Custom essays: Arts of Latin America

Culture of Latin America keeps a lot of mysteries, as it presents a unity of several cultures. Scientists are studying mostly the three most colorful civilizations, history of which counts for hundreds of years – the ancient Aztec civilization, the Incas and Mayans. Each of these civilizations have left us ample evidence of its existence, by which we can judge the era of their heyday, and a sudden decline or partial disappearance. Each culture carries with it a huge cultural heritage, expressed in works of architecture, pictures, books and works of craftsmanship.
The ancient culture of Latin America has many interesting things in it, and even more being surrounded by an aura of mysticism. Many pieces of art of civilization of the Incas, Aztecs and Mayans, unfortunately, are lost forever, but there are some that can give us a way to unravel the mystery of art of those distant worlds.
The Aztecs were great lovers of literature and collected pictorial library of books (called codes) with descriptions of religious rituals and historical events. Most of these books were destroyed during the conquest, or soon thereafter. It is important to point out Mesoamerican codes – handwritten documents of indigenous peoples of Central America’s pre-Hispanic and early colonial period, which mainly in pictorial form highlights historical and mythological events, religious rites, economic topics (such as collecting taxes), contains astronomical and divinatory tables and other information. Being unique documents, they are invaluable monuments of Mesoamerican culture and history.
In this paper I will study the drawings of the “Florentine Codex” – an illustrated collection of books, which contains more than 1800 images about the life of the Aztecs. The second image is “Burning the idols” from Diego Muñoz Camargo “Description of the City and Province of Tlaxcala”. Both these images belong to one historical period of Latin America, give an idea about people and present important historical data.

“Florentine Codex” was an illustrated version of the work of Sahagun, created by Indian scribes, that has more than 1800 drawings, made in a mixed European-Indian style, and texts are in Nahuatl and Spanish that differ from each other. Florentine Codex (1579) includes 12 thematic sections and integrates the two version, written in two columns: the first written in Nahuatl and is a record of oral testimony of informants Sahagun, and the second – free translation of these messages in Spanish, made by Sahagún and his comments.
The visual imagery in the Florentine Codex is defined, contextualized, and amplified, it is very detailed and depict the same events, incorporates glosses, and often blends indigenous and European artistic techniques. These tactics expand the possibilities for understanding the narrative content. (Peterson 1988)
In fact painted manuscripts were used to record information and as part of an oral tradition. The pictorial manuscripts served as mnemonic devices, reminding an orator of key points and details in the narrative, even if images may or may not have been shown to the audience. (Boone 2000)
Pictorial manuscripts were used to record a variety of information including histories, genealogies, geography, calendrical and cosmogonic information, songs, and poems. (Boone 2000)
Being translated into Spanish by Sahagun, the Florentine Codex can be considered as a product of transculturation—cultural interchange between prehispanic and European traditions. The Florentine Codex provides a backgrounf for the study of changes in native pictorial tradition in the 16th century, and these transformations reflect experimentation in artistic processes and
attempts to communicate Aztec history in new ways made by Sahagun and others. At this change is registered in the materials, construction, and format of the Codex, but as for painted images and glyphic signs, they were used to recount a similar narrative of the origin and life of the Mexica people.