Mapas de Merced (Continued)
akwong
Wed, 12/01/2021 – 19:19
Map of Tezontepec, Hidalgo, 1571 (2021 copy)
Signed by Alcalde Martín de Salinas
Facsimile by Tlaoli Ramírez Téllez
Combined media, acrylic, ink and watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork
EX.8900.14
Map of Zolipa Misantla, Veracruz, 1573 (2021 copy)
Signed by Corregidor Pedro Pérez de Zamora
Facsimile by Tlaoli Ramírez Téllez
Combined media, acrylic, ink and watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Artwork
EX.8900.15
photograph © Museum Associates / LACMA
In these two facsimile maps, we see the continuity of Mesoamerica’s cartographic imagery into the sixteenth century. Swirling and coiling shapes evoke the fluid motion of rivers. The inexperienced hills of Colipa bear the standard grid-and-dot sample that symbolizes the bumpy pores and skin of the crocodilian earth. There are European parts, too. Church buildings emerge as regional facilities, reconfiguring landscapes round new axes. And alphabetic writing gives a particular visible means to encode dwelling histories in new methods. The map of Tezontepec specifically highlights the duality and complementarity of the post-Conquest panorama: to the appropriate, a domineering peak, coloured white, and its cavernous U-shaped quarry in pink, yellow, and inexperienced; to the left, the rectilinear facade of the Augustinian convent, rendered in the identical colours. The 2 options mirror each other, a balanced pair that unifies sacred websites of creation.