tlapallacuiloloni (FCbk22f221v)

This iconographic example, featuring a man coloring a piece of paper (tlapallacuiloloni) with a brown pigment, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making 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 what is likely a Nahua male tlacuilo seated on a low woven seat (probably an icpalli), his left hand holding a large white rectangle (probably a piece of paper or a canvas), and his right hand holding a writing or painting implement. On the paper at the tip of the tool there is a leaf drawn on the paper. This is an unusual example where the tlacuilos has created a drawing of an object, and not just put short black lines down. The implement looks a lot like the majority of writing and painting implements in the digital collection, wider at the end that touches the paper and narrower at the end that his handheld. It resembles the agricultural digging stick (huictli), but on a much smaller scale. Between the tlacuilo’s two bare feet is a bowl that holds the substance referred to as the medium for coloring (tlapallacuiloloni). Tools often end in -loni. The start of the term refers to color (often red, but not always), tlapalli. The verb to write or paint (tlacuiloa) comes next in the construction of the term of emphasis here. The man sits in front of an arched three-dimensional building, and he wears a belted, collared, cuffed, and buttoned-down tunic, both of which show European influence. The hair on his head is a big wavy, which may suggest that he is a mestizo (person of mixed Indigenous and European heritage). The contextualizing image shows that the pigment is being processed near the painter. The other man at work in the scene is handing another bowl of paint to the painter.