bandera (FCbk12fiv)
This iconographic example, featuring a black and white sketch of flag or banner (bandera), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. There is no gloss, per se, and no mention of this term in the nearby text in the Florentine Codex. This example shows a banner that was being held by a Spaniard riding a horse during the invasion of Mexico in the early sixteenth century. The banner is curled. It would have been more than twice as wide as it is high, and it is attached to a thin pole that is being held by both of the Spaniard’s hands. It has three-dimensional shading made from straight lines and hatch marks.
Stephanie Wood
This is the first Spanish flag to enter this digital collection as of February 2026. Nahuatl hieroglyphs include a great many flags or banners, but not one that looks much like this large one. Most hieroglyphic flags (e.g., panitl, tecpantli), while also attached to sticks, are small and rectangular. A very few have swallowtail shape (so far, all from the Codex Vergara); this may have been a shape favored by one tlacuilo, and a shape that was introduced to him by the colonizers.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
banderas, estandartes, flags
bandera, flag, a loanword from Spanish, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/bandera
la bandera, o el estandarte, panitl, pamitl
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 12: Conquest of Mexico", fol. iv, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/12/folio/iv/images/0 Accessed 7 February 2026.
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
