Borg. mess. 2: A late eighteenth-century copy of the Mesoamerican Codex Cospi by the Bolognese artist Antonio Basoli (1774-1848)

This article describes Borg. mess. 2 and discusses its scholarly reception. It is a copy, drawn in black ink on tracing paper, of the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican pictorial manuscript known as Codex Cospi (sec. XV-XVI), one of only thirteen surviving manuscripts from before the colonial period. Created toward the end of the 18th century by the Bolognese artist Antonio Basoli, Borg. mess. 2 was once in the collection of cardinal Stefano Borgia. Although today it is nearly forgotten and never studied in detail, the manuscript nevertheless played a key role in the modern study of Mesoamerican codices, since it was examined and commented upon by important scholars such as José Lino fábrega, Georg Zoëga, and Alexander von Humboldt. Subsequently, Borg. mess. 2 was the basis for Agostino Aglio’s reproductions of Codex Cospi published in 1830-1831 in the second volume of Lord Kingsborough’s Antiquities of Mexico and, through the mediation of the latter, even influenced modern editions of Codex Cospi.