1673 Engraving of a Figure Diving from a Tall Pole
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of a figure diving from a tall pole appears in this excerpted leaf from the "New Spain" (modern-day Mexico) section of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In the center of the scene, a figure falls backwards from the top of a tall pole, holding sprigs of flowers in both hands. Below, warriors in feathered headdresses fight with spears, bows, and broad blades among the fallen while a larger battle rages across the open ground beyond. At left, a long wall encloses a domed building, while spearmen with pennants close in from the right.
The engraving is uncaptioned and neither side of the leaf describes a figure like the one seen here. The battle may be the war against the lord of Tlatelolco with which the reverse ends, though the leaf breaks off before its outcome. The text below tells how Tizoc, Moctezuma's successor, built the great stone temple of Mexico called Ku, its walls woven together like serpents around a broad open court where more than ten thousand people are said to have danced in a ring on feast days. Thirty steps led up to a round terrace where the hearts of living captives were torn out and the skulls of the dead were mounted until they fell. The reverse tells how Tizoc had his nose pierced for an emerald and had to take captives for sacrifice before he could be crowned. His people, the text says, judged him so fainthearted that they poisoned him in the fourth year of his reign and raised his brother Axayácatl to the throne. Axayácatl then led an army to distant Tehuantepec, challenged its king to single combat, and routed his forces from an ambush hidden behind straw before pursuing them to the harbor of Huatulco.
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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