The Capitol Dome

5 THE CAPITOL DOME JOHN CARTER BROWN LIBRARY Fig. 7. This 1741 engraving was used in various seventeenth- and eighteen-century English books on the history of the Americas. Its sarcastic caption is "Spanish Gratitude. Cortes orders Motezuma to be Fetter'd." Fig. 8-9. "The Imprisonment of Moctezuma, or the Final Insult" (above) and "Hernán Cortés before Moctezuma," two of a series of 110 fascicles or pamphlets published from 1899-1901 as a Library for Mexican Chil- dren. sometimes placed within the Aztec city itself, in order that stylized pyramids and temples could form the backdrop—as indeed is the case in the Capitol Dome's version. The other two scenes favored by engravers and painters of the early modern centuries were that of Cortés placing Mont- ezuma under arrest (figs. 7, 8), and Montezuma repeating his surrender, sometimes before a notary (fig. 10). The contradic- tion inherent in the Aztec emperor voluntarily capitulating and yet needing to be seized stemmed from the fact that the conquistadors had invented and imagined the surrender. But over the centuries that contradiction was interpreted in various ways; for example, in early modern England, Montezuma's detention was depicted as Spanish ingratitude towards a cooperative ruler (fig. 7), whereas in nineteenth-century Mexico it was explained to school children as the humiliating consequence of his original surrender (figs. 8-9). AUTHOR AUTHOR

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