Producer unknown to us
Vessel
Americas, Mexico
Prior to 1889
Clay, fired
Josef Anton Dorenberg (consul, businessman) appropriated the vessel while working as consul for Belgium and as a businessman in Puebla and the surrounding area in the 1870s and 1880s
Donation to the museum by Dorenberg in 1889
MAm 5371
This red-painted clay vessel from Mexico is decorated with a depiction of the goddess Malinalxochitl. A feathered serpent was carved into the front. Malinalxochitl sits on the serpent, holding a heart stick in her right and a human head in her left hand. Around 1200 CE, the Mexica migrated from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico, where Tenochtitlan (present-day Mexico City) was founded in 1325. In 1521, this territory, the Aztec Empire, which encompassed Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan, was captured by the Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés. Malinalxochitl had magical powers and was able to transform herself into an eagle and unleash spiders and scorpions on her enemies. According to legend, she fell out with the war council and was abandoned by her brother, Huitzilopochtli, the leader of the migrating Mexica, for causing discontent as a sorceress. She took revenge on Huitzilopochtli and the Mexica through her son Copil. Copil, however, was captured by the Mexica priests, who killed him and cut his heart from his rib cage. According to Mexica mythology, a nopal, or prickly pear cactus, sprouted where his heart was thrown. This marked the spot where Tenochtitlan was later founded.
From the 1860s to the 1910s, the collector Josef Anton Dorenberg worked as a businessman and consul for Belgium in the Puebla region of Mexico. During this time, he amassed an extensive collection of Mexican antiquities. His diplomatic status allowed him to take them out of the country despite an existing ban. The Leipzig museum, which listed Dorenberg among its ”patrons” received a collection of 221 objects; of these, about 60 pieces are still extant after the December 1943 bombing raid. He probably acquired this vessel between the 1870s and 1880s and donated it to the museum in 1889.
Julia von Sigsfeld