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glyphic paintings preserved in the archives of the 
viceroyalty at Mexico, where, since the conquest, 
and especially since the year 1540, an evident 
improvement in the art. of drawing is perceived* 
I saw, in the Boturini collection, clothes of cotton, 
and rolls of agave paper, on which were repre- 
sented, by very correct outlines, bishops on the 
backs of mules, Spanish lancemen on horseback, 
oxen yoked to a plough, vessels arriving at Vera 
Cruz, and a number of other objects unknown 
to the Mexicans before the anival of Cortez. 
These paintings were made not by Europeans, 
but by Indians and Mestizoes. On looking over 
the hieroglyphic manuscripts of different pe- 
riods, we observe the progress of the arts to- 
ward perfection. The stunted figures become 
more proportionate. The limbs separate them- 
selves from the trunk ; the eye in profile is no 
longer seen as if it were in the front ; horses, 
which in the Azteck paintings resembled Mexi- 
can stags, assume gradually their real form. 
The figures are no longer grouped as if in proces- 
sion ; their relations to each other are multiplied ; 
we see them in action ; and the symbolic paint- 
ing, which sketches or recals events, rather than 
expresses them, is insensibly transformed into 
an animated painting, which employs only a few 
phonetic hieroglyphics*, to indicate the names of 
* See vol. xiii, page 159, 
