Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

André Thevet's ‘true’ portrait of Moctezuma and its European legacy

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02666280802631100

1943-2178

Patrick Thomas Hajovsky,

Historical Art and Architecture Studies

Abstract Notes 1 – Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 60. 2 – Roger Schlesinger, Portraits from the Age of Exploration (Urbana–Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), p. 112. 3 – Ter Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 8, finds the full development of the term in Dryden's drama, The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards: ‘the freedom of the noble savage is not only associated with wildness and nature, and contrasted with a baseness … attributed to civilization … [which is] associated with servitude linked to law’. See below for analysis of John Ogilby in this context. 4 – This is explicit in Thevet's earlier work, Cosmographie universelle. See Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, André Thevet's North America: A Sixteenth-Century View (Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1986), p. 205. 5 – Benjamin Keen, The Aztec Image in Western Thought (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1985), p. 154. 6 – Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 117–40. See also Pagden, ‘The Savage Critic: Some European Images of the Primitive’, in The Yearbook of English Studies, ‘Colonial and Imperial Themes’ (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1983), pp. 32–45. 7 – These were, respectively, Cosmographie de Levant (Lyon, 1554), and Les Singularitez de la France antarctique (Paris, 1557). Thevet only spent about 10 weeks on the 1555 voyage. He apparently got sick and had to return to France without seeing many of the places he describes in the Singularitez. See Schlesinger, Portraits from the Age of Exploration, pp. xx–xxi. 8 – For a biography of Thevet, including the politically and religiously motivated criticism of his works, see Schlesinger, Portraits from the Age of Exploration, and Schlesinger and Stabler, André Thevet's North America. 9 – Schlesinger, Portraits, pp. 5–7. 10 – Pagden, European Encounters, 43. For a cogent analysis of the controversies between Thevet's and Léry's characterizations of Quoniambec, see Frank Lestringant, ‘The Myth of the Indian Monarchy: An Aspect of the Controversy between Thevet and Léry (1575–1585)’, in Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, ed. Christian Feest (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), pp. 37–60. 11 – Schlesinger finds that Thevet was rightly accused of stretching his facts. For instance, Thevet, who never went to Canada, described it to appear ‘as if he were recounting his own personal experiences’, complete with conversations he had with natives. These conversations, however, were taken largely from the vocabularies in Jacques Cartier's Brief Récit. See Schlesinger, André Thevet's North America, p. 5. 12 – Pagden, European Encounters, p. 51. 13 – Quoniambec and Nacol-absou, King of the Cannibals, also appear in the earlier Cosmographie. Thevet characterizes the cannibal giant Quoniambec as fearsome yet noble. Léry downplayed Thevet's hyperbole in his characterization of Quoniambec in more savage terms. See Schlesinger, Portraits, pp. 129–37, and Lestringant, ‘The Myth of the Indian Monarchy’. 14 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 105. However, for reasons internal to the portrait, this is highly doubtful. See the section on Codex Mendoza in this article. 15 – Ibid., pp. 105, 127. 16 – Ibid., p. 14. 17 – Ibid., pp. 13–14. 18 – Ibid. 19 – Bronwen Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk in late sixteenth-century Venetian portrait books’, Word and Image, 19 (2003), pp. 42–3. 20 – Ibid. 21 – Francisco Sansovino L'edificio del corpo humano … nel quale bravemente si descrivono le qualita del corpo dello huomo & le potentie dell'anima (Venice: Rizzo, 1550). Cited in Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk’, p. 43. For Albertian concepts of virtù over the whims of fortuna, see Martin Kemp, introduction to Alberti, On Painting, pp. 2–4. 22 – Adrian W.B. Randolph, ‘Introduction: the authority of likeness’, Word and Image, 19 (January–June, 2003), p. 1. 23 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 11. 24 – Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk’. 25 – Hugh Honour, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), pp. 84–118. 26 – Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk’. 27 – See H.B. Nicholson, ‘The History of the Codex Mendoza’, in The Codex Mendoza, eds Francis Berdan and Patricia Reiff Anawalt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), vol. I, pp. 1–11, and Schlesinger and Stabler, André Thevet's North America, pp. 216–24. The original Histoyre is now lost, but it did contain a Spanish text, which Thevet translated into French and used for his Cosmographie and Grand insulaire. This copy survives in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Fonds Française 19031. It is possible that Thevet acquired the manuscript at the same time as the Codex Mendoza, and internal evidence suggested by Nicholson would date both to between 1539 and 1542. 28 – Donald Robertson, Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), pp. 94–107. 29 – This beard is drawn with heavy black lines, which contradicts the ‘sparse’ beard described by both Gómara and Bernal Diaz. The contradiction is even to be found in the Crónica X tradition — a group of manuscripts linked to a lost prototype — such as between the Codex Tovar (in which Moctezuma I is beardless while Moctezuma II has a beard) and Diego Durán's Historia de las indias de la nueva españa (in which both kings are beardless). Berdan and Anawalt, ‘Description of Codex Mendoza’, in The Codex Mendoza, op. cit., vol. II, p. 223, describe this drawing and note that beards are unusual among the Aztecs, suggesting that it could be a marker of esteem in indigenous sources. They also note that Moctezuma appears with and without a beard in the Codex Florentino, probably because of the preferences of different artists who worked on that manuscript. 30 – While there are spears in the Codex Mendoza, none of them has the pelt attached to it. It is quite likely that this came from a known example from a local collection, such as the royal curiosity cabinet. The point of the spear is drawn to resemble the jagged edges of a flint point, which mimics somewhat the obsidian-edged spears in the Codex Mendoza, but does not discount the possibility that the artist was looking at an actual object. 31 – Patricia Reiff Anawalt, ‘A Comparative Analysis of the Costumes and Accoutrements of the Codex Mendoza’, in The Codex Mendoza, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 103–51. 32 – For an example of a Tupinamba feather ornament possibly collected by Thevet, see Rüdiger Joppien, ‘Étude de quelques portraits ethnologiques dans l'œuvre d'André Thevet’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April, 1978), pp. 125–36, 130, 133. Similar feather headdresses and/or capes exist in several European collections; a Tupinamba feather cloak in Brussels (cf. Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1991), p. 574) was once labeled ‘Moctezuma's Cape’. 33 – Titles and escudos, or coats-of-arms, were pursued in the colonial period by both noble Indians and Spanish conquistadors. Their use in colonial Mexico is important because they bring together two systems of titling nobility through a commensurate idea; both cultures recognized social and political distinctions through insignia on arms. However, no Aztec shield designs were produced in the colonial period, for obvious reason that shields were granted to defenders of the Spanish Empire. Native nobility thus relied on a new system of signs, often incorporating both European heraldic and indigenous motifs into their shield designs. 34 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 110. 35 – Ibid., p. 112. 36 – Pagden, in the introduction to Cortés, Letters from Mexico (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), p. lxxvi, also notes that several editions were subsequently printed in Latin, French and Italian. 37 – Cortés, Letters from Mexico, pp. 108–9. 38 – Ibid., pp. 84–6, 98–9. 39 – Ibid., pp. 109–12. 40 – See Geoffrey Eatough, ‘Peter Martyr's Account of the First Contacts with Mexico’, Viator, 30 (1999), pp. 397–421, 415. Martyr wrote, ‘I do not marvel at the gold and jewels, but I stand amazed at the skills and flair/training demonstrated in the way the object masters the material. I have seen a thousand shapes and figures which I am unable to describe. In my judgment I have never seen anything whose beauty had the same power to attract men's gaze.’ Dürer wrote, ‘In all the days of my life, I have seen nothing which touches my heart so much as these, for among them, I have seen wonderfully artistic things, and I have admired the subtle ingenuity of men in foreign lands. Indeed I do not know how to express my feelings about what I found here.’ 41 – Both Las Casas and Gómara may have had access to a lost manuscript, De moribus indorum, of which the Memoriales was an incomplete copy. See Charles Gibson, ‘A Survey of Middle American Prose Manuscripts in the Native Historical Tradition’, in Handbook of Middle American Indians (London: University of Texas Press, 1975), 15, pp. 348–50. 42 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 11. 43 – Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary, trans. and ed. Lesley Byrd Simpson (Berkeley–Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), p. 142. 44 – See Francisco López de Gómara, Historia de la conquista de México (Mexico: Editorial Pedro Robredo, 1943), p. 213, and Francisco López de Gómara, Histoire generalle des Indes Occidentales, et terres nueves, qui lusques a present ont esté descouvertes, trans. Martin Fumée (Paris: Chez Laurens Sonnius, 1569), p. 91v. 45 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 23. 46 – Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper Perennial, 1984), p. 114. 47 – Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 39. 48 – Ibid. 49 – Bernal Diaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J.M. Cohen (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963), p. 143. 50 – Berdan and Anawalt, The Codex Mendoza, vol. II, pp. 34–5 (fols. 14v–15r). 51 – Ibid. 52 – Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage. 53 – Todorov, The Conquest of America, pp. 130–2. 54 – Richard Brilliant, Portraiture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 32. 55 – Ibid., pp. 110–11. 56 – Sansovino, L'edificio del corpo humano. Cited in Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk’, p. 43. 57 – Ibid. 58 – Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, Tracte containing the artes of curious paintinge, caruinge, buildinge, written first in Italian, and englished by Richard Haydocke (Oxford: I. Barnes for R. H., 1598), vol. II, p. 3. 59 – Ibid., p. 7. For Lomazzo, Titian is the prime example of one such figure who was ‘beloved of the world, and envied of Nature’. Later, he includes a section on fame that is based in Petrarch. 60 – Lomazzo, Tracte, p. 35. 61 – Ibid., p. 13. 62 – Ibid., pp. 46–7. 63 – Jesús Carrillo, ‘Oviedo on Columbus’, in Repertorium Columbianum (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2000), vol. XI, p. 16. 64 – Ibid., p. 17. 65 – The Italian erudite Ramusio also published this part of Oviedo in a collection with Cortés's second, third and fourth letters, as well as the account by the Anonymous Conqueror. 66 – Carrillo, Oviedo, pp. 15–16. 67 – Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 64–8. 68 – Ibid., p. 59. 69 – Carrillo, Oviedo, p. 27. 70 – Ibid., 4, 30–2. 71 – André Thevet, Histoire des plus illustres et sçavans homes de leurs siecles. Tant de l'Europe que de l'Asie, Afrique & Amerique. Avec leurs portraits en tailles-douçes, tirez sur les veritables originaux, 8 vols (Paris, 1670–1671), p. 2: ‘Le Libraire au Lecteur’. Cited in Schlesinger, Portraits, p. 16. 72 – Pagden, European Encounters, pp. 122–12. See also Pagden, ‘The Savage Critic’. 73 – Ibid. 74 – Pagden, ‘The Savage Critic’, p. 35. 75 – It is as yet unclear whether or not Ogilby used Montanus's plates. Close examination of the two books at the Houghton Library at Harvard University reveals that the hatch marks in the images are identical. But one image stands out: Ogilby's image of Cuzco is the reverse of Montanus's. Based on this evidence, it appears that Ogilby hired an expert copyist, at least for the Cuzco illustration. It is possible that he had the copperplates of all except the Cuzco image, which would mean his engraver had to copy from the printed version, thus resulting in the reversed image. To my knowledge, no one has carefully compared the illustrations from the two editions, although the Houghton Library copies are accompanied by notes. 76 – In his list of authors, Ogilby lists Thevet by name. Perhaps he refers to Thevet's earlier work, the Cosmographie, which would have informed more general descriptions of the Americas. He also cites Antonio de Herrera, Bartolomé de las Casas, Francisco de Gómara, Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca Garcilaso, and José Acosta, among many others. I have not determined whether this list comes from Montanus. 77 – ‘Portrait of Moctezuma (Motecuhzoma II, Xocoyotzin)’ in Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life 1521–1821 ed. Donna Pierce (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), pp. 171–7. There are notable similarities between the Codex Tovar and Medici portraits, as well as some notable differences, such as the beard. The iconography of the king, including the spear he holds, is an idea that Thevet had garnered from the Codex Mendoza, so this aspect is not unique to New Spain.