In the present article we provide a detailed description and interpretation, accompanied by new high-resolution photos, of one of the two Mesoamerican wooden mosaic-covered objects held by the National Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the first part of the text we offer a reconstruction of the object’s collection history, arguing that it could have been part of a lot of artefacts brought to Italy by the Dominican friar Domingo de Betanzos in 1532-33. Then, a new iconographic analysis of the object is provided, leading to a new interpretation of the figure – previously described as an image of Tlaloc, Yacatecuhtli, or Ehecatl – as a representation of the deity known as Xolotl. In the final section we also propose that the artefact could originally proceed from the Southern Puebla-Northwestern Oaxaca region, a hypothesis based both on iconographic traits shared with pictorial manuscripts and on its reconstructed collection history.
The Face of Xolotl: A Unique Mosaic-covered Object in the National Museum of Denmark
Davide Domenici;
2018
Abstract
In the present article we provide a detailed description and interpretation, accompanied by new high-resolution photos, of one of the two Mesoamerican wooden mosaic-covered objects held by the National Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the first part of the text we offer a reconstruction of the object’s collection history, arguing that it could have been part of a lot of artefacts brought to Italy by the Dominican friar Domingo de Betanzos in 1532-33. Then, a new iconographic analysis of the object is provided, leading to a new interpretation of the figure – previously described as an image of Tlaloc, Yacatecuhtli, or Ehecatl – as a representation of the deity known as Xolotl. In the final section we also propose that the artefact could originally proceed from the Southern Puebla-Northwestern Oaxaca region, a hypothesis based both on iconographic traits shared with pictorial manuscripts and on its reconstructed collection history.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
