Uxmal: House of the Dwarf and House of the Nuns

This image—rendered using a camera lucida—depicts ruins of the city of Uxmal in Mexico.

A view of the ruins of Uxmal depicts the House of the Nuns (on the left) and the House of the Dwarf (on the right). The House of the Nuns is a short, wide, one-story building with a series of small windows and an arched entryway, while the House of the Dwarf is a large, pyramid temple structure. Two figures stand between the two buildings. Trees and small bushes grow over the buildings, the House of the Dwarf in particular, which also has a portion of its side broken away to reveal the interior structure.

Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens arrived at Uxmal in 1841, on the final leg of their first Mesoamerican expedition (Bourdon 148). While previous cities they encountered (Copán and Palenque in particular) were overrun with vegetation, Uxmal’s location on a high bluff left it relatively exposed, facilitating the pair’s documentation and survey of the site.

Catherwood’s views of Uxmal, along with a number of his other illustrations of Maya sites, constitute the first systematic attempt at a realistic representation of Mexican archaeological sites, as well as the first time the camera lucida had been used to depict such ruins (Evans 53). Catherwood’s drawings blend Enlightenment notions of faithful, scientific representations with nascent, Romantic-era visual technologies, and are particularly bound up with Romantic notions of landscape: Catherwood’s rendering of Uxmal clearly invoke notions of the picturesque as formed during the Romantic period. Consequently, these images rely on both a concern with scientific accuracy, resulting in the use of the camera lucida, as well as an interest in the aesthetic vision espoused by Romantic ideals.

Catherwood’s illustrations of archaeological sites, such as those from Uxmal, serve a dual function. First, they accurately illustrate the size, proportion, and visual decoration of ancient Maya cities, data which was important to potential collectors of Maya artifacts, museum exhibitors, and investors in future expeditions to the region. Secondly, while some of the sites Catherwood depicts were already known to Americans and Europeans, these were the first illustrations of Mexico in which the artist was personally concerned with the faithful re-creation of the correct size, proportion, and landscape of the city. This concern was particularly important for Catherwood, who made use of a camera lucida—relying on an assumption of its faithful, visual re-creation of reality—to assist in his rendering of Maya cityscapes.