Aztec Lecture Today!

It's a busy time of year with several events around campus. Today don't miss Dr. Hajovsky's lecture 'Portrait and Portrayal: Betraying Personhood in Aztec Stone Sculpture', April 14th (today) from 4:45-5:15 in the art history classroom FAC 235.

Image: Portrait of Nezahualcoyotl from Codex Ixtlilxochitl, page 106 recto. Texcoco, Mexico, ca. 1580

Here's the official blurb from campus notices:

Though Nezahualcoyotl’s sculpted portrait at Tetzcotzingo was destroyed by Mexico’s first bishop in the sixteenth century, it was constructed at the same time that itinerant Aztec sculptors were developing a common imperial style in the Valley of Mexico. This paper considers the limits and expectations of Aztec sculpted portraits from Texcoco and Tenochtitlan by studying their features and comparing them with ritual performance and Nahuatl categories of the body. Although many of the fragmented sculptures remain stripped of their original contexts, I suggest that Aztec portraits of rulers and warriors were distinguished not by the physical attributes of the body and face, but rather by positioning sculpture in the landscape and by verbalizing it in specific ritual contexts. Portraits exist in tension between the verbal recognition of an individual’s merit and the visual expression of aesthetic and social ideals, and this tension reveals Aztec notions of personhood as it coexisted with a public ritual structure.