For colors, inferences were drawn from Adela Breton's watercolors of the late nineteenth century. This remarkable woman made over a dozen solo trips from England to Mexico, spending considerable time at Chichen Itza. Her meticulous drawing skills and color sense have preserved much of what has been irretrievably lost. The Breton watercolors that were most useful for this project were those of the Atlantids from the Upper Temple of the Jaguar. The color choices could fairly be said to represent some of the pigments available to the ancient Maya. Ignacio Marquina (1951) employed a similar yellow in his perspective view of the Ballcourt.


Photograph: Peter Mathews, Courtesy Bristol Museum