Travelers who visited New Spain in the early nineteenth century (and, after 1821, newly independent Mexico) were highly instrumental in revealing to European and North American audiences the features not only of Mexico's contemporary face but of its ancient one as well.[1] By restricting travel to and knowledge about its imperial possessions for over three centuries, Spain had placed a virtual iron curtain around them. For this reason, the writings and illustrations generated by these returning travelers, which in some cases became best-sellers in Europe and the United States, were in many ways a revelation to the outside world.[2]

As Pratt points out in her book Imperial eyes (1994), earlier studies of travel and exploration writing tended to be written in a celebratory, documentary, or literary vein (10-11). More recently, however, travel literature has been viewed more critically by some scholars as an ideological instrument of empire. In her provocative chapter on Alexander von Humboldt (111-43), one of the most influential travelers to visit Spanish America, Pratt focuses on his role in the reinventing of America (chiefly South America) that took place on both sides of the Atlantic in the early nineteenth century. She also calls attention to the process of transculturation and asks what hand Humboldt's American "interlocutors" may have had in reinventing their own continent. In what way, she inquires, did Humboldt (and indeed each travel writer) act as a "transculturator" by "transporting to Europe knowledges American in origin" and "producing European knowledges infiltrated by non-European ones"; to what extent "did Americans inscribe themselves on him, as well as he on America?" (135). These are important questions, and crucial for providing a contemporary framework for understanding the ideological impact of travel writing, like Humboldt's, in the Americas as well as in Europe.[3]

Pratt's discussion of Humboldt devotes little space to his writings on Mexico and quickly reduces them to expressions of his environmental determinism and an archaeological attitude that obscures "the links between the societies being archaeologized and their contemporary descendants" (134).[4] She qualifies this negative judgment by pointing out the important role that Humboldt played in "transporting to Europe an American scholarly tradition dating back to the first Spanish missionaries, and sustained by Spanish, mestizo, and indigenous intellectuals" (136).[5] That role is one that interests me here.

Yet my primary focus in this essay is not on Humboldt's broader role in the nineteenth-century reinvention of America and of its controversial aspects, as cogently articulated by Pratt. Rather, as an art historian, I am more concerned with assessing the more circumscribed part Humboldt played during the late colonial period in New Spain in the reconstruction of Mexico's late pre-Hispanic past, and more specifically in the recovery of Aztec art.[6] Humboldt's contributions to the development of the nascent field of pre-Columbian, especially Aztec, studies occupy an uneasy position. Routinely acknowledged in historiographic surveys of the field, Humboldt is oftentimes treated as a remote figure, of important but vague influence, whose now outmoded views and works are rarely consulted or cited, except for the useful quote. Moreover, today, in an era dominated by different interests and understandings, the activities of travelers and of collectors like Humboldt have come to be seen in a questionable light, as subjects of censure as much as of celebration.[7] Yet it seems to me that a revisionist view of Humboldt's influence should certainly include a reassessment of the impact of his participation in the rediscovery of archaeological Mexico. The question I will be pursuing here can perhaps best be expressed by rephrasing the earlier question: how did Aztec art inscribe itself on Humboldt and he on Aztec art?

Differences between two early travelers to Mexico, Alexander von Humboldt and Guillermo Dupaix, highlight the diverse motivations and goals that impelled some of the prominent visitors to Spanish America during the late colonial period. The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and his companion, the French botanist Aime Bonpland, were among the earliest of these nineteenth-century travelers. They spent a year in New Spain, from 1803 to 1804, following their epic journey through South America that had begun in 1799 and preceding their triumphant return to Europe in 1804.[8] Soon thereafter, from 1805 to 1808, Guillermo Dupaix, a Walloon captain in the Spanish army who had been in Mexico since 1790, and his Mexican illustrator Jose Luciano Castaneda traveled even more extensively throughout New Spain.[9]

Although both sets of partners traveled with the rare permission of the Spanish crown, their missions and circumstances were vastly different. Humboldt's was a personal and scientific quest, financed by his ample fortune. Presumably because of his scientific training in geology and mineralogy and his expertise as a governmental mining inspector (and possibly as a condition of obtaining his critical permission to travel), Humboldt took on the added task of reporting back to Charles IV on his mineralogical findings.[10] Dupaix, on the other hand, had been specifically commissioned by Charles IV to carry out a systematic archaeological survey of New Spain. [11] Insofar as their pursuit of pre-Hispanic relics was concerned, Dupaix conducted extensive first-hand investigations at various sites, actively searching out new finds; in contrast to his arduous expedition in South America, Humboldt appears to have confined his data gathering in this area chiefly to published works, archival searches, discussions with knowledgeable individuals, and viewing objects displayed in public or available in private collections.

While the more dramatic and widely published reports on Mexican antiquities produced by visiting Europeans like Humboldt and Dupaix are better known than those of their Mexican counterparts, these travelers were not working in a historical or cultural vacuum. As recent studies are revealing in greater detail, interest in the pre-Hispanic past had been steadily accelerating during the second half of the eighteenth century. This reawakening had been provoked by several interrelated factors, among them the increasingly ambitious exploratory excursions sponsored by the Spanish crown, beginning with Charles III (r. 17591788) and continuing under his son and successor Charles IV (r. 1788-1808);[12] reactions of writers in New Spain to the criticisms of American fauna, flora, and humankind by the French philosophes (the "dispute of the new world");[13] an incipient nationalism and sense of identity that sought their indigenous American roots in the pre-Hispanic past and would become an integral component of the burgeoning movement for independence; and a series of spectacular if accidental archaeological discoveries in the heart of the capital of New Spain itself.

Moreover, surveys of pre-Hispanic sites and monuments were also instigated from within New Spain.[14] For example, the curate Jose Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez, a former student of the Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavigero before his order's expulsion from Mexico, had independently visited the recently discovered site of Xochicalco (Morelos) in 1777 and eventually wrote about this experience in his Gaceta de literatura (1791). As the first illustrated "archaeological" study of its kind in Mexico, this work can be considered a landmark publication. Earlier in the same venue Alzate had published Diego Ruiz's 1785 report on the important Gulf Coast site of E1 Tajin in Veracruz.

Also contributing to this reawakening were widely disseminated historical writings like those of the exiled Mexican Clavigero's four-volume Storia antica del Messico, first published in Italian in 1780-1781 and quickly translated into English in 1787 and German in 1789, and the Scottish historian William P. Robertson's more general and critical history, the two-volume The History of America, published in London in 1777. Although differing in their appraisal of Mexican antiquities, both authors included discussions of them within the context of a broader historical treatment of ancient Mexico. Clavigero, especially, knowledgeably commented on ancient sculpture and manuscripts, topics that Humboldt would in turn expand upon in his Vues des cordilleres. Honour notes that in his Historia Clavigero "painted a very alluring picture of the Mexican landscape... and also the arts of the Aztecs", passages that no doubt resonated deeply in Humboldt's receptive mind (Honour 1975, 170).[15]

Other works, not especially focusing on the Americas, also played their part in challenging entrenched ideas about the cultural productions of non-European peoples. As Kubler has pointed out, for example, J. G. von Herder in his Outlines of a philosophy of the history of man (1784) insisted on the "unique quality and innate validity of each civilization", and argued that civilizations should be judged on their own merits.[16]

All things considered, Humboldt arrived in New Spain at a propitious moment: concurrent with the outside rediscovery of contemporary Mexico was Mexico's rediscovery of its own archaeological past, and he was to play a decisive role in both endeavors. Recognition of the accelerating activity in archaeology, history, and travel accounts during this period is thus essential for evaluating the role that Humboldt (and others) played in the collective enterprise of reconstructing Mexico's indigenous past. [17]

Some of the earliest chapters in this story of recovery are told by the Mexican savant Antonio de Leon y Gama (1736-1802), one of the most influential Mexican participants in this enterprise.[18] He relates that two great sculptural figures, one representing the Tenochca (Aztec) ruler Axayacatl, and the other a portrait of his son the ruler Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin (the Younger), had been carved on the rocky cliffs at Chapultepec during pre-Hispanic times.[19] The earlier image, which Leon y Gama had never seen except in a state of ruin, had survived from the fifteenth century until the beginning of the eighteenth when authorities had ordered it destroyed. The second carving next to it, which Le6n y Gama did see and which he reported was carved with "great perfection", endured until 1753 or 1754, when it too was ordered to be demolished.[20]

Leon y Gama's eyewitness account appears in the second part of his pioneering archaeological and iconographic monograph called the Descripcion historica y chronologica de las dos piedras (70-81), which had been posthumously published in 1832 (the first edition appeared in 1792). In a section of the second edition entitled "Otros antiguos monumentos que existian [sic] en la ciudad", the learned scholar wrote about these deliberately effaced Aztec remnants as well as others that he reported were still visible in Mexico, such as those serving as cornerstones in colonial structures.

The focus of his work, the two "stones" of the title, had been accidentally unearthed during reconstruction work in 1790 in Mexico City's Plaza Mayor (today's Zocalo), just two years before his first publication. Probably the most renowned of all Aztec sculptures, the first monument, known today as the Sun Stone (and more popularly as the Calendar Stone), was an enormous basalt disk featuring a schematic solar depiction and other calendric and cosmogonic symbols carved in high relief on its surface (Figure 1). The second, today almost equally as famous, was a gigantic statue of the fearsome earth goddess Coatlicue ("Serpent Skirt"), misnamed Teoyamiqui by Leon y Gama (Figure 2). Leon y Gama also discussed a third major monument discovered a year later, the colossal, circular block today called the Stone of Tizoc. Commissioned by Axayacatl's brother and immediate successor Tizoc, this monument has proved to be one of the few explicitly historical Aztec sculptures found (Figure 3).[21]

The changing attitude toward the indigenous past led to a different fate for these newly revealed Aztec monuments. Rather than having them obliterated, like the relief portraits of the royal pair in Chapultepec only decades earlier, the viceroy, the Count of Revillagigedo, ordered that these sculptures not only be preserved but also be publicly displayed. This decision hardly signaled a complete change of attitude toward indigenous survivals of the past, particularly in the case of the large female idol. While the more abstract sculpture of the Sun Stone was embedded and prominently exhibited against the bell-tower of the Metropolitan Cathedral, the statue of Coatlicue was less visibly displayed in a patio of the university, a short distance away--that is, until it was reburied to remove it from the worshipful gaze of the indigenous populace.[22]

Perhaps no nineteenth-century traveler to Mexico was as renowned as the Prussian naturalist and explorer Alexander yon Humboldt. Wealthy, gifted, and immensely energetic, Humboldt's first coup had been to obtain a carte blanche from the Spanish crown to travel unhindered throughout Spanish America. This he did with his travel companion Bonpland for five arduous years, gathering voluminous data and specimens from 1799 to 1804. Although his journey focused chiefly on South America, he included the year-long sojourn in New Spain as well as a brief stop in North America before returning to Europe to popular and scientific acclaim.

Establishing himself once again in Paris, the indefatigable Humboldt set about producing a steady stream of publications detailing his experiences in and observations about Spanish America. His output was prodigious: about 30 volumes in as many years, from 1805 to 1834. From these copious works, it is apparent that the trip had far-reaching consequences, personal as well as professional, beyond those he had originally calculated. Recalling Antonello Gerbi's observation that Humboldt's "positive, totalizing vision" revindicated "America within European-based planetary paradigms", Pratt points out the remarkable fact that in the reinvention of America Humboldt's writings served political and cultural agendas on both sides of the Atlantic (140-41).

But America, it seems, also changed the direction of Humboldt's life. Although his journey had been planned as a scientific expedition, the writings it engendered encompassed much more.[23] In addition to scientific findings in botany, zoology, geology, geography, oceanography, meteorology, and astronomy, his printed works also dealt with political economy, social commentary, travel narrative, and history. Beyond these predictable genres, Humboldt also initiated studies of other areas that would later become the province of preColumbian anthropology, archaeology, and art history.

As noted earlier, Humboldt's contributions to pre-Hispanic scholarship, particularly his pioneer studies on Aztec art, are not well studied today. Yet during the nineteenth-century the early date of his trip to Mexico and his extraordinary fame and influence (he was awarded a staggering 181 honorary degrees) gave his writings an authoritative impact felt on both sides of the Atlantic. His works played a fundamental role in reconstructing and disseminating knowledge about Mexico's pre-Hispanic past. For this reason, the historiographic value of his contribution to the shaping of the present-day field of Aztec studies cannot be easily overlooked.

This is not to say that criticisms of Humboldt, like those of Pratt and Kubler, are not justified. Humboldt worked within a paradigm that often led him to evasions and distortions. Yet he cannot be made to disappear entirely into a European culture, reduced to nothing but an instrument of expansionist and imperialist designs. This would be to substitute a cultural reductionism or determinism for Humboldt's scientific one.[24]

The work most revealing of Humboldt's study of Aztec art and culture is the Vues des cordilleres. Originally published as a folio volume in Paris in 1810/1813 as Vues des cordilleres et monuments des peuples de l'Amerique, it was translated into English in 1814 in an octavo format with the title Researches concerning the institutions and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of America, with descriptions and views of some of the most striking scenes in the cordilleras.t This illustrated volume had been originally planned as an "atlas" supplement to Humboldt's three-volume narrative account of his journey, the Voyage aux regions equinoxiales du nouveau continent, a work that has been credited with inspiring generations of other nineteenth-century explorers of Spanish America.

The original format of the Vues des cordilleres consisted of 69 engraved plates, accompanied by extensive, almost monographic commentaries on each of them. Despite the fact that Humboldt and Bonpland spent only the last year of their journey in New Spain, images from Mexico ended up forming about half of the total number of illustrations. For the English edition, Humboldt himself selected the 19 plates to be included, although the original number of commentaries was left intact. Kubler, in fact, credits Humboldt with inaugurating the "nineteenth-century enlargement of the visual base of information" of the Americas (Kubler 1991, 9).

The plates of Vues des cordilleres are a diverse lot. They comprise views of nature (e.g., Ecuadorean mountain views) and contemporary scenes (e.g., Mexico City's Plaza Mayor), archaeological monuments (e.g., the Cholula pyramid in Puebla) and examples of ancient sculpture (e.g., carved details on the exterior of the Xochicalco pyramid). Humboldt also included sections or combined images taken from pre- and post-Columbian painted manuscripts, which he referred to as hieroglyphic paintings. His use of the term "hieroglyphic" posits a similarity to ancient Egypt, another area that was undergoing a revival of interest in Europe at that time.[25]

One detail that has not been taken sufficiently into account when assessing Humboldt's contribution to the recovery of the late pre-Hispanic past is that the Aztec (and other pre-Columbian) images he published in the Vues des cordilleres were not merely scenes and monuments that he had encountered while on his travels; that is, they were not just illustrations of his journey. Rather, the images he selected indicate that after he returned to Paris Humboldt continued his investigations into ancient Mexican history. In the case of Mexican manuscripts, his illustrations included both pre- and post-conquest documents that had long been in European collections. In fact, he was the first to reproduce color images from several of them. Among these are the pictorial manuscripts known today as the Codex Borgia (Humboldt's Borgia Manuscript of Velletri), Codex Vaticanus B, and Codex Vaticanus A (the first two incorrectly identified as Aztec), all in the Vatican Library; the Maya Codex Dresden in the royal library in Dresden; the Mixtec Codex Vindobonensis in the imperial library in Vienna; the Codex Mendoza in the Bodleian Library in Oxford;[26] and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis in the royal library in Paris (Figure 4). The last manuscript was, in fact, actually rediscovered by Humboldt in this repository, to which it had been bequeathed over a century earlier.[27] He also added several manuscript fragments that he had brought from Mexico to Europe and deposited in the royal library of his hometown of Berlin.[28]

Publication of the Vues des cordilleres thus significantly increased knowledge of the number of known Mexican manuscripts, as these had been enumerated in the late eighteenth century by Clavigero and Robertson. Furthermore, as Brading has pointed out, by demonstrating the survival of native sources, he indicated the possibility of employing these documents to reconstruct a pre-Hispanic history, a possibility that Robertson had doubted (523). Not only did Humboldt publicize the existence of these manuscripts by reproducing parts of them, he also searched out and provided invaluable details about their early histories and in a number of instances knowledgeably analyzed their contents. As part of his treatment of these works, he also produced lengthy, albeit highly speculative commentaries on the nature of hieroglyphic writing systems in the New and Old Worlds, another of his preoccupations.

Among Humboldt's intellectual heirs we may count other pivotal nineteenthcentury European investigators of pictorial Mexican manuscripts, in particular the Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Edward King, Lord Kingsborough, who--possibly heeding Humboldt's call for the publication of all known ancient Mexican manuscripts--undertook the publication of the extant ancient Mexican manuscripts in his landmark nine-volume Antiquities of Mexico, published between 1830-1831 and 1848. Given this attention, it is no accident that pictorial manuscripts were some of the earliest pre-Columbian art works to be intensively studied in the nineteenth century. It is understandable, then, that the great turn-of-the-century German Mesoamericanist, Eduard Seler, should begin his studies of ancient Mexican manuscripts and more general iconographic studies by utilizing the available reproductions published by Lord Kingsborough.

The selection of images in the Vues des cordilleres has been described as "an uneasy combination of mountain views and pre-Columbian art" (McNeil and Deas 1980, 6). Indeed, his choices are curious and deserve some comment. Humboldt took a direct hand in all aspects of his publications, and we can assume that the printed illustrations represent personal and deliberate choices on his part. The rationale for these images, I believe, derive from Humboldt's overarching scientific aims and understandings and can best be understood in this light.

Insight into his reasons for combining "mountains and monuments", two seemingly disparate phenomena, can be gleaned from Humboldt's own words in the introduction to the English edition of the Vues des cordilleres (39-40):

Presenting in the same work the rude monuments of the indigenous tribes of America, and the picturesque views of the mountainous countries which they inhabited, my intention is to connect objects, the relation of which to each other has not escaped the sagacity of those, who apply themselves to the philosophical study of the human mind. Although the manners of a people, the display of their intellectual faculties, the peculiar character stamped on their works, depend on a great number of causes which are not merely local, it is nevertheless true, that the climate, the nature of the soil, the physiognomy of the plants, the view of beautiful or of savage nature, have great influence on the progress of the arts, and on the style which distinguishes their productions.[29]

Or, as he says more succinctly further on: "An accurate knowledge of the origin of the arts can be acquired only from studying the nature of the site where they arose" (40). In Humboldt's view, then, man was part of nature and so his cultural productions could be studied by methods similar to those used in studying nature.

These passages express not only Humboldt's conviction about the origin of "art", but also his belief in the relationship between nature and art. That is, in light of his fascination with the continent's "great scenes of this savage nature", Humboldt was conditioned to view its cultural "monuments", as precisely the kind that would have been produced in such an aboriginal environment. After all, this was a man who partly credited the high achievements of ancient Greece (a Neo-classical touchstone) to its climate (39).

Pratt interprets Humboldt's statements as confirming his belief in the inferiority of indigenous America: "the more savage the nature, the more savage the culture" (133). Kubler too draws attention to the distinction Humboldt made between (American) "monuments" and (European) "art", concluding that because he judged monuments to be lower in value than works of art, it led him to deprecate Amerindian efforts (Kubler 1991, 100). It is this distinction, he says, that also led Humboldt to call Aztec sculptures "documents" rather than "art".

The judgments of his critics may be qualified, to a certain extent, by considering Humboldt's statements within larger historical and personal contexts. The quoted passages reveal his characteristic scientific approach to culture as well as nature. In fact, his distinctions prefigure and parallel a commonly articulated distinction between art and artifacts, one expressed by later anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as by art historians. Humboldt's writings may well have had a role in perpetuating these distinctions. But it should also be noted that these categorizations have been seriously challenged by artists and art historians only in relatively recent times.

A closer look at Humboldt's treatment of specific Aztec works exemplifies the kind of approach that he adopted for discussing objects that we today would call works of art. In the Vues des cordilleres, Humboldt gives prime consideration (pls. I and II) to a stone sculpture that he calls "an Aztec Priestess" (the water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue) (Figure 5).[30] First of all, he provides a local provenance for the statue by situating it in the Mexican collection of M. Dupe (Guillermo Dupaix), and he states that the drawing of it had been made by a Mexican art student (probably Luciano Castaneda). He views the statue somewhat in the manner of a scientific specimen; that is, he identifies the stone, gives its dimensions, reproduces it to its actual size (first edition) as well as in front and back views, carefully describes it, and comments favorably on its "highly finished" details (43-46). He then attempts to place it within a system of known non-European sculptural works, not unlike a botanist attempting to fix the genus and species of a new plant. Intrigued by the statue's headdress and costume, he likens them to those of Egyptian statues, employing in his analysis the insistently comparative approach that characterizes his other writings. Attempting to understand the subject represented, he speculates on the statue's identity, conjecturing that it might represent a "divinity" because of the resemblance of the headdress and "pearls" to those of another idol he had found and collected in Texcoco (and eventually gave to the cabinet of the King of Prussia in Berlin); if not that, then it might be "simply an Azteck woman".

Humboldt's discussion of the already famous "Calendar Stone" (pl. XXIII, "relief in basalt representing the Mexican calendar") reflects another aspect of the mind-set that conditioned his reception of Aztec objects. He was palpably intrigued by the iconographic complexity of this colossal circular monument and what it signified about the level and content of ancient Aztec thought (Figure 6). To him it represented a "degree of civilization" and "proof of knowledge" (277), particularly that which could be called (that he could call) "scientific". His curiosity about the monument had been provoked by his viewing of it in Mexico City, then set in the bell-tower of the cathedral in the central Plaza Mayor. He tells us that he sought to study everything he could find on Aztec calendrics, not just in Mexico but in Europe as well (279). This comment again shows the continuation in Europe of those interests that had been awakened by his American travels. But prompting his curiosity about this particular Aztec relic was a broader interest in the subject of calendrics as such, and his discussion of the monument ranges widely, revealing a formidable knowledge of both primary and secondary Aztec and Asian sources. For his understanding of Aztec calendrics, Humboldt was indebted to the earlier works of several Mexican scholars, whom he credits, but above all to Antonio de Le6n y Gama's informed discussion of the monument published in 1792. In addition, his drawing of the stone is nearly identical to that published earlier by Leon y Gama, as is Humboldt's drawing of the various views of the Coatlicue statue (Figure 7), showing his close dependence on the earlier work of the Mexican scholar.

What' may strike today's critics of Humboldt's descriptions and vocabulary as denigrating to pre-Hispanic cultures might be seen less as a function of his "prejudices" than of "prejudgments", a less value-laden and more philosophical term. In his writings Humboldt was not given to directly denigrating the societies that produced such "savage" art. While his scientific and objective descriptions and analyses may appear to be somewhat naive to a later age, we might consider them as an attempt to understand his subjects in as disciplined a way as he could manage, given his training and the state of knowledge of his time. Thus he would have been inclined to praise those elements of Aztec art that he could place within the broader context of geography, climate, modes of writing, or calendrics.

Indeed, Europeans would not have an opportunity to actually see representative displays of monumental Aztec sculpture until 1824, when the English entrepreneur William Bullock opened his galleries on ancient and modern Mexico in the Egyptian Hall in London's Piccadilly. As a lithograph from the exhibition catalogue (1824) shows (Figure 8), prominently exhibited were casts of the Sun Stone (left center), the Stone of Tizoc (right foreground), and the Coatlicue (far right), all of which Bullock had made during his trip to Mexico in 1823. Copies, as well as some originals, of pre-Hispanic manuscripts were also displayed. Bullock also included other original examples of Aztec sculpture that he himself had collected, pieces that were later to became part of the ancient Mexican collection of the British Museum in London.

What I would like to call attention to here is Humboldt's influence on Bullock's choice of objects, and, in fact, on his entire enterprise. By the time Bullock made his trip to Mexico, soon after it achieved independence, the Prussian traveler's experiences and observations had become the touchstone for later travelers to Mexico and to Spanish America in general. In his book Six months' residence and travels in Mexico (1824), Bullock includes one chapter on "Ancient Mexico" and another on "Antiquities", and he opens the chapter on "Antiquities" with these revealing words:

Baron Humboldt states that the objects worthy the notice of the antiquarian are--the great Calendar and Sacrificial Stones in the Plaza Mayor, the colossal statue of the Goddess Teoyamiqui [Coatlicue] in the gallery of the University, the Aztec monuments in hieroglyphic pictures, and the two pyramids of San Juan de Teotihuacan. (326)

Bullock's book also includes two plates of "Ancient Mexican Sculpture", the first showing a three-quarter view of a sculpture of a water goddess similar to Humboldt's "Aztec Priestess" (Figure 9, left), the first illustration in Humboldt's Vues des cordilleres. The three major monuments cast and exhibited by Bullock had, of course, also been illustrated by Humboldt in the Vues des cordilleres (the third only partially), and the first two by Leon y Gama in his first monograph.

Humboldt may thus be seen as a key figure in helping to establish what would become in time a "canon" of major Aztec sculptural works. Recognizing from the start the importance of the three unearthed pieces, Humboldt disseminated Leon y Gama's pioneer studies and illustrations to other antiquarians and travelers, and through them to a wider public audience outside Mexico. Humboldt's valorization of pre-Hispanic art is still invoked in Mexico today, as demonstrated by a recent catalogue essay that accompanied an exhibition devoted to nineteenth-century graphic images of Mexico.[31]

The cross-Atlantic interchange between Mexican scholars and European travelers was far-reaching in other aspects as well. In addition to his writings and illustrations of ancient Mexican subjects, throughout his life Humboldt provided inspiration to other travelers to Latin America from John Lloyd Stephens, the early explorer of ancient Maya sites, to Charles Darwin, who carried a copy of Humboldt's travel narrative with him on the Beagle.[32] He also provided aid to artists who were interested in Spanish America, thereby stimulating the production of new views of landscapes, peoples, customs, and monuments.33 For example, following his four-year visit to South America, the German artist Johann Moritz Rugendas called on Humboldt and, warmly encouraged by him, returned in 1831 to spend another sixteen years traveling throughout Latin America. Humboldt was also instrumental in obtaining a royal travel grant from the King of Prussia for the artist Ferdinand Bellerman in 1842 (see Honour 1975, 176). And he wrote the introduction to the German architect Carl Nebel's Voyage pittoresque et archeologique dans la partie la plus interessante du Mexique, published in 1836 (Honour 1975, 179). For these and other European artists depictions of the American landscape, so enthusiastically lauded by Humboldt, were a primary objective. The production of these scenes would later influence the development of a Mexican school of landscape painting. Catlin, in fact, links Humboldt's example and influence to the creation of a new Latin American art in the decades following independence (Catlin 1989).

Among some recent writers, Humboldt's circumstances and activities have been regarded with a certain amount of suspicion: his aristocratic birth, wealth, and elite status; his circulation at the upper echelons of society on both sides of the Atlantic; his access to power that obtained for him the unprecedented carte blanche to travel unhindered in Spanish America; his travel under the auspices of a colonial (viceregal) government about to be overthrown in Mexico; his "totalizing" vision (as exemplified by his five-volume grandly titled magnum opus, Cosmos); his effusive Romanticism; his contribution to the perpetuation of a European-based value system, etc. Amid the oftentimes valid critiques we should not lose sight of Humboldt's legitimate and fundamental contributions, even while keeping in mind the uses to which they were put.

Viewed in retrospect, Humboldt emerges as a figure of mixed influence, but a critical one in laying the basis for a new understanding of Spanish America, its present and its past, its natural products and its cultural productions. As acknowledged by defenders and critics alike, his exploits, his writings, and his inspiration enkindled a new vision of lands at that time still largely unexplored and unexamined. Furthermore, he made a prodigious contribution to the nascent field of pre-Columbian, and especially Aztec, art. Informed by his scientific training, Humboldt's methodology combined intense, firsthand observation, profound knowledge of documentary sources, wide-ranging comparative studies, and broad theoretical frameworks, interpretive strategies that would be among those utilized by later generations of art historians, anthropologists, and others studying ancient Mexican monuments. If his scientific or philosophical interests and incessant cross-cultural comparisons sometimes overburdened his discussions of Aztec art, we must recall that Humboldt was a scientist, not an art historian. Indeed, the discipline of art history had not yet emerged; as Kubler notes, the term "art historian" only came into general use after 1840 (Kubler 1991, 10). Humboldt's influence as an individual, traveler, and writer, particularly in the Vues des cordilleres, was pivotal in promoting a burgeoning interest in Aztec and other pre-Columbian art works and their creators. In short, what might have remained the province of a small, specialized group of local antiquarians became, through the efforts and writings of pioneering enthusiasts like Humboldt and others, a generalized awareness in which we participate today.

[1] In the first decades after independence travel restrictions were lifted and the flow of visitors accelerated. The English entrepreneur William Bullock, the Swiss businessman Lukas Vischer, the German merchant Carl Uhde, the France-based explorer Jean-Frederic Waldeck, and the Anglo-American team of New York lawyer John Lloyd Stephens and architect Frederick Catherwood, are just a few of the travelers who returned home with novel experiences and reports as well as ancient objects that eventually formed the basis of museum collections of pre-Columbian art in their home countries.

[2] This essay is an expanded version of a paper presented at the 1995 annual meeting of the College Art Association in San Antonio in a session on the "Historiography of Ancient Mesoamerican Art and Cultures". Organized by Khristaan D. Villela, the session sought to explore the forces that have shaped scholarly and popular contemporary understandings about the art and culture of ancient Mesoamerica. Sessions such as this one are part of the current effort to reassess the development of certain academic disciplines, in this case pre-Columbian art history, in light of present-day understandings and concerns.

[3] Each discipline seems to have its own Humboldt. See Pagden (1993, particularly 104-15), for an astute assessment of Humboldt's understanding of the historical process.

[4] Pratt is not alone in focusing on Humboldt's more dramatic South American journey, which after all did occupy the greater part of his time in the Americas. Botting (1973), for example, devotes less than a page to his year-long stop in Mexico, treating it as a coda to the South American trip.

[5] It is curious that these same mestizos, whom Pratt sees as continuing the work of scholarship that is the only hope of reestablishing the obscure links mentioned, are either omitted or subsumed under those "historical agents who have living continuities with pre-European pasts and historically based aspirations and claims on the present" (135). But mestizos also have links to a European past and to similar aspirations and claims.

[6] The question of terminology, always problematic, has surfaced with greater insistence in recent years. Humboldt popularized the use of the term "Aztec" for the group of Nahuatl speakers who settled in Mexico Tenochtitlan and proceeded to forge a tribute "empire" throughout much of Mesoamerica. Derived from Aztlan, "Aztec" refers to migrants from the legendary homeland of Aztlan, from which several ethnic groups set forth. Employed in a political sense, "Aztec" is useful for referring to the preconquest "empire" of this group but less apt when speaking of those who outlived this polity after the conquest. It also blurs ethnic distinctions, for not all the peoples in the "empire" were "Aztecs". The term "Nahua", derived from Nahuatl, is more fitting for the postconquest period, but too broad a term when one intends to refer only to the preconquest residents of Mexico Tenochtitlan and their culture. The most specific term for the people of Tenochtitlan is Tenochca, which has the value of highlighting the importance of the self-defined community or altepetl. The term "Mexica", broader than Tenochca but not as comprehensive as Nahua, also has its limitations. The other occupants of the island, the Tlatelolca or people of the city of Tlatelolco, were also Mexica, also Aztecs, although they were conquered by the Tenochca in 1473. Unless both the Tenochca and Tlatelolca are intended, "Mexica" also blurs these distinctions.

[7] For example, in her chapter on "Pre-Columbian art in the post-Columbian world," Barbara Braun (1993) takes a critical stance toward collecting as an aspect of nineteenth-century colonialism.

[8] The literature by and on Humboldt is vast. Pratt (1994, 230, n9) provides an up-to-date assessment of the literature on Humboldt, which is chiefly in German. Among the most useful sources she cites is Alexander yon Humboldt: Werk und Weltgeltung (1985), edited by Wolfgang Hagen Hein and translated into English by John Cumming as Alexander yon Humboldt: Life and work (1987). Douglas Botting's Humboldt and the cosmos (1973) is a readable, popular treatment in English of his life and activities, but it contains notable gaps (but half a page devoted to Humboldt's year in Mexico, for example). See also Miranda (1962) for a more extended treatment of Humboldt and Mexico.

[9] Estrada de Gerlero (1994) provides a recent comprehensive update of Dupaix's activities in Mexico as well as the "antiquarian activity" carried out under the direction of Charles IV of Spain. Dupaix's work did not appear until 1834, published as Antiquites mexicaines by the Abbe Jean-Henri Baradere in France, although a version of it had appeared earlier in London in 1830-1831 in Lord Kingsborough' s Antiquities of Mexico. Bernal ( 1980, 104) notes that in both publications Castaneda's drawings were greatly retouched. See Alcina Franch's 1969 edition of Expediciones acerca de los antiguos monumentos de la Nueva Espana, 1805-1808, based upon his discovery in Seville of a draft of Dupaix's manuscript, with a complete set of Castaneda's illustrations. See Keen (1972, 337-38) for an account of the colorful Baradere's fascination with ancient Mexico.

[10] Since Humboldt apparently never visited the Cerro Rico in Potosi, Bolivia, the single greatest source of mineral wealth in the Americas, I would question the seriousness of the charge on Charles' part, or the acceptance of it on Humboldt's part. Humboldt did, of course, visit silver mines in Mexico, including those at Taxco, Real del Monte, and Guanajuato. One chapter of his Political essay on the kingdom of New Spain (1811) is devoted to the "state of the mines of New Spain".

[11] Dupaix and Castaneda began their travels in Mexico City in 1805, and moved east through Puebla to Veracruz. A second journey in 1806 took them to several towns in the southern Basin of Mexico, as well as to Morelos and Zapotec and Mixtec sites in Oaxaca, including Monte Alban and Mitla. From 1807 to 1808 they again traveled through Puebla and Oaxaca, pushing onward to southeastern Mexico and reaching the Classic Maya city of Palenque.

[12] For the antiquarian activities carried out under these monarchs, see Estrada de Gerlero (1993 and 1995).

[13] Most prominent among these caustic French critics of America were the Comte de Buffon, Cornelius de Pauw, and Abbe Raynal. Gerbi's 1973 treatment of the "dispute of the new world" offers a comprehensive and insightful discussion of the topic.

[14] Knowledge about prehispanic sites and monuments slowly began to accumulate and be disseminated through the travel reports of writers like Alzate and Jose Antonio Calder6n, Antonio Bernasconi, and Antonio del Rio, who all focused on the Maya site of Palenque. The work of dissemination was also carried out by other types of publications, such as translations (e.g., the exiled Jesuit Pedro Jose Marquez's 1804 translation of Alzate's Gaceta publications). Keen (1971) and Bernal (1980) offer more detailed accounts regarding the early archaeological and antiquarian activities carried out during this period.

[15] Although it is not treated here, Humboldt's evocative treatment of the American landscape is of critical importance to what Pratt calls the "reinvention of America". She proposes (1994, 120) that Humboldt "reinvented South America first and foremost as nature ... a dramatic, extraordinary nature" that would overwhelm not just perception but human understanding as well.

[16] Quoted in Kubler (1991, 9). See also Keen (1971, 330) for the influence of Herder's thought on Humboldt.

[17] Among the most useful historiographic studies on the rediscovery of the pre-Hispanic past are Benjamin Keen's The Aztec image in western thought (1971) and Ignacio Bernal's A history of Mexican archaeology (1980). Also important, although concentrating more heavily on an outside Euro-American view are Hugh Honour's The new golden land (1975), Collecting the pre-Columbian past (1993), edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, and George Kubler's indispensable Esthetic recognition of ancient Amerindian art (1991). Katherine Manthorne's book, Tropical renaissance (1989), is a major contribution to understanding the activities and contributions of nineteenth-century traveler-artists in Latin America.

[18] For a recent appraisal of Leon y Gama's treatment of Mexican antiquities, see Gutierrez Haces (1995).

[19] From the capital of Mexico Tenochtitlan, Axayacatl ruled the "Aztec empire" from 1469 to 1481; Motecuhzoma II ruled from 1502 to 1520.

[20] For an extended discussion and illustrations of the Chapultepec ruler sculptures, see Nicholson (1959).

[21] Tizoc ruled from 1481 to 1486. His military victories (presumably incorporating those of his predecessors as well) are carved in relief on the exterior curved surface of the disk.

[22] Bernal (1980, 85) connects the transference of the Coatlicue to the university with the gradual setting up of a museum at this site. In 1822, after numerous unsuccessful attempts, a museum of antiquities was established within the university, and in 1825 a presidential decree formally named the fledgling institution the Museo Nacional and directed that it be housed in university space. See Keen (1971, 321) and Bernal (1980, 134-36).

[23] His works earned him such accolades as "the second discoverer of America", "the scientific discoverer of the New World", and, from Charles Darwin, "the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived".

[24] A recent discussion of this tendency is found in Finkielkraut's The Defeat of Mind.

[25] Humboldt's projected trip to Egypt in 1798 had been preempted by Napoleon's invasion of that country. Other unforeseen military and political events likewise caused him to abandon plans for earlier trips to Italy and the West Indies, as well as his participation in a proposed scientific expedition around the world sponsored by the French government. See Botting (1973, 50-58).

[26] For the Codex Mendoza, whose presence in the Bodleian Library was still unknown at the time, Humboldt used Melchisedec Thevenot's 1672 Paris edition of the manuscript, with illustrations copied from the woodcuts published by Samuel Purchas in his Hakluytus posthumus: Or, Purchas his pilgrimages, published in London in 1625.

[27] For a discussion of Humboldt's role in bringing this important early colonial Aztec manuscript to light, see Quinones Keber (1995, 116-17).

[28] These sixteen fragments were first extensively discussed by Seler (1904).

[29] All quotations in English are taken from the 1814 English translation of Vues des cordilleres.

[30] This sculpture was later acquired by the British Museum as part of the Christie collection, and was also extensively analyzed by Seler.

[31] See Loschner n. d. As further demonstrated in the entire exhibition and catalogue, Humboldt has had an impact on the historical as well as present-day development of a national Mexican art.

[32] Humboldt was an inspiration, direct and indirect, to generations of actual visitors to Mexico, like the writer Brantz Mayer in his Mexico as it was and as it is (1844), as well as to armchair travelers like William H. Prescott, who wrote what is probably the best-selling book in the United States on the history of ancient Mexico, the History of the conquest of Mexico (1843).

[33] Manthorne (1989) provides an insightful discussion of these traveler-artists in Latin America. Also useful in this regard is the exhibition catalogue, Alexander yon Humboldt: Inspirador de una nueva ilustracion de America, which focuses on Humboldt's influence on German artists and scientists who traveled to Mexico and South America.

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By Eloise Quinones Keber Baruch College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York