Portraiture in Central American Art 



By Herbert J. Spinden 



jMONG the human beings represented in ancient Mexican 

 and Central American art are there actual portraits of 

 individuals? Accustomed as we are to judge the works 

 of alien peoples in the light of Europe, hardly one of us 

 has not been tempted to see likenesses of old-time rulers 

 in the graven stone faces at Copan, Chichen Itza, and other Maya 

 cities, and to catch the personality of men from the masses in the 

 little heads of baked clay that strew the fields from Central Mexico 

 to the lakes of Nicaragua. But mere human interest is, after all, a 

 dangerous guide to knowledge. 



Aztec Representations of Historical Persons. — The Aztecs were the 

 ruling race when Cortes planted his flag in New Spain. While the 

 seat of their power, in the Valley of Mexico, was somewhat outside 

 the area of the earlier and more magnificent civilizations of Central 

 America, nevertheless this nation must have acquired by inheritance 

 from the preceding peoples many ideas and conventions in art. It 

 may therefore be significant that one looks in vain for acknowledged 

 portraits among Aztec drawings and sculptures. In the native codices, 

 or illuminated manuscripts, and on the commemorative monuments 

 that have come down to us, there are many references to historical 

 personages made through the device of combining the personal hiero- 

 glyph of the individual with a conventional figure devoid of all facial 

 and bodily peculiarities. In these representations the details of dress 

 and ornament may vary enough to indicate rank and place of abode. 

 On the Stone of Tizoc, commonly called the Sacrificial Stone, the 

 figure of Tizoc, who was war-chief of the Mexicans from 1483 to i486, 

 is distinguished by the personal hieroglyph. Excepting the head-dress, 

 his costume belongs to the Aztec war-god Huitzilopochtli or to his 

 wizard brother Tezcatlipoca. The man held prisoner by Tizoc bears 

 the hieroglyph "little net", Matlaltzinco, and stands for an important 

 tribe inhabiting the Valley of Toluca. This tribe was reduced by the 

 Mexicans in the year 1478, possibly under the direct leadership of 

 Tizoc. We have no reason to believe that an individual chief of the 

 Matlaltzincan tribe is portrayed in the captive. In all the other pairs 

 of figures carved on the periphery of this great drum-shaped stone 

 the victor is the Aztec war-god (Huitzilopochtli or Tezcatlipoca), 



[434] 



