When Gentlemen and Savages played ball

Abstract

This study examines the way in which in the West inserted the Mesoamerican ballgame in an uninterrupted chain of its games, while it analyzes how the image of the Mesoamerican ballgame was forged on multiple references related to the games of the Renaissance in Europe, which in turn took Greco-Roman antiquity as a basis.

A corpus of images of the Mesoamerican ball game developed between the late 16th century and mid-20th century are analyzed to determine to what extent European concepts, ideas and practices concerning ball games, determined the way in which the Mesoamerican game is represented.

The sources of inspiration of these images have not been sufficiently studied, not withstanding their recurring use in the historiography devoted to the Mesoamerican ball game, and this study tries to establish the manner in which its creators, artists, conceived the conventions to represent it.