Aztec royalty in the Imperial court of Carlos V

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Mexica Royal Court: A Symposium in Honour of Alfredo López Austin" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A painting in the Ambras Castle (Innsbruck), dating between 1538 and 1556, includes a previously unrecognized portrait of Moctezuma’s son, don Pedro. This identification is based on comparisons with the Codex Cozcatzin (1v), which represents the place glyph of Tenochtitlan and the emperor Moctezuma with his daughter, doña Isabel, and don Pedro, here wearing a tilmatli with black and red horizontal stripes on a white ground with a border design known as tenixyo (“having eyes on the edge”) characteristic of cloaks worn by royalty and royal deities. The Ambras painting may provide evidence that don Pedro was in the court of Charles V as late as 1541, and it shows that don Pedro with a companion who wears only a loin cloth. The Aztec men represent miniature portraits of sorts, for they are authentically costumed. They appear in the court of Charles V, thinly disguised as the court of Xerxes, to show the breadth of his empire, in the tradition of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Mexica Royal Court: A Symposium in Honour of Alfredo López Austin   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52717