27 MARCH 2004, Page 62

In the Royal Academy

In primary colours like posies of spring flowers clumps of schoolchildren sit, cross-legged, listening to their teachers. Tezcatlipoca glowers on them, god of the Toltec darkness, glistening with sacrificial gore, and cruel Huitzilopochtli, whose hideous sculptured fangs gleam fatal in the drowsy afternoon. Voices informatively drone. But Chichen Itza's ancient god, Quetzalcoatl, ruler of this mysterious, primeval world, is hard to draw, the serpentine, plumed lizardbird. The knife's obsidian. A little quiz about evisceration, disembowelling and the gizzard follows, before they file out of the bloody dark into the welcoming sunshine of Green Park.

Norman Bissett