The Age of Exploration & Artistic Images of Native "American" Women
The early 1500s marked a significant era in global history, as European explorers began to report on the lands & peoples they encountered in the recently "re-discovered" Western Hemisphere. Among the various topics that captivated European imaginations (beyond the potential profit prospects of the terrain) the appearance, customs, & lives of indigenous women in the Americas were subjects of particular fascination.
As sailing explorers returned with tales of "exotic" lands & peoples, artists in Europe began to speculate about & depict native women on the other side of the world in prints & other visual formats. These depictions, often based on second-hand accounts, perhaps a few sketches, or sheer imagination, quickly became popular across the continent & the British Isles. The Age of Exploration created a wave of artistic representation reflecting both genuine curiosity & ,perhaps, the projection of European fantasies onto the New World.
As reports from explorers such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, & Hernán Cortés reached the nobles & then the general population, the public’s interest in the so-called "New World" grew rapidly. These explorers often described the native peoples they encountered in terms that highlighted their perceived exoticism & differences from Europeans. Indigenous women, in particular, were frequently portrayed emphasizing their "otherness" in appearance & imagined cultural practices.
European artists, capitalizing on this curiosity, began to create prints depicting the women of the Americas. The depictions were frequently a blend of observation, imagination, & European cultural biases. These prints became immensely popular, circulated among the European elite, & were often used to illustrate the narratives of explorers.
The artistic representations of indigenous women during this period often carried specific themes that reflected broader European fantasies about the Americas. One recurring theme was the idea of the "noble savage" - a concept that idealized indigenous peoples as pure & uncorrupted by civilization. These images contrasted with the realities of European society, where strict norms governed female behavior & appearance.
The fascination with these images intersected with the broader discourse on gender & the role of women in the various classes of society. The portrayal of native women as passive & submissive reinforced European patriarchal ideals while simultaneously presenting the Americas as a place where the traditional & religious concepts might be both challenged & reaffirmed.
These artistic representations also set the stage for later portrayals of indigenous peoples in European art & literature. The fascination with the exotic & the "noble savage," would continue to influence European culture as one of the legacies of the Age of Exploration.
Bibliography
Books
Carroll, Patrick J. Virgins of Guadalupe, The Last Rites of Saint Teresa, & Other Tales of Conquest. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, & the Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Honour, Hugh. The New Golden Land: European Images of America from the Discoveries to the Present Time. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975.
Mason, Peter. Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Pagden, Anthony. European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Seed, Patricia. Ceremonies of Possession in Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Silver, Larry. Marketing Maximilian: The Visual Ideology of a Holy Roman Emperor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
Articles
Aldana, Gerardo. "Image & Imagery: Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Gender in the New World." Renaissance Studies 21, no. 2 (2007): 179-196.
Bredekamp, Horst. "The Lure of America: European Artistic Responses to the New World." Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 59, no. 3 (1996): 361-378.
Friedman, John B. "The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art & Thought." Speculum 56, no. 4 (1981): 828-831.
MacCormack, Sabine. "Images of Conquest: Art as Information in the Early Americas." The Hispanic American Historical Review 79, no. 3 (1999): 399-402.
Pagden, Anthony. "The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian & the Origins of Comparative Ethnology." Ethnohistory 32, no. 3 (1985): 247-251.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. "Travel Writing & Ethnography." History & Anthropology 9, no. 4 (1996): 277-290.
Sturtevant, William C. "First Visual Images of Native America." American Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1973): 601-605.
