The Vatican Museums – Highlight Tours - School Travel

Ethnological Missionary MuseumQuetzalcóatl, Pre-Colombian Mexican divinityThe sculpture is a representation of Quetzalcóatl, a Nahvati name that indicates the FeatheredSerpent god and also the official title of the high priest. In the Aztec pantheon Quetzalcóatl,god of the day, creator of maize, of the religious ceremonies and lord of the priests, opposedthe destructive and nocturnal Tezcatlipoca, patron of warriors. This mythological reptile is thesymbol of one of the main and most complex divinities of Central America. According totradition, the emperor Montezuma II identified Cortés, the conqueror who had come by seafrom the east, with Quetzalcóatl who, according to a version of the Toltech myth of Ce Acatl,had gone away towards the east promising to return in a not specified future. This sculpture,from the high plain of Mexico, datable to the classical period of Aztec art, was given to PopePius XI by the Borgiano Museum of Propaganda Fide of Rome.