Palenque Drawings (Collection) Facsimile Edition

The Palenque Drawings collection gathers a significant body of 18th century visual records connected to the ancient Maya city of Palenque, located on a natural platform in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Once the seat of a powerful royal court in the 7th century AD, the city was abandoned in the ninth century and gradually reclaimed by the surrounding forest. Its ruins entered colonial notice in the mid-18th century, when inhabitants of the nearby village of Santo Domingo de Palenque brought the site to wider attention.

Royal Inquiry and Fieldwork in 1787

In 1787, King Charles III of Spain ordered the governor-general of Guatemala to investigate the ruins and recover artifacts for the National Museum in Madrid. The task was assigned to Antonio del Río, an officer of the Spanish army, who spent five weeks cleaning, examining, and exploring the complex while directing a sustained campaign of recording on paper.

Ricardo Almendáriz and the Core Series

Del Río hired a Guatemalan draftsman, Ricardo Almendáriz, whose work anchors the collection. A principal sequence is described as 27 plates (including three double-page compositions, c. 36×26 cm), establishing a visual inventory of monuments and reliefs that could circulate far from the jungle site.

Multiple Hands and Documentary Groupings

Alongside Almendáriz, the collection distinguishes further bodies of drawings: José Antonio Calderón’s group of four subjects (including representations of relief figures and the Tower) and material signed by Antonio Bernasconi, including a map and additional plates. Later copy-lines and reworkings—some explicitly described as “embellished”—show how Palenque’s imagery was repeatedly recalibrated as it moved through scholarly and administrative channels.

Madrid Repositories and Afterlives

Preserved today between the Biblioteca del Palacio Real and the Real Academia de la Historia in Madrid, these drawings chart an early history of archaeological documentation in the Americas, linked to del Río’s investigation—often regarded as a foundational work of scientific archaeology in the New World.