cuicani (FCbk10f19r)

This iconographic example, featuring a singer (cuicani) holding a book of music, 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 on the same page in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example shows a man in profile, facing left. He wears a long-sleeve shirt with a plain trim on the neck and at the wrists. He holds an open songbook with short straight lines on the two visible pages. This may represent musical notation, but it is difficult to tell. His mouth is open, as though singing. The three speech scrolls that come from his mouth are not just simple volutes, but also have added small circles, dots, and short lines. This may be the tlacuilo’s effort to distinguish these as not simple words but lyrics of his song, although a healer speaks the same type of volute on folio 20 recto. The contextualizing image suggests he may be in a Christian church. Another man stands by him. While they both wear European-style trousers and shirts, the man who is watching and listening has an added cloak (tilmatli), which makes it clear he is a Nahua man. They both probably are. Many colonial churches inducted Nahua singers from their parishioners.