For centuries, indigenous rulers of Mesoamerica commissioned elaborate pictorial histories to maintain their claims to power, land, and privilege--a practice they continued under Spanish authority after the conquest.
An intricate pictographic document on cotton cloth measuring 156 by 66.5 inches, the Lienzo was produced by an Indian painter-scribe of great skill during the sixteenth century in the Northern Mixteca, in the Mexican state of Oaxaca..
The Lienzo of Tlapiltepec is one such history.
For centuries, indigenous rulers of Mesoamerica commissioned elaborate pictorial histories to maintain their claims to power, land, and privilege--a practice they continued under Spanish authority after the conquest