THE COLORS OF THE RAINBOW

The rainbow with all its colors is literally a symbol that unites both worlds:

the indigenous America and Europe.45 _{In fact, it was called in Náhuatl}

ayauhcoçamalotl, a word composed of ayauitl, mist or fog, and coçama- lotl, literally, the colors of the rainbow. Gabriel Espinoza, in his thor- ough analysis of the symbolism attached to the rainbow in pre-Hispanic Central Mexico, points out that the rainbow represented the polarity of the hot, bright, solar upper world, as expressed by its colors, and the

humid, dark, heavy underworld, thus ayauitl, of mist or fog.46 _{In that}

regard, the rainbow was a symbol of creation. Both the image and the materials with which the rainbow in the Florentine Codex is made are very eloquent. First, as Serge Guzinsky has pointed out, in this illustra- tion the painter has entered a new territory of “abstract drawing” in which

44. Citation taken from Dackerman, Painted Prints, p. 14.

45. In the Florentine Codex, book 12 is the history of the Conquest of Mexico as seen by the Mexica and Tlatelolca, inhabitants of the twin cities Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco, and who fought the war against the Spanish. Notably, the frontispiece of book 12 is an image that frames the scene of the meeting of both peoples and worlds under a rainbow. To learn more about the relationship between the image of the rainbow and the indigenous interpreta- tion of the Conquest as the initiation of a new world era, see Diana Magaloni, “Images of the Beginning.” See also Siracusano, in this volume.

the rainbow is “the sole subject of the picture.”47 _{In a sense, the rainbow has} become an icon of sorts. Second, the nature of the colorants in the arch of light and water are tokens of both worlds, the indigenous and European, and also of the creative polarity that makes them become something new. This photograph was taken from the original codex and the colors are very accurate (fig. 19). As you can see, the lowest band of the arch of color starts with a dark red. This color is an iron-based mineral pigment applied over a substrate of gypsum. Both of these materials are minerals related to the watery underworld, as I have presented above. This red is then followed by an organic yellow, which is difficult to identify but is

47. Gruzinsky, Painting the Conquest, pp. 202.

Fig. 18. Black-and-white ink drawing imitating woodcuts. Florentine Codex,

book 6, fol. 174r. Fig. 19. Ayaucoçamalotl, “rainbow.” Florentine Codex, book 7, fol. 238v.

This rainbow was colored using European and pre-Hispanic pigments to symbolize the beginning of a new era in Mesoamerica. It was also colored with both organic colorants, which represent the power of the sun, and mineral pigments representing the nature of the earth and the underworld. Together, these materials symbolize creation.

conceptually related to the flower pigments representing light. Then, the orange that follows is the European mineral minium, followed by Maya blue and Maya green. The upper arch is strangely colored with another lighter hue of orangey red. This color is again minium, the red lead oxide brought by the Spaniards. The combined pigments work together to convey the idea of creation and of the union of two different traditions and peoples in New Spain: the ancient indigenous culture and the newly dominant European civilization. In this central image of the rainbow, the

painters of the Florentine Codex used their mastery of materials and tech- niques, both pre-Hispanic and European, to express their understand- ing of their moment in history: the end of one era and the beginning of another. Thus the colors convey the transition between two worlds.

Today, five centuries after the creation of the Florentine Codex, through the use of our most advanced technology, we have begun to shed light not only on the materials and techniques of the painters but also on the artists themselves. We have begun to understand how they expressed themselves and how they viewed the new world that was forming around them. Their mastery of the traditional and European techniques gave them the capacity to express their understanding of the new world, not only in words and drawings but also through their use of pigments and colors.

Fig. 1. Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectrometer, HYPERION 3000

(two pictures on left), and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer, ARTAX (two pictures on right), provided by the Bruker Company, Germany.

INTRODUCTION

The General History of the Things of New Spain, also known as the Florentine Codex, was compiled, with the aid of native informants, by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún in Mexico between 1576 and 1577. The manuscript, conserved at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Flor- ence, is divided into twelve books and is written both in Náhuatl and Spanish. Its encyclopedic coverage of native Nahua customs makes it one of our most valuable sources for the study of ancient indigenous and early

colonial cultures of the Valley of Mexico.1

† _{Department of Chemistry and CSGI, Università di Firenze}

‡ _{Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)} * The authors wish to thank the Bruker Company of Germany for giving us the opportu- nity to use very sophisticated and innovative instruments to analyze the codex. In particular, we express our gratitude to Giovanni Bizzaro, Lorenzo Marchesini, Pierangelo Morini, and Armin Gross for their cooperation in this project. We would also like to acknowledge Franca Arduini, the director of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, and conservator Ida Giovanna Rao for their invaluable cooperation.

Corresponding author: Piero Baglioni. E-mail: [email protected]; phone: +39-055- 457-3033; fax: +39-055-457-3032.

1. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, 1576–1577. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, trans. Dibble and Anderson, 1959. See also two reviews of the

of the General History