Moonlight, Uxmal Ruins | Romantic Circles

Five pyramids and a stone-block building stand on a flat landscape, varied only by some small bushes and a few large rocks. The sky occupies a great portion of the picture: the clouds breaking at top right reveal the moon, whose light illumines the pyramids. It is unclear whether the pyramid surfaces are bare or covered in vegetation.

After reading John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood’s account of their expedition to Central America (Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan), Benjamin Moore Norman traveled to the Yucatán in order to record a number of new Maya sites and to collect Maya antiquities for donations to museums in the United States; Catherwood and Stephens would not explore these sites, in the northern Yucatán, till 1843. Norman left New Orleans for Havana on November 26, 1841, and arrived in the Yucatan on December 20. After exploring a series of other sites, Norman arrived in Uxmal in early March of 1842, and would remain there shortly until his departure for Mérida. Norman’s description of the ruins relays little of his personal experiences at the site, excepting an account of his emotional reaction to the “sublime” nature of the ruins (Norman 166).

This is one of the first picturesque vistas produced in the Americas to use the specific term, “sublime,” in its description: “The short period to which I was, unfortunately, restricted in the examination of these sublime ruins . . . A moonlight scene from the Governor’s House is one of the most enchanting sites I have ever witnessed” (Norman, Rambles in Yucatan). The word has powerful connotations in the Romantic period, being one of the central concepts associated with the powerful, emotional experience of viewing a picturesque landscape.

Norman’s images of Uxmal are less concerned with producing a scientific record of the site than with conveying a sense of the emotional and sensuous impact given by the experience of a place. They stand in opposition to his text, which is a point-by-point record of the buildings at the site. Consequently, we can see Norman's renderings of Uxmal as visual manifestations of his interest in sublime experience.

Locations Description

Uxmal is a pre-Columbian Maya city located in the modern Mexican state of Yucatán, approximately fifty miles south of the state capital, Mérida. The city was founded around 500 CE; modern archaeologists speculate that at its peak (700-1100 CE) the city was home to at least 25,000 people. The earliest detailed accounts of the city were published by Jean-Frédéric Waldeck (Voyage pittoresque et archéologique dans la province d'Yucatan pendant les années 1834 et 1836; Paris, 1838), John Lloyd Stephens (Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan; New York, 1841), and Benjamin Moore Norman (Rambles in Yucatan: Including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabah, Zayi, Uxmal, &c.; New York, 1843). The city was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

Publisher

J. & H.G. Langley

Collection

Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI

Accession Number

G95Y9.N84

Additional Information

Bibliography

Drake, Francis S. “Norman, Benjamin Moore.” Dictionary of American Biography Including Men of the Time; Containing Nearly Ten Thousand Notices of Persons ... Who Have Been Remarkable, or Prominently Connected with the Arts, Sciences, Literature, Politics, or History, of the American Continent. Boston: Houghton, 1879. Print.

Duyckinck, Evert A. “Benjamin Moore Norman” Supplement to the Cyclopædia of American Literature, Including Obituaries of Authors, Continuations of Former Articles, with Notices of Earlier and Later Writers Omitted in Previous Editions. New York: Scribner, 1866. 73. Print.

Norman, Benjamin Moore. Norman's New Orleans and Environs. New Orleans, 1845. Print.

Norman, Benjamin Moore. Rambles by Land and Water, or, Notes of Travel in Cuba and Mexico; Including a Canoe Voyage up the River Panuco, and Researches among the Ruins of Tamaulipas. New York, 1845. Print.

Norman, Benjamin Moore. Rambles in Yucatan: Or, Notes of Travel through the Peninsula, Including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-Chen, Kabak, Zayi, and Uxmal. 2d ed. New York, 1843. Print.

Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan. 2 vols. New York: Harper, 1841. Print.

Waldeck, Frédéric de, and Hernán Menéndez Rodríguez. Viaje Pintoresco Y Arqueológico a La Provincia De Yucatán, 1834-1836.México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1996. Print.