In 1535 the young Felipe de Guevara accompanied Carlos V on his successful campaign to recapture Tunis from the Turks, an event that was financed by the ransom of the Inca sovereign Atahualpa. Guevara also traveled with and observed the Flemish artist Jan de Vermeyn, who recorded visually the entire expedition so that it might be turned into the greatest tapestries of the Spanish royal...

The human need to record and thereby preserve information for later use manifests itself pictorially and hieroglyphically in Mesoamerica to an extent not seen elsewhere in the ancient Americas. Mesoamerican peoples developed several pictographic writing systems to preserve their knowledge; they painted and carved images on walls, containers, and sculptures, but, more fundamentally, they painted in books. The painter-authors and keepers of the books were guardians of community knowledge and …