Mosaic Disk with a Mythological and Historical Scene

About this artwork

Turquoise and shell mosaics were a specialty of the Mixtecs of northern Oaxaca, whose artists worked in the imperial Aztec (Mexica) capital, Tenochtitlan, after the mid-15th century. This disk commemorates historical events using calendrical and mythological imagery. In Mixtec culture, as elsewhere in ancient Mesoamerica, the history of the world was conceived in terms of cosmic cycles of creation, destruction, and re-creation. Each cycle, known as a “sun,” lasted many centuries. On a smaller sc...