In addition to the monthly Art-in-Medicine series, Lucinda Bennett, Ascension Medical Librarian at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD, also features a monthly artwork that may be of interest to those who work in medicine.
“Mayahuel (Nahuatl pronunciation: [maˈjawel]) is the female deity associated with the maguey plant among cultures of central Mexico in the Postclassic era of pre-Columbian Mesoamericanchronology, and in particular of the Aztec cultures. As the personification of the maguey plant, Mayahuel is also part of a complex of interrelated maternal and fertility goddesses in Aztec religion and is also connected with notions of fecundity and nourishment. Maguey is a flowering plant of the genus Agave, native to parts of southwestern modern United States and Mexico. The depictions of Mayahuel in the Codex Borgia and the Codex Borbonicus show the deity perched upon a maguey plant. The deity's positioning in both illustrations, as well as the same blue pigment used to depict her body and the body of the maguey plant on Page 8 of the Codex Borbonicus, give the sense that she and the plant are one.
Codex Ríos, originally titled Indorum cultus, idolatria, et mores[b] and also known as Codex Vaticanus A, is a 16th-century Italian translation and augmentation of an Aztec codex, the precise identity of which remains uncertain. Its source may have been either CodexTelleriano-Remensis or the hypothesised Codex Huitzilopochtli. The annotations, written in cursive Italian, are attributed to Pedro de los Ríos, a Dominican friar working in New Spain between 1547 and 1562. The codex is organised into seven sections by subject, encompassing Aztec religion, cosmology, ethnography, a divinatory almanac, and pictorial chronicles. Although based on earlier material compiled in New Spain, the manuscript was likely illustrated by an Italian artist in Rome before entering the Vatican Library, where it is still preserved.” (Wikipedia)
Geography: Mesoamerica
Culture: Aztec (Nahoa)
Artist: Unknown
Medium: pigment on paper
Dimensions: 46 cm × 29 cm (18 in × 11 in) (Codex in full)
Accession Number: N/A
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayahuel /https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_R%C3%ADos
Reprinted with the generous permission of Ms. Bennett.
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