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Maya Blue
Maya blue ( es, azul maya) is a unique bright azure blue pigment manufactured by cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, such as the Mayans and Aztecs. Manufacture The Maya blue pigment is a composite of organic and inorganic constituents, primarily indigo dyes derived from the leaves of anil (''Indigofera suffruticosa'') plants combined with palygorskite, a natural clay which is not known to exist in abundant deposits in Mesoamerica. Smaller trace amounts of other mineral additives have also been identified. Historical use Maya blue first appeared around 800, and it was still used in the 16th century in several Convents of Colonial Mexico, notably in the paintings of the Indian Juan Gerson in Tecamachalco. These paintings are a clear example of the combination of Indian and European techniques sometimes known as '' Arte Indocristiano''. After that, the techniques for its production were lost in Mexico, but in Cuba there are examples from as late as 1830. Resistance to weathe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azure (color)
Azure ( , ) is the color between cyan and blue on the spectrum of visible light. It is often described as the color of the sky on a clear day. On the RGB color wheel, "azure" ( hexadecimal #0080FF) is defined as the color at 210 degrees, i.e., the hue halfway between blue and cyan. In the RGB color model, used to create all the colors on a television or computer screen, azure is created by adding a 50% of green light to a 100% of blue light. In the X11 color system, which became a model for early web colors, azure is depicted as a pale cyan or white cyan. Etymology and history The color azure ultimately takes its name from the intense blue mineral lapis lazuli. ' is the Latin word for "stone" and ' is the genitive form of the Medieval Latin ', which is taken from the Arabic ''lāzaward'', itself from the Persian ''lāžaward'', which is the name of the stone in Persian and also of a place where lapis lazuli was mined. The name of the stone came to be associate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Montmorillonite
Montmorillonite is a very soft phyllosilicate group of minerals that form when they precipitate from water solution as microscopic crystals, known as clay. It is named after Montmorillon in France. Montmorillonite, a member of the smectite group, is a 2:1 clay, meaning that it has two tetrahedral sheets of silica sandwiching a central octahedral sheet of alumina. The particles are plate-shaped with an average diameter around 1 μm and a thickness of 0.96 nm; magnification of about 25,000 times, using an electron microscope, is required to "see" individual clay particles. Members of this group include, amongst others, saponite, nontronite, beidellite, and hectorite. Montmorillonite is a subclass of smectite, a 2:1 phyllosilicate mineral characterized as having greater than 50% octahedral charge; its cation exchange capacity is due to isomorphous substitution of Mg for Al in the central alumina plane. The substitution of lower valence cations in such instances leaves the nearby ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Sacrifice In Maya Culture
During the pre-Columbian era, human sacrifice in Maya culture was the ritual offering of nourishment to the gods. Blood was viewed as a potent source of nourishment for the Maya deities, and the sacrifice of a living creature was a powerful blood offering. By extension, the sacrifice of human life was the ultimate offering of blood to the gods, and the most important Maya rituals culminated in human sacrifice. Generally, only high-status prisoners of war were sacrificed, with lower status captives being used for labor.Sharer and Traxler 2006, p. 751. Human sacrifice among the Maya is evident from at least the Classic period (c. AD 250–900) right through to the final stages of the Spanish conquest in the 17th century. Human sacrifice is depicted in Classic Maya art, is mentioned in Classic period hieroglyphic texts and has been verified archaeologically by analysis of skeletal remains from the Classic and Postclassic (c. AD 900–1524) periods. Additionally, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grolier Codex
The ''Maya Codex of Mexico'' (MCM) is a Maya screenfold codex manuscript of a pre-Columbian type. Long known as the ''Grolier Codex'' or ''Sáenz Codex'', in 2018 it was officially renamed the ''Códice Maya de México'' (CMM) by the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. It is one of only four known extant Maya codices, and the only one that still resides in the Americas. The MCM first appeared in a private collection in the 1960s and was shown at "The Maya Scribe and His World", an exhibition held at the Grolier Club in New York City in 1971, hence its former name. An almanac that charts the movements of the planet Venus, it originally consisted of twenty pages; the first eight and the last two are now missing. The greatest height of any of the surviving page fragments is 19 centimeters (7.5 in) of folio 8, and the average page width is 12.5 centimeters (4.9 in). The red frame lines at the bottom of pages four through eight indicates that the dimen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernardino De Sahagún
Bernardino de Sahagún, OFM (; – 5 February 1590) was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain (now Mexico). Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529. He learned Nahuatl and spent more than 50 years in the study of Aztec beliefs, culture and history. Though he was primarily devoted to his missionary task, his extraordinary work documenting indigenous worldview and culture has earned him the title as “the first anthropologist."Arthur J.O. Anderson, "Sahagún: Career and Character" in Bernardino de Sahagún, ''Florentine Codex: The General History of the Things of New Spain, Introductions and Indices'', Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, translators. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1982, p. 40.M. León-Portilla, ''Bernardino de Sahagún: The First Anthropologist'' (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2002), pp. He also contributed to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Florentine Codex
The ''Florentine Codex'' is a 16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún. Sahagún originally titled it: ''La Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España'' (in English: ''The Universal History of the Things of New Spain''). After a translation mistake, it was given the name ''Historia general de las Cosas de Nueva España''. The best-preserved manuscript is commonly referred to as the ''Florentine Codex'', as the codex is held in the Laurentian Library of Florence, Italy. In partnership with Nahua men who were formerly his students at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, Sahagún conducted research, organized evidence, wrote and edited his findings. He worked on this project from 1545 up until his death in 1590. The work consists of 2,400 pages organized into twelve books; more than 2,000 illustrations drawn by native artists provide vivid images of this era. It documents the culture, religious cosmology ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Textiles
Maya textiles (''k’apak'') are the clothing and other textile arts of the Maya peoples, indigenous peoples of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. Women have traditionally created textiles in Maya society, and textiles were a significant form of ancient Maya art and religious beliefs. They were considered a prestige good that would distinguish the commoners from the elite. According to Brumfiel, some of the earliest weaving found in Mesoamerica can date back to around 1000-800 B.C.E. Materials Ancient Maya women had two natural types of cotton to work with, one white and the other light brown, called ''cuyuscate'', both of which were commonly dyed. The preparation of cotton for spinning was very burdensome, as it had to be washed and picked clean of seeds. The cotton was usually associated with the elites. Elite women were also given the opportunity to work with the most expensive feathers and pearl beads. However, women of the elite not o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mural
A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spanish adjective that is used to refer to what is attached to a wall. The term ''mural'' later became a noun. In art, the word mural began to be used at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1906, Dr. Atl issued a manifesto calling for the development of a monumental public art movement in Mexico; he named it in Spanish ''pintura mural'' (English: ''wall painting''). In ancient Roman times, a mural crown was given to the fighter who was first to scale the wall of a besieged town. "Mural" comes from the Latin ''muralis'', meaning "wall painting". History Antique art Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the cave paintings in the Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave in Borneo (40,000-52,000 BP), Chauvet Cave in Ardèche departmen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramic art, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or Molding (process), moulded or Casting, cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. However, most ancient sculpture was brightly painted, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorant
A colourant/colour additive (British spelling) or colorant/color additive (American spelling) is a substance that is added or applied in order to change the colour of a material or surface. Colourants can be used for many purposes including printing, painting, and for colouring many types of materials such as foods and plastics. Colourants work by absorbing varying amounts of light at different wavelengths (or frequencies) of its spectrum, transmitting (if translucent) or reflecting the remaining light in straight lines or scattered. Most colourants can be classified as dyes or pigments, or containing some combination of these. Typical dyes are formulated as solutions, while pigments are made up of solid particles suspended and are generally suspended in a vehicle (e.g., linseed oil). The colour a colourant imparts to a substance is mediated by other ingredients it is mixed with such as binders and fillers are added, for example in paints and inks. In addition, some colourants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with their associated islands, the Americas cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography is dominated by the American Cordillera, a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon, St. Lawrence River–Great Lakes basin, Mississippi, and La Plata. Since the Americas extend from north to south, the climate and ecology vary widely, from the arctic tundra of Northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, to the tropical rain forests in Central America and South America. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 42,000 and 17,000 years ago. A second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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