Synopses & Reviews
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 andldquo;painted bookandrdquo; that first came into public view at Sothebyandrsquo;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 Tenochtitlandaacute;n 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 Christieandrsquo;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. Bauerandrsquo;s curiosity about the Codex and its whereabouts led him down many forking pathsandmdash;from California to Seville and Mexico City, to the Firestone Library in Princeton, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Christieandrsquo;s in New Yorkandmdash;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.
Review
andldquo;
The Search for the Codex Cardona is an amusing, informative, and novelistic scholarly book. It develops its topic rapidly with concise and short
sentences, which makes it easy to read. This book could serve undergraduate
students and lay readers as an introduction to Mexican painted books
and graduate students and scholars as an introduction to the virtually
unknown and now lost Codex Cardona, a possibly invaluable source of information about the Aztecs. In this sense, The Search for the Codex Cardona makes a unique contribution in that it focuses not on an available scholarly resource but on one that has never been available and that may no longer exist.andrdquo; - Jongsoo Lee, The Latin Americanist
Review
andldquo;This book is a gripping tale of intrigue, contraband, covert operations, and a bit of conjecture. . . . In many ways it is a tale that many Latin American historians might dream of writing, about a chance encounter with a manuscript, a colorful character, or a hidden archive, but few of us ever do it. Bauer has.andrdquo; - John F. Schwaller, The Americas
Review
andldquo;One can sense the authorandrsquo;s fun in writing this work and his enjoyment in speculating on the countless explanations concerning ownership of the manuscript, its survival over the centuries, and its contemporary location. Veterans of archival work will particularly appreciate his attempts to discover more (or any) information about the numerous historical surprises within the Cardona. For other readers, however, the great merit of this book will be its struggle with the moral and ethical issues facing museums, libraries, and universities trying to build research collections and preserve records of the past. . . . For scholars of colonial Latin American history, what a story to enjoy ourselves and to present to our students to contemplate!andrdquo; - James A. Lewis, Hispanic American Historical Review
Synopsis
The Codex Cardona is a Mexican "painted book" which may date from the 16th century and has been assessed inconclusively by such places as Sotheby's, the Getty, and Stanford University. This book describes the author's quest to determine the ori
About the Author
“The Search for the Codex Cardona is a terrific read. I could hardly put it down. If the Codex is real, and I came to believe that it probably is authentic, then it is the most important document of the early colonial world to have come to light since the Florentine Codex surfaced in Italy in the late nineteenth century.”—Mary Miller, Dean of Yale College and author of The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. The Crocker Lab 1
2. A World of Painted Books 10
3. Early Doubts 24
4. Sotheby's of London 30
5. The Getty 41
6. Sloan Ranger 52
7. Nights in the Gardens of Coyoacan 63
8. A Mysterious Affidavit 72
9. Seville 78
10. Christie's of New York 88
11. El Palacio del Marquandeacute;s 97
12. Librerandiacute;a Zandoacute;calo 104
13. An Internet Posting 117
14. The Architect's Studio 125
15. Pasaje de las Flores 139
16. The High End 146
17. Ibiza 153
18. A Madrid Anticuario 162
19. Resolution 167
Notes 171
Bibliography 173
Index 177