The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec: A Painted History from the Northern Mixteca

The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec: A Painted History from the Northern Mixteca is a multiauthored monographic study of an indigenous pictographic document painted on a large sheet of cotton (commonly known as a lienzo) produced in sixteenth-century Oaxaca, Mexico. Originating from the community of Tlapiltepec, the lienzo had been marshaled by the town council as evidence in a land dispute in the early twentieth century when a legal assistant absconded with the document. Through a complicated series of events detailed in the volume, the lienzo ended up in the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2004, the museum communicated directly to the community of Tlapiltepec their plans to install a life-size illustration of the lienzo in the museum as part of a new addition to the anthropology gallery and to keep the original in a dark, climate-controlled storage facility for preservation. The municipal council “reacted favorably” and “expressed pride that the lienzo would find a place of prominence in the cultural landscape of the museum galleries” (pp. xxi–xxii). These events led to the development and publication of this volume. The in-depth studies presented by the authors, in addition to the abundance of high-quality, full-color illustrations, bring knowledge and understanding of this rare, indigenous pictorial document not just to the museum and its audiences but to specialists and nonspecialists alike.The study comprises four major essays by various authors and a foreword by Elizabeth Hill Boone. Boone's foreword provides a theoretical orientation toward an understanding of the Lienzo of Tlapiltepec, contextualizing its structure and aims within the greater corpus of known indigenous pictographic documents. Her foreword provides a succinct summary of much of the information presented in her seminal study on pictorial histories, Stories in Red and Black (2000), that is particularly useful for readers who have not read this book, to gain a sense of the major themes central to indigenous pictorial histories.In chapter 1, Nicholas Johnson presents a consideration of the lienzo as an object, addressing its materiality and contextualizing it within the corpus of similar Coixtlahuaca Valley lienzos. His object-centered approach yields a thoughtful consideration of facture, scale, and orientation, particularly useful for art historians or scholars interested in codicological studies of indigenous pictorial manuscripts. In chapter 2, Bas van Doesburg situates the content and aims of the Lienzo de Tlapiltepec within the sociopolitical context of the Coixtlahuaca Valley in the sixteenth century. Doesburg provides a systematic analysis of the graphic messages encoded in the lienzo's composition, analyzing the relationship among dynastic lineage, divine origins, and territorial claim communicated and reinforced throughout the Lienzo de Tlapiltepec and similar pictorial documents. Doesburg further illuminates its historical context through his close analysis of sixteenth-century archival documents pertaining to the community.Doesburg's chapter is followed by an appendix that transcribes sixteenth- and early seventeeth-century documents related to Ihuitlan (a site of prominence within the pictorial documents) and Tlapiltepec. As noted by Doesburg, these early colonial written documents have been fundamental for scholars to contextualize the sociopolitical dynamics and historical significance of pictorial documents and have facilitated the identification of places and features within the landscape. The publication of all the known archival documents (heretofore unpublished and often inaccessible) related to the Ihuitlan-Tlapiltepec polity prior to 1620 is an invaluable boon to other researchers. A second appendix provides a general description of glosses and tentative interpretations for others, updating and building on transcriptions in Alfonso Caso's classic study of the Lienzo de Tlapiltepec.In chapter 3, Nicholas Johnson considers the pictorial organization of the lienzo, describing relationships and connections elucidated through the use of red and black lines. His analysis focuses on the visual dynamics of the lienzo's overall composition, and he compares its structure to other genres of Nahuatl and Mixtec pictorial histories such as screenfolds and tiras. Arni Brownstone and Eckehard Dolinski, in chapter 4, provide a detailed description of their process in reproducing the illustrations and content of the lienzo found throughout the volume, one of its great highlights and strengths. This information is particularly useful for scholars interested in incorporating digital technology and media to enhance viewing, study, and understanding of pictorial documents.In sum, The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec is an invaluable addition to the literature on indigenous-made pictorial documents of southern Mexico. The multidisciplinary perspectives help illuminate the sociopolitical and artistic complexity of the lienzo, while the high-resolution photographic reproductions make the book an indispensable resource for scholars and general readers alike.

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