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Dumbarton Oaks Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology
State and Cosmos in the Art of Tenochtitlan
Richard Fraser Townsend

Townsend offers an interpretation of major examples of Mexica monumental art by identifying three interrelated iconographic themes: the conception of the universe as a sacred structure; the correspondence of the social order and the territory of the nation with the cosmic structure; and the representation of Tenochtitlan as the historically legitimate successor to the civilization of the past.