Diego Rivera...Human sacrifice before Tohil 1931

Watercolor painted by Diego Rivera in San Francisco, Calif. during the summer of 1931, originally commissioned to illustrate a never-published English translation of the Popol Vuh by John Weatherwax.

Diego Rivera ... La noche de los rábanos... 1946

Diego Rivera... The Popol Vuh... illustrations 1930-33

In 1930, while in San Francisco, Mexican artist Diego Rivera began a series of illustration for 

a translation of the Popol Vuh by North American writer John Weatherwax. Both men shared

 a fascination with the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. The Popol Vuh, or council book, 

recounts the ideas and traditions, origins and dynastic chronology up to the year 1550 of 

the ancient Quiché Maya inhabitants of the highlands of present-day Guatemala.

Beginning as oral tradition, the Popol Vuh was set down in hieroglyphic form, then into what 

Popol Vuh scholar Dennis Tedlock has called an “alphabetic substitute,” before being 

transcribed and translated into Spanish by the Dominican friar Francisco Ximénez in the eighteenth century.

The Creation

Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.

Watercolor and gouache on paper. 48 × 64 cm. (19 × 25¼ in.)

The Trials of Hero Twins 

Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.

Watercolor and gouache on paper. 

31 × 48 cm. (12¼ × 18¾ in.)

Human Sacrifice Before Tohil 

Illustration for Popol Vuh, 1930–1933.

Gouache on paper. 

31 × 48 cm. (12¼ × 18¾ in.)