The Art History Lecture Series is proud to welcome Molly Bassett, Associate Professor at Georgia State University, and Jeanette Peterson, Professor Emerita at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In this talk we follow the enduring cosmological configuration of the ruler in the center of a quadripartite universe from its roots in the Olmec culture to a sixteenth-century representation of Moteuczoma II in the Florentine Codex. Our analysis engages what Maggie Cao calls “dimensional translation,” as we cross domains from the linear flatness of painted images to the full-bodied, even embodied, nature of Nahua sculpture. We propose that the Florentine image and the tepetlacalli (stone boxes) featuring Moteuczoma’s profile portrait present the Aztec ruler as the pivot in four-sided spaces that illustrate the vast reach of his authority.
