Painting the Skin: Pigments on Bodies and Codices in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. ÉLODIE DUPEY GARCÍA, and MARÍA LUISA VÁZQUEZ DE ÁGREDOS PASCUAL, editors. 2018. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. x + 284 pp. $75.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-816-53844-7 .

Painting the Skin: Pigments on Bodies and Codices in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. ÉLODIE DUPEY GARCÍA and MARÍA LUISA VÁZQUEZ DE ÁGREDOS PASCUAL, editors. 2018. University of Arizona Press, Tucson. x + 284 pp. $75.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-816-53844-7.

In this richly illustrated and intriguing volume, the editors have brought together an interdisciplinary, multinational team of 29 scholars whose contributions in the foreword, introduction, epilogue, and 13 chapters provide a highly informative look at colors and pigments and the range of surfaces—from bodies to codices—that they adorn. One of its most impressive aspects is the extent to which it brings together a variety of disciplines to address the problem of color, allowing for an analysis of the chemistry of pigments to be interwoven with discussion of the symbolism of specific colors. For this reason, it will be a useful text across multiple contexts and disciplines. Judging from the volume's title, one might conclude that it deals primarily with color, but it offers equally fascinating treatments of how color interacted with scent and played a key role in therapeutic and medicinal practices. These issues are not often considered, and their inclusion here extends the discussion well beyond the optic to open powerful ways of approaching materials that, when considered at all, tend to be seen largely through an iconographic lens. Although each chapter deserves its own commentary, this review's space constraints require a focus on the general contours of the book.

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