Cuilol (TV4r)

See below for another example of Cuilol, which seems to show two frames of a screen-fold codex with flower or rosette symbols that Gordon Whittaker (personal communication) identifies with the verb (i)cuiloa, to paint or write. Our iconographic example of tlacuiloliztli shows this same flower in addition to the two speech scrolls pointing opposite ways, as though in conversation. That example, from the Codex Telleriano Remensis, shows a woman actively painting or writing on that two-screen codex.

Penny C. Morrill translates the name "Cuillol" as "Painter" in her book, The Casa del Deán (2014, 89).

Marc Thouvenot identifies the verb icuiloa (or ihcuiloa, with the glottal stop), which means to paint, write, or print, as having a root of -cuil-. He notes how it also appears in tlacuiloliztli (writing), tlacuilo (writer), and cuicuiltic (mottled). He goes on to show various uses of icuiloa that take it beyond the simple definitions just given, resulting in something like the action of creating a design (e.g., on leather, ceramics, sculpture, or in textiles). It can also be something like the action of decorating (e.g., to put a flower on a cup of atole). He associates icuiloa and tlacuilolli with "cultural artifacts," such as arts and crafts or examples of writing and painting, but cuicuiltic with effects created by "nature." This short summary barely does his article justice; it is worth reading the entire piece. How Thouvenot's study might connect with the concept of bent or curved mentioned by Prem (1974: 555, 682) raises an interesting question. Perhaps the bent or curved lines of writing, painting, carving, embroidery, and so on, fall with in the realm of expressions of -cuil-. See
Marc Thouvenot, "Imágenes y escritura entre los nahuas del inicio del XVI," Estudios de Cultural Náhuatl 41 (2010).