Barbara_E._Mundy]_The_Death_of_Aztec_Tenochtitlan

huaniTzin RecenTeRs The ciTy • 103

At the same time, he, like the gobernadores who followed
him, needed to strike a delicate political balance between
the viceroy and the judges of the audiencia, who protected
him and the parts of the city he controlled from the more
aggressively expansionist Spanish cabildo.
This said, the documentary record on Huanitzin and
his reign is admittedly sparse, much of it cited above. We
have no secure date for his accession to the seat in Mexico-
Tenochtitlan. Through the 1530s, Franciscans were learning
Nahuatl and setting it to the Latin alphabet; the training of

native scribes followed, and early documents began to be

produced in Nahuatl in the decade of 1535–1545, coinciding

with Huanitzin’s reign. 13 There is no known document

exclusively authored by him. Thus, a rare artwork—the

only one known that can be connected to Huanitzin’s

patronage—looms large in reconstructing the aspirations

of his reign (figure 5.3). The work is an elaborate feather

painting, or feather mosaic, the most highly regarded of all

art forms in both pre-Hispanic and early post-Conquest

Tenochtitlan.

figuRe 5.3. Unknown

creator, The Mass of Saint

Gregory, feather mosaic,

1539. Musée des Jacobins,
      Auch, France.