“The only unquestionable specimen of Mexican art that I know of in Great Britain, is a cup of very fine gold, which is said to have belonged to Montezuma. It weighs 5 oz. 12 dwt. Three drawings of it were exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries, June 10, 1765. A man’s head is represented on the cup. On one side the full face, on the other the profile, on the third the back parts of the head. The relievo is said to have been produced by pinching the inside of the cup, so as to make the representation of a face on the outside. The features are gross, but represented with some degree of art. This cup was purchased by Edward, Earl of Orford, while he lay in the harbour of Cadiz with the fleet under his command, and is now in the possession of his grandson, Lord Archer. I am indebted for this information to my respectable and ingenious friend Mr. Barrington.
“As the Mexican paintings are the most curious monument extant of the earliest mode of writing, it will not be improper to give some account of the means by which they were preserved from the general wreck of every work of art in America, and communicated to the public. For the most early and complete collection of these published by Purchas, we are indebted to the attention of that curious inquirer, Hakluyt.
“Don Antonio Mendoza, viceroy of New Spain, having deemed those paintings a proper present for Charles V., the ship in which they were sent to Spain was taken by a French cruiser, and they came into the possession of Thevet, the King’s geographer, who, having travelled himself into the New World, and described one of its provinces, was a curious observer of whatever tended to illustrate the manners of the Americans.
“On his death they were purchased by Hakluyt, at that time chaplain of the English ambassador to the French court; and being left by him to Purchas, were published at the desire of the learned antiquary Sir Henry Spelman. They were translated from English into French by Melchizedeck Thevenot, and published in his collection of voyages, A.D. 1683.
“The second specimen of Mexican picture-writing was published by Dr. Francis Gemelli Carreri, in two copper-plates. The first is a map, or representation of the progress of the ancient Mexicans[[72]] on their first arrival in the country, and of the various stations in which they settled, before they founded the capital of their empire in the lake of Mexico. The second is a chronological wheel, or circle, representing the manner in which they computed and marked their cycle of fifty-two years. He received both from Don Carlos de Siguenza y Congorra, a diligent collector of ancient Mexican documents.
“But as it seems now to be a received opinion (founded, as far as I know, on no good evidence) that Carreri was never out of Italy, and that his famous Giro del Mundo is an account of a fictitious voyage, I have not mentioned these paintings in the text. They have, however, manifestly the appearance of being Mexican productions, and are allowed to be so by Boturini, who was well qualified to determine whether they were genuine or supposititious. Mr. Clavigero likewise admits them to be genuine paintings of the ancient Mexicans. To me they always appeared to be so, though, from my desire to rest no part of my narrative upon questionable authority, I did not refer to them.
“The style of painting in the former is considerably more perfect than any other specimen of Mexican design; but as the original is said to have been much defaced by time, I suspect that it has been improved by some touches from the hand of an European artist. The chronological wheel is a just delineation of the Mexican mode of computing time, as described by Acosta. It seems to resemble one which that learned Jesuit had seen; and if it be admitted as a genuine monument, it proves that the Mexicans had artificial or arbitrary characters, which represented several things besides numbers. Each month is there represented by a symbol expressive of some work or rite peculiar to it.
“The third specimen of Mexican painting was discovered by another Italian. In 1736, Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci set out for New Spain, and was led by several incidents to study the language of the Mexicans, and to collect the remains of their historical monuments. He persisted nine years in his researches, with the enthusiasm of a projector and the patience of an antiquary.
“In 1746 he published, at Madrid, Idea de una Nueva Historia General de la America Septentrional, containing an account of the result of his inquiries; and he added to it a catalogue of his American historical Museum, arranged under thirty-six different heads. His idea of a New History appears to me the work of a whimsical, credulous man. But his catalogue of Mexican maps, paintings, tribute-rolls, calendars, &c., is much larger than one could have expected. Unfortunately a ship, in which he had sent a considerable part of them to Europe, was taken by an English privateer during the war between Great Britain and Spain, which commenced in the year 1739; and it is probable that they perished by falling into the hands of ignorant captors.
“Boturini himself incurred the displeasure of the Spanish court, and died in an hospital in Madrid. The history, of which the Idea, &c., was only a prospectus, was never published. The remainder of his Museum seems to have been dispersed. Some part of it came into the possession of the present Archbishop of Toledo, when he was primate of New Spain; and he published from it that curious tribute-roll which I have mentioned.