1673 Engraving of the Aztec God Tezcatlipoca Enthroned
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca enthroned appears in this excerpted leaf from the New Mexico section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a dark-skinned idol in a feathered headdress sits on a low bench before a curtain strewn with skulls and crossed bones. In his right hand he raises a round mirror fringed with feathers, and in his left he holds a shield pierced by arrows. At left, worshippers kneel and bow, while at right, seated figures and a spearman wait beside the bench.
The figure appears to be Tezcatlipoca, whose image is described on the reverse. Said to forgive sins, the god held a fan of gold plate ringed with colored feathers that shone like a mirror in which he was believed to see all worldly things. As lord over hunger, drought, barrenness, and plague, he took another form—he sat on a bench behind a red curtain embroidered with skulls and bones, his body pitch-black, holding a shield set with four arrows like the one seen here. The reverse goes on to describe Quetzalcoatl, god of merchants, whose image had the face of a bird with a red beak and a long tongue, and then opens the chapter on New Galicia, where the text recommends quince juice against scorpion stings. The text below finishes a description of Huitzilopochtli, with a gaping beak full of teeth in his belly and two fiery eyes flickering in his chest before turning to Tlaloc and the goddess Toci. It closes with the festival of Toci's son, a god of the hunt, whose image was carried up a high mountain while the crowd set fire to the brush around its foot and drove the game to the summit, where it is said to have been slaughtered by the thousands for a feast.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and Die Unbekante Neue Welt, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.
CONDITION
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