Bernard Picart, French, born Paris, - Le Mercure Des Mexicains Adoré...-Divinite qui Preside a la Chasse - 1722 - T-Shirt

This 1722 engraving by Bernard Picart shows an indigenous Mexican divinity who presides over the hunt, rendered in the language of a classical god and set within a finely worked European print.

Visual Elements & Composition

The image is built from fine engraved lines rather than solid fills, so light and shadow come from dense hatching and open passages of paper. The figure sits at the centre of the composition, with the decorative framing and the title lettering around it, giving the page the orderly balance of an early eighteenth-century book plate. The title itself, with its long French inscription and the date 1722, anchors the bottom of the work.

Meaning & Symbolism

Picart linked this Mesoamerican deity to Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and the hunt, so that a figure unfamiliar to European readers would read as a recognisable counterpart. The method was central to his Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, a multi-volume survey of world faiths that reshaped how Europeans understood global cultures. The print reflects an Enlightenment habit of comparing religions to find shared human impulses toward the divine, and it questioned the assumption that European doctrine was the measure of all belief.

Why It Works on a Tee

An engraving this detailed rewards a close look, and a chest-level graphic puts it in front of you at that distance, so the hatching and figure can be read the way Picart intended for a reader holding a page. The single central image suits a shirt's open front, where the print sits whole and uninterrupted.