A Mexican Tarot? A 1583 deck of Mexican playing cards. (original) (raw)

Abstract

This presentation examines the status of a deck of cards that circulated in Mexico City around 1583. The deck contains 18 cards created by the second monopoly of playing cards in Mexico City under the administration of Alonso Martínez de Orteguilla, surviving today as a printer’s proof in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville. The set shows iconography regularly employed in Renaissance Tarot decks, such as figures representing Force and Temperance, together with portraits of the Mexica kings Moctezuma, and Cuauhtemoc, as well as representations of dancers and acrobats from prehispanic traditions. Given the popularity of playing cards in 16th century New Spain, these cards both entered into, and to some degree created, a social context that allowed the circulation of what appear on the surface to be European games and images in Mexico City. Yet the images, and probably game rules, resulted from the encounter of European and Prehispanic iconography and philosophical traditions. The representation of both cultural references in an European style situates the deck as an important element in the construction and dissemination of a new visual culture. Through an multidisciplinary approach of Early Modern European books, prints, paintings, and playing cards, all objects that were employed for the education of the priviledged creole and indigenous population, as well as a consideration of books, traditions, popular festivities and games of prehispanic past. This presentation also addresses the probable role the popular and portable deck of cards with allegorical images had in the construction of the Mexico City society in the early years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan.

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