Tizoc Stone 1450

The Tizoc Stone, now in Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Antropologia, was carved by Aztec artists from stone some time before the Spanish conquest. The monument tells us a great deal about the exercise of power in that culture. It is thought to have been commissioned by Tizoc, the seventh Aztec ruler, and it depicts his victories in a series of military conquests. We see Tizoc himself, in a repeated, ritualized scene, dominating his defeated enemies. It is a carefully constructed statement of political legitimacy. Note the standardized imagery, devoid of individual expression, and the emphasis on symbolic representation rather than realistic depiction, all of which serves to underscore the authority of the ruler and the state. Studying works like this, along with colonial-era documents such as the Florentine Codex, gives us insights into the worldview of a now-vanished civilization. The Tizoc Stone stands as a powerful example of how art can be used to legitimize power and shape collective memory.