Research Catalog

Title

The colors of the new world : artists, materials, and the creation of the Florentine codex / Diana Magaloni Kerpel.

Author

Magaloni Kerpel, Diana

Publication

• Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, [2014]
• ©2014

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Medina, Cuauhtémoc

Description

xi, 67 pages : color illustrations; 21 cm.

Summary

In August 1576, in the midst of an outbreak of the plague, the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and twenty-two indigenous artists locked themselves inside the school of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in Mexico City with a mission: to create nothing less than the first illustrated encyclopedia of the New World. Today this twelve-volume manuscript is preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence and is widely known as the Florentine Codex. A monumental achievement, the Florentine Codex is the single most important artistic and historical document for studying the peoples and cultures of pre-Hispanic and colonial Central Mexico. It reflects both indigenous and Spanish traditions of writing and painting, including parallel columns of text in Spanish and Nahuatl and more than two thousand watercolor illustrations prepared in European and Aztec pictorial styles. This volume reveals the complex meanings inherent in the selection of the pigments used in the manuscript, offering a fascinating look into a previously hidden symbolic language. Drawing on cutting edge approaches in art history, anthropology, and the material sciences, the book sheds new light on one of the world's great manuscripts - and on a pivotal moment in the early modern Americas.

Series Statement

Getty Research Institute Council lecture

Uniform Title

Códice florentino.

Subjects

• Artists' materials > Mexico
• Pigments
• Manuscripts, Mexican
• Códice florentino
• Illumination of books and manuscripts, Mexican > Technique

Note

• "'The colors of the New World' publishes Diana Magaloni Kerpel's lecture of the same title, held at the Getty Center on 7 November 2013."--Title page verso.
• Introductory essay by Cuauhtémoc Medina.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 60-64).

Call Number

JFD 14-4979

ISBN

• 9781606063293 (paperback)
• 1606063294 (paperback)

LCCN

2014001971

OCLC

866615682

Author

Magaloni Kerpel, Diana, author.

Title

The colors of the new world : artists, materials, and the creation of the Florentine codex / Diana Magaloni Kerpel.

Publisher

Los Angeles : Getty Research Institute, [2014]

Copyright Date

©2014

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Getty Research Institute Council lecture

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 60-64).

Added Author

Medina, Cuauhtémoc, writer of introduction.

Added Title

Códice florentino.

Research Call Number

JFD 14-4979