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From pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica to Renaissance Italy

The Italian Social Life of Mesoamerican Things

Edited by Davide Domenici (University of Bologna)

 

Scroll editing by Chiara Florise Amadei (CNR ISPC)

Revision & accessibility by Alfonsina Pagano (CNR ISPC)

This route examines the arrival in Italy during the sixteenth century and the subsequent circulation of a group of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican artifacts, primarily pictorial manuscripts, mosaics, gilded spearthrowers, and stone sculptures. The route guides the reader along a five-century itinerary in which the social lives of these Mesoamerican objects intersect with those of prominent Italian scholars and collectors. In the final section, data derived from materials science and iconographic analyses reveal new insights into the objects’ materiality and original functions.

 

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Highlights from the route

References

  • Buscaroli, G. 2017. “A New Iconographic Analysis of the Two Mesoamerican Dart-Throwers of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology of Florence.” Archivio per l’Antropologia e la Etnologia 147: 33–52.
  • Buti, D., D. Domenici. In press. “La voz de los colores. Estudio de los materiales pictóricos del Códice Vaticano A.” In El Códice Vaticano A (Vat. lat. 3738). Historia, recepción y contenido de un manuscrito pictográfico colonial sobre el México antiguo , ed. S. Botta, G. Olivier. México, Roma, Città del Vaticano: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Dipartimento di Storia, Antropologia, Religioni, Arte, Spettacolo, Sapienza Università di Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
  • Domenici, D. 2016. “Nuovi dati per una storia dei codici messicani della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXII: 341-362.
  • Domenici, D. 2016. “The wandering « Leg of an Indian King ». The cultural biography of a friction idiophone now in the Pigorini Museum in Rome, Italy.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 102: 79- 104.
  • Domenici, D. 2017. “The Descrittione dell’India occidentale, a Sixteenth-Century Source on the Italian Reception of Mesoamerican Material Culture.” Ethnohistory 64: 497-527.
  • Domenici, D. 2017. “Missionary Gift Records of Mexican Objects in Early Modern Italy.” In The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750, ed. E. Horodowich, L. Markey, 86-102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Domenici, D. 2018. “Códices mesoamericanos en la Italia de la primera edad moderna: historia y recepción.” In Códices y cultura indígena en México. Homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, ed. J.J. Batalla Rosado, J.L. de Rojas, L. Pérez Lugones, 351-375. Madrid: Distinta Tinta Ediciones. 
  • Domenici, D. 2020. “Mesoamerican Mosaics in Early European collections. Style, Provenance and Provenience.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 59: 8-65.
  • Domenici D. 2021. “The Flowery Matter of Chant. The Use of Organic Colors in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Codex Painting.” In Flower Worlds. Religion, aesthetics, and ideology in Mesoamerica and the American Southwest, ed. M. Mathiowetz, A. D. Turner, 266-282, Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 
  • Domenici, D. 2021. “The Dominicans as Conveyors of Mesoamerican Objects to Italy and Europe.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.967. 
  • Domenici, D., 2022. “Rediscovery of a Mesoamerican greenstone sculpture from the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi.” Journal of the History of Collections 34(1): 1–21.
  • Domenici, D., 2022. “Handling sacrifice. Reception and perception of Mesoamerican knives in Italy.” Quaderni Storici 169, LVII (1): 55-83. 
  • Domenici, D. 2023. “Objetos americanos en el Museo delle curiosità naturali, peregrine e antiche del cardenal Flavio I Chigi (1631-1693).” In Tejiendo imágenes. Homenaje a Victòria Solanilla Demestre, ed. C. Simmons Caldas, M. Valls i García, 118-125. Lincoln: Zea Books.
  • Domenici, D. 2023. “Woodcut of a Mesoamerican Mosaic-Encrusted Mask from Aldrovandi’s Musaeum metallicum.” In Visual Reflections across the Mediterranean Sea, ed. N. Fritz, P. von Wyss-Giacosa, 70-77. Siena: GMS SRL.
  • Domenici, D. 2023. “Ms. Borg. mess. 2:  A Late Eighteenth-Century Copy of the Mesoamerican Codex Cospi by the Bolognese Artist Antonio Basoli (1774-1848).” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXVIII: 189-214.
  • Domenici, D. 2023. “The collection of Tommaso de’ Cavalieri as recorded by Ulisse Aldrovandi in 1577 (BUB, Ms. Aldr. 136/6).” Storicamente 19: 1-20. https://storicamente.org/domenici_collection_tommaso_de_cavalieri
  • Domenici, D. 2024. “From the Market to the Museum: Nineteenth-Century Circulation, Display, and Scholarly Study of Mesoamerican Artifacts in Italy and Beyond.” In Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940. A New World of Latin American Antiquities, ed. A.D. Turner, M.E. O’Neil, 21-37. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
  • Domenici, D. 2024. “Codices: A Colorful Speech.” In We Live in Painting. The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art, ed. D. Magaloni, D. Domenici, A. de Carteret, 109-120. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  • Domenici, D. 2024. “Mosaics: The Aesthetics of Anymacy.” In We Live in Painting. The Nature of Color in Mesoamerican Art, ed. D. Magaloni, D. Domenici, A. de Carteret, 139-150. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
  • D. Domenici. 2024. “Mixtec Social Memory in Late Reinassance Rome. Ulisse Aldrovandi, Tommaso de’ Cavalieri and the ‘Skull of an Indian King.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 110-2: 51-76.
  • Domenici, D. In press. “Ulisse “Aldrovandi’s Engagement with Mesoamerican Material Culture.” In Global Aldrovandi. Exchanging Knowledge in the Early Modern World, ed. L. Markey, D. Domenici. Leiden: Brill.
  • Domenici, D. In press. “Animated Surfaces Technology and Aesthetics in Late Postclassic Mesoamerican Mosaics.” In Amerindian Art Histories and Archaeologies: Material Transformations in the Indigenous Americas, ed. S. Savkic Sebek, B. Artzi, E. Baquedano. Gainesville: Florida University Press.
  • Domenici, D. In press. “Llegada y recepción del Códice Vaticano A en la Italia del siglo XVI.” In El Códice Vaticano A (Vat. lat. 3738). Historia, recepción y contenido de un manuscrito pictográfico colonial sobre el México antiguo, ed. S. Botta, G. Olivier. México, Roma, Città del Vaticano: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Dipartimento di Storia, Antropologia, Religioni, Arte, Spettacolo, Sapienza Università di Roma, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
  • Domenici; D. In press. “The Transatlantic Journeys of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican Things: Sixteenth-Century Italian Circulation Spheres and Their Implications in Terms of Style, Typology and Provenience.” In The Challenge of Mobile Images and Objects in Mesoamerica, ed. S. Savkić Šebek, R. Koontz. Berlin: Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut.
  • Domenici, D. In press. “The Transatlantic Life of Codex Cospi.The cultural biography of a Mesoamerican manuscript between Mexico and Bologna.” In Il Códice Cospi, ed. D. Domenici, É. Dupey García, G. Olivier. Bologna: Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna.
  • Domenici, D., D. Buti, C. Grazia, É. Dupey García, A. Romani, L. Cartechini, A. Sgamellotti, C. Miliani. 2019. “Non-invasive chemical characterization of painting materials of Mesoamerican codices Borgia (Borg. mess. 1) and Vaticanus B (Vat. lat. 3773) of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.” Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae XXV: 201-228.
  • Domenici, D., D. Buti, C. Miliani, A. Sgamellotti. 2020. “Changing Colours in a Changing World. The Technology of Codex Painting in Post-Classic and Early Colonial Mesoamerica.” In Materia Americana. The Body of Spanish American Images: 16th to mid-19th centuries, ed. G. Siracusano, A. Rodríguez Romero, 45-57. Buenos Aires: Sáenz Peña-Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. 
  • Domenici, D., É. Dupey García. 2022. “The Wind God and the Descent of the Tzitzimitl. New Insights on the Iconography and Provenance of the Mosaic-Encrusted Bird Head at the Friedenstein Palace, Gotha (Germany).” Ancient Mesoamerica 33: 474-499.
  • Domenici, D., É. Dupey García, C. Grazia, D. Buti, A. Romani, A. Sgamellotti, C. Miliani. 2020. “Los materiales pictóricos del Códice Vaticano B.” In Nuevo Comentario al Códice Vaticano B (Vat. Lat. 3773), ed. K. Mikulska, 63-85. México, Warszawa, Città del Vaticano: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, University of Warsaw, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
  • Domenici, D., L. Laurencich Minelli. 2014. “Domingo de Betanzos’ Gifts to Pope Clement VII in 1532-1533: Tracking the Early History of Some Mexican Objects and Codices in Italy.” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 47: 169-209.
  • Domenici, D., C. Miliani, D. Buti, B. Brunetti, A. Sgamellotti. 2018. “Coloring materials, technological practices, and painting traditions. Cultural and historical implications of non-destructive chemical analyses of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican codices.” In Painting the Skin. Studies on the Pigments Applied on Bodies and Codices in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, ed. É. Dupey García, M.L. Vázquez de Ágredos Pascual, 129-143. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 
  • Domenici, D., J. Nielsen. 2018. “The Face of Xolotl: A Unique Mosaic-covered Object in the National Museum of Denmark.” Mexicon XL(5): 122-134.
  • Domenici, D., S. Tacconi. 2025. “Benedetto XIV e le collezioni indigene americane dell’Istituto delle Scienze di Bologna.” In Benedetto XIV e Bologna. Arti e scienze nell’età dei Lumi, ed. F. Citti, I. Graziani, 307-309. Bologna: Pendragon.
  • Miliani, C., D. Domenici, C. Clementi, F. Presciutti, F. Rosi, D. Buti, A. Romani, L. Laurencich Minelli, A. Sgamellotti. 2012. “Colouring Materials of Pre-Columbian Codices: Non-Invasive in Situ Spectroscopic Analysis of the Codex Cospi.” Journal of Archaeological Science 39: 672-679.