Images of the Common Man in the Codex Borbonicus

Resumen

The Codex Borbonicus is one of the great masterpieces of Aztec art, the largest and most beautiful manuscript in the Aztec style that is still extant. Each of its 36 pages contains complex and colorful paintings dealing exclusively with calendrical material. In its two major sections, the manuscript presents the tonalamatl, the 260-day divinatory calendar, and the festivals of the eighteen divisions of the solar year. Perhaps the most striking feature of the Codex Borbonicus is the fact that the information in the manuscript is presented solely through pictorial means, in the native manner. The few notes made on it in Spanish appear to have been added later, and are frequently in error.