The seizure of Tenochtitlán was a formative event in the creation of colonial Mexico and represented the starting point for the profound transformations to Mexican society that accompanied the conquest. In the centuries that followed, the drama of this event attracted the interest of artists, writers, and others in this new society. One particularly impressive late seventeenth-century effort to depict the siege was painted by an unknown artist in Mexico on a large folding screen most likely given by a local member of the Spanish elite to the new viceroy, Conde de Galve. On one side, the conquest of the city in 1521 unfolds in a series of scenes from the top left, where Cortés, bathed in sunshine, lands in Mexico and meets Moctezuma, to the bottom right, where in darker tones the Spanish are driven from the city on the “sad night” and Native American refugees flee into the surrounding forests to escape the violence. In between, scenes depicting critical moments in the conquest take place in different parts of an imagined cityscape. While key elements of the conquest story are present, the overall scene is most striking for its depiction of what one critic has called the “motley banquet of violence,” which contrasts sharply with the serene, peaceful, and idealized cityscape of seventeenth-century Mexico City depicted below.2

The scene reproduced here chronicles a dramatic moment from a central panel in the screen where Aztecs battle the Spanish near the Temple Mayor in the central plaza of Tenochtitlán. The building labeled D is the temple itself, depicted here as a hollowed-out octagon rather than in its true form, a towering pyramid. While violent scenes of battle swirl around the temple, in the background one can see the remains of ritually sacrificed Spanish soldiers and those of a horse, which had also been sacrificed.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

The Battle of Tenochtitlán

Notes