Mexico is the modern term for a country that at one time was the site of several ancient empires, as well as the core of the Spanish Empire in North America.
The name Mexico is derived from the AzTECS’ name for themselves (the Mexica) and was a shortened reference to their capital city of Tenochtitlan. After the conquest Hernan Cortes rebuilt the city, retaining this nickname as its official name. The Spanish called the colony as a whole New Spain. Mexico was not used to denote the country until after it gained independence from Spain in 1821. In recent years there has been a new use for the term. Modern archaeologists frequently use the term Mexican to refer to the non-MAYA peoples of northern Mesoamerica, such as the Aztecs, ToLTECS, and Tarascan.
Mexico is a large, geographically diverse area. The main geographical feature of the country is the Mexican Plateau, also known as the central highlands. Throughout history this area has had the greatest concentration of human settlements. The highlands are shaped like a large “V,” with the tip some miles to the south of Mexico City and the arms continuing northward to the border with the modern-day United States. Except at its outer edges, the area is mostly level. Elevations are highest in the southern part of this zone (8,000 feet) and lowest at the U. S. border (4,000 feet). While the southern part of this zone (around Mexico City) receives adequate rainfall, the north is considerably drier and characterized by extensive deserts. The Southern Highlands begin at the Pacific Ocean and run north, including the modern-day Mexican states of Oaxaca and Guerrero. Mountain peaks in this region are at about 8,000 feet. Since most of the region is mountainous, humans have tended to congregate in small valleys that lie around 3,000 feet. The Gulf Coastal Plain is another major geographic zone, running from the Rio Grande in the north to the Yucatan Peninsula. It is a low-lying region that is wet and swampy in the south, becoming drier in the north. Veracruz and Tabasco are two of the most important subregions in this large area. The final major area of Mexico is the Yucatan Peninsula, consisting of the modern-day Mexican states of Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo. This is a large, flat table of limestone that is dry in the north and wetter in the south.
This range of geographical zones has given rise to a number of distinct cultures. Mexico is part of a large cultural area called Mesoamerica by modern anthropologists. This region covers most of modern-day Mexico along with Guatemala and parts of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. The arid borderlands in the north before 1492 were mostly peopled by nomadic hunters and gatherers. The center of the country, dominated by the Mexican Plateau, saw the rise of complex agricultural societies and eventually large empires such as the Aztecs. In the south broken topography and scattered valleys led to the development of small city-states focused mostly on the fertile valley floors. Both the low-lying Tabasco and Yucatan regions were home to the Maya people.
Mexico was the most important region within New Spain, containing most of the educational, health, and economic infrastructure. Arts such as music, metalworking, painting, and architecture thrived and were the equal of those in Europe. Mexico City itself remained one of the largest cities in Spanish America throughout the colonial period. The silver mines in Zacatecas were crucial to the colonial economy of New Spain and the Spanish Empire as a whole. Throughout the colonial period Mexico was one of the most developed, most densely populated regions of the New World.
Further reading: Peter Gerhard, A Guide to the Historical Geography of New Spain (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993); Michael C. Meyer and William L. Sherman, The Course of Mexican History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
—Scott Chamberlain
Michelangelo (1475-1564) Italian artist An Italian sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet, Michelangelo personified the highest ideals of the Renaissance.
Michelangelo di Buonarroti Simoni was born on March 6, 1475, in the Tuscan village of Caprese. Because of his mother’s frail health, he was raised in the family of a stonemason at the village of Settigano. Following his mother’s death and the remarriage of his father in 1485, Michelangelo rejoined his family in Florence and began school. At the time the Florence he experienced was rich and powerful. It was also a patron and symbol of the arts, a home to numerous cathedrals, churches, and palaces adorned with sculptures by Donatello, Verrochio, and Granacci and with paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, and Masaccio. Amid the rich artistic atmosphere Michelangelo fraternized with art students, practicing art by copying smuggled drawings of the masters’ works. Clinging to an impoverished noble title, his father, Lodovici, was aghast that his son desired to learn a trade. Nevertheless, he reluctantly apprenticed his son to Ghirlandaio in 1488.
Between 1489 and 1492 Michelangelo learned the rudiments of sculpture, apprenticing in the Medici gardens patronized by Florence’s unofficial ruler, Lorenzo the Magnificent. During this time he produced his first two sculptures, reliefs of the Christian Madonna of the Stairs and the classical Battle of the Centaurs. Following Lorenzo’s death in 1492, the political and religious climate of Florence changed and so did Michelangelo’s work. Reflecting the growing European demand for moral reform, the citizenry of Florence expelled the Medici family and looted their palace. Bereft of the art community’s most important patrons, many artists fled the city. Michelangelo drifted from Venice to Bologna and Rome, taking on commissions for sculptures. With his reputation solidified as an artist, he returned to Florence in 1501 at the request of the city. Wishing to regain prestige as a center for the arts, the city commissioned Michelangelo to turn a four-meter block of marble into a sculpture that was to adorn the outside of a cathedral. Following three years of work, much of it in the secrecy of a locked shed, Michelangelo unveiled David, a sculpture of the biblical figure portrayed as an ideally formed classical hero. During his stay in Florence from 1501 to 1506, he also completed reliefs of the Pitti
Madonna and the Taddei Madonna, produced the marble Madonna of the Burghes, and painted Doni Madonna. Moreover, he painted his cartoon for the Battle of Cascina (1504-05) to adorn the Palazzo Vecchio as a fresco opposite Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari.
In 1505 Pope Julius II invited Michelangelo to Rome, commissioning him to design his burial tomb. The project dragged on for more than 40 years. Equally frustrating for Michelangelo was Julius’s demand to fresco the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. “Foul I fare and painting is my shame,” stated the artist as he began the project, but the result was an elaborate composition composed of 343 colossal figures from the Bible and classical times, proving Michelangelo’s brilliance in the medium of painting. Influenced by Neoplatonism, the muscular figures on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel revealed an ideal type of human being whose beauty reflected their divine stature.
Between 1513 and 1534 Michelangelo served the Medici popes, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son Giovanni (Leo X) and the bastard nephew Giulio (Clement VII). As in his relationship with Julius II, Michelangelo found little in common with the Medici popes. Following Clement VII’s death in 1534, Michelangelo moved permanently to Rome, where he lived in a comfortable house provided by the heirs of Julius. He continued to serve the Vatican during the reigns of Popes Paul III and Julius III. The former, who waited impatiently for more than 30 years for the services of the master artist, commissioned Michelangelo to paint The Last Judement over the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel and the Conversion of Saul and the Crucifixion of St. Peter in the Vatican’s Pauline Chapel. Combined, the work on these frescoes lasted from 1535 to 1550. In 1547 Paul named Michelangelo the architect in chief of the new, partially completed St. Peter’s Basilica, often referred to as the greatest single project of the Renaissance. Completed after the artist’s death, St. Peter’s was constructed close to Michelangelo’s original plans.
Eccentric and finally independent, Michelangelo died in Rome on February 18, 1564, shortly before his 89th birthday. Supported by four popes and numerous other important patrons of art, his rise from artisan to artistic genius helped elevate the status of artists during the High Renaissance.
Further reading: Charles De Tolnay, Michelangelo, 6 vols. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1969-1975); Frederick Hartt, The Sistine Chapel (New York: Knopf, 1991); R. M. Letts, The Cambridge Introduction to the History of Art: The Renaissance (Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge University Press, 1981); David Summers, Michelangelo and the Language of Art (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1981).
—Matthew Lindaman
World History
