Search for the Codex Cardona

In The Search for the Codex Cardona, Arnold J. Bauer tells the story of his experiences on the trail of a cultural treasure, a Mexican “painted book” that first came into public view at Sotheby’s auction house in London in 1982, nearly four hundred years after it was presumably made by Mexican artists and scribes. On folios of amate paper, the Codex includes two oversized maps and 300 painted illustrations accompanied by text in sixteenth-century palaeography. The Codex relates the trajectory of the Nahua people to the founding of the capital of Tenochtitlan and then concentrates on the consequences of the Spanish conquest up to the 1550s. If authentic, the Codex Cardona is an invaluable record of early Mexico. Yet there is no clear evidence of its origin, or what happened to it after 1560, or even where it is today, following its last known appearance, in 1998 at Christie’s auction house in New York. Bauer first saw the Codex Cardona in 1985 in the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, where scholars from Stanford and California were attempting to establish its authenticity. Allowed to gently lift a few pages of this ancient treasure, Bauer was hooked. By 1986, the Codex had once again disappeared from public view. Bauer’s curiosity about its provenance and whereabouts brought him into contact with an international cast of curators, agents, charlatans, and erudite book dealers, and led him down many forking paths, from California to Seville and Mexico City, to the Firestone Library in Princeton, to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and Christie’s in New York. The Search for the Codex Cardona is a mystery that touches on issues of cultural patrimony, the workings of the rare books and manuscript trade, the uncertainty of archives and evidence, and the ephemerality of the past and its remains.

“The Search for the Codex Cardona is a terrific read. I could hardly put it down. If the Codex is real, and I came to believe that it probably is authentic, then it is the most important document of the early colonial world to have come to light in more than 100 years.”--Mary Miller, Dean of Yale College and author of The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec “The Search for the Codex Cardona is, like an Aztec worldview, about a paradox and a pilgrimage through caves, cities, and marketplaces. Is it part of a very energetic ‘hoax’ or a story representing the tragic losses of the indigenous Mexican world, carried, washed, and burned away in the millennial passions of the Spaniards? The author makes us ask, ‘Could it be that there was once such a book of Mexican wonder and cultural creativity telling of the space and time of the Aztecs and their profound encounter with the strangers from across the sea? A book now dismembered into scattered pieces of stories and images, waiting for a new generation to piece the stories back together?’ The real value of the book is that it leaves the reader wondering whether it is an example of a deep human drive to play the trickster with us or whether the Codex is just around the corner in a rare books shop or closet. Reader Beware! Reader Alert!”--Davíd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard University "A chance invitation to view a rare book said to have been produced in early Mexico led Bauer to a quarter-century investigation into the origin and ownership of the Codex Cardona. This ancient book, filled with lavish decorations akin to a Book of Hours and including maps with tax data like the Domesday Book, was written in Mexico around the mid-16th century. As in the best suspense novels, Bauer begins in the middle of the action. Obsessed with tracing the provenance and present location of this historical volume, he follows clues into the murky world of international antiquities dealers and prestigious auction houses. His intriguingly conspiratorial tone enables the reader to be privy to his search for the answers to the scholarly riddles." - Brian RenVall, Mesalands Community Collage, The Library Journal "This is the strangest book that I have ever reviewed. It is part mystery story, part fantasy and part history. The book concerns the sudden and unexpected appearance in 1982 at Sotheby's London of a magnificent manuscript purported to be a 16th-century Aztec painted book called the Codex Cardona. If authentic, it would have been the most extensive codex yet discovered, totalling 427 pages, with more than 300 painted illustrations and two detailed and extraordinary maps. Such a treasure would revolutionise the study of Aztec civilisation and early-period colonial rule in Mexico. The manuscript was supposedly assembled under the direction of one Captain Alonzo Cardona y Villaviciosa between the years 1550 and 1556. And yet there is no record of this captain, and no expert had ever heard of the Codex Cardona. Herein lies the mystery that this book sets out to solve" - Alan R Sandstrom, Times Higher Education

Contents; Dedication; List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Preface; 1. The Crocker Lab; 2. The World of Painted Books; 3. Early Doubts; 4. Sotheby’s (London); 5. The Getty; 6. Sloan Ranger; 7. Nights in the Gardens of Coyoacan; 8. A Mysterious Affidavit; 9. Seville; 10. Christie’s of New York; 11. El Palacio del Marqués; 12. Librería Zócalo; 13. An Internet Posting; 14. The Architect’s Studio; 15. Pasaje de las Flores; 16. An Antiquities Dealer; 17. Ibiza; 18. A Madrid Anticuario; 19. Resolution Notes; Bibliography; Index