Western Mexico as foundational works of Mexican aesthetics. The painter saw in the enlargement of his collection much more than a hobby; his purpose was to rescue and preserve the pre-Columbian heritage for a better understanding of Mexican art development. His fascination with stone figures and ceramic pieces became an inspiration for his artworks. A clear example of this is the figure of Xochipilli, the Lord of the Flowers, whose image Rivera illustrated in the mural paintings located in the stairs of the Secretariat of Public Education (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP). This drawing, in archaeological terms, is possibly the most accurate pictorial representation of an Aztec deity. It is known that the artist's fondness for collecting instigated an economic and familiar problem at the time. Mexican novelist and model Guadalupe Marín, Diego's wife for a time, was particularly upset by her husband's insistence on buying idols, regardless of his household expenses. This is demonstrated in a narration published in 1964 in the cultural newspaper El Gallo Ilustrado: "Go away, I tell you to take your tepalcates and leave my husband alone. Just see what Rivera does to me: he buys those mannequins and then he doesn't care that we don't even have enough money to eat. Surely the few cents that were for today's expense, this chacharero takes them". Regarding the nature of his collection, Rivera did not want it to be a scientific sampler, but instead sought to return the pieces their Mana, which in the words of the anthropologist, historian and philosopher Mircea Eliade (Bucharest, 1907 –Chicago, 1986) is: "(…) the mysterious and active force possessed by certain individuals, generally the souls of the dead and all spirits (…). It is a force different from the physical forces from a qualitative point of view, that is why it is exerted in an arbitrary way. A good warrior owes that quality not to his own strength or resources, but to the strength that a dead warrior's mana gives him. That mana is found in the small stone amulet that hangs around his neck." Diego Rivera aimed to rescue the ritual character of the pieces in his collection; that divine essence that they possessed at the time they were used and that endowed them with their real value. In an interview with the painter, the American journalist Betty Ross commented that "The master affectionately touched a stone figure, which