that circulated in the ambit of the Spanish and New Spanish
elite.32 Indeed, in Mexico City, Madrid, and other capitals through-
out Spain’s empire in early modernity, decorative screens like the
Richmond biombo adorned rooms in the palaces of the aristocracy,
and, as studies of inventories have shown, it was not unusual for
high-ranking families to have numerous pictorial screens in their
collections.33
Recent scholarship on subjectivity and codes of conduct among
elites in eighteenth-century Latin America suggest that the Richmond
screen’s thematic and pictorial emphasis on Virtue would have had
a particular resonance within that sector of society, a condition that
opens up new avenues for its interpretation. Scholars have shown that
the concept of ‘Virtue’ was understood in early modern Latin America
within a constellation of interrelated ideas about model forms of
conduct and subjectivity organized around the principles of ‘Honor’
and ‘Shame.’34 Within that code of conduct Virtue would have
been understood as one of a number of components of ‘Honor,’ a
32
The screen was acquired in the early-twentieth century by Alexander and Virginia
Weddell, but the circumstances by which they acquired it are unknown. The Weddells
collected numerous works of eighteenth-century art (including several biombos) during
the period of their residence in Mexico City from 1924 to 28, and it may have been
at that time that they acquired the screen. On the Weddells and their collecting
in Mexico City, see Schreffler (2002). The Weddells also lived and collected in
South America and Spain in the early twentieth century, and thus it is also possible
that they acquired the work elsewhere in the Americas or in Europe. On the Spanish
and New Spanish elite’s use of screens, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río
(1970); also Curiel (1994, and 1999).
33
For example, archival documents (Archivo Histórico de Protocolos 1733) indi-
cate that the Dukes of Albuquerque, the descendants of two New Spanish viceroys,
were the owners of at least fifteen biombos in eighteenth-century Madrid.
34
On the analysis of the ‘honor/shame paradigm’ in Latin Americanist scholarship
and a review of some of the pertinent literature, see Hutchinson (2003).
complicated and, as Ann Twinam has noted, ‘negotiated’ concept en-

compassing a set of attributes including reputation and the respect of
one’s peers, lineage, race, family history, religion, and sexual and
marital conduct or misconduct.35 Among elites, the possession of
‘Honor’ was equated with the possession of status and could be lost as
well as gained. As such, it was an attribute that was fundamental to
the structuring and maintenance of social hierarchy among elites.36
This complex code of conduct focused on the possession (or lack)
of honor, scholars have shown, was also a highly gendered one. A
man’s possession of honor and therefore virtue related to a number
of factors including his “willingness to fight [and] to use force to
defend [his] reputation against those who would impugn it” as well
as his “assertiveness, courage, authority, and domination of women.”37
In contrast, a woman’s possession or loss of honor were more closely
linked to her sexual conduct and the “possession of shame, retained
through discretion and sexual control.”38 Given the complexity of
these discourses on honor and virtue in later colonial Latin America,
how can we interpret the prevalence of the emblems of Virtue on
the Richmond screen? A consideration of the architectural settings
in which that biombo and the other screens that employ Van Veen’s
moralizing emblems would have been displayed and viewed in the
eighteenth century suggests some particularities of the ways in which
they would have operated within this gendered discourse on ideal
conduct among elites.
Scholars have discerned two main domestic settings in which the
use of decorative screens is documented: in the ‘salon del estrado,’ the
formal room in which the reception and entertainment of guests took
place, and in the bedroom.39 Such rooms were architectural spaces
in elite residences, but they can also be conceptualized as what Henri
35
On ‘virtue’ and virtuous conduct as manifestations of honor, see Seed (1988)
62–64; Gutiérrez (1991) 208–15; and Lipsett-Rivera (1998) 195–96. On ‘honor’ in
colonial Latin America, see Seed (1988) 61–74; Twinam (1989) 118–55; Gutierrez
(1991) 176–80 et passim; the essays in Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera (1998); and Twinam
(1999) 30–33 et passim.
36
Twinam (1989) 123.
37
The first quote in this sentence is from Spurling (1998) 45, and the second is
from Seed (1988) 63.
38
Spurling (1998), 44. On honor among women in colonial Latin America, see
also Seed (1988); and Twinam (1989, 1998, and 1999).
39
Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río (1970) 17–24; and Curiel (1999) 18–20.
Lefebvre has called ‘social spaces’—spaces produced through repre-

sentation, language, and practices that generate from within a network
of social relations and distinguish them from other, differently con-
ceived spaces.40 It is within this conception of domestic space as ‘social
space’ that Gustavo Curiel recently described the salon del estrado as
“feminine space par excellence.”41 As, in Curiel’s words, the place
where “the lady of the house formally received important guests,”
the salon del estrado was conceptualized within a code of etiquette
that associated women with entertaining and domesticity and thus
with certain kinds of domestic spaces. Just as the discourse on honor
and shame in colonial Latin America provided the ideological back-
drop within which a social hierarchy of elites was produced and
maintained, so, too, the moralizing biombo, with its emphasis on the
possession of Virtue, supplied a visual and material setting against
which the establishment and strengthening of social ties in that sector
of society would have occurred in the salon del estrado.
In the social space of the bedroom, however, the biombos whose
imagery drew from the Theatro moral may have taken on a slightly
different tenor, confronting issues of sexual and marital conduct more
directly. As Curiel writes, in the bedroom, the screen served “to iso-
late beds from the indiscreet gaze of servants and visitors.”42 The
biombo’s subdivision of space and provision of privacy in the setting
of a bedroom resonates with certain spatial dimensions of sexual con-
duct that were central to the discourse on honor and virtue.43 Indeed,
within that discourse ‘honorable’ men were charged with protecting
and controlling female sexuality both through the use of physical force
and through the use of discretion in the revelation of sexual activi-
ties. Related to this conceptualization of an honorable man’s duties,
the spatial seclusion of women was understood to be another way
in which female honor and virtue could be maintained.44 In their
production and subdivision of space as well as in their concomitant
reference to notions of boundary, isolation, secrets, concealment, and
defense, the moralizing biombo recast the honorable man’s control
of female sexuality in the form of the folding screen and the spatial
enclosure it produced.
40
Lefebvre (1991). See also Foucault (1986).
41
Curiel (1999) 19.
42
Curiel (1999) 19.
43
On these components of female honor, see Twinam (1999) 64, 91.
44
Gutierrez (1991) 213; and Seed (1988) 63.
It is perhaps not coincidental with respect to this operation of the

moralizing screen that the term “biombo” is said to derive from the
Japanese “byo-bu,” which in turn can be translated as “protection
from the wind.”45 In its reconfiguration in eighteenth-century New
Spain, then, the format of the pictorial folding screen appears to
have retained something of its association with acts of protection. But
with its use of Van Veen’s moralizing emblems, the kind of protec-
tion the Richmond screen implies is not simply protection from the
wind. It is instead a kind of protection and, in fact, enforcement of
a form of female sexuality and subjectivity. Thus, in addition to
marking certain kinds of domestic spaces with ideas of honor and
virtue, the Richmond screen and its cognates can be seen as ‘inter-
pellating’ mechanisms through which the form and function of the
biombo itself intervene forcefully in an early modern patriarchal dis-
course on ideal forms of female conduct and subjectivity.46 The
screen’s gendered conceptualization of Virtue is further promoted
through its use of female allegorical figures that appear in the guise
of Minerva as the demonstrators of virtuous behavior. The presence
of these figures on the screen clearly relates to the use of established
iconographic conventions in the emblems, but their status as long-
standing visual traditions does not negate their strongly gendered
and moralizing character. For example, in the emblem used on the
panel bearing the motto “Virtue is Steadfast” (Fig. 11.4), Virtue, in
the form of Minerva, is depicted as a strong and virtuous young
woman who triumphs over the ‘fallen’ woman who is perhaps to be
understood as having lost her virtue.
Providing a very literal example of what Twinam has called the
‘tangibility’ of honor, the Richmond screen gives visible and material
form to a discourse on sexual conduct and subjectivity among eigh-
teenth-century elites in New Spain and elsewhere in Latin America.47
Just as its pictorial and textual source, the Theatro moral, was dedicated
to Queen Mariana of Austria, who, in turn, was to use the book in
the education of her son, the Richmond screen appears to have been
designed to address an elite woman or women whose conduct it ref-
erenced iconographically, textually, and spatially. It is hoped that as
45
On this linguistic matter, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río de Redo
(1970) 11.
46
On ‘interpellation’ as a model for subject formation, see Althusser (1971).
47
Twinam (1998) 73.
more data surface on the provenance of this and the other screens that
draw from the texts and images of the Theatro moral, it might become
possible to read the biombos and their imagery in more direct relation
to the specificities of the lives of those who would have served as
its primary audience.
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Hemming, C., and M. Aldbrook (1982) The Decorative Folding Screen (New York: 1982).
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Hutchinson, E. Q. (2003) “Add Gender and Stir?: Cooking Up Gendered Histories
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Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, trans. D. N. Smith (Cambridge: 1991).
Lipsett-Rivera, S. (1998) “A Slap in the Face of Honor: Social Transgression and
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Colonial Latin America, eds. L. L. Johnson and S. Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: 1998).
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—— (1999) “La meditación barroca de la muerte,” in Viento detenido: Mitologías e
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1998) 68–102.
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York: 1982).
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE FIGURE OF MARY AS THE CLOISTER IN

MEXICAN MENDICANT ART
Richard E. Phillips
Introduction
The viceregal Mexican cloisters of the mendicant religious orders of

friars—the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian—along with prac-
tically all of the other cloisters constructed by Western Christendom,
were originally intended and held to represent and embody the
Church/Paradise. The generic cloister was to be understood in
metaphor and in manifestation as an immaculate island of the sup-
posedly true world of heaven in the midst of the ‘false’ world of this
life.1 Congruently, medieval and early modern art and literature com-
monly identified Mary with paradise, as the earth in which God
planted the tree of life of Christ’s cross, just as he had planted the
tree of knowledge in the earthly Eden. It was maintained that Eve
had been the agent of humanity’s perdition just as Mary, the second
Eve called to undo the sins of the first, was the medium of its salva-
tion.2 Certain medieval and Mexican colonial written sources specifically
identify the cloister as a figure of Mary. Due to the repeated occur-
rence of mural-painted votive representations of the Virgin in the
corpus of Mexican sixteenth-century claustral programs of mural
painting, this essay investigates whether the Mexican cloisters’ intrinsic
1
Edgerton (2001) 213–19; Peterson (1993) 124–37; Phillips (1993), esp. Chap.
4, 348–431; Migne (1844–91) vol. 172, cols. 407D and 590, by Honorius of Autun
c. 1080/90–1156, and vol. 176, cols. 1167–73, by Hugh of Fouilloy, who lived
1100/10–1172/73; Synan (1967); Flint (1972) 215–16; W. Wilkie (1967); Sigüenza
(1907–09) 2, 551–52; Durandus [lived 1230–7 to 1296] (1494); Durandus (1906)
26–27; Kuttner (1967); Rieder (1908); Frühwald (1963); Lexikon der christliche Ikonographie
(1968–76) s.v. “Baum,” “Baüme,” “Brunnen,” “Kreuz,” “Paradies,” “Paradiesflüsse,”
“Quelle,” “Quellbrunnen;” Schapiro (1985) 20 and fig. 24; Rey (1955) 44 and fig.
8; Messerer (1964) 103–09; and Meyvaert (1986) 51.
2
Guldan (1966) 99–100 et passim.
meaning as Church/Paradise was intentionally extended by the Marian

images to include her as well.
In Mexican mendicant cloisters, those scenes featuring the Virgin
Mary that are not part of the sequences of corner processional stations
normally appear above the exterior side of entrances into the clois-
ters, or on the claustral side of passageways leading from them into
monastic dependencies. These isolated images, whose theme, place-
ment, and connection with any particular monastic ambient do not
follow any set pattern, are generally not associated with any others
as part of a uniform or consistent sequence. It will be argued that
their intent is to invoke the Virgin Mary as the model of inviola-
bility of the particular dependency above which the image is placed,
and by extension of monastic holiness. Just as God, following doc-
trine, entered Mary without ‘defiling’ her, leaving her virginity intact
even after the birth of his son,3 so the given monastic space is per-
ceived as protected from the entrance of the secular world’s pollu-
tion by entreating the Virgin via her image.
A basic intent of these Marian mural paintings was to secure, or
allude to, the protected, inviolate piece of the heavenly Paradise that
is the monastery, symbolized by the cloister and its Eden garth, against
the depraved physical world that it occupies but of which it is not
a part. These isolated works can best be seen as the visual equivalents
of prayers or invocations. They would have functioned to: (1) remind
the friar or visitor to pray or arrange her/his thoughts upon entering
a given monastic space so as to ensure its continued sanctity, leaving
all preoccupations from the impure, secular world behind; (2) simply
remonstrate to the entrant that the given space was meant to be
inviolate; or (3) magically guarantee purity by their presence, whether
or not they were beheld for meditation, given the traditionally mirac-
ulous concept of the power of images. On one level, it is important
only that God and the Virgin be aware of the images done in their
honor for the greater glory of both and to secure spatial protection
from the Devil, whether or not transitory human bodies took notice
of them. God, petitioned by these images, would presumably see to
it that the monastery be protected from desecration.
3
For the controversies throughout the history of Christianity over the doctrine
of Mary’s intact virginity before, during, and after the birth of her son Jesus, see
Warner (1976) 43–45, 64–66; and Graef (1963) 80–96.
the figure of mary as the cloister 291
Locative Purification: Cuauhtinchán and Epazoyucan
On the cloister side of the ante-refectory entrance of the sixteenth-

century Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla, is a grisaille
painting of The Annunciation (Fig. 12.1). It is an original mural paint-
ing from the 1580s or ’90s.4 For a mural painting it is quite small,
measuring only about 80 × 75 cm., equivalent to the size of a large
print in a book. Due to its diminutive size and its black, grey, and
white color range, it is not difficult to visualize in context as an
intentional counterpart to the prints that were commonly hung on, or
attached to, walls to decorate them or signify them under a religious
vocation during the early modern period. For example, a Venetian
woodcut in the form of a complex retable with central main image
of the Madonna and Child was tacked to a schoolroom wall in Forlí,
Italy, in 1428.5 Similarly, the account book of the Franciscan monastery
in the community of Milpa Alta just a few kilometers south of Mexico
City records the purchase in 1603 of 23 woodcuts to decorate the
refectory and the cell where the Provincial was going to stay. The
woodcuts’ stated purpose was to enhance the monastery’s appear-
ance for the Provincial’s tour of inspection.6 Because 1603 is only
one generation after the end of the ‘golden age’ of Mendicant activ-
ities in the central Mexican heartland7 and the painting of the little
Annunciation at Cuauhtinchán, we can be sure that the Milpa Alta
account records a practice that was normal in, and inherited from,
the sixteenth century. Such knowledge enhances our perception that
4
For the flanking polychrome figures of the jaguar and the eagle as fraudulent
additions in the 1940s, see Phillips (1993) 623–27. For the dating of the construc-
tion and original campaign of decoration of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán,
Puebla to the 1580s or ’90s, see Mendieta in García Icazbalceta (1892) 91; Ciudad
Real (1976) 87; Kubler (1948) 456; McAndrew and Toussaint (1942) 311–25; and
Castro Morales (1960) 12 and 16.
5
Mayor (1971), nos. 10 and 87–91.
6
“. . . mas veynte y tres estampas para el refectorio y la celda de n[uest]ro P[adr]e
prouy[nci]al . . . 5 p[es]os 6.” “Memoria del Conuento de la Milpa . . . 1602–06.”
Fondo Franciscano, vol. 143, fol. 131. My thanks to Dr. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma,
then Chief of the National Museum of Anthropology, and to the then Director of
the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia, Mexico City, Sra. Estela González, for permitting me to use the Fondo
Franciscano and other bound viceregal collections of documents there.
7
For the ‘golden age’ of the Mendicant friars in the sixteenth-century central
Mexican heartland and the decline in their power there after the indigenous pandemic
of 1576, see Poole (1987); Schwaller (1987); Cummins (1979); and Ricard (1933).
292
richard e. phillips
Fig. 12.1 The Annunciation. 1570s or ’80s, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla.
the Cuauhtinchán Annunciation alluded to and invoked the sacred

marking of precincts through the hanging of prints.
The function of The Annunciation grisaille at Cuauhtinchán is to
ensure the purity of the space entered—the ante-refectory—and the
decorousness of the friar’s or guest’s thoughts as he mentally prepares
himself to sit down at the refectory table. The image is to help him
avoid the natural tendency of indulging in the meal as sensual grati-
fication. Its motivation is comparable to that for the fresco of the
Man of Sorrows painted by Fra Angelico a century-and-a-half earlier
over the equivalent claustral side of the entrance into the ante-
refectory of his new Observantine Dominican house of San Marco,
Florence. The spatial and decorative definition of the ante-refectory
at San Marco are physical evidence of the Mendicant Observantine
reaction against monastic laxity. It seeks to enforce decorum and
gravity through the heightened liturgical specificity of ambients in
churches and conventual blocks and through a new kind of monas-
tic mural painting championed by Angelico, confrontational and first-
person in narrative rather than discursive and third-person.8 And the
sixteenth-century Mexican Mendicant friars were largely followers of
the Observantine reforms that mostly began in Italy but were sub-
sequently implemented in Spain beginning in the late fifteenth century.9
This reading of the Cuauhtinchán Annunciation is supported by the
meanings inherent to images of the Virgin over claustral passages at
contemporary Augustinian Epazoyucan and Franciscan Huejotzingo.
They also invoke the body and spirit of the Virgin as guarantors of
purity. The tympanum of the portal into the stairwell of the first
floor of the Epazoyucan cloister displays a large mural of The Death
and Coronation of the Virgin (Fig. 12.2). It was painted about 1563,
when the general chapter meeting of the entire Mexican Augustinian
province was held in the Epazoyucan monastery.10 This image is
8
Paatz (1952–55) vol. 3, 21–23 and 33; Maggi (1983) 403–23; and Hood (1995)
passim.
9
Garcá Oro (1971) 18, 25–26, 39,145–148, 164, 176, 181–201, 231–32, 312;
Legarza (1962) 16–124; De Castro (1975) 184–85; and Kubler (1948) 5–7.
10
Grijalva (1624) fol. 98; Colección Conway (1563) no. 34; Colección de documentos
inéditos . . . (1864–84) vol. 4, 521; and Phillips (1993) 552–60. I am grateful to the
then Director and Secretary of the Biblioteca Cervantina of the Instituto Tecnológico
y de Estudios Superiores, Monterrey, Mexico, Lic. Ricardo Elizondo and Sra. María
Esther Rivera, respectively, for allowing and assisting me to use the manuscripts of
the Colección Conway. All of the originally grisaille murals of the first floor of the
Epazoyucan cloister, including The Death and Coronation of the Virgin, were later
294
richard e. phillips
Fig. 12.2 The Death and Coronation of the Virgin. Ca. 1563, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Augustinian monastery of
Epazoyucan, Hidalgo. Photo by the author.
closely related stylistically, but not thematically nor liturgically, to

the neighboring uniform suite of processional corner niches painted
at the same time in the cloister with scenes of the Passion for Corpus
Christi and other processions. It is many times larger than they are
and, unlike them, its compositional center is a good deal above the
viewer’s eye level.
Of the pictures studied in this essay, this is the only one that is
not static or horizontal but vertical in its compositional movement.
It is the only one that is a composite of two scenes that are not sep-
arated by any boundary. The two parts engender a before-and-after
dynamic that is especially appropriate to the ascendant function of
the stairwell that the image announces. The Virgin’s earthly corpo-
real existence comes to an end in the lower representation, showing
the fleeting nature and falseness of this life even for a figure so exalt-
edly holy as Mary. The skull of death and the legend in Latin,
OMNIA EQVAT, “it equalizes all,” make sure that we do not miss
this point.
The Epazoyucan rendition goes against the trend that character-
ized the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century development of death of the
Virgin scenes in western European art. Such versions commonly
showed her not dead but on the verge of death, holding a sacra-
mental candle.11 At Epazoyucan we return anachronistically in part
to this theme’s original Byzantine origins, for Mary is portrayed
already dead, as if to emphasize the contrast between the two realms,
the earthly and secular that ends in death, and the holy, which is
held to promise eternal life. This reinforces the transcendent impli-
cations of the friars’ ascension from the first floor of the cloister to
the second, which houses the cells of the individual friars.
The Epazoyucan Death of the Virgin eschews another established
Byzantine convention for this scene, however: It does not show the
adult Christ, next to the kneeling and grieving Apostles, standing over
his mother’s deathbed and receiving her soul in the form of a swaddled
infant. Instead, the Byzantine child figure of Mary’s soul at Epazoyucan
is transposed to the Coronation scene above, which strikes one as an
intelligent and knowing means of achieving a fluid transition between
retouched in color paints in a somewhat crude manner. Moyssén (1965) 24, plausibly
asserts that this occurred around 1901, when the monastery’s church was repaired
and painted.
11
Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 605–07.
the two iconographic traditions of Orthodoxy and Catholicism that

meld in this image.12
The purity that she maintained in this life merits her coronation
by the Trinity of Father, Son, and dove of the Holy Spirit at the
apex. One principal intent of this work was to have the generic friar,
upon going upstairs to his cell, meditate on the relationship between
his impending physical climb and the Virgin’s own spiritual ascent
toward apotheosis. Or this motivation behind the work is more accu-
rately described as having the secular visitor think that the upward-
bound friars were expected to be thinking this, inspiring the viewer’s
edification and respect for the friars. In Latin the death of the Virgin
is called Transitus Beatae Virginis Mariae (Tránsito de la Virgen in Spanish),13
which is the text of the highly damaged title under her deathbed in
the painting. The Latin transitus means “a going over” or “passage.”14
The painting guarantees purity upon passage from one functional and
ceremonial space to a different one by invoking the immaculate
Virgin’s progress from physical death to eternal life in two separate
but linked images. By so doing, it symbolically removes the cells of
the upper cloister to the unassailable heights of heaven, cloaked in
the Virgin’s eternal purity. The cell is the mendicant friar’s coun-
terpart to the monk’s wilderness retreat or hermitage, where the friar
privately steels himself for battle with the demon in the exterior
world through preaching and social mobilization.15
Proving the true intent of the Epazoyucan Death of the Virgin, we
have corroborating evidence from the nearby Augustinian monastery
at Acolman, where the provincial chapter meeting was held in 1560
before reconvening at Epazoyucan in 1563. The formal influence of
the masonry, carving, and painting of the Acolman house was pro-
found throughout the northern Augustinian sphere in Mexico for the
two decades following its church portal’s elaborately inscribed date
of 1560, including at nearby Epazoyucan.16 Of the comprehensive
12
The banderole directly beneath The Coronation of the Virgin at Epazoyucan reads
in Latin “VENI DE LIBANO SPONSA MEA VENI CORONABERIS CANT>4”.
This is the abridged text of the first two lines of Songs 4, 8, “Come from Libanus,
my spouse . . . Thou shalt be crowned from the top of Amana . . .”
13
Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 604.
14
Lewis (1891) [1985].
15
This is the conclusion to which one must come about the essential construct
of the mendicant cell after reading Braunfels (1972) 135–37.
16
Montes de Oca, (1975) 21; and Grijalva (1624) fols. 94v, 98.
program of psalmodic citations equating the Acolman cenobium with

the House of God, it is no coincidence that the one from Psalm 90,
1–6, painted on the south corridor of the second floor of the second
cloister, along its suite of eight cells, has the most private, reclusive, re-
moved, and celestial connotations of the whole cycle. It reads, in part:
QVI HABITAT IN ADIVTORIO ALTISSIMI IN PROTECTIONE
DEI 3ELI [i.e. coeli] CONMORABITUR DICET DOMINVS SUS-
CEPTOR MEVS ES TV ET REFVGIVM MEVM . . .17
This passage is translated:
He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the
protection of the God of Jacob. He shall say to the Lord: Thou art
my protector, and my refuge . . .18
Sequential Purification: Huejotzingo and Chimalhuacán Chalco
Unlike the isolated Marian images of Cuauhtinchán and Epazoyucan,

whose primary function is to enjoin the purity of individual depen-
dencies—the refectory and the second, cell floor of the conventual
block, respectively—the sequence of two images in the Franciscan
monastery of Huejotzingo is clearly meant to secure the inviolability
of its complete cloister, that is, to place the whole monastery under
the Virgin’s protection. The mural paintings of The Annunciation and The
Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns
Scotus (Fig. 12.3) were painted there about 1558 as part of a compre-
hensive mural program.19 The two works are dissimilar in format
and material imagery, however, so they are not meant to be seen
in tandem as closely linked members of a series.
17
The letters underlined are no longer legible in situ or are completely effaced.
18
The Holy Bible (1899) Psalm 90, 1–2.
19
For 1558 as the likely year for the mural painting campaign of the Huejotzingo
conventual block, see Prem (1974) 39–50 and 498–99; Castro Morales (1980) 11–16;
McAndrew (1969) 316–22 and 336; García Icazbalceta (1892) 70–91; Angulo Iñíguez,
et al. (1945–56) 2, 355; García Granados and MacGregor (1934) 256; Salazar
Monroy (1945) 3; Mendieta (1971) 542 and 654; Paso y Troncoso (1905–42) 8,
261, note; and Oroz, et al. (1947) 166, note 181. The iconographic complexity of
this mural of The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns
Scotus, and the reasons for the depictions of Aquinas and Scotus in it, cannot be
treated in this essay due to their secondary importance to its theme, but are cov-
ered extensively in Phillips (1993) 459–61, endnote 21.
298
richard e. phillips
Fig. 12.3 The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Saints Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Ca. 1558, mural painting, first floor,
cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo, Puebla, Photo by the author.
The Annunciation is painted over the door between the first and sec-
ond chambers of the inner portería.20 Native Americans had to go
through these ambients to use the confessionals that were built into
the thickness of the church wall here. The friars heard the confes-
sions from the church side.21 As with other sixteenth-century Mexican
Mendicant monasteries at Actopan, Tlaquiltenango, or Zinacantepec
whose inner porterías often had masonry or plaster benches along the
walls to accommodate the natives who had business with the friars,
and whose mural paintings are directed toward a native audience,
this Huejotzingo inner portería constituted an extension of the com-
munity space of the outer portería. Consequently, The Annunciation
here is intended to be seen by the natives and other visitors seek-
ing access to the cloister immediately beyond it as a reminder and
protector of that courtyard’s essential inviolability.22
The Annunciation is theoretically identical with the moment of
Christ’s incarnation, which means that it also represents the moment
of the consummation of paradise, the founding of the Church, the
planting of the new Eden in the Virgin to undo the loss of the earthly
Eden through Eve. The Annunciation mural, then, refers to the monastery
as paradise, the church militant linked not to this false world but to
20
There is no good English equivalent for the Spanish word portería, which refers
to the configuration or structures, distinct from the church portal, built as the front
entrance into the friar’s residence. See McAndrew (1969) 164–65. This study assigns
the term “conventual block” to the complete friars’ residence including the cloister
but excluding the church. It also takes the traditional term portería for the monas-
tic portico or entrance into the conventual block and divides it into ‘outer’ portería,
referring to the initial reception space of the monastery that is open to the outside
on one side, and ‘inner’ portería, consisting of one or more separate chambers
accessed from the outer portería that are not open on any side to the exterior and
which constitute entry points of limited size to ensure control of access.
21
This statement contradicts Kubler (1948) 253, who asserts that “The father
confessor entered the confessional from the convent side, to meet the penitent who
approached from the nave.” This paper contends that when confessionals were set
in the wall between the church and the portería, the friar confessor entered from
the church side, while the penitent entered from the portería side. The portería in
sixteenth-century Mexico was a community space for the native townspeople. When,
on the other hand, the confessional was built into the wall between church and
cloister, rather than church and portería, then Kubler’s assertion is correct, given that
access to the cloister would have been less common for the native, reduced to cer-
tain special ritual occasions, than access to the church.
22
For proofs that the native Mexican peoples were the principal intended audi-
ence and ritual users of the sixteenth-century claustral mural paintings, see Phillips
(1999) 227–50. I am grateful to Dr. Ángel J. García Zambrano for translating this
essay. See also Phillips (1993) 140–404.
the church triumphant of heaven.23 ‘Paradise’ is not an apt term for

the nondescript little second chamber of the Huejotzingo inner portería
over whose entrance side the painting is located, so the image must
instead irradiate toward a larger context beyond its limited immediate
theatre. That would be the cloister directly beyond, whose access is
carefully controlled by the small chamber. After a thorough search, not
a single instance was found in western art of the Archangel Michael’s
depiction in an Annunciation scene. His presence in this mural oppo-
site the archangel Gabriel, who is biblically intrinsic to the Annuncia-
tion, is further indication of a monastery-wide significance for this
image: Michael is the patron saint of the entire Franciscan foundation
and indeed the town of Huejotzingo. As such the Huejotzingo Annuncia-
tion is comparable in its impact as spatial conditioner to its counter-
part painted on the western spandrels of the cloister arcade of the
Dominican establishment at Chimalhuacán Chalco about 1553.24
The Chimalhuacán Annunciation is the culmination of a four-corner
mural cycle that begins on the opposite southeast angle with The Fall
of Man, and is premeditatedly situated so as to be the first claustral
image contemplated by the visitor entering on the southwest from
the portería. In this way it identifies the traditional paradise imagery
of the cloister and its central open-air planted garth with the achieve-
ment of the new Eden planted in the earth of the Virgin. Any argu-
ment that the coincidence of entrance and Annunciation at Chimalhuacán
is casual cannot be accepted. The unknown friar who invented this
complex mural program on the economy of salvation could con-
ceivably have opted to begin the cycle with The Fall of Man where
The Annunciation is, or at any other point. This would have removed
The Annunciation from its preeminent position opposite the conven-
tual entrance. But he did not. He chose the only configuration of
the four images composing the cycle distributed among the four cor-
ners of the cloister arcade that culminates in The Annunciation before
23
Rupert of Deutz (1974) 4, 85–87; Van Engen (1983) 291; Guldan (1966) 99–100
et passim; Livius (1893) 51; St. Bonaventure (1888–89) 2, 427; Román (1575) 1,
fol. 75; Lorenzana (1769) 185–86; García Icazbalceta (1947) 1, 34 and 115–116
and 3, 9; Durandus (1906) 1, 11; and Durandus (1494) fol. 1v.
24
Santiago (1540–87) fols. 31v–54v; Dávila Padilla (1625) 472 and 477; and
Kubler (1948) 525–26. I am grateful to the then Directors of the Fondo de Microfilm
of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología
e Historia, Mexico City, Víctor E. Urruchúa Hernández and J. J. González Monroy
for allowing and assisting me to consult Santiago (1540–87).
the southwest entrance, clearly proclaiming the cloister to the visi-

tor as the paradise achieved through and guaranteed by Mary.
The Annunciation at Huejotzingo, like that at Chimalhuacán Chalco,
indicates that the cloister, identified with Mary, is paradise. It attempts
to ensure that, like the Virgin, the monastery can be entered yet
not polluted. A further attempt at Huejotzingo to cloak the monastery
in the Virgin’s sinlessness is provided by the The Immaculate Conception
of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus on the cloister
side of the entrance into the chapter room’s vestibule (hereafter sim-
ply titled The Conception). There is a deliberate relationship between
The Annunciation and The Conception in the Huejotzingo conventual
block, in that both are on a direct line in the same path that leads
to entry of the cloister, then east along the north cloister walk abut-
ting the church, then its exit past the chapter room on the way to
the church. The viewer who traverses this whole route starting from
the outer portería will ultimately see both images that proclaim and
enjoin the purity of the cloister.
Immediately beyond The Conception one sees to the right on the
south the painting over the entrance to the chapter room, guarded
at the center by the military Archangel Michael, patron saint of the
Huejotzingo monastery, flanked by the other two non-apocryphal
archangels, Raphael and Gabriel. Together the three archangels form
the protective militia of the gates of heaven, a symbolism inherent
to them around church entrances since at least Carolingian times.25
They define the chapter room immediately beyond them as heaven
and mark the chapter room door, consequently, as the vulnerable
point of transition to paradise that they protect from earthly profa-
nation. This painting demonstrates through parallelism that a prin-
cipal function of images over entrances at Huejotzingo, such as The
Conception immediately adjacent at the ingress to the chapter room
vestibule, is to protect paradise from desecration by improper secu-
lar considerations.
The function of The Conception at Huejotzingo is not only, nor even
primarily, to consecrate entry to the chapter room. The latter has its
own archangel painting to assure that. It is clear that, like all of the
paintings discussed so far in this essay, it refers not only to the space
about to be entered, but reflects its meaning back onto the space from
25
Mâle (1972) 298–300; Réau (1955–59) 2, 1, 41–52; and Heitz (1963) 221.
which it is viewed, in this case the cloister. How can the chapter
room be paradise if the purity of the preceding cloister, which is the
quintessential figure of the Paradise of monasticism since early
Christianity, and upon which the chapter room depends for its own
sacrosanctity, is not secured? How could this evocation of the con-
troversial doctrine of the Virgin’s eternal purity as an idea in the
mind of God before the creation of the universe, as the perfect ves-
sel for the realization of God’s will on earth, not have been inter-
preted by the initiated viewer with regard to the commonly known,
age-old symbolism of the cloister as undefiled paradise?26
The Huejotzingo Conception is depicted as a retable in triptych
form. Thus it is completely different in format, size, and material
symbolism from the rest of its fellow claustral paintings. As with The
Death and Coronation of the Virgin at Epazoyucan, then, it is isolated
from the mural decoration devoted to the definition of the corner
niches’ processional theatre due to its larger size, its theme dissociated
from Christ’s Passion, and its position above a doorway, raised above
the spectator’s viewing level of that theatre. The Epazoyucan mural
is framed by a laurel wreath of victory extended by nude men that
is analogous to the triumphal arches of greenery framing the adja-
cent corner niche stational retables. To the contrary, the Huejotzingo
Conception is not related via material symbolism to the ephemeral pro-
cessional festival connotations alluded to at the nearby stations. Instead
it evokes a permanent, votive, dedicatory panel, a triptych with a
solid wooden frame.
In the twenty-first century we have become accustomed to viewing
triptychs out of context on museum walls, and might find nothing
remarkable in the way the mural-painted Conception is displayed at
Huejotzingo. In the museum we are normally judging a triptych purely
by what we see in it. However, to the early modern mind a polyptych
or any other retable was only part of an ensemble that had to include
or imply an altar.27 Upon seeing one, ideally the spectator immedi-
ately thought of its altar, just as retable and altar were joined in the
adjacent claustral corner niches at Huejotzingo, Epazoyucan, and
elsewhere in viceregal Mexico. Where is the altar that would corre-
spond to the Huejotzingo Conception? Was an ephemeral altar placed
26
Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 75–76; and Warner (1976) 247.
27
Limentani Virdis and Pietrogiovanna (2002) 12–15; Berg-Sobré (1989) 3–10,
27, 47, 71, 77, 84, 110, 134–39, 167, 173–78, 181–86, 311; Snyder (2005) 283;
and Hartt and Wilkins (2003) 45.
before it or in the doorway opening directly below it at different

festive intervals? That is possible, for there is a wealth of information
on such temporary altar tableaux in early modern Europe and in
Mexico for religious processions, including inside cloisters.28
The early modern retable was read by the viewer as reflecting
meaning or sacredness onto that which stood in front of it. Thus
the Huejotzingo triptych of The Conception could not have been under-
stood only as a signifier for the space beyond its portal, the chapter
room vestibule. Retables placed the altars before them under the
vocation of the depicted saint or sacred event that sublimated a saint.
Does this mean by extension that the Huejotzingo cloister was delib-
erately consecrated like an altar to the immaculate conception of the
Virgin Mary, as numerous churches, chapels, and cathedrals of the
Hispanic world have been? No firm conclusion can be made on this
matter, but the possibility is strengthened by the fact that there is
incontrovertible proof that at least one other Franciscan cloister in
viceregal central Mexico was dedicated specifically to that vocation.
If the Huejotzingo cloister had indeed been so designated, it would
not have been alone in colonial New Spain.
A contract of 1701 mandates construction of the principal cloister
of the Franciscan Province’s mother house in Mexico City.29 The
sermon on the occasion of the cloister’s dedication was printed in
1702. It states repeatedly, including an emphatic reference in the
title, that the courtyard is consecrated to the “Concepcion Purissima”
[sic], the immaculate conception of Mary, as its specific vocation.
The sermon’s author, Fr. Manuel de Arguello O.F.M., equated Mary’s
womb inhabited by God with the generic cloister as a figure for
monasticism. He preached:
. . . on the one hand it is called the womb and on the other, cloister:
“Blessed is the womb that bore thee,” wrote St. Luke, which the Church
transcribed “Claustrum Mariae bajulat.” Mary’s core could be nothing else
but God’s cloister! Of necessity, my Dominican and Franciscan brethren
[gathered for the claustral dedication celebration], Mary’s cloister had
to be ours!30
28
Las Casas (1967) 328–29; Sigüenza (1907–09) 425; Jiménez de Cisneros (1965)
1, 208 and 2, 800–03; Liber Processionarius . . . Cisterciensis (1569) fols. 18v–19r; Mitchell
(1986) 58; Heers (1971) 25–26, 70–71; Jacquot and Konigson (1973) 57, 434;
Bridgman (1973) 239–40; and Lleó Cañal (1975) 48–49.
29
Castro Morales (1979) 21.
30
Arguello (1702) frontispiece and further specific statements that the cloister is
Arguello cited the fourth line, first verse of the Matins hymn of the
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (LOBVM ), which reads “Claustrum
Mariae bajulat.”31 Fr. Matheo Guerra’s preliminary ‘opinion’ or ded-
ication, published in the same document with Arguello’s sermon,
provided an even more thorough equation that shows that tradi-
tional Hispanic religious thought regarded the generic cloister as a
figure of Mary.
God created Mary as a cloister for himself, the church identifies it
[through the LOBVM ] and says that it is Mary’s cloister: Claustrum Mariae
bajulat . . . God wanted to make himself human, and to do this he
elected the spotless womb of Our Lady. He wanted to be the fruit of
her spotless womb, and, since there can be no fruit without earth, he
asked Mary for earth, and Mary gave him her earth. He desired to
en-cloister himself in the form of a man [the Christ child], and asked
Mary for her spotless womb to make in it, and of it, a closed cloister . . .32
Arguello and Guerra identified Mary, as manifest in her own immac-
ulate conception, with the figure of the ideal as well as the real clois-
ter a century-and-a-half after the principal decorative campaign at
Huejotzingo, but they drew upon a metaphor known long before it.
Their exegesis can consequently be applied with confidence to the
interpretation of the problem of the identification of the Mexican
sixteenth-century cloisters with the figure of Mary. The LOBVM,
dedicated to the immaculate conception on pages 1, 5, and 7. The original text

translated by this author reads on page 9:
. . . en vna parte se llama vientre, y en otra parte se llama Claustro: “Beatus
venter, qui te portauit,’ escribiò S. Lucas, y trasladò la Iglesia: Claustrum
Mariae baiulat. Entrañas de Maria [sic], no podian [sic] ser sino Claustro de
Dios! Claustro de Maria de necessidad [sic] hermanos mayors y menores avia
[mod.: había] de ser nuestro!
31
“Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Matins, Nocturne I,” Appendix A
of Purtle (1982) 179.
32
Guerra (1702), preface to Arguello (1702) on unnumbered pages 10–13 prior
to the numbered pages of Arguello’s sermon; this author’s translation. The original
Spanish printed text of the citation on unnumbered pages 10–11 is:
Hizo Dios á [sic] Maria [sic] para Claustro suyo, ponele [sic]el nombre la
Iglesia, y dice que es Claustro de Maria: Claustrum Mariae baiulat . . . quizo
[sic] Dios humanarse, y para humanarse [sic] eligió el purissimo [sic] vientre
de Maria señora, quiso ser fruto de su vie[n]tre purissimo, y como para ser fruto,
se necessita [sic] de tierra, pidió la tierra a Maria, y Maria le dio su tierra,
quiso enclaustrarse como hombre, y pidió a Maria que le diesse su purissimo
vientre para hazer [sic] en el, y del [mod. de él] vn Claustro cerrado . . .
The extraordinarily vivid verb humanarse “to make oneself human,” is no longer
accepted as a Spanish word, while the verb enclaustrarse still is. Galimberti Jarman
and Russell (2003).
upon whose line ‘Claustrum Mariae bajulat’ they seize, was in exis-
tence at least by the eleventh century and instituted formally in
church ceremonial by Pope Urban II in 1095. In the twelfth cen-
tury the monks Philip of Harvengt and Radulfus Ardens also identified
Mary with the cloister.33 There is plenty of precedent then, at least
in the literature of the ideal cloister, for the possibility that the
Huejotzingo court was consecrated to Mary as a physical metaphor
comparing her enclosed purity and inviolate virginity to those of the
friars and their institute.
Processional Purification: Acolman
The question of the possible consecration of the Huejotzingo cloister

to Mary must be considered in the light of the contemporary dec-
orative campaign for the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery
of Acolman. This is the only surviving Mexican Mendicant sixteenth-
century claustral mural campaign featuring a complete Marian sequence
of images, rather than the isolated ‘signposts’ that this essay has so
far treated. It is a processional cycle for the corners (Fig. 12.4).34
Mary as agent of Jesus’ incarnation is the primary protagonist of
the processional theatre of the Acolman first cloister. This is the
only known claustral cycle of corner images in Mexico to feature
scenes not directly associated with Christ’s Passion. The reason for
this must be Acolman’s singularity as the only surviving sixteenth-
century monastery in Mexico, with the exception of Franciscan
Xochimilco, to have two true cloisters, not just courtyards, both com-
posed of garth, piers or columns, and four covered walks.35 A few
others, such as Huejotzingo and Yuriria, have a second, small open
courtyard to accompany the principal cloister within the conventual
block, but none except Acolman and Xochimilco has a second court-
yard with covered, arcaded walks meant to function materially to
provide access to major dependencies nor ceremonially as a hub of
monastic life.
33
Arroyal (1784) n. p.; Migne (1844–91) vol. 155, col. 1423 and vol. 203, col.
215; J. Wilkie, (1967); and Gründel (1976) 8–11.
34
Edgerton (2001) 108 and 210.
35
Ciudad Real (1976) 1, 109, recorded the two cloisters of the Franciscan
monastery of Xochimilco, which still survive, in his visit of 1585. Six friars inhab-
ited them. They were completely finished save for the corridors of the cells.
Fig. 12.4 Schematic iconographical diagram of the first cloister of the Augustinian
monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico, built after 1539, mural painted ca. 1560.
Drawing courtesy of Prof. Reynaldo Santiago.
Kubler, in his brilliant morphological study of the Mexican monas-

teries, established that the first cloister at Acolman belongs to the
earliest group of such structures, built in the 1530s and ’40s of rub-
ble or lime with little or no carved articulation. Piers of simple sec-
tion were the rule and the column was not employed.36 At Acolman
a second cloister was added just to the east of the older one around
1560, of much grander dimensions, of two stories planned as such
36
Kubler (1948) 346–48. The Acolman first cloister always had only one floor
until a second was added in the 1950s by the Mexican Dirección de Monumentos
Históricos of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Following Gurría
Lacroix (1968) 36, in the 1950s a loggia with wooden roof was added over each
of its four sides. Simple piers of square section were built over each first floor pier,
in effect creating a second floor for the first cloister. Toussaint (1948) 30, has a
photograph of the humble cloister from above, showing the four slanting roofs of
its four walks with no superstructure above those roofs. There is no reason to believe
that the Acolman first cloister ever had a second level. The Augustinians also had
single-storey cloisters built in Mexico at Yecapixtla about 1541 and at Charo ca.
1580–1602, and these subsist as such today.
from the outset, with columns and arches of masterful stereotomy

and beautiful sculptural details. In short, the Acolman second court
is everything that the first quadrangle is not. The architectural and
carving style of this second hub are closely related in style to the
grand Plateresque portal of the church, which features the emphatic
inscription dated 1560, so long that it requires two placards. In that
same year the provincial chapter meeting for the complete Augustinian
province of Mexico was held at Acolman.37 The most powerful and
prestigious Augustinians in Mexico, those with the power to vote,
would not have met outside the familiar confines of the mother house
in Mexico City unless their accommodations at Acolman were deco-
rous and if there were too not much building detritus over which
they could stumble.
The separation in time between the construction of the two clois-
ters is not reflected in a similar lacunae between their decoration.
Close study of the mural paintings and their painted frames in the
corners of the old cloister and the corners of the new cloister reveals
that all of them are closely related stylistically and belong to the
same decorative campaign, perhaps by the hand of the same master.38
The availability of two true cloisters to decorate at Acolman about
1560 resulted in the painting of three processional cycles: the cor-
ners of the outside walls of both floors of the much finer second
cloister received Passional sequences, while the much humbler, smaller,
single-storey old cloister received a Marian suite in its outside corners
(Figs. 12.4 and 12.5).39 All of the other surviving corner processional
cycles in Mexican sixteenth-century cloisters consist of images allusive
to Christ’s Passion; once the space for that minimum liturgical require-
ment had been secured at Acolman in the new cloister, it was pos-
sible to dedicate the old to a celebration of Mary as the human
intermediary of the incarnation. This rare diversification of theme
proves that the Marian cycle of the first cloister could not have been
conceived or executed separately from the required Christocentric
sequence of the second.
The mural program of the first cloister consists of an Evangelist
paired with one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church for the
37
Grijalva (1624) fol. 94v.
38
Phillips (1993) 358–59.
39
The mural cycle of the lower second cloister was destroyed, but small frag-
ments of it remain. Gurría Lacroix (1968) 6–12; and Phillips (1993) 522–24.
308
richard e. phillips
Fig. 12.5 The Annunciation Witnessed by Sts. Augustine and John of Sahagún. Highly damaged mural painted ca. 1560, first cloister,
Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico. Photo by the author.
eight cloister-walk-directed faces of the four corner piers, a figure of

an Augustinian friar saint on each of the faces of the eight simple
intermediate piers, and a cycle of six Marian processional images in
the corners (Fig. 12.4). Each of the Marian scenes save The Adoration
of the Magi has two kneeling saints in profile depicted at the lower
corners. These saints are generally identical with many of those
depicted on the piers. The reuse of most of the pier saints as ‘wit-
nesses’ of the holy events demonstrates, in conjunction with the styl-
istic and material evidence on site, that the pier and processional
paintings were conceived together as one unit of meaning.
The four processional images on the west side of the first cloister
are The Annunciation Witnessed by Saints Augustine and John of Sahagún
(Fig. 12.5), The Visitation Witnessed by Saints Ambrose and Jerome, The Adora-
tion of the Child Witnessed by Two Female Saints,40 and The Adoration of
the Magi. There is no way on a single clockwise or counterclockwise
line, as liturgically prescribed for processions, to pass each Marian
image of the west end in a manner consonant with the traditional
chronology of these Christian events (see Fig. 12.4). The temporal
sequence in the Bible is: (1) Annunciation, (2) Visitation, (3) Adoration
of the Child, and (4) Adoration of the Magi. A procession that has
presumably exited the church and gone through the passage between
cloisters at the northeast corner will, on its normal counterclockwise
path, pass event number 4 first, then proceed along 1, 2, and 3. The
clockwise order of 3, 2, 1, 4 is improbable in terms of narrative
coherence. Perhaps the anomalous temporal order of the Marian images
here resulted from a desire to ‘bracket’ the two dominant west-end
representations with Adoration scenes that exalt the fruit of Mary’s
acceptance of the will of God.
The two other surviving paintings of the cycle on the east side
are in very poor condition, with large sections erased (Fig. 12.4). It
has not been possible to identify their subject matter with certainty.
40
For the iconographic tradition of images of The Adoration of the Child, see
Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 220–26. In the course of field work it was verified that two
profile figures, one in each lower corner of the painting as typical of this cycle,
‘witness’ the event. Only their heads and upper torsos are visible, but they are
clearly marked as female in dress and hair arrangement. They have haloes to indi-
cate sainthood but lack nuns’ veils or habits. They could not be representations of
St. Augustine’s female relatives or of Augustinian nun saints, for other Mexican
viceregal Augustinian mural cycles of saints in cloisters depict these latter two female
categories dressed in the black Augustinian habit.
However, there are plausible indications that their content was funda-
mentally Marian and incarnational, matching that of the four paint-
ings of the west side. The basic structure of the two eastern images is
clear enough that we can at least be sure that they do not repre-
sent scenes from the childhood of Jesus such as The Flight into Egypt
or The Disputation of the Elders in the Temple, events that could
have logically followed upon those depicted on the west side. The
cloister, whether officially through consecration or simply through
signification, is therefore not dedicated to Jesus’ childhood but to
Mary as the agent of his incarnation.
Mary’s centrality in this cloister is underlined by the fact that three
of the four Doctors of the Church—Augustine in The Annunciation
and Jerome and Ambrose in The Visitation—appear in the two scenes
in which Christ is to be felt as present in his mother’s womb but in
which he is not physically visible, leaving Mary as the prime prota-
gonist on the viewer’s sensory level. The four Doctors of the Church
carry more weight in this cycle than the friar saints. This is due to
their physical and symbolic location on the stronger corner piers in
conjunction with the Evangelists as the metaphorical ‘cornerstones’—
not merely ‘columns’—of the church, and because one of the four
was Augustine, the purported founder of the Order of Hermits that
had this monastery built and decorated.41
Augustine, the preeminent saint on the piers as far as the viewing
friar would be concerned, whose lead as ‘founder’ he would be
obliged to follow, is placed within The Annunciation (Fig. 12.5), which
as the first event in the chain of the narrative serves as the proces-
sional ‘title page,’ the point of departure for the rest of the Marian
cycle. Accordingly, The Annunciation is also first at Acolman in expe-
riential terms, for it is the image that a procession that had exited
the church and gone through the passage from the second cloister to
the first would see first, framed in the segmental barrel vault, all the
way down the north cloister walk to the west (Fig. 12.4). This signals
that the basic meaning of the first cloister’s corner mural cycle is
incarnational, since Augustine ‘conjures up’ the moment when God
becomes flesh through Mary in the sequence’s ‘title page.’
As a model for the viewing friar—and through the guiding friar
officiant, the Indian neophytes on procession42—St. John of Sahagún
41
Forshaw (1967); and Réau (1955–59) 3, 1, 388–89.
42
Phillips (1999) 227–50, and (1993) 140–404.
is set opposite Augustine at the right lower corner of the painting,

further emphasizing its primacy by making it an all-Augustinian affair
embracing the ‘father’ of the Order and one of its most illustrious
friars. By contrast, The Visitation is the only picture of the cycle whose
two witnesses, Jerome and Ambrose, are both Doctors. This is enough
to reiterate Mary as the protagonist of the processional images,
although these Doctors ‘testify’ to an event of secondary importance
to the believer compared with the fundamental moment of the incar-
nation. This can be verified simply by comparing the number of
extant early modern representations of the Annunciation to those of
the Visitation, or the volume of ancient and medieval writing on the
former versus the latter.43
As with Franciscan Huejotzingo and Dominican Chimalhuacán
Chalco, when The Annunciation is the first image associated with a
cloister, it identifies it with the paradigm of the new, definitive, heav-
enly paradise of eternal life: As the earth, Mary, in which God,
according to doctrine, planted the new dispensation, his son. The
identification of that paradise with Mary would have been logical,
intended, and inescapable.
The focus, origin, and visual anchor of the system of signification
of the first Acolman cloister is Christ immanent in the central stone
cross of the garth (see the center of Fig. 12.4). Nevertheless, a num-
ber of ancient metaphors, thoroughly embedded in Christian lore,
would have led the believing onlooker to view the earth in the garth,
from which symbolically grew the cross as tree of life, as Mary. As
Guerra wrote in 1702, Mary is the earth, Christ is the fruit. If we
follow this rescension, God is not earth—he can only clothe himself
in the material guise that Mary as physical agent, as earth, can pro-
vide. For Mary as earth the Friars Hermit of Acolman had only to
look to the writings of their purported founder Augustine, such as
De Genesi Lib. 2, where he presents her as the earth watered by the
43
Livius (1893) passim. The four key moments of Christian, and therefore cosmic,
history are the incarnation—identical with the Annunciation—the Passion of Christ,
his resurrection and ascension, according to Rupert of Deutz (1974), 91. St. John of
Sahagún, who lived 1430–79, was a Spaniard from Salamanca who belonged to what
was in 1560 the modern era of the bona fide Order of Hermits of St. Augustine. He
was not officially canonized as a saint until 1691, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 2, 733.
He was the logical choice for this program as the most famous Hispanic Augustinian
saint with whom the friars could identify, for Villanova, i.e. Santo Tomás de
Villanueva, did not supplant him in that category until the seventeenth century.
Holy Spirit. Or they could study Ambrose, Augustine’s teacher, who

marveled
how from paradise the first Adam was cast forth into the desert . . . the
Second Adam [Christ] returned to Paradise . . . From virgin earth Adam,
Christ from the Virgin.44
Mary’s earth, following medieval exegetes, took the spiritual form of
the ‘enclosed garden’ of Songs 4, 12. This invited parallels with the
cloistered garth. Rupert of Deutz, whose Commentary on the Song of
Songs, composed in the year or so after 1125, represented a watershed
in the growth of the cult of Mary by being “. . . the first consistently
Marian interpretation of that love song ever to appear in Latin
Christendom,” explained that Mary’s womb is a garden in that it is
fertile, enclosed in that it is uncorrupted. Rupert took the traditional
Christian figure of paradise—the fountain, the garden, the four
rivers—and laid over it a Marian veneer, much as would have been
done by an informed spectator of the Acolman first cloister program.
He envisioned her as the new Eve—who undoes the harm done by
the first woman—in whom God plants the new celestial paradise as
he had once planted on Earth the terrestrial Eden. As Eve once
invited Adam to taste the fruit of perdition, so Mary later invited
God into her closed garden, that is, the womb, to taste the fruit of
salvation. She is the blessed earth with the tree of life in the mid-
dle, whence flow the four rivers of the Gospels.45
This metaphor continued into early modern times, for Ulrich of
Lilienfeld wrote:
Paradise is the body of the blessed Maiden . . . in the middle of the
garden, that is, in the womb of the blessed Maiden, the Lord God
planted the tree of life . . . Therefore the fruit of this tree, namely the
blood shed in the Passion, means everlasting life and salvation.46
Similarly, the earliest named Spanish poet, the secular cleric Gonzalo
de Berceo, in the mid-thirteenth century describes Mary as the par-
adise garden with tree of life, with the four rivers of the Evangelists
emanating from her: She is even specifically called the ‘editor’ of
the Gospels.47
44
Livius (1893) 51 and 64.
45
Van Engen (1983) 291; and Rupert of Deutz (1974) 85–87.
46
This is my translation of Guldan’s citation, 99–100. According to Guldan
(1966) 177, Ulrich, abbot of Lilienfeld, wrote this in the period 1351–58.
47
Berceo (1985) 11, 24, 37–45, 69–78.
The figure of Mary as enclosed garden-paradise was not just literary

but also found frequently in the visual arts. Here a couple of salient
examples must suffice. In a Rijksmuseum painting from the first half
of the fifteenth century of The Virgin and Child between Four Virgins,
Mary holds the Child on her lap and is seated in the middle of a
raised platform. It is separated from the rest of the depicted space
by a railing and stands in a completely enclosed courtyard before a
wall with shut gate in the central middle ground, beyond which is
a landscape. A distinctly cloister-like effect is produced. The closed
gate, sequestration, and premeditated contrast of inside/outside are
clearly meant to signify Mary as the enclosed garden of the Song of
Songs. To emphasize her virginity through the iconographic principle
of parallelism, she is closely surrounded on her garth platform by
four female virgin saints (left without obvious identifying attributes).48
They are the adjectives that qualify her Noun.
Braunfels rightly compared this picture’s hierarchism of space to
that of the Uffizi painting of about 1485–88 by Giovanni Bellini
whose title is unknown but which was most aptly characterized by
Robertson as A Meditation on the Incarnation.49 In it we see a garth-
like space with tile floor segregated by a marble railing from the grassy
knoll on which it stands. The hill in turn is separated from the back-
ground landscape by an intervening lagoon. As in the Netherlandish
arrangement there are sacred personages standing inside the primary
space of the ‘garth’ and others—in this instance Peter and Paul, the
guardians of the church/paradise50—outside of it, in the secondary
space of the knoll.
The fundamental identity of the garth-like space of Mary as the
agent of incarnation in the Rijksmuseum work is maintained in
Bellini’s. Mary is the queen enthroned, dominant over her son (who
sits on a pillow while contemplating an apple) in height and posture.
Her throne’s two upper steps are of normal rectilinear form, but Bellini
made the two lower steps semicircular to avoid an abrupt transition
and thus allow it to flow into the central figure of the cosmic cross
48
Braunfels (1956) 4 and Abb. 3; and Edgerton (2001) 208–09.
49
Braunfels (1956) 9; and Robertson (1968) 101.
50
As the principal apostle to the Jews and apostle to the Gentiles, respectively,
Peter and Paul represent the two columns that uphold the Catholic church and by
extension they embody the fabric of the church. Jameson (1895) 1: 179–80; Clement
(1971) 250; Mâle (1984) 384; and Vetter (1965) 124–25.
in the square that is her son’s theatre. All of the protagonists within
the central claustral figure—the Child and the three baby souls who
seek the apples of salvation in the tree of life brought by the new
Adam and the new Eve—are on the horizontal arm of the pave-
ment cross that departs from the exact midpoint of the throne’s cir-
cular steps. Mary sits outside of her son’s cruciform theatre, but its
construction and its protagonists necessarily flow from her. The
Acolman first cloister’s signification was realized along the same basic
tenets as those expressed by Bellini.
Mary’s ultimate abstract identity is as source or progenitor, whether
in the guise of earth, enclosed garden, or fountain. She was linked
with the central fountain of the Jeronymite monastery of Guadalupe’s
principal cloister at Puebla, Extremadura, Spain by a long laudatory
inscription carved into the basin. This is to be expected because the
monastery largely owed its position as one of the two or three most
important houses of any religious order in early modern Spain to
its possession of the miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The basin, dated 1405, was destroyed during the years of anticler-
ical reaction, but chroniclers had previously recorded the inscrip-
tions.51 By marking the central fountain as a metaphor for Mary,
the Jeronymites effectively placed the whole principal cloister—Eden,
symbolically and actually watered by it—under her tutelage. Indeed,
the whole house was hers. Its principal cloister thus constitutes an
important antecedent to the Marian interpretation of the Huejotzingo
and first Acolman cloisters.
Conclusion
A specific consecration of the cloisters of Cuauhtinchán and Epazo-

yucan to the Virgin Mary cannot be proved nor refuted on the basis
of the surviving Marian mural paintings of those two foundations,
which parallel the Virgin’s capacity to be entered yet not defiled
only with the passages that they protect. There is clear evidence that
the Virgin’s advocacy was extended much more broadly at Chimal-
huacán Chalco, Huejotzingo, and Acolman due to the identification
of The Annunciation, the moment when the new paradise was sup-
51
Juaristi (1944) 130–33.
posedly realized through the perfect vessel of Mary, with the three
cloisters as the first image or signpost viewed upon their entry. Only
at Acolman was this identity linked directly with the processional
liturgy, since only its Annunciation was part of the decorative ensem-
ble of the stations. The impact of the Huejotzingo Annunciation was
amplified by the corresponding mural triptych of The Conception that,
like it, was indissolubly linked in meaning to the cloister with which
it was connected.
Unlike the Cuauhtinchán, Chimalhuacán, and Huejotzingo
Annunciations and the Epazoyucan Death and Coronation of the Virgin, the
Huejotzingo Conception and the Acolman Annunciation are sacramental
retables that inevitably imprint a predominantly Marian reading on
the traditional symbolism of the complete cloister, not just depen-
dencies of it. At Acolman such a reading is further reinforced by
the decision to set aside the first cloister as the Virgin’s processional
theatre in premeditated contradistinction with the normal Christocentric
and Passional ambient of the second. The Huejotzingo and Acolman
first cloisters may have been ritually consecrated to the Virgin as
the Franciscan main cloister of Mexico City indeed was in 1702,
but this unproven point is not nearly as important as the fact that
the equation Mary—inviolability—cloister was an essential and inte-
gral aspect of their signification.
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no. 78 (1999) 227–50.
Poole, S. (1987) Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain,
1571–1591 (Berkeley: 1987).
Prem, H. (1974) Matrícula de Huexotzinco (Graz, Austria: 1974).
Purtle, C. (1982) The Marian Paintings of Jan Van Eyck (Princeton: 1982).
Réau, L. (1955–59) Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: 1955–59).
Rey, R. (1955) L’Art des Cloîtres romans: Étude iconographique (Toulouse: 1955)
Ricard, R. (1933) La “Conquête spirituelle” du Mexique (Paris: 1933).
Rieder, K. (1908) Der sogennante St. Georgener Prediger (Berlin: 1908).
Robertson, G. (1968) Giovanni Bellini (Oxford: 1968).
Román, H. (1575) Repvblicas del mvndo, divididas en xxvii. libros (Medina del Campo,
Spain: 1575).
Rupert of Deutz (1974) Commentaria in Canticvm Canticorvm (Turnhout, Belgium: 1974).
Salazar Monroy, M. (1945) Motivos ornamentales al fresco del convento franciscano de
Huejotzingo (Puebla, Mexico: 1945).
Santiago (1540–87) “Actas provinciales de la provincia de Santiago de México,
1540–87.” A microfilm of Ms. 142 from the Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection
of the University of California, Berkeley, consulted in the Fondo de Microfilm
of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología
e Historia, Mexico City, Fondo Miscelánea, roll 89.
Schapiro, M. (1985) The Sculpture of Moissac (London: 1985).
Schwaller, J (1987) The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: 1987).
Sigüenza, J. de (1907–09) Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (Madrid: [1605] 1907–09).
Snyder, J. (2005) Northern Renaissance Art, eds. L. Silver and H. Luttikhuizen (Upper
Saddle River, NJ: 2005).
Synan, E.A. (1967) “Honorius of Autun,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967).
Toussaint, M. (1948) Acolman (Mexico City: 1948).
Van Engen, J. (1983) Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: 1983).
Vetter, E. (1965) “Das Frankfurter Paradiesgärtlein,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher 9, (1965)
102–46.
Warner, M. (1976) Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New
York: 1976).
Wilkie, J. (1967) “Philip of Harvengt,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967).
Wilkie, W. (1967) “Hugh of Fouilloy,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967).
PART IV
FULFILLMENT:
THE EXTENSION AND EXPRESSION OF THE
FEMALE BODY IN THE NEW WORLD
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CONVENTS, ART, AND CREOLE IDENTITY IN

LATE VICEREGAL NEW SPAIN
Elizabeth Perry
The nuns of the convents of New Spain were patrons and practitioners
of a variety of art forms, including music, drama, architecture, paint-
ing, sculpture, and embroidery. This paper focuses on a cluster of
innovative visual practices developed in and around the colonial con-
vents by Mexico’s creole elite. These innovations began in the first half
of the seventeenth century with the development of the escudo de monja
(nun’s shield) hagiographic badge (Figs. 13.1 and 13.2).1 The escudo
de monja was invented as a collaboration between the convents and
a reform-minded episcopate. They were official commissions of the
convents, or gifts to them, and remained convent property after the
deaths of the nuns who wore them. In the eighteenth century, with
the convents in decline and the creole elite struggling to deal with the
reforms of the Bourbon monarchy, a second new genre of art, the
monja coronada (crowned nun) portrait tradition was invented by
the families of the nuns (Fig. 13.3). Monja coronada paintings put
the image of the Mexican nuns and their distinctive costumes and
ritual practices on permanent and near life-size display in the palatial
homes of the creole elite. This new visual culture associated with the
convents contributed to a local resistance to Spanish authority and to
creole self-fashioning as a noble, courtly, and divinely elected people.
The first escudos de monjas appeared in the Mexican convents in
the 1630s in response to restrictions of dress imposed upon the con-
vents by the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Manso y Zuñiga
(1587–1655). Manso y Zuñiga had arrived in Mexico in 1629 as a
post-Tridentine bishop with a mandate for reform. The restructuring
1
This article is based on my dissertation, “Escudos de monjas/Shields of Nuns: The
Creole Convent and Images of Mexican Identity in Miniature,” Ph.D. diss., Brown
University, 1999. I would like to warmly thank my dissertation advisors, Dr. Jeffrey
Muller and Dr. Marcus Burke.
322 elizabeth perry
Fig. 13.1 Unknown Mexican artist, Virgin and Child with Saints. 17th c.,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Dr. Robert H. Lamborn Collection.
convents, art, and creole identity 323
Fig. 13.2 Unknown Mexican artist, Coronation of the Virgin with Saints. Ca.
1770–90, Denver Art Museum, Collection of Jan and Frederick R. Mayer.
324 elizabeth perry
Fig. 13.3 Andrés López, Sister Pudenciana. 1782, Olana State Historic Site, New
York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.
of the religious orders, and of convents in particular, had been

ordered by the Council of Trent at its third session (1562–1563),
masterminded by St. Charles Borromeo (1538–1584), the nephew of
Pius IV. Although lay and religious women played a large part in the
reform movement, the Council of Trent had especially charged the
bishops with this obligation, and Borromeo himself would go on to
famously reform the convents of Milan.2 These celebrated convent
reforms would have been current in the mind of Archbishop Manso
y Zuñiga as he composed his own rule for Mexican nuns in the seven-
teenth century, especially in light of Borromeo’s recent canonization
in 1610. The oldest, wealthiest, and most luxurious convents in New
Spain were those of the Conceptionist Order, and the most visible
sign of their reform would be a change in the appearance of the
nuns themselves.
Since the establishment of their Order at the end of the fifteenth
century, Conceptionist nuns had been required to wear two images of
their patron, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. One image
was worn over the heart in the form of a venera—a detachable piece
of devotional jewelry, usually made of precious material such as
enameled gold. The second image was worn as an embroidered
patch on the shoulder of the nun’s cloak. The devotional image worn
on the heart and sleeve was a courtly tradition begun in late medieval
Europe and brought to Mexico from Spain. Members of other mil-
itary, chivalric, and religious orders in New Spain wore similar com-
binations of insignia on the chest and the cape. However, only the
veneras of the convents would change in form, becoming the new and
unique form of devotional art known as the escudo de monja.
In his 1635 rules for the Conceptionist nuns of New Spain, Manso
y Zuñiga did not attempt to impose radical reform on the Mexican
convents, as was taking place at the time in the discalced convents
of Spain. He sought only to impose partial reform, especially in the
symbolic realm of dress. The bishop reminded the Mexican nuns of
their vows of enclosure, chastity, obedience, and poverty (the inter-
pretation of which was most troubling to all). He then directly
addressed the issue of the Marian badges, stating that the nuns were
now required:
2
Baernstein (1993).
326 elizabeth perry
[to] wear on their cape and scapular an image of Our Lady, sur-
rounded by the rays of the sun and wearing a crown of stars on the
head, in a setting that is plain and decorous, which is not to be of gold,
stone, or enamel.3
The original (Spanish) rules of the order had not specified anything
about the material of the images.
It was precisely at this time, in the 1630s, that the Mexican Con-
ceptionist nuns began to wear small paintings on copper or parchment
set into frames of indigenous tortoise shell in the place of their tradi-
tional veneras of enameled gold. The new form of the badges fulfilled
all the requirements of the bishop’s rule: they were images of the
Virgin that were not made with ‘gold, stone, or enamel.’ The shift
in materials was a direct response to the restrictions imposed on the
convents by the bishop, but it was a response on the part of the con-
vents that obeyed the letter of the rule more than its spirit. The tor-
toise shell-framed paintings were as much luxury objects as the veneras
had ever been.
The convents made an ingenious choice in substituting tortoise shell
for the gold of their badges. Tortoise shell was considered a luxury
good in Europe because it had to be imported from the tropics. But
in Mexico it was a plentiful material with a native tradition of skilled
workmanship. From the sixteenth century, it seems to have been
favored for ecclesiastical objects: Its lightness made it a useful mate-
rial for large processional crosses and croziers. Tortoise shell also
held special female associations: it was used by elite Mexican women
for the large combs that held their mantillas, and for their chiqueadors
(beauty patches).4 Not being gold, tortoise shell met the bishop’s con-
ditions, yet it was still a material with a certain cachet of precious-
ness, femininity, and religious importance.
Escudo with Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints (ca. 1630–50), in
the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is an early example
of the new genre (Fig. 13.1). The badge is attributed to a member
of the prominent Lagarto family of illuminators—either Andrés
Lagarto (1589–1666) or Luis de la Vega Lagarto (1586–after 1631)—
3
Emphasis added. “Traigan en el manto y escapulario una imagen de nuestra
Señora, cercada de los rayos del sol, y corona de Estrellas en la cabeza, con guar-
nicion llana, y decente, que no sea de oro, piedras, ni esmalte;” Manso y Zuñiga
(1635) 5.
4
Armella de Aspe (1979) 10.
who were active in the city of Puebla in the early seventeenth century.
The painting is executed in gouache and gold leaf on parchment, the
technique of manuscript illumination. It depicts a seated crowned
Virgin and Child surrounded by a glory of cherubs, some holding
symbols of her Immaculate Conception, and flanked by Saints John
the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria. The composition is encir-
cled with a representation of the Franciscan cord and a decorative
border of cherubs’ heads on a blue background. The border design,
which includes some motifs associated with metalwork (such as sgraffito
marks), may have originated in attempts to imitate the appearance
of the original Conceptionist veneras made of enameled gold.5 The
entire escudo, framed in tortoise shell and glass, measures fifteen
centimeters in diameter.6
Such new badges must have been considered a successful solution
to the problem of precious materials and womanly vanity, at least
initially, because the bishops permitted more escudos to be made
and the practice was allowed to spread. If the bishops had not been
pleased with the escudos, they certainly had the authority to stop their
production and use. An escudo attributed to Andrés Lagarto and
now in the treasury of the Cathedral of León was a gift of a bishop
newly returned from Mexico, a gesture suggestive of episcopal pride
in the new genre.7 The new type of badge—the small painting framed
in tortoise shell—was adopted by Conceptionist convents in other
parts of Latin America and eventually retransmitted back to Spain.8
However, although elements of the genre, or even an early version
of what would become the escudo de monja, migrated to other parts
of the Spanish Empire, the elaborate and distinctive escudo de monja
5
The blue ground used on some of the early borders—especially in the early illu-
minated escudos—was a motif seen in both miniature painting and enameled metal-
work. Miniature painters used finely ground precious materials to achieve sparkling
effects like those of inlaid stone and enamel traditional in jewelry work. An example
of such a blue ground used in metalwork borders is the rim of lapis lazuli around
a ca. 1540 portrait medallion of Charles V; Evans [1970] 83, 96, and pl. 65.
6
The Conceptionists were associated with the Franciscan Order, although they
had their own rule.
7
Tovar de Teresa (1988) 176–177.
8
The abbess of the Conceptionist Convent in Lima, Peru, Sister María A. Sorazu,
shared with me photographs of eighteenth-century portraits of abbesses depicted
wearing small escudos. The 1728 rules of a discalced Conceptionist convent in
Cádiz recommended that the nuns wear images made of base metal or framed in
tortoise shell in the place of the traditional veneras; Regla y Constituciones . . . (1728) 6.
328 elizabeth perry
developed only in Mexico. By the end of the seventeenth century,

the Mexican badges were significantly larger and visually more com-
plex than any other genre of devotional jewelery in the early mod-
ern west.
Although they were worn on the body and functioned as badges
of devotion and group identity, escudos de monjas were at least as
closely allied to small cabinet pictures—a genre that includes painted
and embroidered images—as to jewelry, including the veneras from
which they evolved. The painted escudos were small in scale for
paintings, yet complex in composition and execution. They belonged
to the European tradition of small-scale painting, which was part of
the mainstream of seventeenth-century art. Although some early painted
escudos, such as the example in Philadelphia, were executed in
gouache on parchment, the technique of ‘true’ miniature painting
as practiced by Flemish and English artists, virtually all other painted
escudos were executed in oil paint on a metal base, usually a sheet of
copper (some escudos were embroidered).9 This was the traditional
medium for small-scale painting in Spain, as in much of Italy. Unlike
‘true’ miniatures, which were executed by specialists in the technique
of illumination (gouache on parchment), oil ‘miniatures’ were made
by the same painters who made full-scale paintings (in other words,
by the most widely known painters).10 Following in this Spanish tra-
dition of working in both ‘large and small,’ the most renowned artists
of New Spain painted the large oil miniatures that were known as
escudos de monjas. For this reason, the use of the escudo de monja
should be seen not only as a religious practice of the creole elite but
also as a public display by this group of the finest and most advanced
painting in New Spain.11
9
For a discussion of the term ‘miniature’ painting as it was used in the seven-
teenth century, see Colding (1953).
10
For example, Francisco Pacheco estimated that of the approximately 150 por-
trait paintings that he had made, more than half were ‘small ones;’ cited in Stratton,
The Golden Age in Miniature (1988) 22.
11
The absence of documentation recording payment for the escudos in the records
of either the convents or the artists suggests that at least some of the escudos may
have been offered to the convents as acts of devotion rather than having been com-
mercial objects sold to the convents. Dr. Ruiz Gomar kindly confirmed this lack
of documentation in a 1996 conversation at IIE, UNAM, and I thank him for his
collaboration. The very fact that names of artists can often be attached to the escu-
dos (or were sometimes already attached, i.e., signed, by their makers) also distin-
guishes the escudos from other forms of religious jewelry, which were usually left
unsigned and can only rarely be attributed to a named artisian or even to a par-
ticular country. See Lightbown (1992) 42–43.
In contrast to the earlier veneras brought from Spain, which

depicted only the image of the Virgin, the Mexican escudos de mon-
jas customarily represented an elaborate sacra conversazione of angels,
saints, and other holy figures. The theme of the Virgin’s coronation
by the Trinity was incorporated into the design, as well as the elab-
orate decorative border of flowers and winged cherubs’ heads. Although
simple versions of the sacra conversazione theme can sometimes be
seen on other types of devotional jewelry, the complexity of the scenes
represented on the escudos de monjas (especially the large number
of figures) can be paralleled only by larger devotional works, including
retablos (altarpieces), the genre of painting with the highest status in
New Spain. The ornamental border designs of flowers and cherubs’
heads that adorned both painted and embroidered escudos for two
centuries also carried associations with larger devotional paintings.
The designs recall the garlands of flowers painted around devotional
images of the Virgin or saints in imitation of real flower offerings.12
The incorporation of these elaborate new elements into the Mexican
medallions was a development that can only be characterized as an
act of considerable artistic ambition for the new genre.
However, this desire to create complex images with many figures
and decorative elements necessarily conflicted with the concurrent
need for the images to operate as legible badges. The slight increase
in the size of the escudo de monja in the period immediately fol-
lowing the invention of the genre may have been an attempt to help
resolve this difficulty. It can be argued the this modest increase in
size—about one to two inches larger than the earliest examples—
resulted in a medallion that was as large as was feasible for an image
worn on the body. The light material of the tortoise shell frames was
also a key factor allowing this development: metal or wooden frames
would have made such large paintings too heavy to have been com-
fortably worn by the nuns. The increase in size may have been
small; but in scale with the human body, the change was enough
to make the escudos de monjas appear strangely marvelous and
unlike any other form of devotional jewelry. The change also allowed
the artists painting the escudos more space in which to represent an
increasingly complex pantheon of devotional figures.
The legibility required of a badge was also preserved in the newly
complex escudos de monjas through a rigid standardization of the
12
For a study of this genre, see Freedberg (1981).
330 elizabeth perry
composition. The predictability of the composition helped the visually

complex badges to be more easily read from a distance (as the escu-
dos usually would have been seen by the public—on the bodies of
the nuns, from a distance, during a performance of the liturgy or
other ceremony). The standardization of the composition and bor-
der design, as well as the distinctive framing material, also helped
to define the escudo as a distinctive genre of object.13
Beyond their status as the tour de force of a new Mexican genre,
the escudos de monjas represented great cultural authority through
their iconography, which centered on the Virgin of the Immaculate
Conception. Closely associated with Habsburg royal patronage, the
holy image of the Inmaculada was painted by the entire litany of
‘golden-age’ Spanish painters: Ribera, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo,
etc. The miraculous appearance of the Inmaculada—the Guadalupana—
on the tilmatli (cloak, also tilma) of a converted Mexican was promoted
by creoles as extraordinary evidence of their divine favor. Even the
pope was said to have exclaimed of this Mexican Virgin: Nomi tanto
omi nationi; “God has done such for no other nation.”14 This Inmaculada
was asserted to be an acheiropoitic image (one made without human
hands). Because of its divine origin, the Mexican Guadalupe was the
supreme and ultimate Inmaculada. Her cult influenced the meaning
of every image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in New
Spain, including that of the escudos de monjas. Through the cult of
the divine image of Guadalupe, Mexico could claim a special and
miraculous inmaculada that trumped the Spanish one.
Their makers, patrons, and audience would all have been very
conscious of the fact that, when worn on the body, the escudos de
monjas represented a completely new genre of devotional art and
religious practice. As a new genre, the escudo de monja became a
Mexican artistic tradition that could compete with Spanish tradition.
Poignant proof of the special esteem accorded the escudos is the
very fact that, unlike other elements of the nuns’ costume and acces-
sories such as the silver crowns worn at convent rituals, a great many
escudos de monjas—including early examples—were preserved by
13
Tortoise shell appears to have become reserved for the new genre—it was vir-
tually never used to frame other types of devotional jewelry or portrait miniatures.
14
These words were attributed to Pope Benedict XIV upon seeing the image of
the Guadalupana for the first time (through a painted copy). This proto-nationalistic
motto was added to painted and printed copies of the Guadaulpana in the eighteenth
century; see Lafaye (1976) 88.
the convents rather than being merely buried with the nuns.15 Clearly,
these were esteemed works of art as well as sacred and devotional
objects.
There is evidence that before the end of the seventeenth century
the Church hierarchy had concerns about the suitability of the con-
vents’ new art form. In 1673, following a pastoral visitation to the
Convento de San Jeronimo in Mexico City, Archbishop Payo de
Ribera castigated the nuns for the excess of their dress, and issued
pronouncements concerning the prohibition of colored ribbons, lace
that was worn on cloths around the head “under the pretext of ill-
ness,” lace worn on sleeves, colored underskirts, or other vanities.
Furthermore, the bishop reprimanded the nuns to “take care in your
escudos that you should wear you do not exceed in preciousness or
curiosity the holy poverty that you profess.”16 Indeed, the escudos
de monjas no longer seemed the product of a reform; the curiously
oversized shields were, rather, the epitome of worldly preciousness
and pride.
A late-eighteenth-century escudo in the Mayer Collection at the
Denver Art Museum is particularly beautiful and elaborate (Fig.
13.2). At least twenty-two figures of saints and angels are artfully
arranged in an eight-and-a-half-inch tortoise shell frame. In its style
and complexity it is similar to escudos made by, or attributed to, José
de Paéz (1720–ca. 1790). Paéz was a prolific artist who often worked
for the Mexican convents. At least eleven escudos de monjas, includ-
ing a large Jeronymite escudo in the collection of the Hispanic Society
of America in New York, are attributed to this artist. The escudo
represents the coronation of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception
by the Trinity, surrounded by three tiers of saints and the Sacred
15
In contrast, almost all of the nuns’ crowns, which were made of silver, and
also therefore at least ‘semi-precious’ objects, were buried with the nuns. Archeological
excavations at the convents of San Jerónimo have shown that some of the nuns
were buried wearing escudos de monjas; Carrasco Vargas (1990). However, as a
photograph of the burials at the Conceptionist Convento de la Encarnación shows,
the nuns were not all buried wearing their escudos; Perdigón Castañeda (1994) 19.
Numerous early escudos made by important painters survive, showing that these
objects were valued by the convents and deliberately saved from burial (and some
escudos exist that were elaborately framed in monstrance-like stands). Evidence from
the monja coronada paintings and some elaborately framed escudos also suggests
that by the eighteenth century older escudos were being recycled by the convents
for the next generation.
16
Cited in Carmen Reyna (1990) 27.
332 elizabeth perry
Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The upper tier of saints depicts, from left
to right, St. Joachim, St. John the Baptist, Michael the Archangel,
Raphael the Archangel, the Guardian Angel with a human soul, and
St. Anne. The middle tier depicts Saints Luis Gonzaga, John of
Nepomuk, Barbara, Joseph with the Child Jesus, Rosalia of Palmero,
and John of God. The bottom tier depicts Saints Gertrude the Great,
Ignatius Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Stanislaus Kostka with the Child
Jesus, Theresa of Avila, and Anthony of Padua taking the Christ
child from the arms of Joseph in the tier above. The composition
is surrounded by the border of roses, blue ribbons, and cherubs’
heads on a gold ground distinctive of the escudo de monja genre,
and is set into a tortoiseshell and glass frame.
What appears to modern eyes as a bewildering crowd of unidentifi-
able figures was, in the eyes of its original audience, a clearly rec-
ognizable and ordered representation of the spiritual identity of the
convent. The iconography seen on the escudo de monja was a com-
plex sacra conversazione of angels, saints, and other holy figures, espe-
cially monastics, who had supported and advanced the cult of the
Virgin. This sacred history of devotion to the Virgin was held by
the creole elite to have been only now coming into its final fulfillment
in Mexico (in part through the actions of the nuns themselves). The
escudos de monjas represent the Virgin in a variety of incarnations:
As the Inmaculada, the winged Virgin of the Apocalypse, the Guada-
lupana, and the Virgin Annunciate. All of these images of Mary
must be understood as carrying apocalyptic meaning in the context
of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was promoted by the
creole elite as evidence of the culminating role New Spain was des-
tined to play in human salvation.
The representations on the escudos de monjas were intended pri-
marily as signs (badges) of institutional identity meant to be read,
rather than solely as objects made for the private devotional medi-
tations of the nuns (although they probably also functioned in that
way). The rules of the Conceptionist Order specifically stated that the
purpose of the image worn by the nuns was to function before the
eyes of others as a visual reminder of the nuns’ practice of the imi-
tation of the Virgin. The Virgin was said to be literally ‘impressed
in the heart’ of her devotee. The Marian image was symbolically
‘tied’ to the bodies of elite creole women through their escudos de
monjas, and through the pageantry and performance of convent rit-
ual. These rituals—the specialized ceremonies of profession and death
as well as the nuns’ daily recitation of the Hours of the Virgin, the
Litany of Loretto, and the Franciscan Crown Rosary—all centered
on a metaphor of coronation.17 Therefore, the representation of the
Coronation of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven on the escudo de
monja was both a visual prayer glorifying the Virgin and a power-
ful means of associating the creole nuns with this ultimate, and royal,
feminine spiritual authority.
The pronounced Jesuit iconography of many late colonial escu-
dos, including this example, also appears to have had political as
well as religious meaning for the creole convents. In 1767 Charles
III expelled the Society of Jesus from Mexico, an act that provoked
great outrage among the creole elite. The convents are noted as hav-
ing been particularly zealous in their defense of their former con-
fessors and mentors. Because written statements concerning the
expulsion were forbidden by royal decree, visual statements, such as
paintings, were an important method of local protest. Several large
allegorical paintings glorifying the Jesuits were made in New Spain
in the period immediately following the expulsion and were proba-
bly related to the convents.18 The Jesuit-pervaded iconography of
many escudos de monjas after 1767, including this escudo with its
depictions of Ignatius Loyola, Luis Gonzaga, and Stanislaus Koska,
among others, can be seen as creole acts of solidarity with the Jesuit
Order that were made in direct defiance of the Spanish Crown.
New Spain was still in turmoil over the expulsion of the Jesuits
when the Bourbon monarchy began to actively support radical con-
vent reform under Bishop Francisco Fabián y Fuero (1765–1773) of
Puebla and Archbishop Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana y Butrón
(1766–1772) of Mexico.19 Besides dress, issues of reform included the
large number of niñas or “protégées” (often the nuns’ sisters and nieces)
living in the convents, the excessive number of servants, the unlim-
ited admission of secular women into the convents as beatas, and the
excessive personal expenses of the nuns. The ultimate goal of the
bishops was to force the convents to accept a communal lifestyle—
with all expenses and income pooled on a common basis, full com-
munal possession of goods, and the abandonment of private cells and
17
See my dissertation for an extensive discussion of the relationship between the
escudos and convent ritual and literature.
18
Mateo Gómez (1989) 377–386.
19
Lavrín (1965).
334 elizabeth perry
servants. The convents would use all avenues of redress and resistance
to the common life, such as numerous petitions to the Council of the
Indies, to the Audiencia, directly to the Crown, and even to Rome.
The nuns of the convent of Santa Inés in Puebla went so far as to
petition the viceroy to remove their bishop from office.20 In all their
suits, the convents’ position was basically the same: Their standard
of living was an established tradition and they were under no legal
obligation to live a reformed lifestyle. The dress of the nuns repre-
sented the outward sign of their compliance with episcopal pressure,
and for that reason carried symbolic meaning for both sides of the
debate.21
That the escudo de monja became an element of that politically
charged struggle is apparent in the diffusion of the practice of wear-
ing escudos among the unreformed convents of New Spain. In the
seventeenth century, the use of the escudo had been confined to the
Conceptionist Order and to three convents that had been founded
by the Conceptionists in the sixteenth century. Therefore, the initial
use of the escudo de monja in Mexico represented an informal kind
of ‘family’ practice on the part of certain convents that were related—
to the Conceptionist Order and to each other—by their foundations.
Yet the practice was also from the start firmly linked to the wider
reform issue: While Conceptionist nuns also founded the first Carmelite
convent in New Spain (the order reformed by Saint Teresa of Avila)
escudos de monjas were never worn by the Carmelites. And when
Bishop Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz (1637–1699) founded the
reformed Augustinian convent of Santa Mónica in Puebla, the reformed
Augustinian nuns also shunned the escudo (even though their unre-
formed sisters in Mexico had adopted the practice). At some point
in the eighteenth century, the Dominican convents of Santa Catalina
de Siena in Mexico City and in Puebla began, for the first time, to
wear escudos de monjas. This convent was unreformed and active
in the protests against the reforms. None of the other more austere
Dominican convents adopted the escudo de monja. By the end of
20
Ibid., 193.
21
The vehemence of that criticism and the importance of costuming as a symbolic
construct are made clear in a 1735 letter to the Abbess of the Convento de Santa
Clara in Querétaro. In the letter, the Franciscan Provincial threatened the nuns of
Santa Clara with excommunication for even speaking—for or against—the forbid-
den practice of decorative pleating of the nuns’ scapulars. The letter is cited in
Gonzalbo Aizpurú (1987) 241.
the eighteenth century—the time of the most intense struggles over

reform—virtually all of the unreformed convents of the metropolitan
center of New Spain (Mexico City and Puebla) were wearing the
escudo de monja, regardless of traditional practices or foundations.
Significantly, none of Mexico City’s reformed convents of any order
ever adopted the escudo de monja. The escudos de monjas had
become both a product of imposed religious reform and an inge-
nious subversion of that reform.
Ironically, despite declining enrollments in the convents, both the
nuns and their escudos de monjas became more, not less, visible in
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century creole society. Perhaps largely
due to changed demographics, the number of creole women enter-
ing the Mexican convents as professed nuns decreased measurably
in the eighteenth century, and sharply in the nineteenth century.22
Elite creole families no longer needed to have three, or even four, of
their daughters ‘take estate’ in the convents, in part because advan-
tageous marriages were easier to arrange in the late colonial period
(there was now no acute shortage of ‘white’ elite males). However,
the profession of a daughter still carried important social and reli-
gious status, and remained a major and predictable social event for
nearly every elite creole family. It is in the context of this struggle
for native autonomy centered on the convents of Mexico that the
monja coronada genre of portraiture emerged.
The monja coronada portrait depicted an image of the young nun
at the time of her religious profession, which was commissioned by
her family for display in the home. Like the escudo de monja, this was
a new tradition, and it seems only to have occurred in Mexico begin-
ning about 1727.23 What is interesting to note is that the number of
creole women entering the Mexican convents as professed nuns
decreased measurably in the eighteenth century due to changing
social conditions, yet the image of the nun became more important. The
nun became more, not less, visible in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
century creole society. The monja coronada portrait genre appeared
in the creole home precisely as the meaning of the religious profes-
sion pictured was being bitterly contested. This contestation existed
22
Lavrín (1986) 175.
23
The most important recent studies of the monjas coronadas paintings are the
doctoral dissertation of Montero Alarcón (2002), and the exhibition catalog Monjas
coronadas . . . (2004).
336 elizabeth perry
within the context of larger political conflicts stemming from creole

desire for political and social equity and self-determination in their
relationship with Spain. If the number of actual nuns had shrunk,
their symbolic meaning in creole culture had only increased.
Like the escudo de monja, the monja coronada tradition devel-
oped out of Spanish practice, specifically a form of portraiture based
on a metaphor of divine coronation. The nun’s betrothal to Christ
and symbolic coronation was a central metaphor of convent culture
in the late medieval and early modern period.24 Crowns were used in
convent funerary rituals as well as ceremonies of profession through-
out Europe (they were also used in marriage ceremonies). Convents
sometimes commissioned a death portrait of particularly important
or holy nuns and the nuns were often depicted wearing crowns.25
Decked in flowers, wearing the crown of her mystical betrothal, and
surrounded by burning candles, the body of the crowned nun is
shown as she appeared at her funerary ceremonies. These deathbed
portraits of crowned nuns were the oldest type of monja coronada
portraiture, and were a practice brought to Mexico from Spain. They
exist throughout Latin America.26
In contrast to this practice, the new Mexican monja coronada genre
was an image of the young nun at the time of her religious profes-
sion, commissioned by her family for display in the home. Monja
coronada paintings quickly developed as a standardized image: The
young woman in her costume was shown alone against a simple back-
ground and holding special ritual accessories, such as Christ child
figurines. The accessories—the statues, stylized floral palms, lit candles,
and elaborate crowns, as well as the inscriptions on the paintings—
all signaled the transformation of these creole women into the spir-
itual brides of Christ. After completing the year of the novitiate, the
young woman was allowed to leave the convent for a period of three
to five days before the ceremony of her final vows, and it was most
likely during her brief final visit to the family home that her por-
trait was completed. When the young woman disappeared into the
cloister, her image remained to comfort her family and commemorate
her sacrifice and piety; it also celebrated the status of the family.
The practices surrounding the admission of a creole woman into
24
For this aspect of convent culture, see Vanderbroeck (1994).
25
Ibid., 114; and Catálogo IV Centenario . . . (1990) 82.
26
See Jaramillo de Zuleta (1992) for examples from Colombia.
a Mexican convent were an opportunity for a display of creole wealth,

nobility, and spiritual authority. The professed nun provided her
family with prestige, religious assistance, and a network of social and
business contacts. Her dowry and celebration of profession were
costly, but admission to a convent was still less expensive and eas-
ier for the creole family to arrange than an advantageous marriage.
Moreover, these events were opportunities for the display of con-
spicuous consumption of wealth that was deemed necessary for a cre-
ole family to maintain elite-class status. The limpieza de sangre (purity
of blood) requirement of the convents not only served to exclude
women of Native American, African, or mixed lineages from the
convents, it also served to document publicly the (supposedly) ‘pure’
Spanish descent of the creole families of the women accepted for
convent admission. This was a touchy issue for the creole elite, as
the purity of creole blood was treated as quite suspect by Spanish
elites. Their doubts were reasonable, because many creole families
were indeed not of ‘pure’ Spanish descent, but acceptance into a
convent ‘proved’ otherwise.27 The monja coronada portrait served as
a superb document of this status for the entire family.
The nun not only represented the presence of racial purity and of
the sacred in the lineage of her family but she was also evidence of
its wealth and status. Profession required considerable expense; both
the dowry and the extravagant public celebration of religious pro-
fession were costly. High officials from local and regional govern-
ment, the nobility, and even the viceroy were in attendance at the
religious profession of a daughter of a prominent family. Engraved
invitations were sent for the ceremony, which was preceded by a
mass with a special sermon given by an invited speaker. The sermon,
which often used the woman’s new religious name as its theme, was
published by the family and given as a keepsake of the occasion.
On the way to the church for the ceremony the girl was processed
through the streets of the city in an open carriage, displaying her
ceremonial finery as she bid farewell to the world.28 All of these
ephemeral practices were made into a permanent display through
the monja coronada paintings.
27
See Israel (1975) 93.
28
Fanny Calderón de la Barca (1804–1882), the wife of the Spanish ambassador
to Mexico, wrote an informative and entertaining account of a nineteenth-century
religious profession held at the Conceptionist convent La Encarnación; Calderón
de la Barca (1966) 264–267.
338 elizabeth perry
Convent rituals offered the creole elite an opportunity to display

a distinctively Mexican expression of Spanish cultural tradition. The
floral crowns worn by the nuns of New Spain at their ceremonies
of profession and death were, like the escudos de monjas, an elab-
oration and Mexicanization of Spanish traditions: The crowns worn
by nuns in colonial Mexico were much larger and more ornate than
those worn in Europe.29 It is probable that native Mexica traditions
contributed to the creation of the elaborate floral crown tradition of
colonial Mexico. Flowers were used in some similar ways (as head-
dresses) in pre-Hispanic religious ceremonies; these practices are doc-
umented in the codices. The basic crown was made of silver, and
was ornamented with a fantastic array of objects: Beads, sequins,
wax figurines of the baby Jesus, the Virgin, or other saints, and
above all with flowers—artificial and most likely fresh as well. The
flowers worn in the crowns of the nuns may have symbolized par-
ticular religious meanings for their audience; flowers often signified
religious virtues in the devotional literature of the period.30 Finally,
the crown’s associations with royalty and nobility should not be for-
gotten, as they were surely part of the intended meaning of the total
assemblage.
In addition to accessories like the crown, there were many fea-
tures of the costumes seen in the monjas coronadas that were inim-
itably Mexican. Most of the nuns are depicted wearing stoles, an
article of religious dress worn by bishops, priests, and deacons. The
practice of nuns wearing stoles appears provocative in light of the
convents’ struggle for autonomy against the bishops of Mexico. The
Mexican nun’s headdress included an unusual curved form called
the panocha.31 This extra bit of ornamental fabric hung over the nun’s
forehead and often displayed large pendant pearls. The pleated scapu-
lar decorating the front of the habit was a labor-intensive detail of
dress criticized (to no avail) as an affectation of fashion by the Church
authorities attempting to reform these creole institutions.32 And finally,
on top of the nun’s pleated scapular frequently appeared the over-
29
The Mexican crowns were several times larger than crowns used in Europe,
such as a Franciscan crown from Hasselt published in Vanderbroeck (1994) 114.
30
In her article on monjas coronadas, García Barragán (1992) draws some specific
meanings for the floral iconography from devotional literature and emblem books.
31
Armella de Aspe and Tovar de Teresa (1993) 85.
32
See note 21.
sized and singular Marian medallion of the unreformed convents:

The escudo de monja.
A 1782 portrait of Sor Pudenciana Josefa Manuela del Corazón
de María as a monja coronada depicts such an elaborately costumed
young creole woman (Fig. 13.3). Sor Pudenciana is represented as
turning slightly and faintly smiling as she engages the viewer’s eye.
Her young and somewhat melancholy face contrasts markedly with
her elegant and formal attire: A long habit, cape, scapular, and stole.
The smooth blandness of the paint in the fabric and background of
the painting is broken by islands of ornate detail: The face beneath
its floral crown and pearl-lined panocha, the draped rosary and
embroidered stole, the floral wand with an image of the Virgin of
the Apocalypse held lightly in the left hand, the clothed Christ child
figure held up to view in the other, and the large escudo de monja
worn on the chest. Above her embroidered headdress decorated with
pearls, she wears a crown of silver ornamented with artificial flowers
and a dove in flight, symbol of the Holy Spirit.
The painter was as careful to record every detail of the young
woman’s elaborate costume, which was embroidered with silk, sequins,
and pearls, and her accessories—the crown, wand, figurine, and
escudo de monja—as to capture the likeness of her pretty face. The
inscription on the portrait of Sor Pudenciana has been partially
destroyed to fit into the present frame; it appears to read:
Portrait of Madre Sister Pudenciana Josefa Manuela of the Sacred Heart
of Mary, legitimate daughter of Don D. Bernardo Ramírez Cantrillana
and of Doña María Josefa Ambrosia Tamariz. She was born the 19th
day of May of 1757 and took the habit of a religious [professed as a
novice] in the Encarnación Convent of this court of Mexico, the day 16
of August of 1781, and made her solemn profession [as a nun of the
choir and] black veil [a nun of the highest status] Sunday the 25 of
August of 1782.
The emphasis on the numerology of dates is typical of monja coronada
inscriptions. Statements such as that a particular nun’s profession was
made at “seventeen years, one month, and eleven days of age” are
common. This formula came from traditions of hagiographic literature,
and in using it the young woman was likened to a holy person or
saint. This precise documentation—in word and image—of the cul-
tural display made by the monja coronada is an indication of the
extraordinary importance religious profession in a Mexican convent
held for the creole family as a display of wealth, status, and identity.
340 elizabeth perry
Like all cultural symbols, the escudos de monjas and monjas coro-
nadas worked on a variety of levels of meanings: religious, social,
artistic, and political. The escudo came to function as a symbol of
the convents’ resistance to Spanish reform of a convent lifestyle that
was conceptualized as both a traditional Mexican right and an impor-
tant site of creole culture. It placed the elite-class women of these
colonial convents under the patronage of the Virgin of an apocalypse
that was characterized by the creoles as specifically Mexican in nature,
and its pantheon of saintly beings identified the nuns themselves as
part of that sacred history. The transformation of Spanish culture
was most vividly represented in the picturesque monja coronada por-
traits that captured the ephemeral display of creole spectacle. The
religiosity and courtly splendor of the Mexican people were repre-
sented through the development of new genres of art, such as the
escudo de monja and the monja coronada, that were strange and
marvelous in their visual excess. All these elements of cultural dis-
play were Spanish in origin, and yet completely unlike anything seen
in Spain; they were the creation of a distinctly creole sacred identity.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SWEEPING OF THE WAY:

RETHINKING THE MEXICAN OCHPANIZTLI FESTIVAL
In the aftermath of Spanish colonization of central Mexico in the

sixteenth century, a remarkable corpus of illustrated manuscripts was
created under the auspices of Christian missionaries. These chronicles
classified and categorized virtually every aspect of pre-Columbian native
life. Worried that native Mexicans were still practicing forbidden rit-
uals under the guise of Christian pageantry, missionary-chroniclers
paid special attention to the spectacular pre-Hispanic monthly rituals
to the native gods. The friars, therefore, sought to create a body of
knowledge by which to better understand and thus more effectively
extirpate any lingering native ‘idolatry.’ These manuscripts are under-
stood best, however, as a collaborative effort, since Mexican Indians
participated actively in the project, supplying the friars with their
memories, oral traditions, histories, and written records. What is
more, the manuscripts’ pages are replete with images drawn by native
Mexican artists, the very people whose defunct governments, out-
lawed deities, and proscribed rites they describe. These sources rep-
resent the colonial nexus of different traditions about constructs called
‘books’ and ‘writing,’ and reframe the ritual past in ways significant
to both colonists and indigenous Mexicans.1
1
This essay is part of my forthcoming book, Picturing Ochpaniztli in Colonial Mexican
Codices, printed here by permission of the University Press of Colorado, Boulder. It
is an outgrowth of my dissertation, whose final draft was generously supported by
a Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship at the University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque. An early version of this essay was presented at the Conference of the
Society of Sixteenth Century Studies in San Antonio, Texas in October 2002. Travel
to that conference was funded by a Professional Development Program Grant from
the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Drs. Flora
Clancy and Holly Barnet-Sánchez at the University of New Mexico, and Drs. Charlene
Villaseñor Black and Dr. Cecilia Klein at the University of California at Los Angeles
have all given valuable advice, helping me to clarify my argument. I must also
thank Richard Wright, Mario DiCesare, Roze Hentschell, and Barbara Sebek, who
read drafts of this essay and offered numerous useful suggestions.
344 catherine r. dicesare
This essay investigates these chronicles’ representations of a pre-

Columbian festival known as Ochpaniztli, “the sweeping of the roads.”
This celebration corresponded with one of the series of twenty-day
festival periods dubbed veintenas that, together with the final five un-
named days, comprise the Mexican pre-Hispanic ritual year of 365
days. The Ochpaniztli festival was dedicated to Tlazolteotl, the “deity
of filth” or “divine filth,” a goddess of human sexuality patronized
by diviners, midwives, adulterers, and child-bearers. The friars also
recorded references to her as Toci, “Our Grandmother,” and Teteoin-
nan, “Mother of the Gods.” Despite this variety of appellations, rep-
resentations of her consistently involve one and the same goddess.2
Tlazolteotl was intimately linked with physical and moral ‘filth’ and
led humans to transgress acceptable social and sexual boundaries.
She functioned for both aboriginal informants and Christian friars
as a symbol of debauchery and an instigator of licentious behavior
which could result in serious consequences for the malefactor and
the community at large. At the same time, she was the patroness of
numerous cleansing spaces and activities, and could relieve the ill
effects of the transgressions that she inspired. These were not sepa-
rate contradictory functions for the goddess, however: Engaging
directly with ‘filth’ or immorality of all kinds, in the indigenous con-
ception, could help to overcome it.3
Early colonial Ochpaniztli illustrations usually portray as their
major or even sole focus the paraphernalia-laden figure of Tlazolteotl,
whose attributes usually include a cotton headdress, blackened mouth,
broom, and shield (Figs. 14.1–14.4). For the viceregal viewer, she
manifests the multiple roles that Mexican indigenous women played
as agents of transformation and purification, both in the domestic
sphere as spinners, weavers, cleaners, and child-bearers, and in the
public arena as physicians and midwives. Indeed, Thelma Sullivan
characterized the goddess Tlazolteotl as the very personification of
“the transformative nature of Woman.”4
In this essay I highlight the myriad ways in which ritual purification
was integrated into the Ochpaniztli festival in order to effect trans-
2
According to Sullivan, (1982) 7, the goddess’ name comes from tlazolli, “filth”
or “garbage,” and teotl, “deity.” See also Burkhart (1989) 92. “Divine Filth” is the
translation provided by Klein (1993b) 21. I am indebted to Drs. Klein and Villaseñor
Black, personal communications, July 2002, for the idea that the names Tlazolteotl,
Toci, and Teteoinnan all refer to the same entity.
3
Klein, personal communication, July 2002.
4
Sullivan (1982) 15.
the sweeping of the way
345
Fig. 14.1 Ochpaniztli, fol. 21r, Codex Tudela. Reproduction by permission of the Museo de América de Madrid.
Fig. 14.2 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Elizabeth Hill Boone, The Codex Magliabechiano
and the Lost Prototype of the Magliabechiano Group (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983), fol. 39r, by permission of the University of California Press.
formations at a number of different levels: Domestic, public, moral, and

corporeal. Tlazolteotl was especially linked with profound fears about
the physical illnesses and communal devastation wrought by illicit
sexual activities as well as concerns about procreation and childbirth.
The festival may have incorporated cleansing and penance as well
as magical and medicinal therapies to protect the community, cure
infirmities, and ensure healthy parturition. The colonial Ochpaniztli
illustrations are thus a vital source of information about the ways in
which the indigenous ritual past was remembered or imagined in the
Christianizing milieu of mid-sixteenth-century central Mexico. In cen-
tering their pictorial imagery on the deity’s body and its appurtenances,
the colonial Indian artists left a visual record of Tlazolteotl’s most
important role in the celebration: As the bodily agent of purification
and protection, she took away with her all of the evils and impuri-
ties of the community, restoring equilibrium and harmony.
the sweeping of the way 347
Fig. 14.3 Ochpaniztli, fol. 3r, Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Reproduced by permission

of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Fig. 14.4 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites of the
Ancient Calendar, eds. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden (Norman: 1971) Pl. 24.
© 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Anonymous indigenous artists provided the colonial Ochpaniztli illus-

trations for missionaries who were busy cataloging the gods and rites
of native Mexican worship for the utilization of the mendicant col-
leagues. While Tlazolteotl is prominent pictorially, the friars’ accom-
panying texts treat Ochpaniztli’s public celebratory manifestations.
Though there is no single model for describing the festival, it is usu-
ally set in August or September and linked with key participants,
attributes, and activities that normally include the sacrifice and flaying
of a woman impersonating the goddess, and brooms and sweeping
rites. The most substantial accounts were compiled in New Spain’s
metropolitan center, Mexico City, including the anonymous Codex
Tudela, tentatively dated to 1553, the Dominican friar Diego Durán’s
Book of the Gods . . . of the 1570s, and the voluminous writings of the
Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún for his General History of the Things
of New Spain, also from the 1570s.5
5
Códice Tudela (1980) 263–65; Durán (1971) 229–37 and 447–49; and Sahagún
This group of texts describes maize deities in relation to the cel-

ebration, which in concert with its autumnal date, has led many
modern scholars to conclude that Ochpaniztli was a harvest festival.
Its purification aspects have been generally subsumed within these
agrarian interpretations.6 Yet it is likely that there were localized
variations on these veintena festivities.7 Since lustral rites are also
described independently of maize activities, it is my contention that
the propitiation of maize gods need not be reconciled with the cleans-
ing activities that constitute much of the festival’s enactment. What
is more, Tlazolteotl’s pictorial attributes in the Ochpaniztli illustra-
tions are most readily linked with women’s roles as agents of cleans-
ing and transformation. Indeed, Betty Ann Brown suggests that the
rite’s patroness “originally had little to do with agricultural fertility,
and . . . only took on this significance when her feast was merged
with another, possibly earlier, feast of Chicomécoatl [a maize deity].”8
I will therefore propose that universal purification, linked with social,
moral, and corporeal issues, was actually a chief and separate func-
tion of the Ochpaniztli observance.9
The cognate Codices Tudela and Magliabechiano, both dating to the
mid-sixteenth century, are among the earliest colonial chronicles to
(1950–1982) 2:19–20 and 118–26. Sahagún’s General History is commonly known as

the Florentine Codex. While the provenance of the Codex Tudela manuscript is not
secure, its Ochpaniztli account is especially valuable to this essay because it refers
specifically to rites that purportedly took place at the Great Temple in pre-Hispanic
Tenochtitlán, now the center of Mexico City. On the provenance and dating of
this manuscript, see Boone (1983) 85–88.
6
There is a large body of scholarship on Ochpaniztli’s agrarian overtones. Seler
(1963) 1, 123, interprets its cleansing rites as part of the autumn harvest, in which
maize is symbolically purified as it emerges from the ground. Margain Araujo
(1939–40) 157–74, closely follows Seler’s interpretation. Graulich (1999), especially
chapter 3, also offers an agrarian interpretation of Ochpaniztli in his recent study
of the calendrical cycle, suggesting that it originated as a springtime sowing festi-
val. In his model, purification rites are linked particularly to the renewal of the
earth at the beginning of the rainy season. Broda (1970) 249–52, has discussed its
agrarian rites in relation to martial overtones. Carrasco also examines the inter-
section of warfare and agriculture in a number of essays, most recently Carrasco
(2002) 197–225.
7
Indeed, even Durán (1971) 70–71, admits that, although he obtained differing
versions of festival activities from his indigenous informants, he only included those
things “on which I found my informants agreed.”
8
Brown (1984) 203. Brown’s essay is important for establishing the historical
underpinnings of the festival, rooted particularly in early martial conflicts between
the Mexica and the people of Culhuacán.
9
My analysis is indebted particularly to Burkhart (1989), especially chapter 4,
“Purity and Pollution,” which demonstrates the profound moral and penitential
implications of sweeping and straw brooms.
include representations of the Ochpaniztli festival (Figs. 14.1 and

14.2).10 These illustrations evoke the formal conventions and iconog-
raphy of pre-Columbian manuscript painting, in which figures are
composed of bold, unvarying black outlines that enclose even washes
of ink.11 Bodies are treated so as to convey the maximum amount
of information about dress and iconography. Torsos and arms are
positioned frontally, while heads and legs are depicted in profile, so
that all accessories are clearly legible. The sole figure of the goddess
comprises the illustration in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Fig. 14.3),
which may have been painted about the same time as the Tudela,
c. 1553–55. A virtually identical illustration appears in the Codex
Vatican 3738, a cognate of the Telleriano-Remensis, which was produced
in the Italian language at a slightly later date, probably in the 1560s.12
The figures in both codices appear to have been placed on the page
before the textual annotations that surround them were. Although
the amount of detail in each scene varies, both represent the patron
goddess Tlazolteotl laden with the same accessories. She sports a
headdress of unspun cotton that supports cotton-bedecked spindles.
Black circles adorn her cheeks, usually accompanied by thick black-
ening around her mouth. She carries a broom in one hand, and in
the other a shield decorated with numerous small circles.
This iconography remains consistent in Durán’s slightly later chron-
icles of the 1570s, in which the artist incorporates the pictorial illu-
sionism, naturalism, and landscape associated with the Renaissance
style imported to Mexico, yet the goddess herself is still depicted
with the pre-Columbian-inherited profile orientation of the head and
legs with frontal arms and torso (Fig. 14.4). A related illustration
appears in Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales, which was written in Náhuatl,
the lingua franca of indigenous central Mexico, and compiled at the
Franciscan mission town of Tepeapulco, Hidalgo in 1559–61.13
Though not expertly drawn, this image provides a wealth of picto-
rial information about the Ochpaniztli celebration. The left side of
10
On the date of the Codex Magliabechiano, see Boone (1983) 7ff.
11
See Boone (1983) 34, on the use of the pre-Hispanic painting style in these
two post-Conquest manuscripts. Robertson (1959) devised a useful series of stylistic
categories for analyzing early colonial manuscripts. On style and iconography in
late pre-Columbian manuscripts, see Boone and Smith (2003).
12
Quiñones Keber (1995) 128–32. Codex Vatican 3738 has its Ochpaniztli repre-
sentation on fol. 47v; see Anders, Jansen, and Reyes García (1996).
13
Sahagún (1993 and 1997) fol. 251v.
this pictorial space relates the festival to the goddess’s parapherna-

lia, a headdress and face mask mounted atop a wooden scaffold.
It must be noted at the outset that these early representations of
proscribed native gods and rites are not unmediated visions of the
pre-Columbian past, since this project was carried out largely for
the benefit of those Europeans who sought to extirpate native religion.
What is more, the dearth of pre-Hispanic native manuscripts from
central Mexico with which to compare the colonial material makes it
difficult to know if the Indians drew on established indigenous tradi-
tions for representing the veintena festivals. Nevertheless, the colonial
images are reminiscent of pre-Columbian pictorials, in which the
lavishly adorned bodies of gods and rulers conveyed ample information
about their function and associations through paraphernalia, gesture,
posture, and careful positioning. What is more, the same image of
Tlazolteotl appears—sporting blackened mouth, cotton headdress,
and broom—in the elaborate Ochpaniztli celebration depicted in the
spectacular Codex Borbonicus, a largely pictorial manuscript from cen-
tral Mexico.14 While it is of uncertain date, it may have been an
early colonial copy of a pre-Columbian manuscript, and is almost
certainly of native authorship. I suggest that the native colonial artists
were using highly intentional iconographic and pictorial conventions
for representing the Ochpaniztli patroness.15
On the eve of the Spanish conquest, the native peoples of heart-
land Mexico conceived of Tlazolteotl as a dangerous and powerful
being. Characterized as the ‘deity of filth’ or ‘divine filth,’ she was
linked especially with illicit sexual activity and its disruptive, potentially
fatal consequences. We know a good deal about her associations from
a variety of viceregal sources, including the veintena accounts, histories,
divinatory almanacs, and the ecclesiastics’ catalogs of the Mexican
‘pantheon.’ She was reputed to inspire sexual excesses and adultery,
was the patroness of prostitutes, diviners, and midwives, and embodied
a kind of love magic that could entice humans to commit all manner
14
Codex Borbonicus (1991) 30.
15
The viceregal veintena illustrations have received a good deal of scholarly atten-
tion. For example, Brown (1977) suggests that they were a largely colonial inven-
tion, fostered by missionaries and influenced by European calendrical imagery. On
the other hand, Nicholson (2002) 65 et passim, has recently argued that the vein-
tena cycle had “almost certainly been illustrated in a fairly systematic fashion at
the time of the Spanish conquest” in handbooks.
of carnal sins and sexual transgressions. In his catalog of Mexican

deities Sahagún describes Tlazolteotl as ‘another Venus’ who presided
over the realm of ‘evil and perverseness’ where she inspired ‘lustful
and debauched living.’16 This litany of shame was later echoed in the
seventeenth-century writings of Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada,
who characterizes the goddess as a nasty sex demon, the ‘deity of
excrement and refuse’ venerated especially by those given to actively
indulging their corporeal urges. She is well named, he maintains,
because as goddess of sensuality what else could she be but foul,
filthy, and stained?17
The commentators of the divinatory almanac in the Codex Telleriano-
Remensis describe Tlazolteotl as evil, shameless, ‘with two faces,’ a
“goddess of garbage and shameful things” who protected adulterers
and ‘evil women.’18 They liken her to Eve as the catalyst of original
sin, declaring that “before the flood she caused everything evil and
deceitful” and that “as time began, so did sin.” Bolstering the
Tlazolteotl-Eve parallel, the Ochpaniztli account in the same man-
uscript states that the natives celebrated this festival for “she who
sinned by eating the fruit of the tree.” The association of these two
sinister female figures from separate religious traditions no doubt
resulted from Eve embodying sexual temptation and its devastating
consequences within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Her labor as a
spinner after her expulsion from Eden also links her with Tlazolteotl
who, as the patroness of spinners and weavers, invariably wears an
unspun cotton headdress that often bears spindles.19 In addition, these
associations are interwoven: though spinning and weaving were among
the Mexican woman’s chief domestic and economic activities, in
native lore they were also well-known metaphors for sexual activity.20
To the Mesoamericans, the unbridled sensuality that Tlazolteotl
inspired was more than just a social transgression, however. It could
result in chaos, destruction, even death. This goddess was the teotl,
the “deity” or supernatural force associated with tlazolli, a Náhuatl
term generally translated as “filth.” Burkhart and López Austin in
16
Sahagún (1979) 1, fol. 11v and Sahagún (1950–82) I, fol. 23.
17
Torquemada (1975) 2, 62. My translation.
18
This and the following quotes before the next footnote are from Quiñones
Keber (1995) 254–65.
19
Sekules (2002) 83.
20
Brunfiel (1991) 224–51; Burkhart (1989) 93; and Sullivan (1982) 7–8, 14–15.
particular have analyzed the concept of tlazolli.21 It circumscribes a

broad realm of pollution, including tangible material substances like
dust, dirt, mud, and excrement that made one physically ‘dirty.’
Burkhart suggests that Tlazolteotl’s cotton headdress, “soft, incoher-
ent, unformed, but with creative potential” and clear sexual conno-
tations, was a kind of tlazolli.22 Moral, social, and sexual transgressions
like adultery, prostitution, and sodomy were also major sources of
corrupting tlazolli. It was thought that contact with too much tla-
zolli caused a buildup of noxious ‘fumes’ in the liver, which could
harm or even kill the transgressor.23 In the Florentine Codex volume
on Nahua rhetoric, Sahagún describes the malefactor inhabited by
an almost palpable substance “which troubleth him, perverteth him,
and . . . which afflicteth his bones, his body, his mind, his heart; and
it eateth, it drinketh, it disturbeth his heart, his body.” He characterizes
the pre-Columbian concept of engaging in the proscribed activities
promoted by Tlazolteotl as bathing in ordure and swallowing “stench,
rottenness, and blackness.” The sinner placed himself in
the uninhabitable place, the place of fright, where stand the torrent,
the crag. The cliff, the gorge, the crag stand sheer, stand ashen, stand
reddened: the place where there can be no standing, no place of exit.24
One thus risked physical danger and sudden, violent death.
In fact, the Mesoamericans blamed sexual transgressions for a
whole host of serious diseases, including tlàcolmiquiztli, which has been
translated as “harm caused by love or desire” or “filth death.” It
was thought that toxic vapors could emanate from the transgressor’s
body to further afflict spouses, children, and even the community at
large. An adulterer’s spouse, for example, was held to be suscepti-
ble to chahuacocoliztli, “illness due to adultery,” while the unborn
fetuses of adulterous women could be irreparably harmed by the
mother’s noxious emanations, and pregnant adulterers might be sub-
ject to serious difficulties while giving birth. A father’s marital infidelities
rendered newborn infants susceptible to ixtlazolcocoliztli, “filth diseases
of the eyes.” As Ortiz de Montellano notes, proscribed sexual activities
like homosexuality—which was punishable by execution—were believed
21
Burkhart (1989) especially chapter 4, “Purity and Pollution,” 87–129; and López
Austin (1988).
22
Burkhart (1989) 93.
23
López Austin (1988) 1, 232–35.
24
Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 30–32.
to cause property damage, including crop failures and dead livestock,

resulting in grave economic consequences.25
Consequently, it was held to be crucial that the malefactor, “thou
[who] hast found pleasure in filth, in vice,” rid himself of the accrued
muck, “thy evil odor, thy corruption.” Significantly, it was Tlazolteotl
herself, the divine instigator of the pollution, who paradoxically offered
the path toward balance and cleansing. It was thought that purify-
ing baths and confessional rituals performed under her auspices could
relieve the ill effects of the “ugly, stinking, rotten” filth that she in-
spired.26 For example, in consonance with Tlazolteotl, healers invoked
Chalchiutlicue, the rain goddess, “She of the Jade Skirt” (i.e. the
cleansing waters), at the ritual “bath for the sickness caused by love
affairs or by affection,” tetlazolaltiloni. These ablutions were to relieve
the ill effects of sexual misconduct.27 The Codex Telleriano-Remensis
congruently locates these same two goddesses at the bathing ceremony
for newborn Mexican children, who were held to be born in a state
of general corruption resulting from the sexual activity of their par-
ents.28 The Codices Magliabechiano and Tudela situate particular sponsorship
of the bathhouse’s cleansing waters with Tlazolteotl, whose head with
its cotton headdress and blackened mouth hangs over the bathhouse’s
doorway.29 In her role as Tlaelcuani, “filth eater,” she ‘devoured’
sins, indicated by the thick rubber film blackening her mouth, in a
one-time confessional ritual. According to Sahagún, the deity
forgave, set aside, removed corruption. She cleansed one; she washed
one. . . . In her presence confession was made, the heart was opened;
before Tlaçolteotl [sic] one recited, one told one’s sins.30
25
I have been assisted in writing this paragraph on the Náhuatl terminology for
the pathology of filth by Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 135; Burkhart (1989) 95–97; López
Austin (1988) 1, 262 and 266; and Ortiz de Montellano (1990) 151–52.
26
Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 30–31.
27
Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 136; López Austin (1988) 1, 266; and Ortiz de
Montellano (1990) 164.
28
Codex Telleriano-Remensis, fols. 11v–12r. Quiñones Keber (1995) 170–71, dis-
cusses this bathing scene; see also Burkhart (1989) 113, on the bathing rites for the
newborn.
29
Codex Magliabechiano, fol. 77r, and Codex Tudela, fol. 62r.
30
Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 23–24. The Christian friars were quite interested in this
confessional rite, with its analogies to Christian practices. Tlazolteotl’s role as both
the bringer and reliever of filth has been written about extensively. See, for exam-
ple, Carrasco (1999) 164–87.
After this confession, the penitent donned paper garments mirroring

Tlazolteotl’s own, which were eventually discarded at the crossroads
shrines of goddesses known as the Cihuateteo (the “deified women,”
parturients who had died in childbirth). Thus the penitent “in the
end . . . changed his way of life.”31
Straw and sweeping with straw brooms were crucial elements of
this purification process in the native Mexican consciousness. Sweeping
was of paramount importance in both the sacred and quotidian
realms, unsurprising given the turmoil and peril that could result from
a filthy environment. Prior to confessing, the penitent “swept well the
place where the new reed mat was placed, and a fire was lit.” This
established physical order and focus in this space where the petitioner
was to be morally purified. Sweeping could also serve as atonement
for one’s sins. Offenders were ordered to “sweep; clean; arrange; order
things. . . . Take care of the cleaning. And now thou art to clean
things; thou art to clean thyself.” The malefactor was enjoined “to
expiate thy sinful life” by fasting after the confession or passing straw
reeds or sticks through a perforation in the tongue or genitals, “espe-
cially because of adultery.” In the illustration depicting Tlazolteotl
in Sahagún’s catalog of gods, she holds a dangerously thorny bun-
dle ready to supply the implements of self-mortification.32
Straws functioned in this penitential exercise as a means of chan-
neling the malefactor’s corruption away from the body.33 Jeanette
Peterson has demonstrated that the straws used in auto-sacrificial
rites were often made of malinalli, a type of grass whose name can
be translated from Náhuatl as “twisted.” The particular usefulness
of malinalli in this expiatory context may lie in the metaphorical
associations of ‘twisted-ness’ with, as Klein has written, “wrong-doing,
danger, hostility,” since one crucial way to overcome dangerous accu-
mulations of tlazolli was to engage directly with it. For example, as
shown by López Austin, it was held that fornicators’ wives sometimes
rectified a perilous situation by engaging in adultery themselves. The
association of malinalli straw and sweeping with lustral observances
is significant for our discussion because, as Peterson has further
shown, malinalli was the stuff of which Tlazolteotl’s broom was
31
The quote is from Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 27.
32
Burkhart (1989) 117–24, and (1997) 33–38; Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 24 and 26
and 6, 33; and Sahagún (1979) 1, fol. 11r.
33
made.34 Burkhart maintains that the brooms were useful in Ochpaniztli’s

sweeping rites specifically because they were made of straw, which
is part of the tlazolli realm.35
Indeed, Tlazolteotl’s malinalli broom is the single most important
symbol for Ochpaniztli, “sweeping the roads,” routinely present in
illustrations and mentioned in most accounts. For example, the mid-
sixteenth-century Codex Magliabechiano emphasizes sweeping rites and
brooms that were placed in the hand of the ‘demon’ (Fig. 14.2). The
Tovar Calendar, compiled by the Jesuit Juan de Tovar around 1585,
describes Ochpaniztli as a domestic festival venerating household
instruments that the “principal women . . . used in performing wom-
anly tasks.” He notes the particular importance of her broom, which
they ‘honored particularly’ and put in the temple, and which com-
prises the accompanying illustration (Fig. 14.5).36 Colonial charts,
tables, and calendar wheels routinely depict only the broom as the
sole symbol for Ochpaniztli.37
There is, then, a persistent link between Tlazolteotl’s pictorial
attributes in the Ochpaniztli illustrations and the physical, moral,
and penitential cleansing rites over which she presides. Similar activ-
ities carried out on the civic stage were felt to restore communal
balance and harmony. For example, Durán highlights bathing rites
in addition to the widespread sweeping of houses and streets. At the
beginning of the feast, a Mexican woman chosen to impersonate the
goddess was bathed and “consecrated to avoid all sin of transgres-
sion.” Everyone bathed, and even the bathhouses were cleaned, as
were other waterways, including “ditches, streams, and springs” in
which the people then washed. The newly immersed female deity
impersonator was removed from the human realm and kept locked
34
Peterson (1983) 113–20 and figs. 16–18; Klein (1995) 252; and López Austin
(1988) 1, 266. I wish to thank Jeanette Peterson for alerting me to her article.
35
Burkhart (1989) 121. Based on linguistic analysis of Náhuatl terms for sweeping
and purifying, Burkhart (1997) 34, further asserts that “the act of cleaning a sur-
face with straw . . . was . . . fundamental to the very notion of cleanliness.”
36
Boone (1983) 196–97; and Kubler and Gibson (1951) 28–29. The Tovar Calendar
is located in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. My access to it
was facilitated by Norman Fiering, Director, and Richard Ring and Susan Danforth,
librarians, and by a grant from the Institute of the Americas of the College of Fine
Arts, University of New Mexico, for 2000–01.
37
For example, see calendar wheels like the mid-sixteenth-century “Boban Wheel”
in Kubler and Gibson (1951) 56 and fig. 12.
Fig. 14.5 Ochpaniztli, plate IX of the Tovar Calendar. Reproduced by permission

of The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
away in a temple or cage under the close watch of midwives and

female physicians, emerging from captivity only to sweep.38
The Ochpaniztli activities were intended to do more than just clear
away physical grime, however. The Codex Telleriano-Remensis com-
mentator emphasizes that Ochpaniztli was meant to expiate com-
munal sins.
Ochpaniztli means cleaning, and thus during this month they swept
everything, especially their houses and roads. . . . The reason for this
cleaning was that they believed that by performing that ceremony all
the evils of the people would go away.39
Tovar calls the Ochpaniztli patroness the mother of Huitzilopochtli,
who was the Mexicas’ premier god. Traditionally identified as Coatlicue,
according to myth she had been engaged in penitential sweeping
when she became miraculously impregnated with Huitzilopochtli.
Durán indicates that skirmishes and mock battles raging at the Temple
of Huitzilopochtli (now commonly known as the Templo Mayor), in
the sacred precinct at the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlán, were penitential
in nature, “a kind of ceremonial self-sacrifice which they performed
instead of bleeding their tongues or ears, as was usual on other feasts.”
What is more, bloodied straw brooms, with their unmistakable over-
tones of auto-sacrifice and penance, play a major role in Sahagún’s
lengthy Ochpaniztli account. He describes a melee at the Temple
of Huitzilopochtli, in which the patron goddess, midwives, and female
physicians all wield these bloodied brooms in battles with “noble-
men and great brave warriors.” Sahagún writes that the conflict was
called “ ‘They fight with grass,’ because it was indeed grass, it was
indeed straw [brooms] that each of them went carrying in their
hands; . . . they were covered with blood.”40 Though it must remain
speculation, the blood permeating the straw brooms wielded by our
goddess impersonator and her cohort of midwives and curers could
have been the blood of penitential auto-sacrifice.
The corruption might also have been of a bodily nature, so that
the cleansing represented by brooms and sweeping was involved in
corporeal ‘filth’ experienced through disease or childbirth. Female
doctors and midwives are a major class of Ochpaniztli participants,
38
Durán (1971) 232 and 448–49; Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 119; and Códice Tudela
(1980) 263–64.
39
Quiñones Keber (1995) 254. My italics for emphasis.
40
Kubler and Gibson (1951) 28–29; Durán (1971) 236; Sahagún (1950–82) 2,
120–21 and 3, 1–2.
described by numerous sources accompanying and guarding the god-

dess impersonator throughout the whole festival. Moreover, numer-
ous pictorial and textual details in the Ochpaniztli corpus can be
linked with curative therapies. For example, Tlazolteotl’s cheeks and
mouth are blackened with rubber, which was imported particularly
from the Mexican Gulf Coast and had an extensive variety of med-
icinal as well as ritual uses. Andrea Stone has recently demonstrated,
for example, that raw, boiled, and dried latex was and still is used
in Mexico and among the Maya for any number of physical ailments
including hoarseness, dysentery, bloody diarrhea, and head- and
toothaches.41
The commentators of the Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Ríos pay
special attention to extensive communal fasting, particularly among
priests, which took place during the first several days of Ochpaniztli,
a practice that was held to be both therapeutic and penitential. There
are both textual and pictorial references to the cempoalxochitl, literally
translated “twenty flower,” a species of marigold that may have had
purgative and healing properties. Sahagún describes the midwives
and female doctors in the festivities as pelting each other with balls
made of the flower, as well as dancers holding marigold bouquets,
two of whom comprise the sole Ochpaniztli illustration in the Florentine
Codex. The Codex Magliabechiano depicts two similar figures below the
goddess, dressed in capes and holding yellow-orange marigold bou-
quets (Fig. 14.2).42
Sahagún reports in his catalog of Mexican gods that physicians,
“those who purged people,” and the women “who read the future,
who cast auguries by looking upon water or by casting grains of maize,”
both specifically worshipped Toci-Teteoinnan. I noted at the beginning
of this essay that these last two goddess names were inextricably
linked with Tlazolteotl. What is more, Sahagún describes priests of
the maize deity Chicomécoatl (“Seven Serpent”) strewing maize seeds
during Ochpaniztli. While this probably had agricultural connotations,
scattering corn kernels was also a principal means of diagnosing dis-
eases in the pre-and post-Conquest native milieus. For example, the
41
Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 16; 2, 19; and 2, 188; Códice Tudela (1980) 263–64;
Torquemada (1975) 2, 275; Durán (1971) 232; McCafferty and McCafferty (1991)
26 and 33, note 4; and Stone (2002) 21; Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México
(1918) 209–10; and De León (1611) 98. I am grateful to Charlene Villaseñor Black
for sharing her transcription of this last-named source with me.
42
Quiñones Keber (1995) 254; Il manoscritto messicano . . . (1900) 35; Emmart
(1940) 69; and Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 19, and 2, 118.
sixteenth-century Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas states that the
gods gave maize grains to woman so that “she could work cures . . . and
so it is the custom of [indigenous] women to do to this very day.”43
In his seventeenth-century treatise intended to stamp out Mexican
idolatry, Ruiz de Alarcón likewise indicates that “fortune-telling with
the hands or with maize” was a way of determining illnesses. The
nature of the disease could be identified by the positions in which
the kernels landed.44 The author of the Motolinía Insert I charac-
terizes the Ochpaniztli festival as dedicated to the maize god Centeotl
and asserts that it was specifically celebrated “for the patroness against
the evil eye (mal de los ojos),” for whom women fashioned offerings
of small seed dolls with maize-grain eyes.45 The purgatory implica-
tions of these seed dolls are reminiscent of the native practice whereby
illnesses were thought to be transferred to small dough figures of
animals that were then deposited at the crossroads.46
Ochpaniztli specifically involved pregnant women and midwives,
for whom Tlazolteotl was a key patroness. In the divinatory almanac
of the Codex Borbonicus she is depicted in the very act of giving birth.
Sahagún reports that “midwives, those who administered sedatives
at childbirth, [and] those who brought about abortions” were devo-
tees of Toci-Teteoinnan. Moreover, Tlazolteotl’s pictorial appurtenances
in the Ochpaniztli illustrations can be linked with medicinal therapies
for parturients. As López Austin observes, adulterous women may
sometimes have resorted to abortions in order to avoid death from
the abundant bodily toxins believed to have been engendered by
their misdeeds, and, according to Sullivan, it was held that the bark
of the cotton plant could bring about miscarriages by triggering uter-
ine contractions. Pregnant women protected themselves from dan-
ger during the difficult birthing process by confessing their sexual
sins to their midwives, another link to the blackened mouth of the
divinity in her manifestation as Tlaelcuani, “filth eater.”47
Malinalli, comprising the deity’s broom, was held to have cura-
tive uses such as the prevention of miscarriages. Congruently, sweep-
43
García Icazbalceta (1891). Translation into English in Philips (1883–84) 618.
See also Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 15 and 2, 124.
44
Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 153–55. If they came to rest one atop another, for
example, the doctor concluded that the ailment had been brought on by sodomy.
Lopez Austin (1988) 1, 306.
45
Motolinía (1996) 172. My thanks to Victoria Wolff for translating this passage.
46
Burkhart (1989) 63.
47
Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 15 and 303–4; and López Austin (1988) 1, 269; and
Sullivan (1982) 19.
ing was prescribed especially for pregnant women, doubtless to pro-

tect the health of the fetus, which was thought to be so susceptible
to the mother’s bad behavior and even to her negative visual per-
ceptions. The mother-to-be was exhorted to diligently sweep, clean,
and organize. Immediately before childbirth she was bathed and the
house “where the little woman was to suffer . . . to do her work, to
give birth” was extensively swept.48
Childbirth is intimately linked with another of Tlazolteotl’s key
attributes: the shield. The shield subsumes the well-known pre-Hispanic
concept that the parturient was a kind of warrior engaging in battle.
The birth of a child was greeted by shouts and ‘war cries’ from her
midwife, “which meant that the little woman had fought a good bat-
tle, had become a brave warrior, had taken a captive, had captured
a baby.” Women who did not survive the rigors of childbirth were
known as Cihuateteo, “deified women,” or Cihuapipiltin, “celestial
princesses.” These unfortunate women were equated with courageous
Mexican warriors who had been felled on the battlefield or captured
and sacrificed. Their corpses and shields were borne away by old
women and midwives bellowing war cries. The bodies were buried
before images of the Cihuateteo, at whose shrines, as noted above,
the penitents had deposited their paper garments. These Cihuateteo
icons—themselves representing dead parturients—might even have
functioned as protective talismans over the women’s corpses. Given
that she bears a warrior’s shield, Tlazolteotl may have been beheld as
one of the Cihuateteo, since during Ochpaniztli impersonators of the
goddess suffered the same sacrificial fate commonly reserved for cap-
tive warriors, and impersonators of the Cihuateteo were also sacrificed.49
According to Sahagún, it was crucial to keep careful watch over
the dead child-bearers because enemies who captured a piece of their
bodies, especially their hair, the left hand, or one of its fingers, “might
act boldly in war . . . might overpower, might seize many of their
enemies. . . . It was said they paralyzed the feet of their foes.” Doris
Heyden posits that fictive battles enacted during Ochpaniztli paral-
lel actual battles waged between warriors and midwives over the
bodies of those who perished in childbirth. It is a suggestive coinci-
dence, therefore, that the Codex Tudela reports that after her ritual
48
López Austin (1988) 1, 299; Peterson (1983) 121; Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 141–42
and 167.
49
Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 121 and 189; 6, 161–62 and 167. Sullivan (1964) 63–95;
and Klein (1993a) 39–64.
immolation the Tlazolteotl impersonator’s dismembered body parts

were painstakingly stored away in a box “without even missing a
nail,” while her flayed skin was mounted on a stick along with her
“bones and clothes and broom.” All of this was protected for twenty
days “so that the people from Huexucingo [modern Huejotzingo]
would not steal it,” to prevent these long-time foes of the Mexica
from gaining any martial advantage. Her heart was taken to the
battlefield with the Huejotzincas, at the frontier of the ‘Flowery
Wars’ that perpetually raged between the Mexica and the peoples
of Puebla-Tlaxcala. There it was buried along with the bodies of
fallen Mexican soldiers.50
Among the Mexica, Tlazolteotl’s filthy body seems to have simul-
taneously held the power to harm or to protect, and elicited fierce,
even violent responses. Durán reports that at one point the Huejotzincas
burned down her wooden scaffold, known as Tocititlán, which stood
on the outskirts of the Mexica capital city of Tenochtitlán and where
the body and accoutrements of her impersonator were deposited at
the end of Ochpaniztli. Tocititlán means “place” or “dwelling” or
“city” of the goddess Toci, which is as we have seen one of Tlazolteotl’s
homonyms. This attack from Huejotzingo was a ‘frightful thing’ that
reportedly enraged the Mexica emperor Moctezuma II (reigned
1502–20) and threw the whole city “into a state of confusion and
terror.”51 According to Sahagún, Mexican warriors’ attempts during
Ochpaniztli to leave a mask made of her thigh skin ‘in enemy land’
resulted in warfare and death.52 Drawing on Brown’s study of
Ochpaniztli’s historical underpinnings, Klein posits that removing
the dead goddess’s heart or her thigh skin to enemy territory were
overt acts of martial aggression that revived the memories of earlier
wars in which the Mexica had prevailed and thus were intended to
reinforce “their past and present military might.”53 This author fur-
ther suggests that the resultant violence is a reaction to indigenous
perceptions of Tlazolteotl’s profoundly polluted and therefore poten-
tially injurious nature.
At the same time, her body was the agent by which the city annu-
50
Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 162; López Austin (1988) 1, 165; Heyden (1972) 207;
and Codex Tudela (1980) 263–64. Translation of the Codex Tudela passage courtesy
of Victoria Wolff, personal communication.
51
Durán (1994) 457.
52
Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 122.
53
Brown (1984); and Klein (1986) 144–45.
ally rid itself of its accumulated tlazolli. Graulich has made a vital
contribution by discussing the seasonal, symbolic expiation of com-
munal sins through casting off skins during Ochpaniztli. He aptly
points out the analogy between discarded skins and the paper gar-
ments left post-confession at the Cihuateteo shrines. He asserts that
Toci’s flayed skin represents sin, which during the festival was sym-
bolically offered back to the goddess in her role as ‘devourer of
filth.’54 This author is in agreement with this equation of flayed skins
with sins. My emphasis here is somewhat different, however, par-
ticularly in the goddess’ relationship to the dire physical illnesses
caused by sexual misdeeds, and her corporeal body and parapher-
nalia as the physical agents purifying and protecting both the city
and the individual body. At the end of the festival in Tenochtitlán,
the ‘goddess’ was forcefully expelled from the city’s sacred center in
a raucous affair. A young man, donning the flayed skin and adorn-
ments of the sacrificed goddess-impersonator, departed from the rit-
ual precinct, shrieking out war cries amidst a racket of hostile onlookers
who spat and cast flowers in ‘her’ wake. On his way, he left the
skin at Tocititlán, where it was stuffed with a straw bundle and
adorned with all of her ‘garments and finery.’ This was her final
transformation: she became the total embodiment of the filth with
which she had engaged. In this expurgatory act her polluted body,
imbued with the fetid debris of communal dirt, illnesses, and mis-
deeds, was banished to the very periphery of the Mexica capital,
effecting the definitive cleansing of the sacred center, restoring har-
mony and equilibrium. Her body and adornments remained at the
city outskirts, sentry-like, “look[ing] forth” from the top of the scaffold
“so that the straw image seemed a representation of the goddess”
(Fig. 14.4).55
This essay has proposed that we privilege the Indians’ illustrations
as a coherent visual record of the way Ochpaniztli was envisioned
in the early colonial period. A Christian monastic audience doubt-
less viewed Tlazolteotl as a Greco-Roman-style patroness of the
Indians’ ‘idolatrous’ and sanguinary practices. But for native Mexicans
she was intimately linked with profound social and sexual issues,
encoding serious anxieties about indulging corporeal desires. This
54
Graulich (1999) 140–42.
55
Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 125; and Durán (1971) 236.
goddess visualizes a variety of women’s experiences as the chief

Mexican agents of transformation, both within and outside the domes-
tic sphere, as they exercise domestic talents to protect the hearth and
apply the female healers’ and midwives’ extensive knowledge of herbs
and therapies to cure sick bodies and ensure healthy childbirth.
Tlazolteotl is the model purifier. During Ochpaniztli she ultimately
comes to embody the very filth with which she engages, enabling its
removal through her own repeated transformations and eventual
exile. Her transformed body eventually assumes a talismanic function:
In remaining at the city outskirts, she is thought to ward off poten-
tial intruders and safeguard the newly cleansed city. Even when their
details vary, the illustrations’ pictorial focus is the consistent image
of this deity’s body with its elaborate paraphernalia. This author sub-
mits that this body and its adornment are key elements for under-
standing the festival’s function, when, under Tlazolteotl’s patronage,
individual and communal body alike are held to be cleansed, healed,
and protected. The pictorial privileging of her body in the Ochpaniztli
illustrations corresponds to the celebratory focus on her body. As the
corporeal agent of corporeal change, she ushers in a new, reformed era.
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EXPLORING A FEMALE LEGACY:

BEATRIZ ÁLVAREZ DE HERRERA AND THE
FAÇADE OF THE CASA DE MONTEJO
C. Cody Barteet
Since the 1940s, when art historians first began seriously examining
it, the façade of the Casa de Montejo (c. 1542–49) in Mérida, Yucatán,
has been viewed as a visual embodiment of the Spanish conquest of
Latin America (Fig. 15.1).1 Surprisingly, the idea that the iconographic
program of the portal focuses on conquest is based upon a handful
of studies that have done little to unravel the complexities of the
façade, the most ornate sixteenth-century domestic entry extant in
Latin America. Taken together, these studies base their shared sub-
jugation hypothesis for the façade’s sculpted ornamentation on the
supposition that Francisco de Montejo, who was responsible for the
pacification of the region’s native peoples, wished to celebrate his
conquests in the Casa. However, this woefully understudied monument
is much more complex, as its iconographical elements clearly pro-
mote an agenda beyond that of conquest. Indeed, prominent heraldic
elements of the façade, an inherently transparent form of visual com-
munication, are derived from established Spanish and even European
architectural and sculptural traditions. The various forms of heraldic
adornment, including inscriptions, sculptural busts, and escudos, or
“coats of arms,” employed in residential façades functioned as sym-
bols or statements about their patrons who wanted to convey these
messages to large urban audiences. With the Casa, Montejo sought
to legitimize his position as the Yucatán’s adelantado (governor/captain
1
This essay is part of a larger dissertation project titled “Colonial Contradictions
in the Casa de Montejo and Mérida: Space, Society, and Self-Representation at
the Edge of Viceregal Mexico.” Funding for this essay and my dissertation project
has been provided by the Society of Architectural Historian’s Edilia and François-
Auguste de Montêquin Junior Fellowship; Binghamton University’s (SUNY) Department
of Art History Dissertation Research Assistantship; and SUNY’s Rosa Colecchio
Travel Award for Dissertation Research Enhancement.
368 c. cody barteet
Fig. 15.1 Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549.

exploring a female legacy 369
general) because by 1542 his position was endangered, primarily by

the Spanish Crown’s growing desire to centralize authority and reg-
ularize its New World administration through the viceregal government.
Montejo’s hereditary position, compounded by his questionable aris-
tocratic status, had no place within the maturing administration. A
large portion of the Casa’s heraldic material suggests that Montejo
aspired to establish visually his quasi-feudal authority by relying on
his unquestionably noble wife, Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera, for social
status and wealth.
Although her contribution to the colonizing affairs of the Yucatán
has been overlooked for decades in Yucatecan scholarship, Herrera’s
role is visibly recorded in her sculpted bust and familial coat of arms
that prominently adorn the Montejo façade. These visual representa-
tions provide insights into Herrera’s own ambitions as a governor’s
wife and, by extension, into the ambitions of her extended family in
the colonization and governance of the area. In my recovery of
Herrera’s contributions, I reject the traditional supposition that Herrera
was a passive participant in Yucatecan affairs. On the contrary, as
seen through certain decisive actions taken by Herrera, she appears
to have had her own agenda, which at times corresponded with that
of her husband, but at others seemingly conflicted with it. To demon-
strate Herrera’s active role in Yucatecan affairs, I analyze extant
archival documentation concerning Herrera as well as existing schol-
arly studies that have examined the normative perceptions of sixteenth-
century Spanish and Spanish-American women and their subsequent
representations in façade adornment. Here I demonstrate that an
understanding of early modern societal customs and laws, even if
from a broad perspective, can provide insights into deciphering the
role of women as both patrons and subjects in the development of
architectural adornment and façade design. Unfortunately, a bio-
graphy of Herrera has yet to be written; therefore, I must rely upon
the documented activities of her husband to try to piece together
certain portions of her life. However, what is known about her life
does provide clues into both her personality and the contributions
she made to the design and iconographic program of the Casa de
Montejo façade.2
2
Information on Herrera comes from the following texts and archival documents:
Chamberlain (1966), (1958) 15–18, and (1940) 43–56; Rubio Mañé (1941); Rújula
y de Ochotorena and Solar y Tabeada (1932); and AGI, México, 3048.
370 c. cody barteet
The Casa de Montejo Façade
Herrera is depicted on the façade that Guillermina Vázquez has

identified as “a unique example of the first era of Spanish domination,
not only in Mexico, but in all of America.”3 The façade’s relatively
tall and narrow two-storied configuration embodies the two major
architectural styles of Renaissance Spain: purista, or “classical,” and
Plateresque with its Gothic antecedents. Flanking the entrance of the
classical ground floor are columns and engaged pilasters overlaid by
symmetrical representations of mythical creatures that are topped by
Corinthian capitals, inturn capped by a series of small demonic heads.
Four busts flank the entryway: Crowned male and female busts in
the tondos and a young female and a bearded male in the left and
right doorjambs. In previous studies these busts were presumed to
represent the Montejo family: Montejo and Herrera in the left and
right tondo busts; and Catalina, Herrera’s daughter by Montejo, and
El Mozo, Montejo’s illegitimate son, in the left and right jambs. Above
them, the portal rises to a heavily sculpted entablature of imaginary
creatures of composite human and animal forms. The entablature
balances upon the shoulders of a central Herculean figure who is
flanked by lintel inscriptions that read “Amor Dei” to the left and
“Vincit” to the right.
The upper floor has a balcony that overlooks Mérida’s plaza mayor,
and it is supported by the lower façade’s central figure and a heavenly
host of cherubim. The balcony’s door is framed by floral motifs and
more cherubim. Above the balcony, emerging from a bed of budding
vines, the Montejo escudo appears and is topped by a ducal helmet.
The escudo itself is complex: Its four-part division includes a symbolic
shield ordered by Charles V for Montejo, which occupies the upper-
left quadrant; both Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms, which are
in the upper-right and lower-left quadrants; and Montejo’s family
blazon, in the lower-right quadrant. Flanking these elements are the
Casa’s imposing hallmarks: two armed halberdiers stand atop open-
mouthed heads bracketed by two club-carrying wild men. Above the
soldiers appear the monograms “HIS” (Christ), on the left, and “MA”
(Mary), on the right. The façade is topped by a heavily sculpted
cornice which has three busts and more hybrid creatures. The cor-
3
Vázquez (1983) 157.
nice supports a pediment inscription that is flanked by two columns

guarded by two lions. The text reads “Esta obra mando hacer el Adelantado
Don Francisco de Montejo anno de MDXLIX,” which translates as “This
work was ordered done by the Adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo
in 1549.” Ultimately, the façade is topped by another bust that looms
over it.
A Representation of Conquest or Heraldic Propaganda?
The façade’s meanings are immensely complex, but the most pervasive
scholarly assumption is that it is a symbol or testament to Montejo’s
domination of the Yucatán. This commonly held belief is most often
supported by a series of ideological inscriptions and conquest images.
In the façade’s lower lintel, a series of politicized religious inscriptions
are found. The central Herculean figure, as noted above, is flanked
by inscriptions: “Amor Dei” to the left and “Vincit” to the right. Accord-
ing to Vázquez, the word “Omnia” appears on the central figure. In
sequence the texts reads, “Amor Dei Omnia Vincit,” or “The love of
God will conquer all.”4 Thus, these inscriptions are meant both to
proclaim the divine right of Spain and legitimize Montejo’s conquest
of the Yucatán in the name God.
Additional conquest motifs can be seen within the façade’s divine
proclamation; the most pronounced are the armed halberdiers stand-
ing upon open-mouthed heads. ‘Decapitated’ heads or figures under-
foot were not uncommon in Mayan or Mesoamerican art. In general,
these Mesoamerican motifs, along with bound images, signify polit-
ical or ceremonial conquest, which has led scholars to presume that
the Maya would have interpreted the Montejo images in this man-
ner. However, these images could be read in another way. As Matthew
Restall has suggested in his book Maya Conquistador, perhaps the Maya
could have just as equally interpreted the open mouths of these heads
as “permanent but inaudible screams of protest, a symbol not of
death but of vitality despite being underfoot.”5 Furthermore, the
Montejo façade’s numerous Europeanized decapitated or demonic
4
Ibid., 216. On first-hand examination of the façade in August 2004 I was
unable to find this inscription, but I must note the facade has suffered deteriora-
tion, making certain details impossible to discern.
5
Restall (1998) 28.
372 c. cody barteet
heads, similar to those next to Herrera’s bust seen in Figure 15.2,

could also represent the ‘defeated idolatrous’ Maya as well as the
boisterous Spanish opposition that sought to overthrow Montejo’s
governorship.6 Indeed, Montejo attempted to silence his Spanish
opposition on several occasions both through force and imprison-
ment.7 Therefore, it can be inferred that the Montejo monument
was open to multiple layers of interpretation among the local Yucatecan
audiences. This was further compounded by its—and even Mérida’s—
construction directly on top of the ancient Maya center of Tihó: the
Casa de Montejo was built directly upon the foundations of a temple
platform. Due to its placement at the center of Mérida’s urban core
and because of its complex iconographic language, the Casa was
tremendously important as a symbolic ideological monument and as
a form of large-scale urban signage that I suggest legitimized the
Montejos’ claims to the hereditary governorship of the Yucatán.
As a declarative statement in stone, the Casa draws upon European
conventions in which soldiers, wild men, and even open-mouthed
heads were common heraldic images found throughout Spain and
much of Europe. Indeed, the profusion of heraldic images has led
Richard and Rosalind Perry to suggest that “heraldry [has] run riot”
in the Casa de Montejo.8 The sculptors of the façade incorporated
many common forms of heraldic imagery, including escudos. Due
to their individualized nature—escudo imagery can refer to an indi-
vidual’s merits or to the marriage of two noble families—many are
virtually indecipherable. Furthermore, as Juan-Antonio González
Iglesias has stated, “because heraldry is not exactly a popular art . . . it
is therefore virtually impossible to name a coat of arms that is widely
recognized,” despite their often “intentional propagation of symbolic
power.”9 Fortunately, this is not the case with the Montejo escudo
(Fig. 15.3). Along with his capitulación, Montejo was awarded a coat
6
The Yucatán was never truly conquered by the Spanish; throughout its colo-
nial history pockets of Maya lived independent from Spanish governance.
7
Consult Chamberlain (1966) 275–310, for an overview of this political opposi-
tion and how it affected Montejo’s authority in the early years of the colony.
8
Perry and Perry (1988) 95.
9
González Iglesias (1994) 69–70; and Weissberger (2004) 48. Here I borrow
from Weissberger’s quotation and translation of González Iglesias’ discussion of the
proliferation of heraldic imagery of the Catholic Monarchs, in particular their use
of the F and Y initials that correspond with the yoke and arrows of their coat of
arms, 47–48.
Fig. 15.2 Detail: Right Tondo Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida,
Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.
374 c. cody barteet
Fig. 15.3 Detail: Coat of Arms, Upper Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida,
of arms, which he received through a provisión royal created by Charles

V’s imperial advisors that commemorated his accomplishments in
the New World prior to 1527.10 The symbolism of Montejo’s new
coat of arms is complex, and like the larger escudo that it joins on
the façade, the blazon is divided into four parts. The imagery of the
blazon symbolizes the perils Montejo faced and the potential gold
to be found in the Yucatán, and it contains images of strength and
stoicism. The whole escudo is topped by a ducal helmet, which casts
Montejo and his heirs as the “duques[,] marqueses[, and] condes”
of the Yucatán, feudal positions that relate to Montejo’s hereditary
office of adelantado.11
The larger escudo, of which the shield created by Charles V is a
part, is composed of Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms and
Montejo’s family crest. The placement of these four blazons in the
larger escudo represents a symbolic hierarchy, which is often determined
by sex and societal rank. Typically, the male’s family insignia are
given superiority, followed by the female’s family blazons. In a four-
part escudo, the upper-left quadrant is the dominant blazon followed
by, in descending order of rank, the lower-right, upper-right, and
lower-left quadrants. The Montejo escudo is conventional with its
shield created by Charles V for Montejo in the upper left, followed
in descending order by the Montejo family blazon, and both Herrera’s
paternal and maternal arms. Presumably, the familial connotations
and the inherent symbolism of Charles V’s blazon were to be under-
stood by an educated Spanish audience. Although it is impossible to
know if the local Yucatec Spanish constituents fully understood the
escudo’s meanings, many of the motifs would have been recognized
for their centuries-old associations with strength, stoicism, and loy-
alty as exemplified by the lion and castillo as well as the traditional
incorporation of Herrera’s familial arms.12
10
AGI, Indiferente, 421, 2r–2v. For additional information on the escudo, see
Chamberlain (1940) 52–53; Rubio Mañé (1941) 19–21 (text and footnotes); and
Irigoyen Rosado (1981) 9–10.
11
AGI, Indiferente, 421, 2v; and AGI, Indiferente, 415, 91.
12
A castillo can be defined as a masonry fortification with three or more bas-
tions. A bastion is a polygonal, usually five-sided, angular projection from the exte-
rior of a fortification extending from its main walls.
376 c. cody barteet
Herrera’s Biography
Herrera was the daughter of Juan Álvarez de Castañeda and Beatriz

de Herrera, both of whom were Castilian nobles. She was married
twice and had two children, one from each marriage. Her first mar-
riage to Pedro Suárez produced a son, Juan de Esquivel. Suárez died
in 1520, and in 1527 Herrera married Montejo prior to his return
to Mexico. The following year she gave birth to the couple’s only
child, a daughter named Catalina. Soon after Catalina’s birth, Herrera
sailed to Mexico with her daughter. It is presumed that while Montejo
was attempting to colonize the Yucatán, Herrera resided in Mexico
City, where she collected tribute from Montejo’s encomienda at Atzcapot-
zalco. By 1541 Herrera was in Guatemala with her husband after
he was appointed territorial governor in the region.13 Five years later,
Herrera made her first trip to the Yucatán after the initial pacification
of the peninsula by Montejo’s illegitimate son, Francisco de Montejo
(commonly referred to as El Mozo, “the Younger”), and Montejo’s
nephew, also named Francisco de Montejo (El Sobrino, “the Nephew”).
Herrera settled in Mérida, where she remained until shortly after
Montejo’s departure for Spain in 1551, at which time she returned
to Mexico City to live out the remainder of her life. Herrera wrote
her last will and testament on 5 July 1560, and it is presumed that
she died shortly thereafter.14 Despite the vagueness of some of these
historical facts, they do provide the necessary information from which
to analyze Herrera’s importance in both Montejo’s life and in the
iconography of the façade.
From the brief history of Herrera’s life, two important pieces of
information about her emerge: As a resident of Seville, She was
irrefutably a member of an established Castilian noble family, and
she had established economic autonomy by 1526. The relevance of
these facts rests upon an understanding of sixteenth-century societal
customs of inheritance. As her parents’ only child, Herrera inherited
13
Chamberlain (1966) 181. My supposition that she followed Montejo to Guatemala
relies upon Chamberlain’s work in which he notes that Montejo sold his holdings
in Mexico City to finance another colonizing attempt of the Yucatán, which sug-
gests Herrera went with him.
14
Chamberlain published transcripts of the last wills and testaments of both
Herrera (1958) and Montejo (1940).
their titles and noble coats of arms.15 The Spanish tradition of female
inheritance dates from the Visigothic period in which a woman could
become the sole inheritor of the family’s noble estates and arms if
there was no suitable male heir or if she was an only child.16 Her
parents’ noble status helped secure Herrera’s financial position in
Seville, which was further strengthened by the monetary entitlements
she inherited upon her first husband’s death.17 Therefore, despite
her status as a widow, Herrera was seen as an attractive marriage
candidate. Not surprisingly, because of her societal stature many
scholars have suggested that her titles and money were the primary
reasons Montejo married her after what appears to have been a brief
courtship.18
According to societal custom, a husband could assume his wife’s
noble arms as his own, which Montejo did, elevating his precarious
noble status.19 Thus his adoption of her blazons is significant; it
remains unclear what degree of nobility Montejo’s family possessed
prior to his marriage to Herrera and the ensuing award of his royal
patent by Charles V in 1526.20 In addition to claiming her noble
status as his own, Montejo also relied upon his new wife’s financial
resources. This was crucial because the Crown did not finance expe-
ditions to the New World, and Montejo, as governor and head of
the endeavor, was charged with acquiring the necessary resources
for the expedition. Once they were married Herrera agreed to cover
the cost of a colonizing company as attested in her probanza of 1554,
in which she discuses the large sum of money that she provided to
Montejo for their joint enterprises in the Yucatán.21
15
Chamberlain (1940) 55. I have yet to determine if Herrera had siblings.
16
Dillard (1984) 26.
17
Chamberlain (1966) 31.
18
See secondary sources in note 2.
19
Woodcock and Robinson (1988) 23. For further information on Spanish heraldic
design and practices, see: García Cubero (1992); Messía de la Cerda y Pita (1990);
and de Riquer (1986).
20
Chamberlain (1940) 51. In his essay, Chamberlain concluded that the Montejos
were of lesser Castilian nobility. There appears, however, to have been some ambi-
guity in the matter because Montejo was denied entry into certain noble orders;
whether the determination was based upon nobility or politics, which in early mod-
ern Spain were closely intertwined, remains uncertain.
21
AGI, México, 3048, 21. In her probanza, Herrera also seeks a royal pension
because she claims to have been left bankrupt after Montejo was removed from
office and their assets were seized by the Crown.
378 c. cody barteet
Herrera and Montejo epitomized the ‘American dream,’ in that

both took advantage of the opportunities before them to improve
their financial and societal lots. In the American frontier, their mar-
riage had important social and political implications because it allowed
the newlyweds to elevate their position in Nueva España. Modern
scholars are far from the only ones to recognize the social impor-
tance of their union. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in his Historia verdadera
de la conquista de la Nueva España, makes what Luis Weckman has
called a ‘witty comment’ by stating that Montejo brought with him
to New Spain the titles of ‘don’ and ‘señor.’22 Aside from Castillo’s
direct reference to Montejo’s new status as adelantado, he also speci-
fically refers to—and takes a stab at—Montejo’s marriage to Herrera
through his use of the word señoría. In this reference, Castillo appears
to be doing more than simply recognizing the marriage of Montejo
and Herrera: He directly acknowledges the enhancement of Montejo’s
social stock through his ‘witty’ ability to secure a marriage to Herrera
and his appointment as adelantado.
Scholars commonly claim that Montejo was the initiator of their
marriage alliance. However, it could be argued that Herrera was
equally active in negotiating their union. In many respects, Montejo
was an appropriate suitor for Herrera. He had begun his career in
the Caribbean where he enjoyed success in several early colonization
endeavors. During his time as Cortés’s ambassador to the court of
Charles V, Montejo honed his diplomatic skills, which allowed him to
garner his own position as governor of the Yucatán. With his power-
ful new American title, Montejo potentially stood to gain financial,
political, and social prestige from his enterprises in the newly conquered
territories, as seen in the optimism he expressed in his petition to
the Crown to begin colonization in which he states: “Being colo-
nized [Yucatán and Cozumel], they will be the source of great secu-
rity and benefit.”23 Once these facts are reflected upon, it becomes
difficult to assume that Herrera married Montejo unaware. Therefore,
we must consider that she had an equally active role in securing the
22
Weckman (1992) 335; and Díaz del Castillo (1968) CLXVIII: 162. Castillo’s
text reads “A Francisco de Montejo Su Majestdad le hizo merced de la gober-
nación y adelantado de Yucatán y Cozumel, y trajo don y señoría.”
23
Chamberlain (1966) 20; and AGI, Indiferente, 2048, 1. I am relying upon
Chamberlain’s translations of this document due to the poor condition of the orig-
inal text that I recently inspected.
marriage alliance to enhance her own position as the wife of a gov-

ernor and also to recoup her investment. Her intentions become
explicitly clear when her actions upon arriving in Mexico City are
examined. In the capital, Herrera sought soon-to-be-viceroy Antonio
de Mendoza’s recognition of her marriage to Montejo. Perhaps more
importantly to Herrera was her petition to the viceroy to legitimize
their daughter, Catalina, who may have been born out of wedlock.
In historical accounts from the period, Herrera’s insistence on obtain-
ing a second recognition of their marriage has typically been used
to criticize Montejo’s character. Diego de Landa, in his Relación de
las cosas de Yucatán (1566), is one of the few chroniclers to discuss the
petition. Landa states that the necessity for the ‘second’ marriage
arose because the couple was secretly wed in Seville where they had
a daughter, Catalina. Landa further implies that Montejo refused to
acknowledge Catalina as his child and Herrera as his wife until
Mendoza stepped in to reconcile the matter.24 Despite the ques-
tionable veracity of Landa’s account, it must be considered relevant
because Landa documents that Montejo ultimately recognized Catalina
as his legitimate daughter and Herrera as his wife.
Herrera’s insistence upon the second marriage contract demonstrates
her savvy as well as her determination to recoup on her financial
and social investments. In securing the marriage contract’s recognition
from Mendoza, the most powerful man in Nueva España, Herrera
politically and socially and publicly bonded herself to Montejo, thus
securing her position among the upper rungs of the new American
nobility. Furthermore, Herrera made a clear declaration of her deter-
mination to take part in Yucatecan affairs, to benefit from her hus-
band’s advancements, and to gain from her own financial ventures.
Aspiring Women
By the time Herrera made her way to the Americas, she, along with
other sixteenth-century Spanish women, had found herself in conflict
over the re-formation of societal conceptions of appropriate female
identity and behavior. Many factors fueled the debate, including the
continued evolution of the Spanish kingdom that resulted from the
24
Landa (1991) 45.
380 c. cody barteet
fluid nature of the colonization enterprise. In several important trad-

ing centers, such as Seville, where coincidentally Herrera claimed
citizenship, women were often forced to become responsible for their
own livelihoods because of the vacuum left by men who had set sail
for the New World. Moreover, tremendous animosity developed
between the sexes as many married and widowed women found it
necessary to engage in commercial and political activities previously
dominated by men.25
Gender roles were also in flux in the Americas, as Luis Martín
asserts in his study of Viceregal Peru. There, many colonial women
found themselves facing difficulties similar to those confronted by
their Iberian counterparts.26 In numerous instances women were forced
to step into the world of men in order to scratch out livelihoods as
encomenderas, entrepreneurs, politicians, and so forth. But unlike Iberian
women, Spanish-American women were forced to take on increased
responsibilities as settlers and mothers of new generations.27 As pio-
neers, women became harbingers of Spanish society, a practice that
began very early in the American enterprise under the Catholic
Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. Throughout early colonization
the Crown insisted that the conquistadores bring their wives, daughters,
and other female relatives to the newly pacified territories as soon
as possible. The Crown’s resolve in this matter was driven by the
awareness that groups of conquistadores had the potential to become
marauding mercenaries who could pillage the American frontiers in
search of new riches.28 The Crown hoped that the presence of Iberian
women in the Americas would calm the conquistadores and help
them establish permanent settlements. The plan often did not work,
however, because many men set out on other endeavors, only to
leave their wives behind to fend for themselves in the developing
25
Perry (1990) 7.
26
Martín (1983).
27
Dillard (1984) 12. Dillard identifies the following ‘indispensable roles’ of women
in the Reconquista: “settlers, wives of colonizers, mothers of successive generations of
defenders, and vital members of the new Hispanic communities.” These roles are
undeniably similar to those played by women in the American colonization.
28
There were several instances in the Yucatán when Montejo’s men waged sev-
eral brutal campaigns against the Maya. The most infamous were the attacks by the
Pacheco from 1543 to 1545 that left many Maya dead or mutilated. For a sum-
mary of these events, see Chamberlain (1966) 232–236. For information as to why
the conquistadors often employed such deadly campaigns, see Restall (2003) 24–25.
colonial centers. Indeed, Herrera experienced similar circumstances—

for much of her time in Mexico, her husband fruitlessly attempted
to colonize the Yucatán Peninsula, leaving Herrera alone with their
daughter. To some degree, Herrera, as an encomendera, was forced
to provide not only for herself and her daughter in Mexico City, but
also for the continual financial support of her husband’s expeditions.29
Society’s Noble Politics
With a better understanding of Herrera’s character and her in role

in Montejo’s affairs, the Montejo façade can begin to be understood
from the broader social and political perspectives of colonial Yucatán.
Montejo’s attempts to suppress his political opposition would ultimately
fail, creating a fissure between himself and the Crown. As a result,
Montejo was removed from office in 1550 and replaced by the
Crown’s viceregal government. Although his title as adelantado would
eventually be restored to his heirs, its powers were greatly diminished.
Montejo’s ultimate downfall was largely caused by his ambitious
desire to establish an extensive feudal adelantamiento that encompassed
the territories of Yucatán, Tabasco, and Honduras. In essence, it
would have been an enormous feudal estate that would pass from
one generation of Montejos to another as decreed through the hered-
itary nature of the title of adelantado. He actually achieved the ade-
lantamiento at one point in the late 1530s—but only on paper.30
Clearly, however, the Montejos’ ambitions were doomed from the
start because of the developmental track taken by the viceregal gov-
ernment: It had no place for the rise of feudal lords with the poten-
tial to challenge the monarch’s authority. Aside from the bureaucratic
issues that arise, however, I will pay specific attention to the hered-
itary nature of the title and the inherent societal demands placed
upon such positions in sixteenth-century Spain and Spanish America.
29
The colonization of the Yucatán was an extremely slow process during which
time Montejo and his colleagues failed on two occasions to establish permanent set-
tlement on the peninsula. Numerous scholars have suggested that there developed
among the Montejo group a realization that quick riches would not be found in
the peninsula as in other American locations. They realized that in order to recoup
their losses, they were going to have to make a permanent and lasting settlement.
30
382 c. cody barteet
To understand Montejo’s precarious situation in the mid-sixteenth

century, his appointment as adelantado, which was awarded to him
through his capitulación of 1526, must be examined.31 In essence,
Montejo’s patent stipulated the terms and conditions of his coloniz-
ing enterprise, which included the duties and taxes that were required
of him and his subordinates. His capitulación also outlined his pow-
ers as adelantado, granting Montejo direct authority to distribute
house-plots, land, and encomiendas and to appoint local public offices
(constables, aldermen, etc.). Many of the rights outlined in his capit-
ulación correlate to the nature of his position as adelantado, a posi-
tion that originated in medieval Spain during the Reconquista when
monarchs appointed individuals with both military and judicial author-
ity over frontier provinces.32 As military commanders, adelantados
were responsible first for pacifying a region, and, after a colony was
established, they became judicial officers and governors. Before the
early modern period, the position evolved into a lifetime appoint-
ment that was passed from one generation to the next. The posi-
tion of hidalgo, or “nobleman,” carried certain cultural implications
because the title adelantado had to be mapped within the social
strata of the Spanish nobility; it fell between the classes of duke and
marquise.33 Furthermore, the position now demanded proof of nobil-
ity and limpieza de sangre, “pure blood.”
As Barbara Weissberger has noted in her book Isabel Rules:
Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power, the Catholic Monarchs sought
to establish a single Christian nation whose “national self-concept
was disseminated in therapeutic terms, as a purification of the body
politic and a purging of alien and contaminating agents that had
resided in Spain for centuries.”34 In most instances, their desire to
31
AGI, Indiferente, 415, 90v–98v.
32
Stone (1990) 55–56; and Weckman (1992) 333–335. Weckman offers a more
in-depth analysis of the royal position. Important to note from his observations,
although not entirely relevant to the above discussion, is the full evolution of the
position through the Reconquista. Important regulations with regards to the posi-
tion were instituted by the Spanish monarch, Alfonso the Learned, who defined the
adelantado’s functions in the Espéculo, the Siete Partidas, and the Leyes para los ade-
lantados mayores of 1247 and 1255 not all of these regulations were relevant by the
sixteenth century.
33
Hidalgo is derived from the Spanish phrase hijodalgo de solar conocido, literally son
of something of a known household. Additionally and of similar construction, hidal-
guía de pobladuría (nobility of settlement) was used in the New World to demonstrate
the actual possession of a built house.
34
Weissberger (2004) xiii.
purge Iberian noble blood lines did not stop at attempts to physically
rid the peninsula of ‘tainted’ Jewish and Muslim (and later in the
Americas, Indian) blood. Indeed class distinction became of utmost
importance, a result of the societal uncertainty that developed during
the American colonization, as the existing Spanish aristocracy attempted
to maintain its societal stranglehold. Thus, the monarchy and the
nobility developed a system with which to investigate family records,
scouring for signs of tainted racial blood as well any other factors
deemed undesirable. The Americas, too, became a site of contention
because the Spanish Crown initially had to rely upon all willing indi-
viduals—as well as their pocketbooks—to carry out the enterprise. In
certain instances the Crown had supposed many of these able-bodied
men worthy of some distinction. As a result, many Spaniards were
awarded noble titles and governmental positions in Spanish America
for their honorable military service. Had they remained in Spain,
these individuals would have had little chance to improve their posi-
tion due to society’s rigid hierarchy, but America, on the other hand,
was a land of opportunity where many individuals even managed to
achieve high societal and political standing.
When he was awarded the title adelantado in 1526, Montejo
became one such individual. The implicit hereditary nature and the
aristocratic honors bestowed upon the position of governor did not
go unnoticed, however, and several sixteenth-century chroniclers
clearly viewed Montejo unworthy of being recognized as ‘noble,’ or,
more importantly, as deserving of a hereditary governorship. Bartolomé
de Las Casas best expressed this widely held view:
In the year 1526, another wretch was deemed governor of the kingdom
of the Yucatán, through lies and falsehoods and offers that he made
to the King, as other tyrants have done until now in order to obtain
offices and positions so that they may rob [the king].35
For Las Casas, Montejo was clearly the antithesis of what it meant
to be a governor and, more specifically, to be noble in Spanish soci-
ety, even in the decadence of Spanish-American society. These senti-
ments were further compounded by the decision to deny Montejo
35
Las Casas (1999) 124. The Spanish text reads “El año de mil y quinientos y vein-
tiséis fue otro infelice hombre proveído por gobernador del reino de Yucatán, por las mentiras y
falsedades que dijo y ofrecimiento que hizo al rey, como los otros tiranos han hecho hasta agora,
porque les den oficios y cargos con que puedan robar.”
384 c. cody barteet
entry into the noble Order of Santiago.36 With the colonial environment
as a background, it is possible to infer that the imagery of the
Montejo façade actually attempts to rebuke these ideas through its
affirmation of Montejo’s noble status as governor of the province.
It must be remembered that Montejo’s position as governor was
synonymous with being noble, which was uncertain, whereas Herrera’s
nobility was never questioned. Therefore, through the prominent dis-
play of her sculpted bust and familial arms on the façade of the
Casa de Montejo, the Montejos attempted to strengthen their societal
stock and give further legitimacy to Montejo’s dubious lineage by
relying upon the conventions of Spanish nobility. The inclusion of
Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms was not unknown in Spain,
but it did carry certain connotations. The tradition of marshalling a
woman’s arms with those of her husband is believed to have been
initiated in the mid-thirteenth century by a Spanish king who included
the arms of a female relation on the new Castilian royal shield.37 In
so doing, the king was granted the opportunity to appreciate his
spouse’s noble status as his own both publicly and politically and
through her distinction was able to further enhance his own noble
lineage. Like the thirteenth-century king, the Montejos used the
courtly custom to further their own legitimacy within the nascent
American nobility, a message they conveyed to a larger urban audi-
ence through the architectural adornment of the Montejo façade.
Throughout Spain and its dominions, heraldic images were used
as architectural embellishment and in other visual media. Heraldic
motifs were synonymous with establishing certain conceptions about
the patron. Perhaps the most studied example of the practice in early
modern Spain is the case of the Catholic Monarchs. Under Isabella’s
guidance, the monarchs launched an ambitious building campaign;
its objectives were to revitalize and commemorate important monar-
chical sites and monuments throughout Spain. Their intent, as Jonathan
Brown has stated, was to “signal the dominant presence of the monar-
chy throughout the kingdom.” One way their symbolic presence was
36
37
See sources from note 19. There is some ambiguity in these sources as to
when the tradition actually began. It appears that it initiated with Ferdinand III
when he marshaled his father’s arms with those of his mother’s to create the shield
of Castile and Leon upon his father’s death in 1230.
achieved was through the use of heraldic representations in archi-

tectural effigies that visually and emphatically established the monarchs’
claims of ‘dynastic legitimacy and continuity’ at traditional monar-
chical sites.38 As such, these monuments and their architectural adorn-
ments became symbols of public display or, better yet, propaganda.
Not surprisingly, as González Galván has explained in his study of
civil facades in colonial Mexico, this fashion arrived in Spanish
America with the burgeoning American nobility who sought to estab-
lish their own “dynastic legitimacy and continuity.”39 Indeed, one
means by which members of the nobility attempted to visually estab-
lish themselves was through the development of a new descriptive
façade language, a language couched in the patron’s desires to make
declarative statements in stone. By the time the Casa’s façade was
constructed, the Spanish monarchy was well aware of the power of
visual propaganda. Furthermore, in the Casa de Montejo, Charles V
was mindful of the Montejos’ plan to establish large-scale urban sig-
nage because Charles had stipulated that Montejo’s new blazon, which
Charles V awarded to him after his appointment as adelantado, not
only commemorated Montejo’s accomplishments, but more importantly,
also became a symbol of Montejo and his heirs’ legitimacy as gov-
ernors of the Yucatán. The façade of the Casa de Montejo, with its
large escudo protected by armed Spanish halberdiers and wild men,
does this in dramatic fashion.40 These images are complemented by
a series of busts assumed to represent the founding members of the
Montejo dynasty, including at least three female busts. One of these
idealistically depicts Herrera—in the upper-right corner of the por-
tal’s lintel—wearing a crown and the emblems of her noble status
as the governor’s wife. Moreover, her noble lineage is indisputable:
Herrera’s legitimizing coat of arms appears prominently on the façade.
38
Brown (1992) 42. Brown also notes that other intentions of this program were
“to assert their [Ferdinand and Isabella’s] hegemony over the nobles; . . . displaying
their zeal as defenders of the Christian faith,” and to demonstrate “dynastic legit-
imacy and continuity.”
39
González Galván (1989) 95–98.
40
Restall (1998) 3, notes that Montejo relied upon a large number of Nahuas
from Central Mexico during the final colonization. This fact adds interesting com-
plexity to the interpretations of the wild men in that they cannot be seen solely as
standardized representations of European wild men. It seems plausible to infer that
on some level these warriors could be equated with the foreign Nahuas who helped
the Montejos pacify the Yucatán Peninsula.
386 c. cody barteet
A Continuing Legacy
Scholarly accounts about the lives of the Montejo children are sim-
ilar in form to those of their parents in that the life of Catalina, like
that of her mother, has been glossed over while the exploits of her
half-brother are well documented. The emphasis placed on El Mozo
in published works is understandable due to the pivotal role he played
in the colonization of the Yucatán Peninsula, but, I argue, Catalina
also played an equally important role, particularly through her polit-
ically driven marriage to the older Alonso Maldonado, who at the
time was head of the Audiencia de los Confines.41 The goals of their
marriage were clear: To secure a stronger allegiance between these
two important families (Montejo and Maldonado were both from
Salamanca) and to strengthen their combined hold over Yucatecan
and Central American politics.42 Furthermore, it was Catalina, rather
than El Mozo, who inherited their father’s noble titles after his death
in 1553. In some scholarly accounts the fact of her inheritance has
been exploited to characterize the adelantado as a father who neglected
his son and rightful heir.43 When placed in the context of the his-
torical framework, however, Catalina’s inheritance was ensured by
the astute pre-emptive actions of her mother soon after she arrived
in Mexico.
At this time, Spain was quite unlike the rest of Western Europe
because its officials recognized female inheritance. Likewise, issues of
illegitimacy were equally important in the early modern context,
because in Spain an illegitimate offspring could be officially recog-
nized through royal ratification. As Ann Twinam has alluded in her
study of illegitimacy in colonial Latin America, the practice of seek-
ing ratification from the king was not uncommon in Spain and had
occurred throughout the kingdom for some time.44 The practice of
legitimization is significant in the context of this study because El
Mozo was Montejo’s illegitimate son from an affair he had with Ana
de León. While at Charles V’s court, Montejo sought and was granted
the king’s official recognition of El Mozo, his only biological son, as
41
Chamberlain (1958) 15, has noted that there is still some discrepancy as to
when they were married due to the vagueness in the archival documents, but he
suggests it was in either 1542 or 1544.
42
Stone (1990) 53; and Chamberlain (1958) 181.
43
Arrigunaga Peón (1965) 421.
44
Twinam (1999).
his rightful heir. As seen in archival documentation, including his

last will and testament, Montejo often names El Mozo as his hijo
natural—implying that El Mozo was his legitimate beneficiary.
Furthermore, El Mozo had established a permanent settlement in
the Yucatán when he founded Mérida in 1542 (and began con-
struction on the Montejo palace for his father) and was often highly
praised by other government and church officials in the Yucatán.
Despite his role in the colonization of the area, his ratified legiti-
macy did not relieve the political and societal prejudices that had
developed towards him and his father, prejudices apparent after
Montejo’s death when Catalina became the primary heir over her
half-brother.
From the broader political perspective, Montejo and his son were
vestiges no longer suited to the needs of the American government.
The viceregency was a complex system that was meant, as Inga
Clendinnen states, “to discourage the growth of any overmighty fac-
tion.”45 Through their actions, which included, among others, the
barring of municipal elections and the imprisonment of political lead-
ers, the Montejos became an ‘overmighty faction.’ Their exploits cre-
ated a breakdown in the American bureaucratic government. In
response, the Crown punitively ended their monopoly over Yucatecan
affairs by publicly reprimanding Montejo and stripping him of his
governorship in 1550. In addition, El Mozo’s illegitimacy was brought
to the fore by the official passing of his father’s titles to his half-
sister through what seems to have been a politically driven move.
From a broader perspective, Catalina’s social position was much
more secure than that of her half-brother. Her security is unques-
tionably Herrera’s doing because she insisted upon the public recog-
nition of her marriage to Montejo and the important affirmation of
her daughter as legitimate. Herrera’s actions reflect the Visigothic
tradition of establishing female heiresses. Despite the royal ratification
in Spain that legitimized him on paper, realistically El Mozo remained
illegitimate. Thus, in societal and political contexts he was not a suit-
able heir, but his sister was.
Furthermore, Catalina was married to Maldonado, who was an
audiencia president. Despite the political tensions that had been cre-
ated by the families in their attempts to manipulate Central American
45
Clendinnen (1987) 59.
388 c. cody barteet
politics, Maldonado was the epitome of a Spanish bureaucrat. Indeed,

Maldonado came from established Castilian nobility and was an
influential member of the viceregal government. Therefore, the pass-
ing of the title adelantado, even if it possessed no real official power,
to Catalina and effectively to Maldonado through marriage, blended
well with Maldonado’s stature, a status that El Mozo, or even Montejo,
could never possess.
An interesting element of the lower portion of the Montejo façade
that relates to the aspect of Catalina’s status is found in the two
sculpted jamb busts, commonly assumed to represent Catalina and
El Mozo. As seen in Figures 15.4 and 15.5, these images have two
different expressions and fields of sight. Despite some deterioration,
principally of the male figure, it is possible to discern portions of
their original design. On the left, the female bust raises her head to
the upper right while the male figure, on the right, appears to look
horizontally across the entryway of the façade toward the female
(Catalina’s) head, instead of to the expected upper left, which would
have created a symmetrical balance in rhythm with the entire façade.
What makes this composition even more complex is that Catalina’s
bust looks directly up to that of her mother. Furthermore, Catalina’s
bust breaks with the symmetry of the façade as she is possibly the
only female figure or symbol found on the left-hand side of the mon-
ument. In contrast, there are multiple female representations—
Herrera’s bust, the inscription MA (Mary), and another female bust
in the second storey frieze—on the viewer’s right half of the façade,
the side that is traditionally the ‘female,’ or ‘sinister,’ side in Western
religious iconography.46 It appears that Catalina’s bust was placed
deliberately on the viewer’s left-hand side (traditionally the more
prestigious and more often ‘male’ side) of the façade so that she can
look in perpetuity at her mother, the ultimate source of her politi-
cal and social power. Thus, the bust’s placement not only suggests
Catalina’s preferential familial status—and begs the question as to who
devised the Casa de Montejo façade’s iconographic program in the first
place—but also reinforces Herrera’s presence in Yucatecan affairs.
46
In the upper frieze appear three busts, one clearly identifiable as a man in
the center of a frieze and one clearly a female to the right of the façade. The third
figure has deteriorated, but it does not appear to possess the features of a woman.
Fig. 15.4 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida,
390 c. cody barteet
Fig. 15.5 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida,
Conclusion
Even though much remains to be determined about the life of Beatriz

Álvarez de Herrera, what has been uncovered to date provides inter-
esting insights into the political and artistic development of the
Yucatán. My study of established political and societal conventions
underscores the relevance of some of Herrera’s actions and provides
a backdrop from which to analyze her representations in the archi-
tectural adornment of the Casa de Montejo. Through an understanding
of early modern normative conventions in Spain, it becomes possi-
ble to see how these conventions manifest themselves in the Americas.
Although the Casa de Montejo façade does not break with tradition,
it nevertheless provides a vital clue that contributes to an understanding
of the Montejos’ ambitions in the Yucatán as expressed in the icono-
graphic program of such an important viceregal monument. It also
helps shed new light on the role of architectural representation in
viceregal culture. As I have suggested, one way these intentions were
expressed in the Montejo façade was through the visual legitimiza-
tion of and homage to Herrera. It follows, then, that the study of
these images provides a vehicle from which to begin to understand
her role in Yucatecan affairs. Herrera’s determined actions, although
seemingly slight on the surface, rippled out and influenced subse-
quent political and social events. Herrera becomes a point of origin
from which to begin to reevaluate the history, the art, the archi-
tecture, and the role of women in early modern Latin America.
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Dillard, H. (1984) Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300
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J. G. Victoria (Mexico City: 1983) 157–166.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ISABEL DE CISNEROS IN HER OWN ROLE
A. Lepage
In the Name of Santiago
In the introductory catalogue to the broad collection of Jacinto Jijón

y Caamaño, the prominent Ecuadorian historian José María Vargas
casts the seventeenth century as being represented by “Miguel de
Santiago, his daughter Isabel and his disciple Nicolás Javier Goríbar,
with their canvases prepared with conscience, their defined designs,
and their colors of cold tones.”1 Traditionally appearing as a tenuous
first name, squeezed here between those of her father and her cousin
in a slightly sentimental account of her time, Isabel de Cisneros (ca.
1666–ca. 1714) barely exists.2 Only known in art history as Isabel de
Santiago, she appears as the daughter of the most ‘famous’ colonial
Quiteño painter, or again as a wife, working in Santiago’s workshop
“along with her husband Captain Antonio Egas.”3 In her own last
will and testament, however, and throughout various ecclesiastical
documents pertaining to her marriage and the baptism of her chil-
dren, Isabel (de Santiago) consistently identifies herself and signs her
own name as Cisneros, a name she inherited from her mother.4
Therefore, in the absence of any trace of her professional identification
during her time, Isabel de Santiago will be referred to, in the fol-
lowing lines, as Isabel de Cisneros.
1
Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño was an early twentieth-century archaeologist and art
connoisseur. In 1963, the funds to establish a museum, along with his private col-
lection, were donated to the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador by Jijón
y Caamaño’s heirs; see Vargas (1978) 12 and 22.
2
The biological mother of Miguel de Santiago was Juana Ruiz and the grand-
mother of Goríbar was Mariana Ruiz: The two artists have therefore been con-
sidered relatives; ibid., 36.
3
Vargas (1960) 189.
4
Throughout Ecuadorian scholarship, however, Cisneros is referred to as ‘Isabel’
or ‘Isabel de Santiago.’ All original references to her under the name of Santiago
have been retained in cited sources.
396 a. lepage
Identifying Isabel de Cisneros and individualizing her work among

the artists trained in her father’s workshop and active in late seven-
teenth-century Quito appears to be the first duty of any historical
study. One must first recognize, however, that she is one artist among
many in a “notably anonymous artistic scene,” as Alexandra Kennedy
recently qualified it in her discussion of the art of Goríbar (1665–1736),
of which only one signed painting is known.5 In another study
Kennedy asserts that this artistic anonymity resulted as a natural
consequence of the fundamental characteristic of colonial religious
art, which, according to the author, was entirely functional rather than
aesthetic. “Religious art . . . served an end: To transfer, support or
cement a particular religious creed.”6 Thus, while it is not exceptional
to encounter works attributed to Cisneros on the walls of major
museums and colonial churches throughout Ecuador,7 the correctness
of attributions concerning Isabel de Cisneros is as disputable as it is
for most Quiteño artists of this period, including her renowned father,
cousin, and husband. The specific tradition of Ecuadorian art history
of this period might have fostered, until recently, a myth surround-
ing not only Cisneros and her work, but also—by extension—other
artists’ production. Moreover, in the anonymous landscape of Quiteño
art, Cisneros’s minor figure has certainly been less inclined to gain
the favor of art historians reasonably eager to generate a more coher-
ent panorama than the actual one, and to elevate it to the standard
of western historiography by focusing on a few major figures: Miguel
de Santiago (c. 1633–1706) or Goríbar, for example.
One problem, hence, might be the subsequent failure of scholars
to place Cisneros or her work historically and, in turn, to have a
compelling urge to fix this injustice. However, addressing this prob-
lem might finally appear to be a fallacy in the perspective of Quiteño
art, the dominant model of which partly relied, for a long time, on
a tradition reiterated by a few historians. Similarly, the question can-
5
My emphasis; Kennedy Troya (2002) 43–65. Goríbar’s name also appears at
the foot of a print; see Vargas (1978) 36.
6
Kennedy Troya (1998) 95, 87–111.
7
Museums including the Museo Jijón y Caamaño in Quito, the Museo de Arte
Colonial in Quito, the Museo Municipal de Guayaquil, and the Museo Nahim
Isaías de Guayaquil. Churches including the Convent of Carmen Alto, the Santuario
de Guápulo, the Monastery of San Diego, the Monastery of San Francisco, and
the Monastery of San Agustín, all in Quito.
isabel de cisneros in her own role 397
not be simply to discover (or rather re-discover) an unknown or under-

rated woman painter. Of course, following some contemporary west-
ern art historical preoccupations, her academic value would appear
purely gender based, and studying Cisneros would then be an oppor-
tunity to dispute her rank as a woman in a male-dominated culture.
Such concern, no matter how interesting, seems to fall far from the
reality of a complex artistic scene where the identity of the artists,
the distinctiveness of their works, and the circumstances of their pro-
duction thus far defy any definitive classification. Still, an essential
and complicated task is first to pry away the numerous layers of
fiction driven by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideologies
that have, until now, permeated the historiography of Cisneros. Only
then can Isabel de Cisneros be situated in her own right within the
artistic scene of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Quito,
which involved a complex interaction of religious and secular patron-
age. Resulting, as it seems, from such combination, the series of the
miracles of the Virgin of Guápulo realized by Miguel de Santiago’s
workshop might be seen as one of the most significant frameworks
in which to study Cisneros’s contribution to this artistic scene, as
well as an appropriate starting point to consider the delicate problem
of her work’s attribution. If this latter question ends in a very con-
fusing state of affairs, it is nothing, however, compared to the cur-
rent mythical status of Isabel de Cisneros’ life in Quiteño art history.
The Role of Her Life
Considering the available documentation, any account of Isabel de

Cisneros’s life is tentative if not totally fictional. The latest attempt
in this domain by Fernando Jurado Noboa in his 1995 study of Las
Quiteñas (Quiteña Women) reads as a typical mix of facts and inter-
pretations fostered by the composite academic background of its
author.8 Jurado’s first mention of Cisneros’s existence immediately
8
Jurado Noboa (1995) 68–70. As the short biography printed on the back cover
of Las Quiteñas indicates: “The author, Fernando Jurado Noboa (Quito, 1949), is a
doctor of medicine at the Universidad Central del Ecuador, and specialized in psy-
chiatry at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain) . . . [he] is the author of 38 books
related to history and genealogy;” Jurado Noboa (1995) jacket.
398 a. lepage
follows a surprising discussion devoted to the vices of women in colo-

nial Quito. Nonetheless, Jurado reveals that ‘there are good examples’
(Pero hay buenos ejemplos) of Quiteña women, and Cisneros appears as
one of them along with Sor Mariana de Jesús and Sor Juana de
Jesús Paz y Miño, due to the posthumous portrait of the latter she
painted around 1703 (Fig. 16.1). The completion of such a com-
mission, one must understand, elevates Cisneros to the status of some-
thing of a saintly figure herself. While Jurado felt bound to provide
us with a beatified psychological portrait of the artist, his subsequent
brief study under the promising though misleading title “El arte e
Isabel de Santiago” (Art and Isabel de Santiago) contributes nonethe-
less some progress to the understanding of Cisneros’s life and might
be accounted as a first example of a discussion of this painter out-
side the scope of Miguel de Santiago. Working with Cisneros’s last
will and testament and the baptismal records of the children of
Cisneros and her husband, Don Antonio Egas Venegas de Córdoba
(ca. 1635–ca. 1705), Jurado puts to rest the common belief that
Cisneros left no descendents and mentions five children.9 Beyond
this new information about her heirs, one is left with a relatively
traditional account of Isabel de Cisneros’s life (still named ‘Santiago’
by the author). In short, Doña María Isabel de Cisneros y Alvarado
was born in 1666 from Miguel de Santiago, a mestizo whose adopted
name was given to him by Don Hernando de Santiago, a city alder-
man of Riobamba, Ecuador, and Doña Andrea Cisneros y Alvarado
(†1700) who, as Jurado emphasizes, was ‘very Spanish.’10
It is in the light of this dual ethnic legacy that one can retrospect-
ively read—literally—the role of Cisneros as penned by Alfredo Pareja
Diezcanseco in an influential novel titled Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de
9
Vargas (1957) 21. In fact, baptismal records for five children—who are also named
in Cisneros’s will—have been discovered by Jurado. They are: Agustín Lauriano (1689),
María Monica (1692), Nicolás Fortunato (1693), Antonio (1696), and María Tomasa
Venegas de Córdoba (1700); Libro de Bautismos, Archivo Histórico Curia Metro-
politana, Quito [Hereafter AHCM/Q , Sección Sacramentaria (Santa Bárbara),
Libro 1, 170, 181; Libro 2, 18v, 44]. As for additional biographical details, matrimonial
records from the parish of Santa Bárbara indicate that Cisneros was legally mar-
ried to Egas in 1691 and married in the church on January 15, 1692. The death
of Andrea de Cisneros y Alvarado occurred in 1700; Jurado Noboa (1995) 68–70.
10
Miguel de Santiago was the natural son of Lucas Vizuete and Juana Ruiz; see
Miguel de Santiago’s will as published by Vargas (1970) 131–135. See also Jurado
Noboa (1995) 69. While some historians of Quiteño art acknowledge the Spanish
tradition of Cisneros taking her mother’s name [See Navarro (1991) 82; and Vargas
(1957) 21.], they do not apply this name to Cisneros.
Fig. 16.1 [Copy of ] Portrait of Juana de Jesús, original: Isabel de Cisneros. Ca.
1703, Convent of Santa Clara, Quito, Eduador.
400 a. lepage
Santiago.11 Written in 1952, this account of the life and legend of Miguel
de Santiago adds one layer of significance to Isabel de Cisneros’s
existence and status in Ecuadorian art. Cisneros, the painter, does
not enter the novel until halfway through Pareja’s account, long after
the stage has been set for the gradual creation of Santiago as a
brooding master witnessing the death of his three sons, and later the
death of his daughter Juana Ruiz, that of his wife, and of his son-
in-law Egas. In fact, Cisneros gains her importance as a painter only
after Santiago’s abandonment by his most gifted student, Nicolás
Goríbar, whom he had trained and—we are told—who had been
sent to him as a “reparation for the loss of his sons.”12
Relying upon the work published in 1929, among other histori-
cal documents, by the art historian José Gabriel Navarro on Ecuadorian
sculpture from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and exploit-
ing the first publication of Miguel de Santiago’s last will and testa-
ment, Pareja seems to have used the genre of the historical novel
with a specific purpose in mind.13 Known from the twenties through
the seventies as an Ecuadorian socialist novelist, Pareja’s writings,
along with the issue of several socialist manifestoes, have been viewed
by his contemporaries as potentially fueling the (ultimately frustrated)
socialist revolution that began on July 9, 1925.14 In 1952, emphasizing
the indigenous heritage of Miguel de Santiago, who in his genius
becomes a symbol for Pareja’s cause, the novel is clearly in the con-
tinuity of the author’s ideological line, valorizing the indigenous or
otherwise marginalized (black and mulatto) populations of Ecuador.
From a political point of view, perfectly perceived by Kessel Schwartz
shortly after the publication of Pareja’s novel, Miguel de Santiago
and those associated with his genius clearly become representative
of the mestizo’s general condition, and symbols of a wider revolu-
tionary spirit fighting social control over the indigenous population:
11
Pareja Diezcanseco (1952).
12
Ibid., 76–77. The entrance of Cisneros as an artist occurs on pages 91 to 95.
13
See ibid., 129, for a bibliography including, notably, Valentín Iglesias (1922);
and Navarro (1929). In what might be seen as a pre-emptive strike, Valentín out-
lines the origins of the numerous myths surrounding Santiago, although he notes
“. . . there is nothing secure or stable in relation to these myths, which have been
modified through time to the taste and fancy of various writers . . .,” 4–19. Pareja’s
greatest contribution in this camp might be seen then as the concrete stabilization
of the myths of Santiago in Ecuadorian tradition in the form that would later be
continuously repeated.
14
Schwartz (1959) 220–228.
The [Ecuadorian] contemporary novelists—noted Schwartz—have cam-

paigned in the hope of redeeming the Indian, Negro, and other down-
trodden elements from an old slavery. In their emphasis on the social
problems they form a part of a general Ecuadorian movement, in art,
sculpture, and literature, and they have absorbed a conflicting mass
of foreign influences in an attempt to bring a foreign culture into the
Ecuadorian tradition, and especially to graft European socialism on
that tradition.15
This explains why Schwartz, a few years later, identifies—apparently
wrongly—the Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de Santiago as one of Pareja’s
three works of non-fiction.16 Certainly Pareja’s colorful writing and
his taste for incestuous romance blatantly contradict Schwartz’s inter-
pretation. But the cultural implications of the novel, on the other
hand, establish plainly Pareja’s work within the reality of Ecuadorian
history. Hence, one must not be surprised by the feedback effect of
Pareja’s work in the art history of seventeenth-century Quito. As a
distant echo of the novelist’s reliance on Navarro’s 1929 historical
work on Ecuadorian art, Pareja’s Romantic approach to this work re-
appears in the form of a ‘tradition’ according to which, Navarro says
one day [Goríbar] was obligated to abandon the workshop, due to the
excessive obstinacy and bad temper of his master Miguel de Santiago:
Whereas the tradition has painted the master’s flaws to posterity, it
has profiled his disciple as docile and agreeable in character.17
To a great extent, all of Navarro’s following historical account of the
master-disciple relationship borrows from Pareja’s fictional creation,
and a similar shift can be traced in some versions of Cisneros’s
life.18 In this regard, the breeding of history and fiction produces a
tradition nurtured to some extent by Pareja’s ideological stance, and
in which Cisneros’s relationship to her father might still bear an
underlying significance in relation to Ecuadorian cultural history at
large. As the betrayed spirit of the revolution itself, in a sense—
whose accomplishment might always be followed by disillusionment—
the fulfillment of Santiago’s artistic genius might depend on its
15
Schwartz (1955) 297, 294–298.
16
Ibid., 227. “[Pareja’s] three major non-fictional works are La hoguera bárbera,
Historia del Ecuador and a biography, Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de Santiago.” Also note
that this novel is frequently considered to be a work of non-fiction; see Vargas
(1957) 16; and Pareja Diezcanseco (1995) 40.
17
Navarro (1991) 100. For corresponding fiction, see Pareja (1952) 89–90.
18
See, notably, Vargas (1957) 21; Vargas (1960) 188; and Navarro (1991) 81.
402 a. lepage
perpetuation.19 This role is fulfilled through the life of his preferred

daughter, Cisneros, who serves as a fragile but consistent spirit through
which his legacy persists. Indeed, Pareja’s ultimate lines read: “Isabel
lived many, many years [after the death of her father]. From time
to time, works painted by her hand surface.”20
Hence, although a secondary character, Cisneros nonetheless be-
comes something of a hero; for not only does she survive the tradi-
tional malediction surrounding the life of her genius father, but as an
artist herself, she carries on his tradition. This is a heritage to which
Pareja attributes, in disguise, a meaning that ties together the arts
and the life of Ecuadorian people. As such, one might understand
that Cisneros’s symbolic role in the history of Quiteño art in gen-
eral strongly depends on the posterity of her father’s name, a name
to which she has been consistently tied even though, as Pareja and
other historians such as Vargas have read: “In his will . . . Miguel
de Santiago mentions his daughter, Isabel de Cisneros y Alvarado,
widow of Capitán Antonio Egas.”21
Of course, the historical validity of Pareja’s novel is disputable,
and has been argued at times.22 Similarly, despite some troubling
appearances, one should not overemphasize its cultural interpretation
and ideological legacy. On the other hand, no matter how arguable,
Pareja’s creation was precisely intended to permeate a reality that,
unless one reads it uncritically, is already the product of a fiction.
In any case—wrote Pareja—the most credulous is the person who
believes totally in the official document, which is always calculated . . . or
the work of another inventor with less wisdom than the novelist.23
That is why, whether one wants it to or not, the status of Pareja’s
fictional character, in its influential marginality, remains that of Isabel
de Santiago in contemporary studies of Quiteño art—infiltrating, as a
solid myth, any attempts to define her significance within Ecuadorian
19
In Pareja’s own account of the revolution, he concludes, “Little by little, the
protagonists of the revolution of 1925 began to dis-integrate themselves from the
movement . . .;” Pareja Diezcanseco (1999) 85.
20
Pareja (1952) 128.
21
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (1976), s. n. See also Terán (1950)
14; Navarro (1991) 81–82; and Paez (1957) 56, in which he employs the testament
of Santiago, while still naming Cisneros ‘Isabel de Santiago.’
22
See, for example, Vargas (1960) 187.
23
“En todo caso, más crédulo es quien se fía totalmente del documento oficial,
siempre intencionado, o del hecho . . . escrito por otro inventor con menos sagaci-
dad que la del novelista;” Pareja (1952) 8.
art history. Until now, Cisneros’s allusive presence in this history has
been token: Either related to an ideological assessment of Ecuadorian
society or as a uniquely feminine, and therefore remarkable, contri-
bution in its art history. In fact, Cisneros is not a unique example
of a woman artist working in Ecuador, and a recent study by Kennedy
illustrates that cloistered women were actively involved in all aspects
of art production during the colonial period: Patronage, manufacture,
and collection.24 This type of cloistered art production in Ecuador
is consistent with the practices of cloistered women in Europe. Recent
studies by Susan Verdi Webster and Kimberly Gauderman, however,
tend to demonstrate that women held a much higher status—espe-
cially economically—in Quito than they did in Europe.25 This ele-
vated status of women in seventeenth-century Quito, while not being
directly related to Cisneros’s condition, is nevertheless an encouragement
to consider Cisneros’s artistic career through the examination of the
surrounding conditions of the artistic production of her time.
Quiteño Connection
Although no information seems to surface about the time Isabel de

Cisneros started her formation, one can confidently assert that she
was trained and worked in her father’s workshop. Santiago’s work-
shop was already established at the time he received the commission
for the cycle of the life of Saint Augustine, dedicated in 1656, in
the eponymous monastery. Notably, artists including Bernabé Lovato,
Simón de Valenzuela, Nicolás Javier Goríbar, Antonio Egas, and
Gregorito were also trained in the same workshop. Among the securely
attributed works commissioned from Miguel de Santiago’s workshop,
it is only possible to speculate that Isabel de Cisneros worked, along
with Goríbar, on the Series of the Milagros de la Virgen in the sanc-
tuary of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, realized between 1699 and
1706.26 First, in investigating the commission of this very cycle of
24
Kennedy Troya (2002a) 109–127.
25
For example, Webster asserts that while women held such high positions within
confraternities as stewards in Ecuador, it would have been impossible to attain such
a position in a contemporary European-based confraternity; Webster (2002b) 69,
67–85. For a detailed study of the elevated economic status and liberty of women
in Quito in the seventeenth century, see Gauderman (2003).
26
For the most recent related study, see Kennedy Troya (2002a) 50, 43–65. Among
404 a. lepage
paintings, one must examine how the complex weaving of the reli-
gious and secular representatives of Quiteño society intervened in
the life of a given workshop and, possibly, in the subsistence of an
individual artist such as Isabel de Cisneros.
Although she lived during times when the perspective of an artist
largely focused on obtaining commissions from the Catholic Church,
private citizens were also active patrons of religious art. In this regard,
the examination of estate inventories indicates that by the turn of
the eighteenth century almost every household, however humble,
owned at least a painting or two of some saintly advocation. To
understand the status of painting and sculpture at the moment
Cisneros was most active artistically, from circa 1686 to her death,27
it is possible—as a preliminary inquiry—to turn to the estate inven-
tories from the parish of Santa Bárbara where Santiago and Cisneros
lived for the majority of their adult lives. Depending on the socio-
economic status of people living in the area, some might very well
have been patrons of Cisneros’ oeuvre.
In the 1715 inventory of the estate of Don Luis de Araus, a vecino
of Quito, for example, the contents of four separate residences were
inventoried.28 In the principle home of Araus no fewer than seventy-
nine paintings of all sizes, most in gilded frames, are inventoried.
These are images of numerous saints, including Our Lady of Sorrows,
Sts. Mary Magdalene, Lawrence, and Catherine, among others,29
along with forty-four landscape paintings. This collection, just one
of three that this particular family owned, was made up of both New
and Old Testament saints and figures, modern saints, and secular
landscapes. The scale of this collection and the fact that most of
other securely attributed series, one can mention: Christian Doctrine (ca. 1670) in San
Francisco, Quito; Ave Maria, (ca. 1673) in San Francisco in Bogotá; The Articles of
the Faith (1673), and Misericordia (ca. 1673) in the Bogotá Cathedral.
27
While comparatively little is currently known about seventeenth-century prac-
tices in painting workshops in Quito, metalworking workshops have been studied
extensively in an Ecuadorian context. Accordingly, apprentices were admitted into
workshops between the ages of thirteen and twenty. Therefore, with caution, Cisneros
may be considered an active workshop member by at least the age of twenty. For
related studies, see Paniagua Pérez and Truhan (1997) 59–70; and Garzón (1995)
12–24.
28
Inventory of the estate of Don Luis de Araus, Archivo Nacional de Historia,
Quito [Hereafter ANH/Q ], Notaría 4. Jucios. Caja 8. 28-I-1715.
29
Ibid. One can add to this list: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Isabel, Saint
John the Baptist, Saint Rita, David, and Judith.
these paintings are framed, along with the Araus’ possession of a

large quantity of worked silver, undoubtedly places this family among
the upper classes of Quito. Still, one must keep in mind that the
thematic diversity of this collection as well as the inclusion of secu-
lar works is entirely typical of most collections of the time period.30 With
Cisneros’s status as the daughter of a renowned painter, the upper-
class Araus family represents precisely the type of private patron for
whom she must have worked.31 Unfortunately, it is impossible, at
this point, to identify which if any of these works listed in the estate
of Don Luis de Araus could have belonged to the hand of Cisneros.
A second facet of Isabel de Cisneros’ relatively obscure artistic
milieu is to be traced via the estate of Don Manuel de Lomas, whose
surrounding circumstances unveil a network of remarkable connec-
tions in which she plays a certain while indeterminate role. Indeed,
Lomas’s estate was executed in 1705 by Maestro Don Antonio de
la Chica Cevallos (†ca. 1717) who shortly afterward will also be the
executor of Miguel de Santiago’s closed last will and testament. As
the executor to Lomas, Chica delegated some of the work of liqui-
dating this estate to two particularly striking individuals: First, to José
Jaime Ortiz, the main architect of the city, who was put in charge
of the real estate, and second, and most importantly, to Miguel de
Santiago, whose assignment was to liquidate the paintings of Lomas.32
Lastly, during the sale of Lomas’s estate, Antonio Egas purchased a
piece of worked silver for the price of fourteen reales.
While indirectly implicated in Lomas’s estate through familial con-
nections, Cisneros is in fact directly part of this intricate circle. As
her own last will and testament—remarkably witnessed by Goríbar—
indicates, Cisneros owed money to Chica at the time of her death.
Subsequently, in order to solve a debt contracted by her husband,
she consented to pay for the balance of
a house that is in the heights of Santa Bárbara which has been used
as collateral against the 200 peso debt owed to Maestro Don Antonio
de la Chica, plus 50 pesos, which should be paid to the said Maestro
30
For supporting examples, see AHCM/Q: 1687-II-31; and ANH/Q: 1714-XI-13,
1717-VI-18.
31
Based on investigation of estate records, Kennedy asserts Santiago as the only
artist of his time to be consistently identified as the author of works; see Kennedy
(2002a) 208, n. 16.
32
For a recent comprehensive study on Ortiz, see Webster (2002a).
406 a. lepage
with the value of a sculpted Christ that remains as a part of my said

husband’s property; and if the referenced price does not leave the Maestro
content, he should be paid [an additional] 20 pesos from my estate___.33
Hence, suggesting more intimate connections between the involved
parties, Cisneros offers Chica a sculpture that belonged to Egas in
exchange for the outstanding sum. Whether such compensation had
been previously agreed upon or not is unknown. What matters,
finally, is the possibility to witness, through these very circumstances,
Cisneros’s personal involvement in an artistic scene—as tenuous as
her participation might at first appear.
Behind the Miracles
This fragile link, indeed, prolongs itself in the examination of the

conception and realization of the Santuario de Guápulo, whose
decoration most likely begins circa 1685 and continues through the
eighteenth century. Guápulo’s priest, Doctor Don José de Herrera
y Cevallos, was in charge of the artistic decisions at the Santuario
de Guápulo. A familial connection between Chica and Herrera comes
to light through the examination of archival sources, and consider-
ing his abovementioned role in the artistic community, Chica might
have been partially involved in the organization of such a group
comprising the most distinguished artists and artisans of late seven-
teenth-century Quito.34 As recorded by the Cofradía de Nuestra
Señora de Guadalupe (The Confraternity of Our Lady of Guadalupe)
through the Libro de Cofradía, the construction was led between 1650
and 1685 by the lay Franciscan Fray Antonio Rodríguez. Subsequently,
33
“. . . a la deuda de doscientos pesos en favor de Mro Don Antonio de la Chica
con mas sin cuenta para que pague a dicho Mro con el valor de un Santo Cristo
de bulto que quedo para vienes de dicho mi marido y para que en el precio referido
no se halla dicho Mro se le darán veinte pesos de mis vienes__” Last Will and
Testament of Isabel de Cisneros, ANH/Q , Notaría 4, vol. 65, 1714, p. 129v.
34
For family relationship between Chica and Herrera, see ANH/Q: 1714-XI-
13, 50; and AHCM/Q: Caja 28, 7v–14. Goríbar himself is also closely connected
to the Santuario de Guápulo based on his family connections. His uncle, Bachiller
Miguel de Goríbar, served as the Coadjutor in Guápulo 1686–1698. AHCM/Q:
Caja 28, 14–28. The connections between Santiago’s workshop and Guápulo con-
tinue: Between ca. 1688 and 1690, Antonio Egas is actively involved in the fundrais-
ing campaign toward constructing and decorating Guápulo; AHCM/Q: Libro de
Cofradía, 24–38.
Capitán Marcos Tomás Correa designed the retables and Juan Bautista
Menacho executed them. The confraternity recorded their first pay-
ment of fifty pesos to Miguel de Santiago in 1684 for the painting
of the doors of the niche of the sanctuary,35 and it appears that
Santiago’s workshop also received the commission for at least four
painted retables and a series of twelve independent paintings that
were realized between 1699 and 1706 and dedicated to the mira-
cles of the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo.36 One of them,
now titled Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo y su hijo (Fig. 16.2), is
initialed by Miguel de Santiago following the inscription:
Don Francisco, having promised to go to the novena on foot, [instead]
went on a mule. [The mule then] dragged [Don Francisco] to the
corner of the plaza in the year 1665; and while eating, his son choked
on a bone; [the bone] was taken out covered in blood.37
While the representation of these two ‘miraculous’ punishments pre-
sided over by the image of the Virgin is still readable on the bottom
left and right of the canvas, the current state of the painting shows,
as a translucent, centered scene, what Vargas identified in 1990 as
a sacred family previously painted, he asserted, by Miguel de Santiago.38
Whether the resulting hallucinogenic vision is to be attributed to the
effects of time or to a restoration is irrelevant to our concern. First,
one should rather acknowledge the relative difference of styles between
the two superimposed scenes, hardly produced by the same hand.
Subsequently, a slightly closer look at the ‘sacred family’ instantly calls
to mind a late seventeenth-century depiction of the education of the
Virgin preserved nearby at the Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and
presently attributed to Cisneros. Probably credited to Isabel de
Cisneros based on Vargas’s assessment that the composition of ‘domes-
tic scenes’ (asuntos familiares)39 constitute her special domain, the com-
positional and stylistic characteristics of this very work could naturally
suggest the established presence and activity of Cisneros at the time
of Santiago’s work on the Guápulo series and before. Therefore,
35
AHCM/Q: Caja 32.
36
This series is now preserved in the sacristy.
37
Inscription, as cited by Vargas: “Habiendo prometido D. Francisco Romo ir
a pie a un novenario, fuese a mula y le arrastró desde la esquina de la plaza en
el año de 1665 y un hijo suyo estando comiendo se le atravesó un hueso y lo saca-
ron lleno de sangre;” Vargas (1990) 17.
38
Ibid., 17.
39
Vargas (1972) 22.
408 a. lepage
Fig. 16.2 Miguel de Santiago, Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo y su hijo. Ca.
1699–1706, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.
despite the indisputable presence of Miguel de Santiago’s initials, one

might be able to witness here the undermining of a possible, though
fragile (re)apparition of Cisneros’s art underneath that of her father’s.
Although no definitive authorship can be reasonably claimed, there
is no apparent reason to disregard Cisneros’s involvement in the
realization of the twelve paintings that, undoubtedly according to
‘tradition,’ were painted “under the direction of Miguel de Santiago.”40
On the other hand, it is not necessary to X-ray the series of the
Virgin of Guápulo to unveil Cisneros’s active presence at the time
of their realization.
Indeed, the decoration of the Santuario de Guápulo started precisely
when Isabel de Cisneros can be considered, with some certainty, to
have become active in her father’s workshop (as well as more inde-
pendently), and lasted until after her death. Her name is systematically
concealed, however, behind the workshop’s accomplishment, and the
great value of these collective efforts, as we have seen, is ultimately
granted to Santiago’s genius. The omission of Cisneros’s name by
scholars appears normal in the recognition of the Quiteño anony-
mous scene, or considering the status of Miguel de Santiago as the
head of the workshop. However, this exclusion is relatively surpris-
ing when one encounters—consistently—the names of other work-
shop members such as Lovato, Valenzuela, Carreño, and finally
Goríbar in connection to the workshop’s production in general.41
The latter, whose Guápulo retable of the Virgen del Pilar is inscribed
fecit Goríbar, has even often been partially credited—more specifi-
cally—for the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo series.42 From
one extreme to the other, only Juan de Dios Navas, a Franciscan
historian of Guápulo, attributed the paintings on the lower registers
of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube to Isabel de Cisneros in an early
study of the Santuario de Guápulo published in 1926 (Fig. 16.3).43
Navas’s motivation to credit Cisneros seems to rely mainly on the
40
My emphasis; ibid., 21.
41
For examples, see Valentín (1922) 9, 21; Puig (1933) 34; and Terán (1950)
18, 51. Workshop activity is especially recognized in the completion of the early
San Agustín series.
42
Vargas (1960) 189. In addition, Vargas has associated Goríbar with the series
of the Articles of the Faith and the Truths of the Christian Doctrine; ibid., 195.
43
Navas (1926) 266. Navas does not refer to Cisneros by name, but rather as
“the daughter of Miguel de Santiago.”
410 a. lepage
Fig. 16.3 Detail of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube. Previously attributed to

Isabel de Cisneros and currently attributed to Miguel de Santiago. Late 17th c.,
Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.
logical composition of the workshop at the time of the commission,

as well as on the stylistic similarity between these works and another
attributed to Cisneros (Fig. 16.4).44 Nevertheless, Navas’s attribution
suggests that Isabel de Cisneros held an outstanding status in her
father’s workshop, in complete contradiction with her common ban
from the Guápulo cycle. Facing such historical inconsistency, assert-
ing Cisneros’s actual involvement in this very workshop production
appears to be a reasonable albeit unusual first step in studying her
work. It is in any case a more essential gain to the recognition of
her work than any loose attributive effort that, often based on shared
and widespread stylistic qualities, cannot but lead to a speculative
dead end.
Attributive Waltz
Certainly, one of the earliest appreciations of Isabel de Cisneros’s

contribution to the artistic scene of her time, paired with an almost-
contemporary placement of her within Santiago’s workshop, is to be
found in Padre Francisco Javier Antonio’s Vida prodigiosa de la venerable
virgen Juana de Jesús de la Tercera Orden de Penitencia de Nuestro Seraphico
Padre San Francisco: Que florecio en el monasterio de Santa Clara de Quito,
published in Lima in 1756.45 Here, in order to promote the virtues
of the tertiary Franciscan, the author briefly evokes in the following
terms the miraculous circumstances surrounding the commission of
Juana de Jesús’ (1662–1703) posthumous portrait from painter and
sculptor Antonio Egas around 1703:
44
Lovato and Valenzuela are considered to have worked mainly in Santiago’s
workshop early in his career during the completion of the Saint Augustine cycle;
see Navarro (1991) 66–83. See also Navas (1926) 266. Since Navas’ publication,
the retable of La Virgen de la Nube has been reattributed—in its entirety—to Miguel
de Santiago. However, the retable of San Pedro de Alcántara has now been attributed
by the same Museo Franciscano “Fray Antonio Rodríguez, OFM” to Cisneros.
45
Santa Maria (1756). Santa María’s work was based on the account written by
Juana de Jesús’s confessor, Dr. Antonio Fernández Sierra. In addition, Vargas cites
another early reference to Cisneros in a 1786 discourse presented by Don Nicolás
Carrión at the Universidad de Quito. Carrión stresses Cisneros’ artistic activity
within the Santiago workshop; Vargas (1944) 154.
412 a. lepage
Fig. 16.4 Archangel St. Michael. Previously attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and
presently without attribution. Early 18th c., Monastery of San Agustín, Quito,
Ecuador.
After several valiant attempts, his wife, Doña Isabel de Santiago, finally
made the portrait, and if not with perfection with some likeness because
she had met her so many times in life.46
To Jurado’s contemporary eyes, though, Juana de Jesús “looks incred-
ibly Quiteña with a long nose, a subdued smile, a narrow face, and
delicate hands.”47 But for him as well, it is thanks to her apparent
intimacy with the defunct model more than to her skills that Isabel
de Cisneros could, with some success, bring the saintliness of the
religious back to life. Her effort, however, can only be witnessed
through its resuscitation, for this very painting, which remains her
only securely attributed work, only survived through a secluded copy
in the convent of Santa Clara, Quito, where Juana de Jesús was
professed (Fig. 16.1).48 As early as it is, Padre Francisco Javier’s
account still represents the present state of scholarship on Isabel de
Cisneros. Her secure body of work seems to be reduced to a single
inaccessible copy and it is hard not to feel some hopelessness in
Navarro’s conclusion, when he stated:
Many writers have spoken about the art of Isabel de Santiago in a
favorable way [although] there is no known work by this woman whom
tradition signals as the preferred painter of Miguel de Santiago.49
This latter comment by Navarro is somewhat puzzling, as through-
out his career he denies neither the existence of Cisneros, nor her
status as a painter. In fact in the same volume, notably, Navarro
discusses Cisneros’s portrait of Juana de Jesús, while in other pub-
lications he specifically identified and discussed a painting of an
archangel located near the old portal of the church of San Agustín
in Quito (Fig. 16.4), a work he attributes to Cisneros, and an attri-
bution that served as the basis for Navas’s attribution of the Guápulo
retable of La Virgen de la Nube to Isabel de Cisneros.50
46
“Tras algunos intentos y valiéndose finalmente de doña Isabel de Santiago [su
mujer . . .] señalada en el arte, quien por las especies que le quedaron de las veces
que la había visto, la sacó, sino con perfección, con alguna semejanza;” as quoted
by Kennedy (2002b) 119.
47
Jurado Noboa (1995) 62.
48
Navarro (1991) 83. Navarro provides no further information about the origin
of the copy. Today, this painting is preserved in the still-cloistered Convent of Santa
Clara, within the cell in which Juana de Jesús lived during the seventeenth century.
49
Ibid., 83. It should be noted that this manuscript was written in the 1940s,
subsequently published posthumously, and without edition.
50
Navarro (1945) 174. Navarro does not reproduce this work. It is likely, however,
414 a. lepage
Navarro’s reluctance to attribute works to Cisneros is not unusual.

In fact very rarely have works been attributed to her, and when
they have been the method of attribution remains somewhat of a
mystery. Two of them, located in the Pontificia Universidad Católica
del Ecuador, have been identified in the mid-seventies as:
The two paintings of Santa Ana con la Niña María and the scene of the
Hogar de Nazaret have been attributed to Isabel de Santiago. In both
paintings the characteristics of the technique of Miguel de Santiago
are noticeable, along with details of a markedly feminine taste.51
There is no need to emphasize the markedly sexist methodology,
separating male-inherited skill from unrepressed natural taste, which
leads the historian to identify these two works as being the fruit of
a woman painter—the only available choice being the daughter of
Miguel de Santiago. One can remember, moreover, that Vargas
silently rejected any connection between Santa Ana con la Niña María
and the domestic scene that, miraculously, came through the only
painting initialed by Miguel de Santiago in the series of the Virgin
of Guápulo. In any case, such omission might prove to be the best
alternative, for the few attributions that have been made to Cisneros,
to which one should add the Taller de Nazaret located in the convent
of San Diego in Quito, essentially rely on Vargas’s categorization of
her talent at painting ‘domestic’ scenes in a feminine fashion. Without
contesting these attributions, this body of three domestic scenes cred-
ited to her seems to be more of a restriction than a benefit to her
identification. Differently, in the light of the diverse patronage demands,
considering her possible involvement in the Santuario de Guápulo
commission and, at the very least, acknowledging her plain contribu-
tion in her father’s workshop, Cisneros’s production can be broad-
ened—even if this production would remain anonymous.
As contemporary scholars like Kennedy stress, this anonymity is
an intrinsic characteristic of colonial religious art. Departing at this
time from this established property of anonymity only leads to unnec-
essary and confusing assumptions. In 1944, for instance, Vargas attrib-
that the work to which Navarro referred appears under the title Archangel San Miguel
in the 1995 convent museum exhibition catalog. Neither the catalog nor the present-
day museum identifies this painting as the work of Cisneros, but rather as an anony-
mous eighteenth-century work. Convento de San Agustín (1995) 19.
51
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (1976) s. n. Vargas’s position as
director of this museum as well as his later publication, which included long, unref-
erenced quotations contained in this earlier publication, make Vargas’s participa-
tion in the 1976 publication clear; see Vargas (1978).
uted to Cisneros a work depicting Saint Anthony, now in the con-

vent of Carmen Alto in Quito. Later in 1972, and without expla-
nation, Vargas reattributed the same work, this time to the painter
Antonio Salas, who died almost 150 years after Cisneros.52 Ultimately,
it remains difficult to resolve this specific dilemma as styles, tech-
niques, and subject matters are at the same time diffused and min-
gled in the chronology of Quiteño art. In this very context, in which
religious art has been predominantly preserved, one hundred years
does not imply, in most cases, drastic changes in what would define,
as it does for a specialist of western art, the characteristic features
of a given period. Thus, unless any commission, contract, or other
facts can be firmly established, any authoritative attempt to shape
the relative fluidity of the field of colonial Ecuadorian art, and sub-
sequently any will to attribute a singularized position to a painter
named Isabel de Cisneros, would appear to be a fallacy. Then again,
there exists an element of truth in what the unstable tradition con-
cerning Ecuadorian colonial art has consolidated throughout time.
The Reality of the Myth
In sum, to date and as far as the research conditions permit, no

existing work can be securely attributed to Isabel de Cisneros unless
one wants to play a dissonant attributive waltz. As far as the facts go,
Cisneros’s own last will and testament might be considered, ultimately,
as the only first-hand source attesting that she was a painter, and was
completing pending commissions during the last moments of her life:
To Don Antonio Bera—she wrote—to pay for my said husband’s debt
regarding two paintings which were commissioned, and the other works
of which he was also commissioned to complete for various other peo-
ple: [the paintings] will be delivered with my sweat and work, paint-
ing them by selling some of my said husband’s estate in order to buy
the materials. Likewise I paid 40 pesos to Ignacio de Miranda by
painting canvases with said materials.53
52
Vargas (1944) pl. LXVI. In this same work, Vargas attributes to Cisneros a
second painting entitled La Virgen del Carmen, also located in the Convent of Carmen
Alto, Quito (pl. LXV). Vargas (1972b) 254.
53
Testament of Isabel de Cisneros, ANH/Q , Notaría 4, vol. 65, 1714, pp. 127v–128.
“[A] Don Antonio Bera para deuda del dicho mi marido por dos lienzos de obra que
estaban a su cargo y las mas hechuras de que estaba a cargo del dicho mi marido
416 a. lepage
Based on her relationships with her father and husband and relying,
as indicated in her will, on the ties she seemed to have maintained
to Goríbar throughout her life, we can locate Cisneros amidst what
appears to be a coherent artistic community in colonial Quito, in
which sculptors, painters, and architects all appear to gravitate in
the same circles, perhaps orchestrated by figures of a few patrons,
such as Chica or Herrera. Facing the works themselves, Navarro’s
general approach, and his caution in assigning works to a painter
of which very little is known, appear to be an appropriate, while
disappointing conclusion regarding Isabel de Cisneros’s production.
Undoubtedly, breaking the bonds of fiction surrounding Cisneros and
her work appears a preliminary task for a better understanding of
her individual contribution and to clarify our perception of the work-
shop practices of seventeenth-century Quito in general. All the uncer-
tainties surrounding Isabel de Cisneros’s life and work, however,
would only irritate those scholars for whom history only exists in the
accumulation of attested evidence inscribed in a logical sequence and
leading to an ultimate truth.
As an attempt to reconcile truth and fiction, one might stress, in
conclusion, the impact that some of the works produced at the time
of Isabel de Cisneros might still have in the cultural history of
Ecuador. As Kennedy recently demonstrated, the series of the mir-
acles of the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo (as well as her
portrait of Juana de Jesús) participates in a process of ‘criollization’
of Christian doctrine by the New World born Spaniards.54 This move-
ment, one must add, appears perfectly aligned with the contempo-
rary Spanish American criollo campaign to assert primary ownership
of the New World over peninsular Spaniards. Inevitably, the heroic
figures of a few prominent artists, whose works literally represent this
cultural shift, have become—throughout both art history and fiction—
the symbolic vehicles of their patrons’ ideology. In what is the tra-
dition of Ecuadorian art, Miguel de Santiago stands as one, if not the
major, symbol of the perpetuation of this cultural subterranean force.
In that particular context the identification and individualization of
tocantes a destintas [sic] personas de cumplimiento a sus entregas con mi sudor y

trabajo pintándolos vendiendo algunos vienes del dicho mi marido para la compra
de los materiales como así mismo pague cuarenta pesos a Ignacio de Miranda pin-
tando lienzos con dichos materiales y con el valor de algunos vienes de dicho mi
marido.”
54
For further analysis see Kennedy Troya (2002a) and (2002b).
Isabel de Cisneros is most likely irrelevant. In this scenario, her work

only exists when associated with her father’s name, thereby perpet-
uating his myth through the name of his daughter. Thus, even though
everything about her might turn out to be erroneous, or worse turned
into a work of fiction, it is not wrong. For Ecuadorian history seem-
ingly answers back, along with Pareja, that
the fiction which is usually held in every soul forms the tradition and
activates the authentic functions of man, [and that] the symbol obscur-
ing the truth is able to create a spirit determined to reach concrete
conclusions.55
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Gauderman, K. (2003) Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito; Gender, Law, and Economy in
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Jurado Noboa, F. (1995) Las Quiteñas (Quito: 1995).
Kennedy Troya, A. (1998) “Circuitos artísticos interregionales de Quito a Chile,
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—— (2002a) “Algunas consideraciones sobre el arte barroco en Quito y la ‘inter-

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los XVII–XIX, ed. A. T. Kennedy (Hondarribia Spain: 2002) 43–65.
—— (2002b) “Mujeres en los claustros: Artistas, mecenas y coleccionistas,” in Arte
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—— (1945) Artes plásticas ecuatorianas (Mexico City: 1945).
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Spain: 2002) 67–85.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
FROM MUJERCILLA TO CONQUISTADORA:

ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA’S MISSIONARY IDENTITY
IN MEXICAN COLONIAL ART
By 1622, the year of her canonization, the fame of St. Teresa of Ávila
(1515–1582) extended throughout the Spanish Empire. Biographies,
engravings, miracle-working relics, and reports of her incorrupt body
fueled widespread fascination with the Spanish nun who had reformed
the Carmelite Order and had authored best-selling texts on prayer and
mystical experience. Teresa’s cult flourished in the colonial Americas
as editions of her books were carried across the Atlantic, and as
nuns and friars of her Order, the Discalced Carmelites, established
New World communities. Golden-Age Spanish playwright Lope de
Vega celebrated the rapid geographical spread of Teresa’s cult in
his drama The Life and Death of St. Teresa of Jesus:
In lands, isles and seas, now
incense is kindled,
temples for you are readied,
and altars are erected.1
The reference to temples and altars newly dedicated to the saint is
not mere poetic exaggeration, but points to a historical reality: Teresa’s
extraordinary rise in popularity coincided with an explosion of eccle-
siastical construction in the Spanish colonies. Her image was included in
the decoration of many newly erected churches, convents, and monas-
teries, especially those of her Order. Beyond the Virgin Mary, few
other female subjects were so often depicted in Latin American art
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as St. Teresa of Ávila.
This paper investigates a key aspect of Teresa’s posthumous reputa-
tion, not yet discussed in art historical scholarship, which contributed
to her popularity and helped shape the contemporary reception of
1
Quoted in translation in Eire (1995) 393.
420 christopher c. wilson
her image: She was regarded as a patron of the Church’s missionary

effort. Early modern texts (including Teresa’s own books), highlighting
the missionary desires that motivated her work as a religious reformer,
fostered perceptions of her as a leader in the Counter-Reformation
Church’s battle to rescue souls of those regarded as heretics and
infidels. Concentrating on art produced in New Spain, I suggest that
this identification underlay her image and contributed to the success
of its dissemination. Like other triumphalist colonial representations,
such as Santiago trampling the infidel (relief in the retablo mayor of
the Parish Church of Tlatelolco) or the Baptism of the Four Lords
of Tlaxcala (Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Tlaxcala),
Teresa’s iconography helped satisfy the needs of the colonial Church,
which propagated images of heroic soldiers in God’s army to assist
its vigorous implementation of Catholicism.
The Missionary Inclination of Teresa and Her Order
“A woman in this stage of prayer is distressed by the natural hindrance

there is to her entering the world, and she has great envy of those
who have the freedom to cry out and spread the news abroad about
who this great God of hosts is.”2 In this passage from the Interior
Castle, as in other places throughout her writings, Teresa expresses
a recurrent wish to take on the role of missionary, to join the ranks
of friars who sailed to far-away lands for the purpose of ‘winning
souls’ to Catholicism. Central to her project of reforming the Carmelite
Order was an overriding desire to rescue the souls of two groups,
who, in her view, were headed toward eternal damnation: The Protest-
ants in Europe and the unconverted Indians in the New World. In
the Way of Perfection Teresa explains that she founded the Convent
of St. Joseph in Ávila (inaugurated 1562) with such strict observance
of poverty and external austerity because she had heard reports “of
the harm being done in France and of the havoc the Lutherans had
caused and how much this miserable sect was growing . . . I cried to
the Lord and begged Him that I might remedy so much evil. It
seemed to me that I would have given a thousand lives to save one
2
Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 2:392.
from MUJERCILLA to CONQUISTADORA 421
soul out of the many that were being lost there.”3 Through unceas-
ing prayer and rigorous observance of the primitive (or unmitigated)
Carmelite Rule, she asserts, the nuns of St. Joseph’s could assist the
Church in its war against the spread of Protestantism and thereby
counteract further loss of souls. Since the small community of women
would remain occupied in prayer for priests and defenders of the
faith—those on the front lines of the Church’s militant offensive—
“we shall be fighting for [God] even though we are very cloistered.”4
Teresa included Native Americans as intended beneficiaries of her
project after 1566, the year she was visited at St. Joseph’s by Fray
Alonso Maldonado, a Franciscan missionary just returned from
Mexico. According to The Book of Her Foundations, he spoke to her
of the “many millions of souls that were being lost there [in the
colonies] for want of Christian instruction.” Teresa was distraught
at hearing this assessment of the Indians’ spiritual state, and frustrated
that gender prevented her from joining the missionaries overseas: “I
was very envious of those who for love of our Lord were able to
be engaged in winning souls, though they might suffer a thousand
deaths . . . This is the inclination the Lord has given me.” In the
aftermath of the friar’s visit, comforted by what she understood as
a promise from Christ that she would ‘see great things,’ Teresa found
that she could indeed participate in the colonial missionary effort:
Within a year’s time she began extending her reform beyond Ávila,
founding houses of nuns and friars in other Spanish cities and towns.7
The prayers and penance of these multiplying communities of aus-
tere religious, she believed, would buttress the Church’s labors in
the New World as well as in Europe. Though sometimes belittled
by misogynist detractors who labeled her a mujercilla, or “silly little
woman”—a derogatory epithet applied to women whose spiritual
goals were criticized as too ambitious—Teresa had found a formula
for shaping her apostolic desires into a form acceptable to the Triden-
tine Church.8
The saint’s motivating concern for the rescue of souls became
familiar to readers in Catholic Europe and Spanish America through
circulation of her texts, first in manuscript copies and then in printed
3
Ibid., 2:41.
4
Ibid., 2:49.
5
Ibid., 3:101–102.
8
For a discussion of Teresa as mujercilla, see Weber (1990) 17–41.
editions. The first edition of Teresa’s writings, printed in Salamanca

in 1588 (and again in the following year), contained three of her four
major prose works: The Book of Her Life, The Way of Perfection, and The
Interior Castle. Subsequent editions came rapidly. Over the next fifty
years her works were published at Saragossa (1592), Madrid (1597,
1602, 1615, 1635, 1636), Naples (1604), Brussels (1604, 1610), Valencia
(1613 and 1623), and Antwerp (1630). The 1610 Brussels edition
was the first to contain The Book of Her Foundations, her chronicle of
founding Discalced Carmelite communities throughout Spain. The
writings of Mexican nuns, many of whom regarded Teresa as the
ideal model for the female religious, affirm that the saint’s books
were disseminated in New Spain.9
Subsequent generations of Discalced Carmelites retained the mis-
sionary zeal described in the Founding Mother’s books, but with
widely divergent interpretations of how such desires should be put
into action. Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, provincial of
the Order from 1581 to 1585, encouraged expansion into missionary
territories. In 1582, Discalced Carmelite friars set out from Lisbon,
in the presence of King Philip II, for “Guinea, Ethiopia, or whatever
other heathen kingdom the Catholic King Don Philip may think
well to send them,” each armed “with a small-sized Bible, and a
catechism.”10 Critics within the Order complained that such ventures
were at odds with its essentially contemplative nature. Gracián
responded with his treatise Stimulus for the Propagation of the Faith (Lisbon,
1586), an ardent defense of missionary activity.11 In 1585 Discalced
Carmelite friars sailed to Mexico, originally for the purpose of evan-
gelizing the Native American populations, with plans of eventually
spreading into California, New Mexico, and the Philippines. These
ambitions were frustrated when Gracián’s critics prevailed, and the
Mexican Discalced friars found themselves living not within Native
American communities in frontier areas, but in houses usually situ-
9
The theme of Teresa as model for Spanish and colonial Latin American female
religious, including Mexico’s most famous nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, runs
throughout Arenal and Schlau (1989), especially 341–42, 412, and the texts by
Mariana de la Encarnación that the authors include on 368–74.
10
From Jerónimo Gracián’s letter of instruction to the Discalced Carmelite mis-
sionaries, dated March 19, 1582, quoted in translation in Peers (1954) 73–74. All of
the friars in this first group perished in a shipwreck, while those in the second group,
on an expedition to the Congo, were captured by pirates. The third party, which
sailed from Lisbon on April 10, 1584, successfully reached its African destination.
11
Chorpenning (1993) 11–12.
ated in or near the Viceroyalty’s cities, beginning with communities

founded at Mexico City and Puebla in 1586. Mexican houses of the
Order’s friars proliferated rapidly; fifteen were founded between 1589
and 1796.12 In addition to preaching to urban populations in which
criollos or Spaniards often comprised the majority, the friars served
the Church through prayer and observance of the rule, according
to the ideal articulated by Teresa and her collaborator, St. John of
the Cross. John would have been satisfied with this historical out-
come, since he had warned that exterior missionary activity would
carry the Order into regions incompatible with its contemplative
spirit, forcing the friars to spend too much time outside the monastery.
In his Spiritual Canticle he had written:
Let those, then, who are singularly active, who think they can win the
world with their preaching and exterior works, observe here that they
would profit the Church and please God much more . . . were they to
spend at least half of this time with God in prayer.13
Meanwhile in Europe Teresa’s nuns carried the Order to regions
where the Catholic Church sought to enlarge and fortify its presence
as a defense against the spread of Protestantism. During the first decade
of the seventeenth century, two of the nuns most closely associated
with Teresa during her lifetime, Ana de Jesús and Ana de San
Bartolomé, founded convents in France and the Spanish Netherlands.14
Both women held the conviction that the physical presence of con-
vents filled with groups of praying nuns, living according to the prim-
itive Carmelite rule, would bolster a Church in crisis.
Unlike the friars, Spanish Discalced Carmelite nuns did not make
the journey across the Atlantic to found houses in the Americas.
Instead, convents were started by women already settled in the
colonies who had learned of Teresa’s life by reading her books and
had felt inspired to follow her example. Such was the case for Mariana
de la Encarnación (1571–1657), one of the founders of the Order’s
first convent in Mexico City, who wrote that she resolved to become
a Discalced Carmelite nun after the pivotal experience of reading
the saint’s autobiography.15 The first American convent of the Order’s
nuns was founded in Puebla de los Ángeles in 1604, the same year
12
Ramos Medina (1997) 16.
13
John of the Cross (1979) 524.
14
Peers (1954) 116, 118–9; and Arenal and Schlau (1989) 21–27.
15
Arenal and Schlau (1989) 368.
that the two Anas arrived in Paris to make the first French founda-
tion. Like Teresa’s first convent in Ávila, the one in Puebla was named
for St. Joseph (San José). In 1616 a convent was founded in Mexico
City, also named for Joseph, although today it is known as St. Teresa
the Ancient (Santa Teresa la Antigua), to distinguish it from a second
house also established in the capital in 1704, St. Teresa the New (Santa
Teresa la Nueva). Guadalajara received a community of nuns (Santa
Teresa) in 1694, and Puebla’s second Discalced Carmelite convent,
Our Lady of Solitude (Nuestra Señora de la Soledad ), was inaugurated
in 1748. In 1803 a convent was founded in Querétaro, called Our
Lady of Carmel or Sweet Name of Jesus (El Dulce Nombre de Jesús).16
Settled within colonial cities, nuns and friars of the Order were
charged with the task of perpetuating the Teresian charism, which,
at its heart, consisted of saving souls through an apostolate of prayer
and rigorous observance of the Rule.
The Construction of Teresa as God’s Soldier
The missionary attitude, so apparent in Teresa and early members

of her reform, resulted in literary portrayals of the saint as a powerful
commander in the Church’s campaign for the conversion of souls. Late
sixteenth-century hagiographers characterized her as a virile woman,
more conquistador than nun, since, as Alison Weber has observed, “the
only way to comprehend such virtue in a woman was to reassign her
gender.”17 Thus, Fray Luis de León, in his dedicatory letter to the
first edition of Teresa’s written works (1588), asserts that it was God’s
plan for Teresa to transcend the usual boundaries of femininity:
At a time like this, when the devil seems to be triumphing and a mul-
titude of unbelievers follow him and so many nations are obstinate in
their heresies . . . [it seems] to have been God’s will that they should
be faced, not by a valiant man armed with learning, but by a poor
woman who defied the devil and set up her standard against him and
openly raised up people to conquer him and spurn him and trample
him beneath their feet.18
16
For studies of Discalced Carmelite convents in colonial Mexico, see Ramos Medina
(1997); Amerlinck de Corsi and Ramos Medina (1995); Muriel (1995) 377–455;
Alberto de la Virgen del Carmen (1968) 537–47; and Ramón Martínez (1963).
17
Weber (1990) 165.
18
Luis de León (1588) 370–71.
Similarly, Diego de Yepes, in his 1599 biography of Teresa, uses

militaristic imagery to describe her assault on the spread of heresy:
“God took her up as an instrument to wage war against the heretics,
not through sword and spear, but through more mighty and powerful
arms, which are those of prayer.” In another passage, Yepes intro-
duces the notion of Teresa as an antidote to Martin Luther:
This, too, was God’s plan, that at around the same time the wicked
Luther began to plot his lies and deceptions, and to concoct the poison
with which he would later kill so many, He should be forming this holy
woman, so that she would serve as an antidote to this poison; and so
that whatever was taken away from God on one side was gathered
and restored on another side by her.20
Yepes points out that Teresa’s preoccupation with rescuing lost souls
was global in proportion. Having recounted the effect of Fray
Maldonado’s meeting with her, when Teresa heard about the uncon-
verted Indians, and, consequently, founded more houses of the reform,
Yepes emphatically states that she “did not limit her desires to the
conversion of heretics in France and Germany, but with an apostolic
heart and spirit, she dedicated this new and holy reform to the salva-
tion of the entire world, and to the conversion of all infidels.”21
But it was another passage in Yepes’ widely circulated biography
that must have resonated most deeply in the Spanish colonies. It can
be found in one of the book’s final chapters, in which Yepes recounts
some of Teresa’s posthumous apparitions. He writes that on a certain
occasion, the saint appeared in the city of Granada to Madre Antonia
del Espíritu Santo, one of the earliest nuns of the Teresian reform:
She [Teresa] showed the great glory she now enjoyed, and the special
favors that had been granted to her as recompense for the zeal with
which she had guarded God’s honor while she was living on earth,
and for the great pity she had felt for the souls of those heretics and
infidels who were heading toward damnation. Since she had dedicated
her convents to praying for their conversion, our Lord granted her
this reward: That she would be the special patron and advocate for
20
Yepes (1599) 1:9. In her Book for the Hour of Recreation, María de San José also
identifies Teresa as God’s antidote to Luther’s poison, pointing out that the saint
was born “a little less than three years before the ill-fated Luther declared his apos-
tasy” and that “it is the custom of His Divine Majesty to foresee the remedy for
misfortune;” in María de San José (2002) 106.
21
Yepes (1599) 2:19.
this cause in heaven. Thus did God pay her back with many degrees
of glory for the work she had carried out while living on earth.22
This passage highlights the perception that Teresa’s mission contin-
ued, on an enlarged scale, even after her death—that from her place
in heaven she would persevere in the work of converting souls.
Such a presentation of Teresa easily took hold in Spanish America
where, beginning immediately after the conquest, the primary func-
tion of the colonial Church was conversion of the indigenous pop-
ulation. By the end of the sixteenth century, the missionary project
had resulted in substantial achievement, though the process was still
far from complete. While the Church was well established in cen-
tral Mexico, with its metropolitan centers of Mexico City and Puebla,
there remained Indian populations in provincial areas, particularly
the northern territories, in need of evangelization. In the late seven-
teenth century, the Franciscans addressed this issue by dedicating
their attention to inhabitants of the northern frontier. Beginning in
1682 they founded four missionary colleges there, responsible for
both the conversion of the Indians and the propagation of the faith
among Hispanic and mestizo populations.23
In addition to sheer numbers still requiring evangelization, there
was the problem of efficacy of conversions already made. To perceptive
clerics, the missionary effort had only been a partial success. There was
an increasing awareness that, while Indian populations might respond
enthusiastically to Catholicism, they sometimes viewed the new teach-
ings as compatible with their own traditional beliefs. Outward super-
ficial practice of Christianity did not guarantee genuine conversion.
Seventeenth and eighteenth-century reports of idolatry triggered anx-
iety that, among some Indian populations, Christianity and indige-
nous religions existed as complementary faiths.24 In short, despite the
zeal and dedication of the early friars, there was a realization after
the first hundred years of Spanish rule that the process of evange-
lization was an ongoing one.
22
Yepes (1599) 2:221. Madre Antonia’s vision was also reported by Ana de Jesús
during the canonization proceedings. See Depositions of the Processes of St. Teresa of
Jesus (1969) 100–101.
23
William Wroth (1991) 32.
24
See, for example, the selection from Gonzalo de Balsarobe’s 1656 book, Relación
auténtica de las idolotrías, supersticiones, vanas observanciones de los Indios del Obispado de
Oaxaca (An Authentic Account of the Idolatries, Superstitions, and Vain Observances
of the Indians of the Bishopric of Oaxaca), in Carmichael (1971) 138–47.
In a land where Christianity was still taking root, the identification

of Teresa as a missionary saint endowed her image with particular
value and contributed to its widespread dissemination. Through works
of art she could be acknowledged as a champion of the colonial
Church’s past and current success, and as a patron of what remained
to be accomplished. Teresa’s fame was such that, even for those out-
side the Order, especially audiences of ecclesiastics, her image must
have carried these associations. Certainly Discalced Carmelite nuns and
friars, living in a colony populated in part by indigenous peoples for
whose salvation Teresa had prayed and worked, must have contem-
plated these issues when viewing her image. Though any representation
of Teresa could have evoked reflections on her missionary role, there
were certain types of portrayals that, I suggest, best conveyed this
message. Images of her rescuing souls from purgatory, for example,
proclaimed her supposed ability to bring individuals to salvation.
Rescuer of Imperiled Souls
According to the Roman Catholic Church, purgatory is the place,

state, or condition where departed souls, who have died in the state
of grace but are not entirely free of imperfection, are purified of
their sins through punishment before entering heaven. While there
is no theological consensus on the nature and intensity of the punish-
ment, the Latin Church has generally maintained that fire is imposed
on souls in purgatory, though some, such as St. Catherine of Genoa
(1447–1510), have asserted that the soul in purgatory experiences a
desire for God that is an ardent fire, more devouring and painful
than any earthly flames. The Church holds that works of piety prac-
ticed by the faithful on earth, such as prayer, penance, indulgences,
almsgiving, fasting, and sacrifices, can aid souls in purgatory. Prayers
can be directed for the benefit of an individual soul, with the expec-
tation that God, upon hearing such petitions, will accelerate its depar-
ture from purgatory and final entry into heaven. The Council of
Trent reemphasized the doctrine in 1563:
Since the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has [taught]
that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there detained are aided by
the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the
altar, the holy council commands the bishops that they strive diligently
to the end that the sound doctrine of purgatory, transmitted by the
Fathers and sacred councils, be believed and maintained by the faithful

of Christ, and be everywhere taught and preached.25
The Carmelites (both Calced and Discalced) have a strong devotional
concern with the release of souls from purgatory, rooted in the Virgin’s
1251 apparition to St. Simon Stock, prior general of the Order, in
which, according to hagiographic tradition, she presented him with
the Carmelite scapular and promised that those wearing it would be
preserved from hell. This concession expanded to a claim that the
Virgin would liberate scapular wearers from purgatory on the first
Saturday after death. Known as the Sabbatine Privilege, the indulgence
was supposedly ratified by John XXII in 1322, but was widely dis-
puted by other Orders hostile to the Carmelites. In 1577, Gregory
XIII issued the bull Ut laudes that permitted the Carmelites to con-
tinue to preach the belief in Mary’s intercession and special protec-
tion on their behalf on the Saturday after death.26 In art of early
modern Europe and Spanish America, Teresa sometimes supplants
the Virgin Mary as rescuer of souls in purgatory.
A canvas painted by Luis Juárez in the first half of the seventeenth
century, probably originally displayed on the high altar of a Discalced
Carmelite church but now in the Viceregal Museum at Tepotzotlán,
shows Teresa kneeling within an interior setting, absorbed in read-
ing from her breviary (Fig. 17.1).27 Behind her, contained within a
window-like frame, is a view into purgatory. An angel reaches down
to pull a naked figure out of the flames; he apparently has been
freed on account of Teresa’s devotional exercises. Another burning
figure, at the lower-right edge of the scene, implores Teresa for sal-
vation. In the left portion of the canvas, within what seems to be
an adjoining room, is a temporary funerary monument, fitted with
candlesticks and a skull-and-crossbones emblem. The composition
implies that a recently deceased individual, whose death has been
commemorated within the convent, is the same soul who finds release
from purgatory as a result of Teresa’s prayers.
25
Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1941) 214.
26
Rohrbach (1966) 73–4; María de San José (2002) 72 n. 97.
27
Alarcón Cedillo and García de Toxqui (1992–96) 1:158; Ruiz Gomar (1987)
212–14 attributes the painting to Juárez and suggests that it might have once formed
part of an altarpiece in the Church of El Carmen in Mexico City, where two more
of that artist’s Teresian-themed paintings remain. It entered the collection at Tepot-
zotlán in 1970, having previously been housed in the Museo Nacional de Historia.
Fig. 17.1 Luis Juárez, St. Teresa Praying for the Release of a Soul from Purgatory. First
half 17th c., Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico.
The theme of the work echoes Teresa’s own declarations that God
freed souls from purgatory in response to her requests:
It often happens that our Lord draws souls way from serious sin . . .
because of my beseeching Him. The Lord has already granted me so
many favors by freeing souls from purgatory and doing other noteworthy
things that I would tire myself and whoever reads this if I mentioned
them all. He has granted me much more in regard to the health of
souls than He has in regard to the health of bodies.28
During the canonization proceedings, the Discalced Carmelite nun
María Bautista testified that Teresa once declared that she had
obtained the release of her (María Bautista’s) recently deceased father
from purgatory. This same nun also testified about “another religious
whom the Mother [Teresa] saw depart from purgatory, and she [the
deceased nun] said to her: ‘I owe my salvation to you.’”29 According
to a 1628 statement by Francisco de Quevedo, it was commonly
believed among the Discalced Carmelites that Teresa had obtained
the release of King Philip II from purgatory within eight days of his
death, even though, as Quevedo put it, one would expect “that he
deserved a long stay in purgatory.”30
While there are many examples recorded by Teresa and others
who knew her of her intercession for souls from purgatory, Juárez’s
composition probably alludes to a specific instance mentioned in the
saint’s autobiography. News reached her that a former provincial of
the Carmelite Order (probably Gregorio Fernández) had died. Fearing
for his salvation, she immediately went ‘with much anxiety’ to an
oratory and prayed that his soul be freed from purgatory. While
beseeching the Lord for this, according to her account, she saw the
person emerge “from the depths of the earth at my right side” and
ascend to heaven.31 Juárez’s painting draws upon this episode, although
the liberated soul is shown emerging at Teresa’s left, rather than
right, side as is stated in the text. The funerary monument in the
background suggests that an individual of great importance to the
convent community has passed away, in this case a former provin-
cial. But by showing Teresa reading from a book of prayer, Juárez
has conflated the above account with another analogous circum-
stance recounted by the saint:
28
29
Depositions (1969) 132–33.
30
Quoted in translation in Eire (1995) 371.
31
I shall only mention what happened to me on the night of All Souls:

While I was in the oratory after having recited a nocturn and while
saying some very devotional prayers that come at the end, a devil
appeared on the book so that I couldn’t finish the prayer. I blessed
myself, and he went away. When I began again to recite the prayers,
he returned. I believe it was three times I began, and until I threw
holy water at him I couldn’t finish. I saw that some souls left purga-
tory at that instant; little must have been lacking to their freedom,
and I wondered if he had aimed at preventing this.32
Members of the Discalced Carmelite Order, for whom Juárez’s paint-
ing was most likely produced, would have understood this composi-
tion as pointing to more than just a specific instance, or conflation
of instances, of Teresa’s intercession on behalf of souls in purgatory.
They would have viewed it, rather, as an emblematic representation
of the Founding Mother’s celebrated missionary identity. Teresa’s
ability to rescue souls from purgatory was characteristic of a larger,
more general role that was assigned to her—as a bringer of souls
to salvation, whether they be sinners in the flames of purgatory, lost
heretics in France, or unconverted Indians in the New World. As
Diego de Yepes had put it, Teresa was committed to “the salvation
of the entire world.” When looking at Juárez’s canvas, the viewer
could first witness, then invoke, and finally, emulate, Teresa’s deter-
mined efforts to rescue souls through an apostolate of prayer.
The theme of Teresa interceding for souls in purgatory was not
without precedent in European art, though it was treated infrequently.
Rubens took up the subject in a canvas painted during the 1630s
for the church of the Discalced Carmelite friars in Antwerp. Teresa
is shown kneeling before Christ, on a plateau above a group of nude
figures engulfed in flames. As the saint makes gestures of supplica-
tion, a small angel lifts a male figure out of the pool of fire. A print
after Rubens’ painting, by Schelte à Bolswert, bears an inscription
identifying the rescued figure as Bernardino de Mendoza, one of the
persons mentioned in Teresa’s Book of Her Foundations.33 There the
saint recounts her revelation that Mendoza was liberated from pur-
gatory because of his donation of a house for Teresa’s new foun-
dation at Valladolid.34
32
Ibid., 1:206.
33
Göttler (1999); and Vlieghe (1972–73) 2:166–68. Rubens’s painting, formerly
in the Discalced Carmelite friars’ church in Antwerp, is now in the collection of
that city’s Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Other European examples of
the subject are discussed in Gutiérrez Rueda (1964) 106.
34
Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 3:146–7.
In Mexico there are several other representations of this theme

by colonial artists in addition to Juárez’s painting. In the Church of
San Antonio (today the parish church of Cuencamé, Durango) is a
large canvas signed by Juan Manuel Hernández, an artist known
only by this single work. Style and iconography suggest that it dates
from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A hieratic
figure of Teresa stands frontally beneath the dove of the Holy Spirit,
supporting a book and doctor’s biretta in her left hand and reaching
her right arm down toward a group of souls in the flames of pur-
gatory, as if to rescue them from torment.35 This iconography derives
from images of the Virgin of Carmen or the Virgin of the Rosary,
which show Mary assisting souls in the flames of purgatory by extend-
ing toward them a devotional device—a scapular or rosary—to serve
as a lifeline that enables their transfer to heaven. In the painting in
Cuencamé, Teresa takes the place of the rescuing Virgin, in accor-
dance with her similar ability to aid in souls’ salvation. An eigh-
teenth-century canvas in Tepotzotlán’s Museo Nacional del Virreinato,
by an unidentified artist, shows Teresa participating with the Virgin,
St. Joseph, and the Christ child in saving souls from the flames.36
The grandest, most elaborate representation of Teresa’s role in
bringing souls to salvation is a canvas signed by Cristóbal de
Villalpando in 1708, in the Church of Santiago in Tuxpan, Michoacán
(Fig. 17.2). The painting belongs to a genre of New Hispanic por-
trayals that show a panoramic view into heaven, with groups of
saints interceding on behalf of souls suffering in purgatory. According
to Francisco de la Maza, Villalpando’s is the largest such painting
surviving from colonial Mexico.37 It bears an inscription identifying
the donors as Don Pedro Alonso Dávalos-Bracamonte and his wife,
Doña Francisca de Orozco Rivadeneyra Castilla y Orendaín.38 At
the bottom of the painting are souls in purgatory, in various poses
of agony and repentance. Just above them is St. Michael the Archangel,
35
Vargas Lugo and Guadalupe Victoria (1994) 424.
36
Alarcón Cedillo, García de Toxqui, et al. (1992–96) 2:130. Another eighteenth-
century work with a similar composition, showing the Virgin of Carmen accom-
panied by St. Joseph and St. Teresa rescuing souls from purgatory, exists in the
Museo del Carmen, San Ángel; see Ángeles and Fernández (1987) 47.
37
De La Maza (1964) 223–24. The painting measures 725 × 525 cm. See also
P. Ángeles, Catalogue 109, in Gutiérrez Haces, et al. (1997) 322–25.
38
”A devoción del Capitán don Pedro Alonso de Abalos y de doña Francisca
de Orosco su Muger.”
Fig. 17.2 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in Purgatory.
1708, Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán, Mexico.
wings outspread, facing the viewer. In the center of the composition’s

heavenly zone is the figure of Teresa, painted on a larger scale than
the figures around her, looking up toward the Holy Trinity as she
pleads for the salvation of the burning souls, to whom she gestures
with one hand. Two of her attributes, a book and a doctor’s biretta,
rest next to her. She is surrounded by smaller figures of saints, among
them the twelve apostles, St. Peter Nolasco, St. Francis of Assisi, and
St. Anthony of Padua, who echo her requests. Completing this assem-
blage of the heavenly court are the figures of St. John the Baptist and
St. Nicholas Tolentino (a saint also recognized as a patron of souls in
purgatory) at the upper right, and the Virgin and St. Joseph at the
left. In spite of the crowded composition, Teresa is the clear focus of
the scene; just as in Yepes’ book she is portrayed as the special patron
and advocate of the missionary cause in heaven, so in this painting
she is the central figure in the work of winning souls to God.
The iconography of Teresa rescuing souls from purgatory, as illus-
trated by the above examples, must have had different resonances
for different audiences, depending upon the painting’s location (whether
in a parish church or one associated with the Order) and the viewer’s
level of knowledge of the saint’s writings and cult. Upon viewing her
image, Teresian devotees would have selectively contemplated what
was important for them: For laypeople, such as Villalpando’s donors,
the subject offered comforting promise for their own speedy depar-
ture from purgatory through Teresa’s intercession; for religious with
a vocation for saving souls, such as Discalced Carmelite nuns or fri-
ars, the same subject pointed to Teresa’s perceived centrality in the
work of extending God’s grace to imperiled souls, including the eth-
nically diverse New World population.
Charitable Penance
The notion of Teresa as missionary is also implicit in another work

by Villalpando with very different iconography, showing the saint
performing penance (Fig. 17.3). This canvas is one in a series of five
paintings with which the artist decorated the sacristy of the Discalced
Carmelite monastery in San Ángel.39 Paintings on the lateral walls
39
Gutiérrez Haces, et al. (1997) 361–62; and De La Maza (1964) 177–79.
Fig. 17.3 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa in Penitence. Late 17th-early 18th c.,
Sacristy of former Discalced Carmelite Monastery (today Museo de El Carmen),
San Ángel, Mexico.
depict the suffering Christ (Christ as the Man of Sorrows, Agony in the
Garden). In the center of the main wall is Christ Bound to the Column,
flanked by canvases showing Teresa and John of the Cross in pen-
itence. Taken together, the series of paintings associates the redemp-
tive suffering of Christ with the self-imposed suffering practiced by
Christ-imitators, Teresa and John.
The painting of Teresa shows her kneeling in front of an altar
preparing to flagellate herself with a scourge consisting of a bundle
of three cords with metal keys at their ends. From her mouth emerge
the words from Psalm 89 that often appear in engraved and painted
representations of the saint: “Misericordias tuas domini in aeternum cantabo”
(I will sing the mercies of the Lord forever). In the background of
the scene, a nun, standing in the doorway of an adjoining room,
studies the Founding Mother’s penitential behavior. Villalpando prob-
ably took inspiration for his composition from one of a series of
twenty-five engravings of Teresa’s life issued by Adriaen Collaert and
Cornelis Galle in Antwerp in 1613 (Fig. 17.4). In the Flemish print,
Teresa kneels before an altar adorned with a painting of the Ecce
Homo. Surrounded by a variety of penitential instruments, she uses
a scourge of cords and keys, as in the Mexican painting, to punish
her flesh. Devils flee in terror, repelled by the saint’s self-mortifying
behavior.
For viewers familiar with Teresa’s life (such as the friars at San
Ángel), the painting would have communicated more than just a
scene of Teresa in the midst of one of her devotional exercises;
rather, it conveys a fundamental point about the saint’s mission.
According to Teresa’s way of thinking, the primary aim of bodily
mortifications was not individual spiritual progress, but salvation of
souls. She instituted such harsh physical rigors at St. Joseph’s, she
says, because of reports of the spread of Protestantism in France.
Fasts and physical discipline were a means by which she and her
nuns could be useful to the missionary Church. The Bull of Teresa’s
canonization underlines the missionary purpose of her penance:
She showed her constant charity for her neighbor in many ways, chiefly
by her ardent desire for the salvation of souls. She often wept over the
darkness of infidels and heretics, not only continually praying God to
enlighten them, but offering for them fasts, disciplines and other bodily
mortifications.40
40
Gregory XV (1622) 208.
from
MUJERCILLA
to
CONQUISTADORA
Fig. 17.4 Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, St. Teresa in Penitence. 1613, The Carmelitana Collection of
437
Whitefriars Hall, Washington, D.C.

The corresponding image of St. John of the Cross, Teresa’s early

friar, confessor, and collaborator, emphasizes that the purposeful use
of mortification extended into the male branch of the Discalced
Carmelites as well—an important point, since these paintings were
created for an audience of friars. Villalpando’s paintings functioned
by evoking an idea that lies at the heart of the Order: By imitating
the sufferings of Christ through penance, as did Teresa and John,
the Discalced Carmelite becomes associated in Christ’s plan of redemp-
tion, working for the salvation of the entire world. Teresa is pre-
sented as both the model and patron of this missionary endeavor.
Finally, a late eighteenth-century canvas by Andrés López, undoubt-
edly created for a Discalced Carmelite setting since it belongs to a
series of paintings depicting saints of the Order, is an encyclopedic
portrayal of themes central to Teresa’s life and reform (Fig. 17.5).
Inscriptions identify her as the mother of the Carmelite reform and
provide the titles of her books. The half-length figure of Teresa looks
toward Christ, who presents her with a nail of his Crucifixion, a
token of her mystical marriage. On Teresa’s left is an angel hold-
ing an arrow in reference to her vision of the piercing of her heart.
Below is a skeletal personification of death, bearing a book inscribed
with a favorite motto of Teresa’s: “Either suffer or die.” Most inter-
esting is the figure standing near Teresa’s downstretched right arm,
a Native American in feathered costume. This figure’s presence com-
municates two ideas: He is an allegorical personification of the
Americas, alluding to the spread of the Discalced Carmelite Order
to the New World. He also refers to the missionary orientation of
Teresa’s reform, which was shaped, in large part, by her anxiety
about the spiritual state of Indians. “For what grieves me is to see
so many souls lost, and I am very anxious about those Indians,” she
once wrote to her brother Lorenzo in Ecuador; “may the Lord give
them light.”41 Although her apostolic aspirations were thwarted on
the one hand by the restrictions imposed by a male-dominated soci-
ety, they ultimately found expression, with far-reaching effects, through
her religious reform. As it turned out, Teresa’s sense of mission ele-
vated her to a position far beyond that of a mujercilla confined
within the walls of a tiny Spanish convent. Instead, she became a
heavenly patron of the missionary Church, her image among the
most favored in Spanish America.
41
Written from Toledo on January 17, 1570; in Teresa of Ávila (2001) 85.
Fig. 17.5 Andrés López, Emblematic Portrayal of St. Teresa of Ávila.

Second half 18th c.
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INDEX
abstraction 104, 167 burial practice, also see death 84, 90,
Academy of San Carlos 64, 128, 271 93, 94, 95, 151, 158, 163–164, 166,
Acolman, San Agustín 113, 297, 168, 170–172, 177, 331, 36, 361,
305–306, 310–315 362
adultery 351, 353, 355 buttocks 157, 159, 166, 174, 175, 177
agriculture 87, 91, 213
allegory 4, 15, 16, 22, 24, 33, 41, 51, cabildo 21, 29
52, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 101, 133, Cabrera, Miguel
136, 192, 208, 24–249, 251–256, cacique 9–10, 260
258, 262, 265, 266, 274, 275 calabash 174, 175, 177
Altamirano, Ignacio 66 calendar 230, 344–356
altars 103, 302, 303 cannibalism 192
altarscreens (see retablos) Carmelites 339, 419–439
amas (see wet nurses) Casa del Deán 21–44
Amazon women 13 Casa de Montejo 367–391, 368, 373,
Andreasi, Blessed Osanna 104, 108, 109 374, 389, 390
animals 31, 38, 48, 94, 175, 230, 249 casta (caste) paintings 127, 195–196,
Araus, Luis de, will of 197, 202
Arrieta, José Agustín 208–216 Catholic (Counter) Reformation 40,
architecture 17, 268, 271, 283–284, 128, 255, 420
306–367 censorship 30, 49, 70, 129, 132
artists, see native artists, women artists chariot 26, 27
Augustinians 99, 112, 113, 114, 289, Charles II 280
296, 305–307, 310–311 Charles IV, statue of 48–51, 53, 64
audiencia Charles V 28, 370, 375, 377, 378,
Aztecs (also Nahuas, Mexicas) 15, 54, 385,
67, 115–117, 166, 124, 189, 194, chastity (also see virginity, virtue)
199, 200, 213, 221–241, 362 33–34, 132, 136–137, 188, 190, 222,
325
beatas 116, 333 Chica Cevallos, Don Antonio de la
beauty 66, 151, 157, 159–161, 163, 405, 406, 416
176, 276 chicha (also see drinking) 78, 79
biombos 16, 182, 265–286 childbirth 63, 82, 130, 164, 176, 214,
birds (see also eagle and feathers) 31, 230–232, 234, 235, 260, 344, 345,
38, 61, 67, 73, 78, 90, 93, 94, 95, 353, 354, 355, 358, 360, 361
210, 249, 253 children (also see childbirth) 131,
birth, see childbirth 132, 140, 141, 164, 168, 176, 188,
blood (also see color) 44, 362–383 189, 215, 230, 232, 247, 254, 259,
body 190, 203, 346, 353, 362 353, 395, 398
female 14–15, 16, 57, 58, 61–62, Chimalhuacan Chalco, Mexico, cloister
66–67, 79, 125–46, 221–242, of 300–301, 311, 314
247–264 china poblana 208, 214–215, 216
king’s 54–59 Chosen Women 88–89, 94
breast 91, 125, 133, 140, 213, 216, Christ child, image of 75, 84, 85, 89,
2232, 225, 228–232, 234–239, 90, 91, 92, 108, 109, 133, 135, 186,
247–264, 271 247, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263, 332,
breast feeding (see breast) 336, 338, 339, 432
brooms (see straw, sweeping) Cihuacóatl 117, 229, 234, 235, 236
444 index
Cihuateteo 355, 361 Corpus Christi 28, 29 n. 29, 33, 40,

Cisneros, Isabel de 17, 395–417 83, 295
class 188–191, 195–197, 200, 201, Correa, Juan 182
203, 204, 211, 216, 282, 285, 321, Cortés, Hernán 5, 7, 14, 54, 67, 68,
328, 332, 337, 340, 369, 383, 400, 182–204, 278
405 Council of Trent 37, 40, 321, 427
cloister 14, 16, 99–118, 289–315 Counter Reformation (see Catholic
cloister piers 14, 99–118, 309 Reformation)
clothing (also see textiles) 55, 61, 64, Covarrubias, Miguel 149, 155–156,
69, 77, 81, 83, 84, 86–90, 93, 95, 166, 167
191, 104, 125,127,128, 131, 133, Coya 73, 76, 84, 86–88, 95
138, 149, 151, 158, 165, 167, 190, crescent moon, see moon
191, 192, 193, 195, 221–242, 253, criollismo (also see criollo) 15, 185, 416
256, 259, 262, 321, 325, 331, 333, criollo (creole) 11, 15, 16, 55, 58, 68,
334, 338, 339, 350, 359, 362, 363 69, 128, 137, 140, 142, 181, 188,
coats of arms (insignia; also see heraldry, 200, 201, 321, 328, 330, 333, 335,
emblems) 7, 29, 87, 88, 93, 193, 337, 340, 423
253, 367, 373, 369, 370, 372–373, crown (also see headdress) 64, 86, 74,
375, 377, 384, 385 90, 91, 93, 251, 253, 256, 276, 326,
Coatlicue 234, 235, 237, 358 330, 332, 336, 338, 339
Cobo, Bernabé 89 cuadros de costumbres (also see still lifes)
Codices 344–364 208, 209, 216
Azcatitlán 225, 226, 227, 227–228 Cuauhtinchán, Puebla, cloister murals
Borbónicus 351, 360 of 291–293, 297, 314
Borgia 230, 232, 236 cupid 31–32, 276
Florentine 182, 228, 229, 232, 235, Cuzco, Peru 73, 76, 77–83, 86,
238, 353 89–91, 259
Ixtlilxóchitl 235 Cuzco School 73, 77, 82, 84
Magliabechiano 235, 237, 346, 349,
354, 356, 359 dancer (see dancing)
Mendoza 7 dancing 149–151, 165, 166, 167–168,
Osuna 240 170, 174, 177, 197
Primeros memoriales 228, 229, 232, 235 Dante 26
Rios 359 death (also see burial practice) 22,
Telleriano-Remensis 236, 347, 350, 34, 41, 125, 138, 222, 229, 230,
352, 254, 358, 359, 234, 295, 321, 333, 336, 338, 353,
Tudela 235, 237, 345, 348, 349, 354, 361, 362, 37, 428, 430, 438
361 deities, female (see Pachamama, Mama
Vaticanus 230, 232, 350 Ocllo, Moon deity, Coya, Mama
Colonna, Francesco 27 Quilla, Ochipantli) 6, 14, 76,
color (also see skin color) 94, 158, 164, 115–118 221–242, 344–364
167, 188, 195, 196, 197, 214, 227, Dessalines, J. J. 138, 139, 140, 141
229, 268, 344, 350, 354, 358, 359 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 182, 184,
columns, Solomonic 37 194, 378
Conceptionists 325–333 Disease 353, 360
Concha, Andrés de la 9 dismemberment 125, 138, 139, 140,
Concordia 184, 199 141, 146, 361, 362, 371
conquistadors 123, 138 domestic space 128, 196, 207,
convents of nuns 132, 133, 137, 208–209, 214, 215, 282–285, 321,
321–340, 419–439 336, 361, 363
corn (maize; also see food) 78 Dominicans 99–118, 128, 289, 300,
164–165, 174–177, 208, 210, 311, 334
212–13, 214, 216, 348, 359, 360 Doña Marina 182, 184, 194, 203, 204
index 445
drinking 15, 78, 79, 170, 173, 177, 208–216, 247, 249, 258, 259, 261,
208–216 262, 293
duality 115, 117 Foppens, Francisco (also see Theatro
Durán, Fray Diego 165, 181, 236, moral ) 266, 268, 271, 274–286
238, 242, 348, 350, 356, 363 Franciscans 5, 99, 112, 114, 116, 289,
Dutch art influences 208, 210, 211, 300, 303, 311, 315, 327, 350, 411, 426
212 French Revolution 49–50, 61, 64
frescoes (see murals)
eagle 7, 61, 67, 230, 253 fruits (also see food) 197, 210, 311,
early modern period, defined 11–12 312, 313, 352
earth symbolism 13, 79, 159, 173, 175,
213, 234, 235, 236, 311–312, 313 Gaceta de México 138
Eden (see Paradise) gender bias 12–13, 15, 114, 127,
Egas Venegas de Córdoba, Antonio 151–177, 375, 414, 421, 424
395, 398, 402, 405, 406, 411 gender roles 8, 33, 62, 114, 115,
emblems (also see heraldry, coats of 116, 127, 130–132, 133, 137–138,
arms) 25, 30, 136, 184, 193, 199, 140, 146, 160, 170, 173, 176, 185,
266–268, 271–285, 428 189–192, 214–216, 232, 267,
embrace 184, 194 283–285, 344–364, 375, 380
enclosed garden 312–313 Gendrop, Paul 156
engravings (see prints) gifting 185, 186, 188, 194, 199
Epazoyucan, Hidalgo, cloister murals glyph 223, 225
of 293–296, 294, 302, 314 Goríbar, Nicolás Javier 395, 396,
epidemics, see disease 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, 16
Erauso, Catalina de 190–191 Goya 157
escudos de monjas (nuns’ badges) Grito de Dolores (see Hidalgo y Costilla,
321–336, 322, 323, 324, 340 Miguel)
estofado 84, 86 Guayman Poma de Ayala 88
Extremadura, Spain 5
evangelization 419–439 Haiti 125, 138, 140–141
Eve 10, 186, 194, 216, 222, 258, headdresses (see also crowns) 64, 81,
289, 299, 312, 313, 352 83, 84, 88, 90, 93, 87, 158, 193,
235, 253, 338, 339, 344–350, 351,
family 62, 127, 131, 195–196, 210, 352, 353, 354, 375
283, 337, 353, 369, 380, 407 hematite (see mirrors)
feathers 53, 58, 61, 67, 73, 78, 90, 91, heraldry (also see emblems, coats of
93, 94, 95, 96, 223, 249, 253, 438 arms, Casa de Montejo) 193, 367,
feminist methodology 2–5 372, 384–385
Ferdinand VII 51, 53, 58 heredity 369, 376–377, 381, 382,
fertility symbolism 78, 88, 154, 164–165, 385–387
173–174, 175, 176, 199, 213, 214, Herrera, Beatriz Álvarez de 17,
216, 222, 234, 236, 241, 312, 349 369–391
festivals (also feast days, fiestas) 28, Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel 53–54, 56,
29, 94, 214, 344, 345, 348–364 59, 61, 63, 68, 69
Ficino, Marsilio 32 history painting 64, 181–182, 186,
filth 234, 241, 344–369 196, 265
Fiore, Joachim of homosexuality (also see gender roles,
flowers 24, 55, 73, 78, 81, 86, 88, gender bias) 191–192, 353
89, 90, 91, 268, 329, 332, 336, 338, huaca (see wak "a)
339, 359, 363, 370 Huejotzingo, Puebla, cloister murals
folding screens (see biombos) of 293, 297–305, 298, 311, 314,
food (see also calabash, corn, fruits) 315, 362
15, 44, 61, 78, 164, 174, 199, Huitzilopochtli 165, 235, 358
446 index
iconography 7, 8, 26, 30, 32, 36, 54, Mama Quilla 73, 76, 81, 82
64, 76, 78, 86, 88, 90, 136, 151, Manso y Zuniga, Francisco 321–325
163, 165, 175, 184, 186, 192, 196, Marianna of Austria 280, 285
203, 223, 229, 230, 234, 253, 255, marriage 10, 15, 185, 186–188, 199,
265, 274, 281, 285, 330, 332, 333, 203, 204, 210, 212, 239–240, 259,
350, 369, 376, 420, 432 260, 284, 335, 336, 337, 372, 377,
identity 185, 188, 190, 192, 196, 378–380, 386, 395, 398, 438
200, 201, 202, 204, 328, 332, 337, Maya 175, 359, 371–391
339, 369, 379, 388, 391 Mena, Luis de 197, 198
idolatry 83–84, 174, 343, 421, 426 Mendoza, Viceroy Antonio de 41, 379
illegitimacy menstruation (also see blood)
imágen de vestir 83 Mérida, Yucatán 367, 370, 372, 376,
independence from Spain: Mexico 51, 387
57, 59, 61; Peru 247, 254, 262 mestizaje 10, 212, 210, 337
indios/as (naturales) 13, 102, 253, 259 mestizos 188, 195, 199, 203, 259,
indulgences 128, 130, 428 398, 400
Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana metals (also see jewelry) 27, 30, 49,
infanticide 53, 78, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93,
Inkas 73–97, 253, 259 273, 325, 327, 329, 332, 338, 339,
Inquisition 30, 49, 70, 114, 128, 129, 375, 405
137, 141, 142–146, 240 Mexicas (see Aztecs)
insignia (also see coat of arms) 325 Mexico City 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 64,
Italian art influences 32, 255, 293 70, 128, 149, 188, 195, 197, 200,
Iturbide, Agustín 58, 61, 62 230, 234, 282, 303, 367, 315, 334,
335, 348, 376, 379, 382, 43, 424,
jade 24, 172, 173, 354 426
Jeronymites 314, 331 Midwives (also see childbirth) 344,
Jesuits 129, 333 351, 358, 359, 361
jewelry (also see metals, jade) 24, 73, miniatures 327, n. 5, 328, 330, n. 13
78, 81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 149, miscegenation 188, 194, 196, 197,
158, 168, 171, 172–173, 182, 194, 200, 202
234, 237, 259, 325–336 missions 9, 99–118, 289–315,
Juárez, Benito 64, 69 284–315
Juárez, Luis 428–431, 429 mirror of the prince 279–282
Jurado Noboa, Fernando mirrors (also hematite) 171–173, 177
Juno 22, 38, 39 Moctezuma 15, 67, 182–204, 234, 362
monjas coronadas (crowned nuns) 10–11,
Kubler, George 157, 158, 167, 306 321, 335–340
Monroy, Petronilo 65, 65
lady 151–157, 161, 16, 176 moon (also see Moon deity) 6, 7, 78,
Landa, Diego de 379 81–82, 86, 87, 96
Las Casas, Bartolomé de 383 Moon deity (also see moon) 73, 77,
Laws of the Indies 129 81–82, 86, 87, 96
limpieza de sangre 195, 337, 382 Montejo 370, 376, 377, 386, 387,
Lienzo de Tlaxcala 182 388
Lomas, Manuel de, will of 405 Montejo, Francisco de 367–391
López, Andrés 438 Montejo, Francisco de, El Mozo (the
López Cancelada, Juan 138, 141 Younger) 370, 376, 386–388
López de Arteaga, Sebastián 186 Morelos, José María 57
López López, Manuel 126, 138, 139 motherhood (also see breast feeding,
Latin Doctors of the Church childbirth, children) 127, 131, 151,
164, 222, 228, 234, 241, 380
maguey (see also pulque) 213 mountains 14, 77, 78, 79, 81, 90,
Mama Ocllo 73, 82, 86, 91 174, 15, 176, 177
index 447
murals 21, 24–45, 76, 81, 82, 83, peninsulars ( gachupines) 140, 188, 196,
88, 95, 99–118, 289–315 201, 416
mummies 83, 86, 89, 90, 95 Petrarch 25–31, 32–34, 36–37
mythological and classical subjects phallus 194, 238
21–44, 129, 274, 285, 370 Pisarro, Francisco 14, 73
Plan of Iguala 58
Nahuas (see Aztecs) Plateresque 307, 370
Napoleon 51, 57 Plaza, Tomás de la (see also Casa del
nationalism (also see crilloismo) 15, Deán) 21–22, 34, 37, 44
17, 47–71, 130, 185, 200, 201, 203, pregnancy, see childbirth
210, 215, 247, 382, 401 portraiture (also see monjas coronadas)
native women, influence on art 4, 10, 11, 127, 132–133, 136, 137,
101–118 139, 141, 193, 335–340, 398, 411,
native artists 21, 22, 26, 81, 83, 88, 413, 416
95, 103, 109, 223–242, 253, power 16, 35, 101, 116, 118, 125,
343–364 189, 195, 201, 203, 204, 223, 240,
negotiation 15, 19, 109–112, 204, 242, 369–391
241, 283, 351 prints 7, 15, 22, 224, 30, 31, 37, 40,
Neoclassicism 208, 212, 268, 271 125–146, 186, 192, 208, 211, 238,
Neo-Platonism 32 291, 419, 431, 436; violence against
Nino, Luis 84, 85 141–146
nobility 9, 76–77, 79, 82, 86, 87–89, procession (also pilgrimage) 27, 28,
90–93, 94–96, 173, 177, 178, 189, 29, 34, 43, 79, 81, 83, 113 n. 16,
193, 197, 201, 232, 234, 239, 253, 118, 290, 295, 301, 302, 303, 305,
37, 338, 369, 372, 375, 376–377, 307, 309, 315, 337
379, 382–385, 388 profession, religious 332, 335–339
nudity 127, 151, 157, 158, 163, 192, prostitution 351, 353
212, 216, 221, 222, 228, 237–242, Puebla, Mexico 21, 24, 208, 211,
249, 251, 253, 271, 302, 431 237, 334, 335, 423, 424, 426
nuns 10–11, 16, 115, 127, 131–137, pulque (see also drinking, maguey)
146, 321–340, 398, 403, 411, 413, 173, 208, 212, 213, 21, 216
419–439 purgatory 427–434
Ñusta 74, 84, 87, 88 purification 346–364, 382
Oaxaca 9, 21 Quito, Ecuador 395–417

Oaxtepec, Morelos 14, 99–118
Ochpaniztli 344–364, 345, 346, 347, race 185, 191, 192, 194, 203, 204,
348, 357 210, 259, 337
ollín 169, 173 rape 14, 138, 140, 141
Olmos, Fray Andrés de 24, 41–44, refectory 109
240 Relación geográfica 117
Otero, Mariano 47, 63 Renaissance 76, 103, 104, 109, 222,
249, 350, 370
Pachamama 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 86, retablos 8–9, 11, 14, 103, 113 n. 16,
91, 96 188, 291, 302, 303, 315, 329, 407,
Paéz, José de 331 409, 413, 420
Paradise 36, 37, 118, 289–315 Ripa, Cesare 136
Pareja Diezcanseco, Alfredo Riva Palacio, Vicente 67
Passion of Christ 27, 103–104, 118, Rivera, Diego 149, 203, 204
136, 243, 295, 302, 307, 436, 438 Rococo 268
patronage 4, 48, 127, 176, 189, 321, royalty (see nobility)
367, 385, 397, 403, 404, 414, 416, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 49, 69, 70
432 Rubens, Peter Paul 38, 40, 431
Paz y Miño, Juana de Jesús 398 Ruíz de Alarcón, Hernando
448 index
sacrifice (also see self-mortification) sexist language (see gender bias, sexism
348, 355, 358, 361, 434–438 in scholarship)
Sahagún, Bernardino de (also see sexuality (see also gender roles) 8, 10,
Florentine Codex, Primeros memorials) 36, 62, 66, 115–116, 131, 136, 163,
229, 232, 240, 348, 350, 353, 355, 165, 188, 215, 212, 222, 235, 236,
358, 360, 362 238–240, 251, 260, 283, 284, 285,
saints (also see individual saints) 9, 344, 345, 351–353, 360, 363
11, 14, 99–118, 130, 256–258, 309, shaman 165, 168, 169, 170, 171–173,
313, 329, 331, 332, 338, 404, 177, 344, 351, 359
419–439 Sibyls 22, 24, 28, 42, 43
St. Agnes of Montepulciano 111 n. 13 Siguënza y Góngora, Carlos de 200,
St. Ann 332, 414 201
St. Anthony 415 skeleton (also skull) 151, 163, 169,
St. Augustine 43, 112, 308, 310, 311, 170, 171, 172, 232, 234, 237, 295
403 skin color (also see color) 195,
St. Barbara 332 197–198, 201, 202, 203, 210, 247,
St. Catherine of Alexandria 9, 10, 254, 258, 400
105, 111 n. 13, 327, 404 slaves 121–128, 138, 141, 259, 401
St. Catherine of Genoa 427 snake (see serpent)
St. Catherine of Siena 9, 10, 111 Spanish art influences 76, 82, 88, 91,
n. 13, 113 208, 211, 212, 328, 336
St. Dominic 110 n. 13, 256 speech scroll 24, 238
St. Francis 110 n. 13, 112, 257, 332, still life painting 208, 209, 210, 216
434 Stradanus, Johannes ( Jan van der
St. Gertrudis 256, 257 Straet) 38, 130, 192, 249, 250
St. John of the Cross 423, 436, 438 straw (also see sweeping) 355, 356,
St. Lucy 111 n. 13, 113 358, 363
St. Mary Magdalene 10, 111 n. 13, Suárez de Peredo, Patricio 51, 52
258, 404 sun 34, 36, 73, 81, 83, 86, 87, 94,
St. Mary of Egypt 10 169, 173
St. Paul 105, 112, 313 sweeping (also see straw) 29,
St. Peter 103, 107, 112, 313 344–348, 350, 360–362
St. Rose of Lima 111 n. 13, 256 syncretism, defined 76
St. Teresa of Avila 17, 332, 334,
419–439, 429, 433, 435, 437, 439 Theatro moral (also see Foppens) 266,
St. Thomas Aquinas 111 n. 13, 114, 268, 271–286
117, 297, 298 Teresa de Mier, Fray Severando 49
Santiago, Isabel de (see Isabel de textiles (also see clothing) 30, 36, 37, 38,
Cisneros) 83, 84, 86, 88, 89–91, 93–96, 258, 262
Santiago, Miguel de 395–416, 408 Tira de Tepechpan 223, 224, 225, 227,
Scapular 326, 338, 339, 428, 432 228, 241
scourge (also see self-mortification) Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 32, 36
132–137, 436 Tlahuica women 102, 112, 117
sculpture (also also Tlatilco figurines, Tlatilco figurines 149–177, 150,
Casa de Montejo, Charles IV, statue 152, 153
of ) 6, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 64, 77, Tlazolteotl 234, 235, 344
83, 84, 91, 230, 237, 321, 336–391, Tonantzín 7, 165
400, 404, 406 Torquemada, Juan de 352
self-mortification (also see scourge) tortoise shell 326, 327, 329, 330
132–136, 355, 358, 436–438 n. 15, 331, 332
serpent 7, 67, 94, 172, 225, 234, Tovar Calendar 356, 357
235, 237, 359 tumi knife 84, 86
sexism in scholarship (see also gender tzitzimime 234, 237
bias) 151–177, 414 Triumphs 22, 25–44
index 449
Vaillant, George C. 155–156, 159 Ecclesia 22, 35, 36, 37–38, 40,
Veen, Otto van (also see Foppens, 42, 44
Theatro moral ) 38, 266, 267, 268, Immaculate Conception 5, 11, 29,
271, 279–285 78, 81, 82, 83, 247, 298, 301–302,
Vega, El Inga Garcilaso de la 303–304, 315, 325, 327, 330
Velázquez, Diego 211, 330 Marriage of the Virgin 186, 187
Venus 32, 154, 156, 157, 352 Pastoral Virgin 78
Vespucci, Amerigo 251 Queen of Heaven 11, 22, 35, 38,
viceregal, defined 1 n. 1, 12 40, 42, 43, 82, 83, 84, 313, 333
Villalpando, Cristóbal 432–436, 433, Virgin Militant 6, 54
435 Virgin as Paradise or cloister
violence (see also dismemberment, war, 289–315
weapons, self-mortification, prints) Virgin Spinning 78, 88, 89
14, 84 125, 126, 131, 137–138, 140, Virgin with the Mountain of
141, 142, 146, 174, 195, 228, 229, Potosiama 79, 80
271, 283, 362 Virgo Lactans 247, 255, 257, 262, 263
Virgin Mary 5, 8, 16, 22, 36, 42, 73, Visitation 309
77, 79, 84, 87, 88, 93, 95, 96, 113 virginity (see also chastity, virtue) 188,
n. 16, 115, 130, 142, 186, 196, 222, 190, 191, 222, 249, 313
28, 290, 289–315, 26, 332, 338, virtue (see also chastity, virginity) 131,
407, 419, 428, 434 219, 267, 269–285, 274, 276–280,
of Malaga 86 338
of the Annunciation 291, 292, 293,
297–308, 309, 310, 314, 315, 332 wak’a 82, 83, 84, 86
of the Apocalypse 7, 332, 339, 340 war 6, 11, 96, 184, 190, 223, 225,
of the Assumption 81 238–239, 349, 358, 363
of the Candlestick 78, 82, 91, 92, 95 weapons (also see tumi knife, violence)
of Guadalupe (Extremadura, Spain) 61, 84–86, 137, 138, 139, 193, 199,
5, 8, 314 249, 253, 271, 274, 344, 350, 361
of Guadalupe (Mexico) 6, 8, 51, weaving (also see textiles) 344, 350,
53–57, 61, 62, 63, 70, 128–129, 352
130, 142–145, 144, 165, 197, 198, wet nurses 247, 254, 258–262
201, 213, 330, 332, 406 widows 377, 380
of Guápulo 397, 403, 406, 407, 409, witches 114
414, 416 women artists 395–417
de Los Remedios 5–6, 54–55, 130 womanhood (see gender roles)
of the Pilgrims 81 woodcuts (see prints)
of the Rosary 128, 432, 428
of the Rosary of Pomata 75, 78, 82, Xochimilca women 102, 112, 117
89–90
of Sorrows 404 Yucatán 364–391
Adoration 309 Yanhuitlán, Oaxaca 9
Assumption of the Virgin 81 Yautepec, Morelos 112–113
Coronation of the Virgin 295–296, Yepes, Diego de
329, 331, 333
Death of the Virgin 293–296, 294, Zacatenco
302 Zumárraga, Juan de 33, 51, 55, 240
THE ATLANTIC WORLD
ISSN 1570–0542
1. Postma, J. & V. Enthoven (eds.). Riches from Atlantic Commerce. Dutch

Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. 2003.
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Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1550-1830. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13175 2
3. Jacobs, J. New Netherland. A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century
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4. Goodfriend, J.D. (ed.). Revisiting New Netherland. Perspectives on Early
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5. Macinnes, A.I. & A.H. Williamson (eds.). Shaping the Stuart World, 1603-
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6. Haggerty, S. The British-Atlantic Trading Community, 1760-1810. Men,
Women, and the Distribution of Goods. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15018 8
7. Kleijwegt, M. (ed.). The Faces of Freedom. The Manumission and Eman-
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9. Fur, G. Colonialism in the Margins. Cultural Encounters in New Sweden
and Lapland. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15316 0,
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15316 5
10. Kellen Kee McIntyre & Richard E. Phillips (eds.). Woman and Art in
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ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15392 9

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WOMAN AND ART

Wim Klooster (Clark University)

KELLEN KEE MCINTYRE AND RICHARD E. PHILLIPS

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

© Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal

printed in the netherlands

RECONNAISSANCE: MARKING AND MAPPING

Chapter One. The Queen of Heaven Reigns in

Chapter Two. Aﬀections of the Heart: Female Imagery

Chapter Three. The Virgin of the Andes: Inka Queen

Chapter Four. Women and Men as Cosmic Co-Bearers

TAKING POSSESSION: APPROPRIATIONS OF THE

Chapter Five. Abused and Battered: Printed Images and

Chapter Six. Reclaiming Tlatilco’s Figurines from

Chapter Seven. El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma:

Chapter Eight. Nurture and Inconformity: Arrieta’s

CONSOLIDATION: THE QUALIFYING AND TAMING OF

Chapter Nine. Clothing Women: The Female Body

Chapter Ten. Savage Breast/Salvaged Breast:

Chapter Eleven. Emblems of Virtue in

Chapter Twelve. The Figure of Mary as the Cloister

FULFILLMENT: THE EXTENSION AND

Chapter Thirteen. Convents, Art, and Creole Identity

Chapter Fourteen. The Sweeping of the Way:

Chapter Fifteen. Exploring a Female Legacy: Beatriz

Chapter Sixteen. Isabel de Cisneros in Her Own Role ........ 395

Chapter Seventeen. From Mujercilla to Conquistadora:

Index .......................................................................................... 443

I extend my heartfelt thanks to all of our contributors who were

Kellen Kee McIntyre

I would like to thank Dr. Nancy Moyer, Prof. Reynaldo Santiago,

Fig. 2.1 Patricio Súarez de Peredo, Alegoría de las autoridades españo-

City. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional

Fig. 4.1 Schematic iconographical diagram, ﬁrst ﬂoor of the clois-

Fig. 4.4 St. Peter. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, ﬁrst ﬂoor of

María Elena Bernal-García

Fig. 6.4 Tlatilco. Whirling Type D1 Female Figurine. Clay with

Fig. 7.1 Anon., El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma, fragment. 18th c.,

Lori Boornazian Diel

Fig. 9.1 Capture and Sacriﬁce of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughter,

Fig. 10.1 Anon., An Allegory of America Suckling Foreigners (called An

Colonies). Ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 32” by 23 ½”, Cuzco,

NOTE: Figures 11.1.–11.5. are photographs of sections of “The Richmond

Fig. 14.1 Ochpaniztli, fol. 21r, Codex Tudela. Reproduction by per-

Fig. 14.2 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Elizabeth Hill Boone, The

Fig. 15.1 Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo

Fig. 16.1 [Copy of ] Portrait of Juana de Jesús, original: Isabel de

to Miguel de Santiago. Late 17th c., Santuario de Nuestra

Kellen Kee McIntyre

Marina Arrom, Luis Martín, Elizabeth Salas, Verónica Salles-Reese

Why has viceregal art history lagged so far behind comparable

gious realm are Marian devotions, depictions of female saints, and

conquest of Mexico. This small, sculpted Virgin, which stands about

apse wall. No sixteenth-century missions were dedicated to female

primarily boys, but there are references to the education of cacique-

Mary, especially as the Immaculate Conception and the Queen of

modern” chosen instead of the word “viceregal”? The editors of this

seduced, deﬁled, exploited, reviled, and denounced by those (males)

presented in the form of a sacred mountain. And ﬁnally in this sec-

period prints to achieve the political aims of the dominant classes. In

inine power inherent in the remaining essays of Part IV. In them