The Tlaxcalan Senate

The topics dealt with in works produced by the students of the National Fine Arts School began to vary as a result of the definitive triumph, in 1867, of the Liberal faction in Mexico. This trend was encouraged by the School itself, which, in 1869, organized a competition in which the First prize was to go to a painting dealing with a national topic, to be sent to the Annual Exhibition of the old Academy. This was not the only attempt to encourage works alluding to the nations pre-Hispanic past, for some private citizens also sponsored such efforts, as was the case of this picture commissioned to Rodrigo Gutiérrez by Felipe Sánchez Solís from the Mexican-antiquities room which was planning to set up in his home. The lawyer, teacher and Deputy, Sánchez Solís, famous for his patronage of the arts and for boasting that he was a descendent of one of the “most noble families of the Aztec empire", always endeavored to encourage the creation of literary and artistic works alluding to the "nacional" past, which, for him, was tantamount to the pre-Hispanic past. This painting depicts a group of people presided over by the four chiefs of the districts that made up the territory of Tlaxcala before the Conquest. The participants in the meeting are discussing the invitation made to them by Hernán Cortés to form an alliance against their enemies, the Mexica. A standing man, blind and advanced in years, appears to be expressing an opinion that is seconded by a younger man to his right. These two personages are Xicoténcatl the Elder, Lord of Tizatlán, and Xicoténcatl the Younger, his heir. On the records they were against the alliance, being convinced that defeat of the Mexica would mean defeat of all the regions, including Tlaxcala. However, the distrust of the aforesaid chiefs of Tizatlán was not shared by those of the other regions and Cortés proposal was accepted. This painting was among the works chosen to be shown at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris, and also at the International Columbus Exhibition held in Chicago in 1893. It entered the MUNAL, as part of the latter´s founding endowment, in 1982.