The development of the art of the lapidaries and mosaic-workers, like that of the goldsmiths, is attributed by Sahagun to the Toltecs, under the beneficent influence of Quetzalcoatl, the culture hero god. In treating of the pre-Aztec people called Tultecas, or people of Tollan or Tula, by Sahagun, he states that they were very skilful in all that pertained to the fine arts. He writes:
The Tultecas were careful and thorough artificers, like those of Flanders at the present time, because they were skilful and neat in whatsoever they put their hands to; everything (they did) was very good, elaborate, and graceful, as for example, the houses that they erected, which were very beautiful, and richly ornamented inside with certain kinds of precious stones of a green color as a coating (to the walls), and the others which were not so adorned were very smooth, and worth seeing, and the stone of which they were fashioned appeared like a thing of mosaic.... They also knew and worked pearls, amber, and amethyst, and all manner of precious stones, which they made into jewelry.[33]
We find another statement to the effect that—
The lapidary is very well taught, and painstaking in his craft, a judge of good stones, which, for working, they take off the rough part and bring together or cement with others very delicately with bitumen or wax, in order to make mosaic-work.[34]
In the pictorial section of the Florentine manuscript of Sahagun,[35] in the Codex Mendoza,[36] and in the Mappe Tlotzin,[37] are pictures delineating artisans engaged in various crafts, such as weavers, painters, carpenters (wood-carvers), stone carvers, lapidaries, goldsmiths, and feather-mosaic workers, yet we find no actual representation of turquois-mosaic workers. In the third section of the Codex Mendoza appears a picture of a father teaching his son the secrets of the lapidary’s art. The interpreter of the codex writes:
The trades of a carpenter, jeweler (lapidary), painter, goldsmith, and embroiderer of feathers, accordingly as they are represented and declared, signify that the masters of such arts taught these trades to their sons from their earliest boyhood, in order that, when grown up to be men, they might attend to their trades and spend their time virtuously, counseling them that idleness is the root and mother of vices, as well as of evil-speaking and tale-bearing, whence followed drunkenness and robberies, and other dangerous vices, and setting before their imaginations many other grounds of alarm, that hence they might submit to be diligent in everything.
The elaborate series of pictures of the various crafts in the Florentine manuscript of Sahagun (laminas liv to lxiv) includes those that show in detail the work of the goldsmiths and the feather-workers; but the illustrations devoted to the lapidaries we are unable to correlate, in the absence of the text, with the Nahuatl text of the Sahagun manuscript in the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid, which we will give later from the study by Dr. Seler containing a translation of the native text into French. This description of the work of the lapidaries informs us only concerning the working and polishing of the stones. Unlike the other accounts by Sahagun regarding the goldsmiths and the feather-workers, which enlighten us with respect to the details of these two fine arts, he does not here enter into any description concerning the delicate work of the artists who fashioned the beautiful pieces of stone mosaic. Although such work was turned out by the Aztecan workmen, as we have already demonstrated, it seems highly probable that in times immediately preceding the Spanish conquest, the Aztecan kings Ahuitzotl and Montezuma obtained a considerable number of such objects through tribute and by barter with the tribes living in what are now the states of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, and western Chiapas. As our knowledge of Mexican archeology, now all too meager, is extended, it is very probable that we will find vestiges of this art in the Pacific state of Guerrero, where great numbers of jadeite and other greenstone objects have been discovered, with a respectable number of specimens indicating the high artistic skill of the indigenes of that section. We may also hope to find relics of this art in the area of Matlaltzincan culture to the north of the valley of Mexico, and also in the field of Tarascan culture in the states of Michoacan and Jalisco, for, as will be related, mosaic specimens have been recovered from ancient ruins as far north as the State of Zacatecas.
PL. VII
MASK OF WOOD WITH MOSAIC DECORATION