# Coronation Stone of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin > Unrecorded Mexica sculptor, Tenochtitlan - c. 1503 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-mexica-sculptor-tenochtitlan/coronation-stone-of-moctezuma-xocoyotzin/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-18 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unrecorded Mexica sculptor, Tenochtitlan - **Date:** c. 1503 - **Medium:** Basalt - **Dimensions:** 67.4 x 57.8 x 22.9 cm as catalogued by the Art Institute of Chicago. The 1983 exhibition catalogue gave the same block as 22.8 high x 67.3 long x 57.7 wide cm, and a 2023 article gives 55.9 x 66 x 22.9 cm - **Object type:** Antiquity - **Period:** Mexica (Aztec), Late Postclassic, early sixteenth century - **Current location:** Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 161 - **Attribution:** attributed ## Summary A basalt block a little over half a metre across, carved on every face, whose glyphs fix a single day: 15 July 1503, when Moctezuma the Younger took the Mexica throne. It sets that coronation inside the sequence of the five cosmic eras, so that a dynastic event is dated by the calendar of creation itself.Nothing whatever is recorded of it before February 1971, when it surfaces in a Los Angeles dealer's gallery. The two earliest documents are an authentication written for the dealer and a slide a scholar shot on the dealer's premises. In 1972 it was bought by an Illinois industrialist and spent eighteen years in a clock museum in Rockford. The Art Institute of Chicago bought it in January 1990.The 1983 catalogue that made it famous called it the Stone of the Five Suns, said its precise function was uncertain because no example of its type has ever been found in place, and never used the word coronation. The museum's title asserts what that catalogue would not, and in 2023 a specialist recorded in a footnote that Emily Umberger has questioned the monument's authenticity. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 1503-unknown** The ritual centre of Tenochtitlan `[disputed]` (origin) The Art Institute states the monument was originally located within the ritual precinct of Tenochtitlan, whose remains lie under central Mexico City. No findspot is documented. Nicholson wrote in 1983 that no precise provenance data are available but that it was probably discovered somewhere near the centre of Mexico City, and headed the entry: purportedly found in Mexico City. - **unknown-1971** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) Nothing whatever is recorded. No excavation, owner, sale, export document, customs entry or photograph is known for this monument before February 1971. The gap covers the Spanish conquest, the entire colonial period, Mexican independence, the nineteenth-century discoveries of Aztec monoliths in the Zocalo, and the twentieth century up to 1971. - **by 10 February 1971-1972** Stendahl Art Galleries, Los Angeles `[documented]` (dealer stock) Documented by two objects rather than a transaction. An unpublished typewritten analytical study prepared by Hasso von Winning and sent to Stendahl Art Galleries on 10 February 1971, inscribed HvW Feb. 10, 1971 and to Stendahl 10-II-71, in the West Lake Society archive, Rhode Island; and a slide of the object at Stendahl Art Galleries photographed by H. B. Nicholson, identified as 5 Suns Stone, marked S for Stendahl, and time-stamped with the processing date code FEB71H7, in the H. B. Nicholson Slide Archive at California State University, Los Angeles. Copies of both are in the museum's curatorial file. Nicholson's 1983 catalogue records that the block entered a Los Angeles private collection in the winter of 1971. - **1972-1990** Seth G. Atwood (1917-2010), the Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois `[documented]` (purchase) Sold to Atwood on 14 November 1972. The museum's evidence is a letter from Patricia Atwood dated 18 December 1989, copy in the curatorial file. Atwood ran the Atwood Vacuum Machine Company and had founded the Time Museum at the Clock Tower Resort in Rockford in 1971. The stone was lent from there to the National Gallery of Art in 1983, where the lender is listed as The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois. It was not part of the Sotheby's dispersal of the Time Museum's horological collection, having been sold nine years earlier. - **1990-present** Art Institute of Chicago `[documented]` (purchase) Sold to the Art Institute of Chicago on 9 January 1990, acquired through the Major Acquisitions Fund and accessioned 1990.21. No price has been published. On view in Gallery 161. Exhibited internationally at least six times since, including the Royal Academy in London, the Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn and the British Museum. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This monument has never been offered at auction. Both recorded sales, to Seth Atwood on 14 November 1972 and to the Art Institute of Chicago on 9 January 1990, were private, so no hammer price and no buyer's premium exist and no figure has been published for either. For scale in the same collection and the same decade: the horological collection of Atwood's Time Museum was dispersed by Sotheby's in four sales realising 57.9 million United States dollars in total, the first of which, in 1999, included the Henry Graves Patek Philippe at eleven million. This stone was in none of them, having been sold to the museum nine years before. ## Exhibitions - Art of Ancient Mexico: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, catalogue no. 6 as Stone of the Five Suns, lent by The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois, National Gallery of Art in association with Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, 28 September 1983 to 8 January 1984, 1983-1984 - The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, catalogue no. 3, as Coronation Stone of Moctezuma II (Stone of the Five Suns), Art Institute of Chicago, 10 October 1992 to 3 January 1993; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 4 February to 18 April 1993; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 6 June to 15 August 1993, 1992-1993 - Aztecs, catalogue no. 226, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 16 November 2002 to 11 April 2003; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 16 May to 10 August 2003; Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 12 September 2003 to 11 January 2004, 2002-2004 - The Aztec World (not in catalogue), The Field Museum, Chicago, 28 October 2008 to 19 April 2009, 2008-2009 - Moctezuma: Aztec Ruler, catalogue no. 14, British Museum, London, 24 September 2009 to 24 January 2010, 2009-2010 ## Literature - 1983, H. B. Nicholson with Eloise Quinones Keber, Art of Ancient Mexico: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, pp. 41-42, catalogue no. 6, as Stone of the Five Suns. - 1992, Richard Townsend, ed., The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes, exh. cat., Art Institute of Chicago, pp. 57-59, 375, cat. 3, fig. 13a-c. - 1993, James N. Wood, The Art Institute of Chicago: The Essential Guide, p. 15, as Coronation Stone of Motecuhzoma II. - 2003, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Felipe Solis Olguin, Aztecs, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, pp. 455-456, cat. 226. - 2005, Eduardo Matos Moctezuma and Felipe Solis Olguin, The Aztec Calendar and other Solar Monuments, INAH, pp. 125-126, 155. - 2009, James Cuno, The Essential Guide, 3rd ed., Art Institute of Chicago, p. 24; and Richard R. Townsend, The Aztecs, 3rd ed., Thames and Hudson, pp. 29-30. - 2023, Marc Grigsby, in Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, on the Aztec Calendar Stone as a coronation monument, with the Chicago stone as comparison and the authenticity question in footnote 4. ## Open questions - Is the monument ancient? Emily Umberger has questioned its authenticity in a personal communication of 2019, recorded in a published footnote by Marc Grigsby, who sets the doubt aside on iconographic grounds. No scientific examination of the stone has been published. - Where did it come from, and when did it leave Mexico? Nothing at all is recorded before 10 February 1971. Nicholson wrote only that it was purportedly found in Mexico City and probably discovered somewhere near the centre of the city. - Who sold it to Stendahl Art Galleries, and when? The two earliest documents are an authentication commissioned by the dealer and a slide taken on the dealer's premises, and neither names a source. - What does Hasso von Winning's unpublished February 1971 study actually say? It is the earliest expert opinion on the object, it was written for the seller, and it has never been published. This record has not read it. - Does the Stendahl Galleries archive at the Getty contain anything on this stone? The archive holds letters, appraisals and sales records and is the subject of a Pre-Hispanic Art Provenance Initiative, but no finding on this object has been published. - What did the Art Institute of Chicago pay Seth Atwood on 9 January 1990? No price has been published and there was no auction. - Why is the 1 Rabbit date on the underside incised in a style that differs from the relief carving of every other surface? Nicholson recorded the difference and did not explain it, and no later explanation was found. - Is the coronation date 15 July or 25 July 1503? The Art Institute gives 15 July, following Nicholson's derivation from the Caso correlation; Grigsby's 2023 reading of the same 1 Crocodile glyph gives 25 July. - Which dimensions are right? The museum, the 1983 catalogue and a 2023 article give three different sets, agreeing only on the thickness of 22.9 cm. - Has Mexico ever made a claim? No claim by the Mexican state or by its National Institute of Anthropology and History was found in the sources consulted, and the official text of the 1972 federal law on archaeological monuments could not be retrieved to establish what regime applies, so this record does not characterise it. ## Sources - [1] Art Institute of Chicago, collection record 1990.21, Coronation Stone of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Tombstone, dimensions, glyph reading and the date 15 July 1503, credit line, gallery, the full provenance text with the von Winning study and the Nicholson slide, and the publication and exhibition histories. Read through the museum's public API; the object page at artic.edu/artworks/75644 refuses automated requests. - [2] H. B. Nicholson with Eloise Quinones Keber, Art of Ancient Mexico: Treasures of Tenochtitlan, National Gallery of Art, 1983, catalogue no. 6, Stone of the Five Suns. Read in the Internet Archive full text: the Time Museum lender line, purportedly found in Mexico City, the winter 1971 entry into a Los Angeles private collection, the glyph reading, the Caso correlation and 15 July 1503, the differing incised style of the 1 Rabbit underside date, and the statement that the precise function is uncertain. The word coronation does not occur anywhere in the volume. - [3] Marc Grigsby, on the Aztec Calendar Stone as a monument to the coronation of Motecuhzoma II, Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, 2023. Footnote 4 records that Emily Umberger has questioned the authenticity of the Chicago monument in a personal communication of 2019. Also gives dimensions of 55.9 x 66 x 22.9 cm and reads the 1 Crocodile glyph as 25 July 1503. - [4] Getty, 'Research to Shed Light on 20th-Century Trade in Mexican Antiquities', 14 November 2019, on the Stendahl Galleries archive and the Pre-Hispanic Art Provenance Initiative, with Mary Miller, director of the Getty Research Institute, on Stendahl's trade in antiquities often looted, forged, or assembled from disparate fragments, and on his building of the first mass market for pre-Columbian antiquities. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Seth G. Atwood', for his dates, the Atwood Vacuum Machine Company and the founding of the Time Museum at the Clock Tower Resort, Rockford, in 1971. TERTIARY; flagged for replacement with an obituary of record or the Time Museum's own publications. - [6] JCK, 'Final Time Museum auction brings in $18.2 million', on the Sotheby's dispersal of the Time Museum's horological collection, the 57.9 million dollar total across four sales and the 1999 sale of the Henry Graves Patek Philippe at eleven million. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.