The piece is an engraving made by the British artist John Chapman at an undetermined time, between the last decade of the 18th century and the first two decades of the 19th century. The inscription that accompanies the engraving in its lower part, made in English, indicates that the symbols and glosses arranged in a concentric way give an of the way in which the ancient Mexicans computed time. In effect, it is a model of what we know as the calendar wheel, according to the legend at the bottom, taken from the work of Father Francisco Javier Clavijero.
The signature of the author is found in the lower right part of the plate as J. Chapman Sculpt, the same one that identifies his numerous portrait work preserved in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Little is known about the life of John Chapman, who was active between 1792 and 1823. Through his work, we know that he was one of the most talented stippling engravers of the late 18th century, and it is believed that he was mostly self-taught. His father, also named John Chapman, was probably a surveyor and cartographer. During his career, Chapman engraved allegorical themes according to the designs of J. Smith and Raphael Corbould. He worked closely with the art dealer Thomas Macklin on his Shakespeare series and nearly half of the prints bear his name He also worked as an architectural draftsman and collaboratedwith the artist Philip James de Loutherbourg. It is known that he was part of the Royal Academy in Pall Mall, London.
The word written in capital letters at the top –Mexico– identifies the origin of the object of the engraving. Also at the top, in the right hand corner, 'Plate I' can be read, which seems to suggest that this was the first of perhaps a series of plates. The represented object constitutes a calendar wheel. This particular iconographic genre, of which numerous examples elaborated between the 16th and 18th centuries are preserved, results from an adaptation of the indigenous calendar of the Nahua tradition to the circular format, with the aim of exposing in a didactic and clear way the complex articulation of time in relation to space. The indigenous temporal units acquired spatial connotations that were articulated based on the division into four or five parts of the world - the four directions and a center. This meant that each time unit (day, year, era) corresponded to a physical space, to which we must add the fact that the names of the years are repeated every 52 years. As the specialist Ana Diaz points out, for this reason it was necessary to generate a format that would allow for explaining the dynamics of the tonalli (calendar) , and its different modules, in visual , thus simplifying the barriers that separated the indigenous epistemological nuclei from the Christian.
The Mesoamerican calendar s for the 52-year xiuhpohualli, equivalent to a Mesoamerican “century”. This resulted from the combination of two other systems: the tonalpohualli, formed by 20 signs and 13 numerals, which combined formed a cycle of 260 days and was used, among other matters, for divination and for the assignment of the calendrical name of the people; and the cempohualpohualli, formed by the same 20 signs and 18 numerals, which, combining the final 5 days called nemontemi, made the 365-day solar cycle that was used to organize the festivals of the gods and for the recording and collection of the tribute.
The calendar wheel of the engraving shows in its center the glyphs of the years 1-Reed, 2-Flint and 3-House, as well as a hill with three ascending footprints, together with the inscription in capital letters, “Year of the Mexicans". A second circle contains the representation of the lunar cycle as it is symbolized in European calendrical formats, moons –meztli in the Nahua context– with faces that allow us to appreciate their different phases. In the middle wheel 18 glyphs are represented, which refer to the 'months' or periods of twenty days, with their names in the Nahuatl language. We note that the first of the 'months' referred to by the sources and other wheels is labeled with the number 18, so the numbering that was noted below each glyph is out of phase by one position. The usual order of 'months' is as follows: 1, Atlcahualo, “Detention of the Waters"; 2, Tlacaxipehualiztli, “Skinning of the People”; 3, Tozoztontli, “Little Vigil”; 4, Hueytozoztli, “Grand Vigil”; 5, Toxcatl, “Dry Thing”; 6, Etzalcualiztli, “Meal of Corn and Beans”; 7, Tecuilhuitontli, “Small Festival of the Lords”; 8, Huey tecuilhuilhuitl, “Grand festival of the Lords”; 9, Miccailhuitontli, “Small Festival of the Dead”; 10, Xocotlhuetzi, “Falling of the Fruit”; 11, Ochpaniztli, “Sweeping Away”; 12, Teotleco, “Arrival of the Gods”; 13, Tepeilhuitl, “Festival of the Mountains”; 14, Quecholli, which means “Pink Spatula" (similar bird to the flamingo); 15, Panquetzaliztli, “Raising of the Flags”; 16, Atemoztli, “Lowering of the Water”; 17, Tititl, “Shrunk or Wrinkled”; and 18, Izcalli, “Resurrection”. We also observe that there are errors in the spelling of the names of some "months". For example, the one numbered as 17, which actually corresponds to the 18, Izcalli, is written as Izcagli, and the 13, in reality 14, Quecholli, is written Checiogli.
The scheme indicated so far shows how the circumference of lunar rotations, associated with the month in the Christian calculation, was intended to be linked to that of the indigenous "months". It was an artificial way of matching the indigenous cycles, determined more by the "festival"(ilhuitl) than by some astronomical phenomenon, with the lunar cycle (meztli). The Second Book of the Florentine Codex associated the concepts of "festival" and "month", and in this wheel we have their graphic representation.
Finally, the outer wheel represents the xiuhpohualli from the four glyphs bearing the year that are repeated thirteen times: tochtli, "rabbit"; acatl, "reed"; teatl, "flint"; and calli, "house". Under each sign its name was written, although again with errors. For example, the engraver wrote Cagli instead of Calli [T: house]. The entire wheel was framed by the representation of a serpent. This element is not indigenous but ed into the Western tradition from the conception of time in ancient Greece: the uroboros, or serpent that bites its tail, that symbolizes the eternal cycle of things. The inscription in capital letters "Century of the Mexicans" was arranged around the wheel on its upper outer part.
The text at the bottom refers to the work of the Jesuit Priest Francisco Javier Clavijero, born in the Port of Veracruz in 1731. He is one of the most worthy representatives of the 18th century Spanish Universalist School, which was committed to the convergence of the tradition of classical humanism with modern empirical science. He was recognized for his historiographical works. The expulsion of the Society of Jesus from the American territories in 1767 led him to go into exile in the Italian city of Bologna, which then belonged to the Papal States. In that city, he wrote in Italian his great work, "Storia Antica del Messico", written in ten books and accompanied by nine dissertations; it was published for the first time in 1780. It was a compendium of the Pre-Columbian history of New Spain and an indigenist vindication that confronted the pernicious vision that some European intellectuals of the time spread about America, especially against the Dutch philosopher and diplomat Cornelius de Pauw. This work was also forged as rescuing the "Mexican antiquities", which during the Enlightenment ceased to be considered as demonic manifestations in order to be valued as representations of a culture worthy of being known.
This work was published in English in 1787, based on the Italian edition. It contains three plates that give an of the Mexican century, year and month. Iconographically, we observe that the engraver John Chapman copied the Europeanized form of the glyphs that were represented on the wheels of Clavijero. It is worth observing the Tochtli sign, "Rabbit", to perceive its naturalist representation far removed from the Mesoamerican Convention; The same happens with Teatl, "Flint", represented more as a metal spearhead than as a stony object. However, the composition of the ensemble does not correspond to the Clavijero images but to another of the various representations probably inspired by the “Calendar no. 4” from the collection of the intellectual and cosmographer from New Spain Carlos Sigüenza y Gongora, who lived during the second half of the 17th century. Specifically, the iconography and the arrangement of all the elements mentioned, including the erroneous numbering of the "months", refer us to the so-called “Wheel of the Mexican Civil Cycle” that belonged to the collection of the Italian historian and antiquarian Lorenzo Boturini, who died in 1755. The Puebla intellectual Mariano Fernandez de Echeverria y Veytia continued an unfinished work by Boturini and was able to copy his various calendar wheels. On the other hand, the Italian adventurer Gamelli Careri could also have been inspired by the composition of Sigüenza y Gongora to make the calendar wheel that appears in his work 'Giro Intorno al Mondo' (1699), published in London in English in 1704, and, in turn, Boturini reported having had with the wheel made by Gamelli.
Therefore, it seems likely that Chapman consulted some of these works to make his engraving. He also made an engraving inspired by the representation of the Templo Mayor of Mexico that appears in the work 'History of New Spain' by Archbishop Francisco de Lorenzana, published in 1770. There is no doubt that Mexican antiquities also attracted the curiosity of the English engraver from the circulation of the works of the New Spain Enlightenment.
References:
Oudijk, Michel R. y María Castañeda de la Paz, “La colección de manuscritos de Boturini: una mirada desde el siglo XXI”, en Memorias del Coloquio: El caballero Lorenzo Boturini. Entre dos mundos y dos historias, México, Museo de la Basílica de Guadalupe, 2010, pp. 87-129.
Díaz, Ana, El cuerpo del tiempo. Códices, cosmología y tradiciones cronográficas del centro de México, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México-Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas y Bonilla Artigas Editores, 2010.
