tlactli (FCbk10f83r)
This iconographic example, featuring the torso (tlactli) of a human body, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making possible comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text near the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows an upper body at an angle, leaning left. It has red bones protruding from the sites of the shoulders. The back, yellowish in color, has many black ribs and a spine drawn in a way to make them visible, even if they might be under the skin. At the top of the torso, where the head and neck are missing, blood appears at the oval shaped hole. As with the other torsos brought into this collection from the DFC, the body appears to have been butchered. The artist has not taken a full body and then pointed to the different body parts. Rather, the tlacuilo identifies body parts by cutting them apart from the others.
Stephanie Wood
Other torsos appear in the two examples below that are also from the Digital Florentine Codex. There are few possible comparisons for this one, other than the shoulders (acolli or ahcolli, with the glottal stop) where bones protrude. See some examples below. In the example of Acolhuacan, the top of the arm has both a fatty (yellow) and a bloody (red) line at the point of severance, another indication of the awareness of the visuals associated with bodily interiors.
Stephanie Wood
intotlac
in totlac
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
torsos, cuerpo, costillas, hueso, huesos
el torso
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 83r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/83r/images/0 Accessed 10 September 2025.
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.”
