quechquemitl (FCbk10f121v)
This iconographic example, featuring an Indigenous woman’s blouse (quechquemitl), is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the keywords chosen by the team behind the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss. This example shows a Chichimec woman wearing this version of a quechquemitl blouse. It is short, with a lower black border and a point in the front, in the middle. Her midriff is bare. Some of the surrounding fragments of other things have been removed to give focus to this blouse. But see the contextualizing image for the original. That image shows that a skirt rolled twice at the waistline was also worn by this woman. Also, her clothing is shaded for three-dimensionality, an artistic style learned from the colonizers.
Stephanie Wood
This type of blouse is rare in this digital collection because most Nahua women wore the huipilli tunic or blouse. The quechquemitl was probably indicated for certain regions and ethnicities. In the Online Nahuatl Dictionary, see how Karttunen refers to this blouse as literally meaning “neck-garment.” The quemitl (a ritual bib) also hangs from the neck. But the quechquemitl was definitely more of a blouse and it could be worn over a blouse. See below.
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
textiles, ropa, mujeres, blusa, blusas, cuello
quechquemi(tl), an Indigenous woman’s blouse with a point in the front, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/quechquemitl
la blusa corta puntiaguda
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 121vv, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/121v/images/0 Accessed 2 October 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.”
