The landscape of Metztitlan, Mexico: Power and control in a sixteenth century Spanish administrative painting

ABSTRACT

The concept of landscape has been studied mostly as the view of a space with particular interest in its aesthetics, originating at the turn of the sixteenth century. However, I argue that in fourteenth century northern Europe, the concept was focused on polity rather than aesthetics. This article examines this lesser-known tradition by analysing the painting of Metztitlan, a sixteenth century town in Mexico, and arguing, first, that unlike all the other representations in the Relaciones Geográficas to which it belongs, it is the only landscape, and second, that this painting is associated with an administrative procedure common in Spain to gain control over imperial lands. I review European practices regarding the representation of towns under the Spanish Crown. Then, I present the results of the fieldwork carried out to locate several heights which probably served as vantage points to paint the landscape. Based on this research, I analyse the intentions of the painter to argue that it should be considered within the same tradition as the paintings made in Spain by Flemish painter Anton van de Wyngaerde, as part of the Spanish Empire's Germanic tradition of describing places with the intention of exerting control over them.

KEYWORDS:

• Landscape painting
• Spanish Empire administration
• sixteenth century Mexico
• Metztitlan
• Relaciones Geográficas

Acknowledgements

This paper is a product of the project Paisaje y Geografía Cultural en México based at the Institute of Geography of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). The research on Metztitlan has been conducted since 2006 along with Gustavo Garza Merodio. Thanks to Dora Napolitano and Susana Kolb for the English version. Maps have been prepared by Luis Fernando Gopar Merino and the edition of images and text was made by Ximena Gómez. I am grateful to all of them. Thank you to the inhabitants of the Municipality of Metztitlan who have helped me over the years during my field work seasons and to Fátima Martínez who organised some of the logistics to get there.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Federico Fernández Christlieb, Master on History of Mexico at UNAM, PhD on Geography at University of Paris IV-Sorbonne, Senior researcher at Institute of Geography UNAM.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 For the sixteenth century Nahua regions of Central Mexico, altepetl has been described by historians as an organized community whose members were tied to the territory by a customary law and who have an interaction with the environment (Licate 1981; Gibson 1983). Altepetl is explained by Marcus (2000) as “polity” and by Lockhart (1992) as “ethnic-state”.

2 The RGM, text and painting, are in the Benson Latin American Collection at the library of the University of Texas at Austin, catalogue number 1285.

3 The author Gabriel De Chávez was not born in Spain, but was the son of two Spaniards. He belonged to the first generation born in Mexico. His painting is in a European style on European paper.

4 Philippe Comar describes how, during the sixteenth century, authors like Jean Cousin in France, Vredeman de Vries in the Netherlands or Daniel Barbaro in Italy, developed treaties on perspective based on the work of Jean Pèlerin, better known as Viator (Comar 1999).

5 Charles V was born in Ghent and his mother tongue was Flemish, a Germanic language. He only learnt Spanish after he became King of Spain, but he relied heavily on the Germanic part of the political apparatus in general to govern and in particular to better know the geography of the new territories of the Empire (Kamen 2003). After he became Emperor, the Holy Roman Empire was known in Spanish as Sacro Imperio Romano Germánico (Carrasco 2005; Espinosa 2009).

6 We know the work of this artist better because of tapestries that were made in the eighteenth century. The Tunis landscape tapestry, which is now at the Real Alcázar, was woven by the Vandergoten brothers, but it was a replica of earlier tapestries made in the sixteenth century in the workshop of Wilhelm Pannemaker, which were, in turn, reproductions of the paintings of Jan Vermeyen and Pieter Coeck (or Coecke) van Aelst (now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna).

7 There are many studies about the relationship between land and polity in Mesoamerica in the sixteenth century under a generic institution known as altepetl (Bernal-García and García-Zambrano 2006; Endfield 2001; Ramírez-Ruiz 2006; Reyes García 2000).

8 All these images are easy to find on the internet. The complete Atlas Civitatis Orbis Terrarum including Hoefnagel's Barcelona, is in: http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/mapmakers/braun_hogenberg.html

A link with Wyngaerde's drawing of Toledo is: https://www.alamy.com/toledo-vista-general-grabado-de-anton-vander-wyngaerde-ao-1563-image210508761.html

9 “Instrucción y memoria de las relaciones que se han de hacer para la descripción de las Indias, que su majestad manda hacer, para el buen gobierno y ennoblecimiento dellas”. The collection of answers is now known as “Relaciones geográficas del siglo XVI” (Acuña 1984-1987).

10 The Relaciones Geográficas of Yucatan and Guatemala were not considered by Mundy in her analysis although both were part of Mesoamerica and New Spain (Acuña 1982, De la Garza 1983).

11 Encomienda was a Spanish institution which rewarded conquistadors with the labour of a group of people on a specific piece of land (Sympson 1966).

12 All cited texts were translated from Spanish by the author.

13 The area of the Province of Metztitlan in 1579 is equivalent to 13 current municipalities in the State of Hidalgo plus one in Veracruz.

14 The decree of 1548 (referred above) indicates that the person in charge of answering the instruction must do the field work along with “three other people” (Solano 1988, 5).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: [Grant Number IN302115].