The Aztecs, through old-world eyes

A Getty Villa exhibit explores how Europeans looked to ancient Rome to understand the Mexican empire.

A 1,200-pound stone head of an Aztec moon goddess has moved into the Getty Villa. So have life-size statues of a warrior adorned with eagle feathers, a duck-billed wind god and a demon known as the Lord of Death.

Made between 1440 and 1521 and on loan from Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology and the Templo Mayor Museum, the massive artworks are among 64 sculptures, paintings and works on paper in "The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire." Opening Wednesday, it's the most surprising exhibition yet to appear at Southern California's bastion of classical Greek and Roman antiquities.

In "Aztec Pantheon," with an eye on its Mexican American audience, the Getty is celebrating the bicentennial of Mexican independence by exploring how Europeans came to understand the Aztecs -- in terms of the Roman Empire. "From the moment Europeans went to Mexico, especially Spanish conquistadors who accompanied Hernán Cortés in 1519 and missionaries who arrived after the conquest, they encountered a culture that was so unfamiliar, the only frame of reference they had was their knowledge of Roman antiquity," Lyons says. "Looking through that lens, they interpreted the Aztecs as the Romans of the New World.