pesos (FCbk10f22r)

pesos (FCbk10f22r)
Iconography

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description:

This detail from a painting shows hands exchanging coins, apparently relating to salaries or bribes in a discussion about attorneys. The men in the contextualizing image wear European shirts and trousers, but with the added Nahua cloak (tilmatli) worn by more elite men. The coins have crosses on them, which suggests pesos rather than tomines. Tomines were eighths of pesos, but tomin also came to mean "money". Sometimes the tomines had dots on them showing one, two or three. A half peso tomin could have the number 4 on it. But pesos had crosses, distinguishing them.

Description, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis:

There is no gloss or even a word in the companion text for this image that mentions pesos, but comparing them to glyphs of coins helps identify them. See examples of both pesos and tomines below. Also worth noting is how tomines were the coins most common in the local Nahua economy, especially when it came to wages of rural workers and minor purchases in the marketplace. But attorneys, like town council members, were accustomed to dealing in larger sums, including pesos.

Added Analysis, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript:

Florentine/Florentinus, Codex (FC)

Date of Manuscript:

1577

Creator's Location (and place coverage):

Mexico City

Syntax:

noun(s)

Cultural Content & Iconography:

Money, Coins, Prices

Cultural Content, Credit:

Jeff Haskett-Wood

Colors:

tan

white/neutral

Shapes and Perspectives:

circle, circular or rounded

Other Cultural Influences:

Spanish/European

Keywords:

moneda, monedas, dinero

Glyph or Iconographic Image:

Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s):

peso, a unit of money (a loanword from Spanish), https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/peso
tomin, one eighth of a peso, or one real, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tomin

Glyph/Icon Name, Spanish Translation:

pesos

Spanish Translation, Credit:

Stephanie Wood

Image Source:

Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 22r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/22r?spTexts=&nhTexts= Accessed 23 June 2025.

Image Source, Rights:

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.”

Historical Contextualizing Image: