Year 8 History

“Lienzo” means “canvas” or “piece of cloth” in Spanish. The original Lienzo de Tlaxcala was a painted cotton sheet around 2 meters wide and 5 meters long.(Figure 1) A large scene at the top depicted the political structure of the Central Mexican kingdom of Tlaxcala. Below, a seven-by-thirteen grid of cells contained dozens of small scenes that showed how the Tlaxcalans and their Spanish allies defeated the Aztec empire. In other words, the lower portion of the Lienzo told the story of the “Conquest of Mexico” from a Native American point of view.2The small scenes which told this story read from left to right, top to bottom, one row at a time.

Most of the Lienzo’s narrative was told through pictures. Its artists mixed Mesoamerican and European styles in complex ways. For example, Tlaxcalan warriors were always drawn with their faces in profile, following prehispanic traditions. Malinche, the indigenous translator of Hernán Cortés, was always drawn with her face in a 3/4 view imported from Europe. The objects depicted in the Lienzo’s scenes also mixed Mesoamerican with European. Malinche was never depicted wearing New World sandals; she was always drawn wearing closed European shoes (Figure 2).

Indigenous warriors were dressed in feathered body suits, wore battle standards on their backs, and held circular shields. European warriors were dressed in armor or doublets and held oval shields. Old World horses were drawn next to New World turkeys. Most of the cells were also labeled at the top in alphabetic script. These labels were written in Nahuatl, the dominant language spoken in Central Mexico in the sixteenth century (Figure 2). Usually these labels were geographic names, indicating where each scene was taking place. Occasionally short Nahuatl phrases were written instead, describing the scene in more detail. The original Lienzo de Tlaxcala is lost. The version you see in Mesolore has been recreated. Above all, our recreation uses images from a lithograph facsimile printed in 1892. In addition (as discussed below), the recreation is also influenced by other visual documents from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

The original Lienzo seems to have been painted around 1552, commissioned by Tlaxcala’s (indigenous) city council. The surviving council minutes for 17 June 1552 record plans to send a delegation across the Atlantic to meet with the Emperor, Charles V. As part of this delegation, a painting was to be prepared showing the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Tlaxcala and the subsequent conquest of the Aztec empire by Tlaxcalans allied with Spaniards.4 It is entirely possible that the Lienzo was actually taken to Europe on such a journey. At least six Tlaxcalan delegations traveled across the Atlantic to present petitions before the Crown, the earliest in 1527.5 Unfortunately, however, we have not found records that confirm the Lienzo’s transatlantic travels. The embassy to Europe first planned in 1552 took a number of years to prepare (feather capes for the ambassadors had been completed in 1556), and as far as we can tell it did not take place until 1562.6 We do not know if the ambassadors took the Lienzo with them.

When we next hear of the Lienzo, in the late eighteenth century, it is (back?) in Tlaxcala. A copy was painted in 1773, in an updated eighteenth-century style. Shading was used extensively in this copy to give bodies and draped clothing an appareance of three-dimensionality.

 

Introduction to the Lienzo de Tlaxcala. (2015). Retrieved from http://www.mesolore.org/tutorials/learn/19/Introduction-to-the-Lienzo-de-Tlaxcala