solar (Osu7v)

This painting is an iconographic example of a house lot (solar or xolal, two different spelling of the loan that came into Nahuatl from Spanish). It comes from the Codex Osuna, folio 7 verso (or Image 17). It is a bird’s eye view of a square piece of land that is painted gray. On the land, in a frontal elevation view, is a family house (what we are calling a calli). The house is white with an open entryway, and this is framed with what are probably wooden beams. All people in this scene are shown in profile, most facing toward the viewer’s right. The father may be a noble Nahua, wearing knee-length socks and a knee-length tunic with a cape over it that is tied at the shoulder. The cape has a red border. This man is gesturing with both arms, index fingers pointing toward a Spaniard who is demarcating the parcel, using a stone to pound a stake into the corner of the plot. A red speech scroll (with a small white part nearer the mouth) emerges from near that Nahua man’s mouth. The mother is sitting on her knees, with her legs tucked under her, and her bare feet are showing. She has a neaxtlahualli hairstyle. Her white huipilli has a red border at the bottom, as does her skirt. Her huipil has a triangular piece of cloth over it, something like a quechquemitl with a pechero (Spanish for a rectangle reinforcing the v-neck). The two babies seem to be males, given their posture, with knees up under the white cape with a red border that is knotted at their shoulders.