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Loading... The Search for the Codex Cardona (edition 2009)by Arnold L.Bauer
Work InformationThe Search for the Codex Cardona by Arnold J. Bauer
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Of all the peoples of The Pre-Columbian Americas only the Mesoamericans (present-day central Mexico & Guatemala) produced books. They were known as amoxtli and tataah. They were painted books with words and pictures depicting myths, history, and every day life of the region. When Spain made its entrance into the region most of these ended up lost for all time. Some through plunder, others through neglect, but most were destroyed by bonfire around the same time Martin Luther was nailing his thesis to the door in Europe. Spain wanted to convert the region to Christianity and the painted books of the Nahua populations (Aztecs) were declared heresy and heathenish; thus they had to go even though some of the friars wanted to salvage some. It is estimated that only twelve remain. It makes me want to cry. Not long after the originals were put into the flames, some works were commissioned to record the history of pre-Columbian times and also tell the story of the 'conversion' of the area. These became known as the Mexican Codices. Some of the pages of these books were done by scribes that still spoke the original languages and had some connections to the past of the region. The Search for the Codex Cardona is the story of one of these codices. It appeared in 1982 along with many doubts about its authenticity and provenance. It was offered to several institutions of high renown but none actually pulled the trigger and acquired it. Bauer, a history professor in the University of California system, had seen the codex, knew it had disappeared again, got the urge to track it down and explain where it might of come from. If it was hoax. Or a high-quality forgery. This book is the tale of that search and the many players involved. The writing style is personable not academic. It does have some disjointedness but does manage to get some of the Quixotic story told. There are still biblionuts out there that will devote a significant amount of their life to tracking a single book down. Or tracking it until the trail completely evaporates.
During his hunt Bauer manages to convey Mexico’s odd and powerful charisma.
In The Search for the Codex Cardona, Arnold J. Bauer tells the story of his experiences on the trail of a cultural treasure, a Mexican "painted book" that first came into public view at Sotheby's auction house in London in 1982, nearly four hundred years after it was presumably made by Mexican artists and scribes. On folios of amate paper, the Codex includes two oversized maps and 300 painted illustrations accompanied by text in sixteenth-century paleography. The Codex relates the trajectory of the Nahua people to the founding of the capital of Tenochtitlán and then focuses on the consequences of the Spanish conquest up to the 1550s. If authentic, the Codex Cardona is an invaluable record of early Mexico. Yet there is no clear evidence of its origin, what happened to it after 1560, or even where it is today, after its last known appearance at Christie's auction house in New York in 1998. Bauer first saw the Codex Cardona in 1985 in the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, where scholars from Stanford and the University of California were attempting to establish its authenticity. Allowed to gently lift a few pages of this ancient treasure, Bauer was hooked. By 1986, the Codex had again disappeared from public view. Bauer's curiosity about the Codex and its whereabouts led him down many forking paths--from California to Seville and Mexico City, to the Firestone Library in Princeton, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Christie's in New York--and it brought him in contact with an international cast of curators, agents, charlatans, and erudite book dealers. The Search for the Codex Cardona is a mystery that touches on issues of cultural patrimony, the workings of the rare books and manuscripts trade, the uncertainty of archives and evidence, and the ephemerality of the past and its remains. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)972.01History and Geography North America Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Bermuda Mexico, Central America, West Indies, Bermuda Ancient civilization (-1516)LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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A true mystery that keeps you reading to find the answer. Maybe someone will and the author will be able to finish the story. ( )