Floral Paradise between Pages: Analyzing Botanical Decorations in the Florentine Codex

Abstract

The Florentine Codex, also known as the Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, is a collection of twelve books compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún in order to document and monitor Indigenous practices in central Mexico during the late sixteenth century. Often omitted from studies of the document are the more than 600 botanical and scroll decorations that can be found in small spaces between sections of text or after chapter titles throughout the three volumes. The present work is a re-evaluation of previous work on such decorations, with analysis of the botanical imagery in context with research on herbals, botanical illustration, and contemporary books. The decorations, which contain flowers and fruits salient to Pre-Columbian Nahua and Christian religious traditions, turn the Codex itself into a floral paradise by adorning its pages

Códice Florentino, México colonial, adornos de libros, imágenes botánicas, paraíso