Sixteenth Century Chalice Cover of Feathers from the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico. Text or Image?

Abstract

Feather art was one of the artistic traditions that most surprised the Spaniards upon their arrival in New Spain (Mexico). With this material they ordered to elaborate a great variety of religious pieces, among them mitres, ínfulas, religious paintings, as well as the covercloth that today is at the National Museum of Anthropology of Mexico City and that is the main theme of this study. For a long time it was considered that it was a Mexica ritual shield (chimalli), later it was called a calyx or cover, and different scholars saw in it the images of water, earth and fire. Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, in the setting of a Congress held in 2006 in Mexico City, presented a first reading of the signs, which in my opinion perfectly defines the function of the object. In this work, in addition to a review of previous studies, we will approach the context of the piece, its history, it’s possible uses, and will offer the first reading of the Nahuatl hieroglyphic text proposed by Professor Alfonso Lacadena in 2006 and the one that he did in 2017, in which I intervened, is why I take the license to write about this «precious» object. All the merit is his.