LACMA Store

The Colors of the New World: Artists, Materials, and the Creation of the Florentine Codex
$13.50
In August 1576, in the midst of an outbreak of the plague, the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún and twenty-two indigenous artists locked themselves inside the school of Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco in Mexico City with a mission: to create nothing less than the first illustrated encyclopedia of the New World. Today this twelve-volume manuscript is preserved in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence and is widely known as the Florentine Codex.
A monumental achievement, the Florentine Codex is the single most important artistic and historical document for studying the peoples and cultures of pre-Hispanic and colonial Central Mexico. It reflects both indigenous and Spanish traditions of writing and painting, including parallel columns of text in Spanish and Nahuatl and more than two thousand watercolor illustrations prepared in European and Aztec pictorial styles. This volume reveals the complex meanings inherent in the selection of the pigments used in the manuscript, offering a fascinating look into a previously hidden symbolic language. Drawing on cuttingedge approaches in art history, anthropology, and the material sciences, the book sheds new light on one of the world’s great manuscripts—and on a pivotal moment in the early modern Americas.
By Diana Magaloni Kerpel
Diana Magaloni Kerpel is a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and has served as director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City.
- Paperback
- 80 pages, 6 x 8.25 inch
- Published 2014
THE LACMA Store
Located on the Pacific Rim, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection of nearly 154,000 objects that illuminate 6,000 years of artistic expression across the globe. Committed to showcasing a multitude of art histories, LACMA exhibits and interprets works of art from new and unexpected points of view that are informed by the region’s rich cultural heritage and diverse population. LACMA’s spirit of experimentation is reflected in its work with artists, technologists, and thought leaders as well as in its regional, national, and global partnerships to share collections and programs, create pioneering initiatives, and engage new audiences.
The LACMA Store reflects the museum itself through its thoughtfully curated selection of LACMA-developed catalogues and publications, books, posters, and apparel. It is located in the Resnick Pavilion.
tel 323 857-6146 | webstore@lacma.org
Thank you for your support and for shopping at the LACMA Store online. Your purchase helps support the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and its many programs.