Quetzalcoatl Worship and Hunting Deity – Rare 1734 Engraving of Aztec Rituals

Name: Quetzalcoatl Worship and Hunting Deity – Rare 1734 Engraving of Aztec Rituals
Brand: American Maps and Prints
SKU: BG-13806-54
Price: 290 USD
Availability: InStock

$290

€260 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1734
Kind: Native Peoples
Size: 42 × 26 cm (16.5 × 10.2 in)
Condition: Good. Condition is good. The engraving has strong impressions and crisp detailing throughout. There is some minor toning along the edges, light foxing near the lower margin, and a faint crease in the top right corner. The paper is otherwise stable, clean.
Period: Colonial America
Places: Mexico
Reference: BG-13806-54

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

Quetzalcoatl and the hunting deity, a copperplate engraving of 1734 from Les Cérémonies et Coutumes Religieuses de tous les Peuples du Monde, engraved after designs by Bernard Picart (Tome IX, plate numbered 90 at the top). Two scenes appear on one sheet.

The upper scene is lettered "Le Mercure des Mexicains adoré à Cholula sous le nom de Quetzalcouatl". A seated figure on a stepped pedestal receives the offerings of a crowd on a checkered terrace: kneeling attendants, men in feathered headdresses, a woman with a child in the foreground, a brazier, and a man bringing a caged bird. Mountains and a distant town appear beyond the balustrade. The lower scene, "Divinité qui préside à la chasse", is a crowded hunt in a wooded landscape, with figures drawing bows and clubbing animals around a large central beast.

The engraver follows a European habit of matching foreign gods to classical ones, and so the feathered serpent deity is lettered as the Mercury of the Mexicans.

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