huaniTzin RecenTeRs The ciTy • 107the ordinary, known world, “in which objects have rational
explanations and knowable origins, and the world adum-
brated in the picture, which defeats explanation. . . . This is
captivation, the primordial kind of artistic agency.” In the
example of Trobriand canoe prows that Gell examines, he
argues that these captivating objects were used as weap-
ons when making overseas exchanges, “[demoralizing] the
opposition because they cannot mentally encompass the
process of its origination, just as I cannot mentally encom-
pass the origination of a Vermeer.” 33 Huanitzin would have
known the attraction that feathered objects held for Euro-
peans, with Cortés sending back shipments of feathered
shields as early as 1522, and the attraction that the Mexica
themselves had for feathered works, particularly feathered
clothing, which points up their power of captivation on
both sides of the Atlantic. 34 So not only was Huanitzin
sending the pope a gift of overwhelming generosity, but its
extraordinary manufacture marked it as one of overwhelm-
ing visual power.
In the featherwork The Mass of Saint Gregory we have
begun to perceive how Huanitzin imagined New Spain,
or rather, his domain, the great city of the Indies, from
where he could dispatch captivating and extravagant (and
perhaps even humiliating) gifts to an overseas pontiff. Its
orthodox central iconography also offered a testament
to his acceptance of Christianity. At the moment of the
creation of this work, Huanitzin had particular reason
for making public statements about his devotion as a
Christian. Around the second year of Huanitzin’s reign,
Bishop Juan de Zumárraga, a Franciscan appointed to the
highest religious post in the New World, was in the midst
of a widespread anti-idolatry campaign. Many indigenous
elites fell under suspicion of continuing in their old ways,
and one of those accused, although never questioned
by inquisitors, was Huanitzin himself. 35 After scores of
interrogations, Zumárraga’s investigation zeroed in on
the ruler of nearby Tetzcoco, don Carlos Ometochtzin,
who descended from Nezahualcoyotl and Nezahualpilli,
the lords pictured in figures 3.2 and 3.3. Accused of the
worship of pagan idols and of engaging in an adulter-
ous and incestuous relationship with his niece Inés, don
Carlos was found guilty and hauled to the Plaza Mayor
of Mexico City for an auto-da-fé on November 30, 1539,
a public spectacle that commanded the presence of the
leaders of the native governments of Mexico-Tenochtit-
lan and Santiago Tlatelolco as witnesses. Huanitzin was
thus one of those who heard the charges against his peer
proclaimed in both Spanish and Nahuatl; don Carlos was
executed the following day. 36 While a group of Tlaxcalan
elites had been executed for idolatry some ten years before,
this was the first high-profile execution of a member of
the native elite nobility, a man as well connected through
family ties to other Nahua elites in the Valley of Mexico
as the Habsburgs were interconnected in Europe. As
Huanitzin’s cousin by marriage was burned at the stake,
Huanitzin’s public acceptance of the Catholic faith and
his display of that affiliation became both a political and
a mortal necessity. It is in this year that the feather paint-
ing is dated.
As tempting as it may be to read the framing text as a
secondary decorative element added to the central image,
this response is likely a product of our modern response to
picture frames as ancillary to the central work. It is worth
recalling that somewhat later in the colonial period, pic-
ture frames were often more valuable than the works they
held. In the indigenous context of the sixteenth century,
frames were essential in providing key temporal and spatial
contexts for the interior image. If we return once again to
folio 2r of the Codex Mendoza, we see two frames. The
first is an outer frame of fifty-one year counters to suggest
a correlation between the length of Tenoch’s rule and the
near-sacred cycle of fifty-two. The second is an inner rect-
angular frame that is meant to be read as an abbreviated
version of the water-surrounded island; it also establishes
the outer boundary of the quadripartite space that con-
nects, as we have seen, the city of Tenochtitlan to the sacred
quincunx template (see figures 1.3 and 2.5). These frames
are essential for interpreting the central image. In a similar
fashion, the frame of the featherwork also establishes both
space (magna indiaru[m] urbe Mexico) and time (ad 1539)
for what unfolds in the central field. And what does appear
is a miraculous vision of the crucified Christ. From the
vantage of Catholic theology, of course, the coincidence
is perfectly plausible given that the Christ is believed to
be present wherever, and whenever, the Mass takes place.
This framing of the sacred presence of the Christ within
the city of Mexico, it must be emphasized, appears on a
portable object. Thus, its patrons, named as Huanitzin and
Pedro de Gante, projected their vision of the city outward
toward an intended European and Christian public. By
locating the presence of the Christ within a space identified
as Mexico, Huanitzin and Gante thereby offered to the
pope a vision of a decentered Christianity, with the Christ
as equally present in Mexico as in Rome.