Mexico City in the Footsteps of Moctezuma: Aztec Art and Architecture

While the Aztec, or Mexica, people of today’s Central Mexico had no specific word that corresponds precisely to the Western term “art,” they had very specific ideas about what made objects cualli—a word for good or right in the Nahuatl language. Ellen Hoobler, William B. Ziff, Jr. curator of art of the Americas at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, surveys the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, site of modern Mexico City, during the reign of Moctezuma—an imperial city crisscrossed by canals and so beautiful that Spaniards who saw it wondered if it was a dream.

She examines the Florentine Codex, an early colonial-era manuscript that provides the most detailed source on the pre-conquest world. Using its words and images Hoobler considers the techniques and materials of a limited selection of the Mexica’s surviving art treasures in stone, ceramics, and feather mosaics. She also outlines the Aztec ritual and belief system, richly documented by Spanish conquistadors whose missionary zeal sought to destroy, not understand the civilization.

World Art History Certificate elective: Earn 1/2 credit*

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