Artifacts are unique among the culturally constituted forms of expression in represent-ing at once cultural acts and unmediated documents of cultural practices. They have alife span that extends significantly beyond the moment of their reification and, beingmostly portable, lend themselves better than other cultural forms to decontextualiza-tion and alienation. Their material nature makes them objects for close and repeatedinspection and evaluation. For these reasons, artifacts play a pivotal role in the processof culture contact, where tangible evidence for cultural differences is actively gatheredin order to define the other culture in terms of one’s perceptions of it.

As material documents of another culture, however, artifacts also pose some seri-ous problems. Because they can be grasped physically, they often create for the view-er the illusion of unproblematic comprehension of their function and meaning.Removed from their appropriate original context, forms may be (and generally are)interpreted in terms of function and meaning according to the rules for reading shapesvalid only for the culture of the viewer. Rather than leading to a better understandingof the other, such misreadings often result in gross misperceptions of the other andconsequently in inappropriate behavior toward it.

European technological superiority, as deduced from the ability to produce suchpreviously unknown items as glass beads or iron implements, initially caused manyindigenous peoples of the Americas to regard their makers or the objects themselvesas supernatural beings and to treat them accordingly. Conversely, Europeans applyingtheir standards of decent clothing to the comparative nakedness of the inhabitants ofthe tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas were quick to generalize about thedeficiency of indigenous cultures – or to see nudity as an indication of their persistentstate of nature, be it paradisiac or otherwise.

Given the importance of the mutual evaluation of the respective material culturesupon first contact, the study of this process is of obvious significance for a better under-standing of cultural interaction. Such an understanding, however, is impeded by atleast two factors. One is the asymmetry inherent in the sources: Direct evidence is onlyavailable for European views of indigenous products, whereas native reactions are –with few exceptions – transmitted only in mediated form through the writings of con-temporaneous European observers. The second problem lies in the interpretation of

A FIRST EUROPEAN ASSESSMENT OF INDIGENOUS AMERICAN ART

Christian F. Feest

Translations published as:Dürer et les premières évaluations européennes de l’art mexicain. In: Joëlle Rostkowski, Sylvie Devers(eds.), Destins croisés. Cinq siècles de rencontres avec les Amérindiens (Paris 1992: UNESCO—AlbinMichel), 107–119 (Spanish edition: Una evaluación europea del arte mexicano. In: Joëlle Rostkowski,Sylvie Devers (eds.), Destinos cruzados. Cinco siglos de encuentros con los amerindios. México, DF 1996:Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 93–104.)

European sources of the 16th century, which are based on cultural premises that todayare no longer shared or fully understood even by the modern heirs of this cultural tra-dition. Much as in the interpretation of artifacts from another culture, an understand-ing of 16th century texts is naively taken for granted because words are recognized andread without regard to the shifts in meaning and cultural context they may have under-gone. (Recognition of this problem should also serve as a sufficient deterrent against anall too easy, yet common interpretation of indigenous peoples’ behavior at contactthrough an application of their present attitudes.)

An illustrative case is supplied by the aesthetic recognition of Aztec and otherindigenous American artifacts in 16th century Europe. Of the various groups of suchworks carried across the Atlantic at that time, few were as prominently displayed andcommented upon as the objects sent in 1519 from Mexico to Emperor Charles V byHernan Cortés (Feest 1990:33). These included some of the “presents” fromMoctezuma delivered to the conquistador approaching Tenochtitlán, whose signifi-cance in Aztec terms can be gleaned from traditions recorded later in the same centu-ry by the Dominican monk Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1950–1969, 13: 11–13). Themost frequently cited account relating to their European display is Albrecht Dürer’swords of surprise at the sight of these exotic treasures in the afternoon of 27 August1520 in Brussels.

From the contexts in which this passage continues to be cited may be gleaned thesignificance attributed to the fact that these words were those of an artist who, it isimplied, as such had gained an immediate access to the aesthetic merits of the Aztecworks, and who was thus able to describe them “in an appraisal far ahead of his time,”rather than in the conventional clichés of the ‘barbaric’ or ‘grotesque’ (Kopplin 1987:296; Jantz 1976: 94; cp. Anders 1971: 4; Elliott 1976: 21). His “open-mindednesstoward and valuation of these testimonies of foreign cultures” is sometimes also seenrelated to a specific German openness in heart and spirit toward everything indigenousAmerican (Bilang 1971: 8; Jantz 1976: 104). George Kubler (1991: 43) takes a moredetached view when he qualifies Dürer’s “hurried traveler’s notes” as less perceptivethan those of other observers, yet he still accepts them as an expression of an at leastpartial aesthetic recognition. Hugh Honour (1975: 29) is certainly close to the mark inhis warning that Dürer’s comments, despite “the ring of truth about them,” should notbe taken literally.

Dürer’s text, as collated faithfully from two surviving copies of the diary (Rupprich1956–1969, 1: 155), is rarely reproduced in the original even in German publications(e.g., Nowotny 1960: 17–18). Modernized versions have improved its readability inour own time, but have also removed the most obvious indication of the time that haspassed since it was penned down. Previous translations into English and Spanish, how-ever, have gone far beyond normalization into full fledged interpretation of Dürer’smeaning. My own effort to render these words more or less faithfully into English,although more literal than previous ones, likewise cannot reproduce the flavor of theoriginal, and should moreover be read in conjunction with the subsequent compara-tive discussion:

“Also have I seen the things, that one has brought to the king from the new goldenland: a fully golden sun, a full fathom wide, likewise a fully silver moon, also thus

2

large, likewise two chambers full of suchlike equipment [rüstung], likewise of allkinds of their weapons, harness, ordnance [geschucz], marvellous defences [wehr,i.e. probably shields], strange clothing, bedding and all kinds of marvellous thingsfor each and every use, that there is much more beautiful to look at than wondrousthings. These things have all been costly, that one has valued them at hundredthousand gulden worth. And yet I have all days of my life seen nothing that has thusdelighted my heart as these things. For I have seen among them wonderful artifi-cial things [wunderliche künstliche ding] and have wondered at the subtle ingeniaof the people in foreign lands. And the things that I have had there I do not knowhow to express.”

The supposition that Dürer had in fact recognized the Mexican objects as “art”becomes especially apparent in the English and Spanish translations of the text, inwhich the phrase “wonderful artificial things” [wunderliche künstliche ding] is ren-dered as “wonderful works of art” (Conway 1889: 102; Honour 1975: 28; Jantz 1976:94; Hutchison 1990: 141), “wonders of art” (Panofsky 1945, 1: 209), “strange worksof art” (Anders 1971: 46; Nicholson and Keber 1983: 29; Pierce 1990: 247–248),“astounding works of art” (Bernal 1980: 131), “amazing artistic objects” (Miller 1986:202), or “maravillosas obras de arte” (Palm 1951: 65) and “cosas extrañas de arte”(Anders 1971:4). Even German versions of the text impart this less than original mean-ing: in one case the full phrase is cut off in the middle of the capitalized second adjec-tive (“wunderliche Künst”), whereas the German edition of Erwin Panofsky’s Dürermonograph retranslates “wonders of art” from the English without recourse to the orig-inal text (Bilang 1971: 10; Panofsky 1977: 279).

Dürer’s Low Countries Diary actually uses the word “kunst” [art] exclusively for pic-tures, in other words for products of his trade, and not for an abstract idea, whosemodern meaning has only developed since the 16th century. Despite Dürer’s protes-tation that the Mexican objects had been “much more beautiful to look at than won-drous things,” they are nonetheless qualified as “marvellous,” “wonderful,” “strange,”and “costly.” These descriptors clearly relate the “wonderful artificial things” to thoseartificialia which together with unusual naturalia were the subject matter to be collect-ed in the Kunst- and Wunderkammern of the Renaissance, and in which the exoticmanufactures were frequently placed with the natural materials from which they hadbeen shaped (cp. Impey and MacGregor 1985).

A somewhat more careful evaluation of the text will not only have to scrutinizeDürer’s usage of specific words, but also the context in which the statement appears.In fact, the text continues without even a new paragraph with the remark: “I have seenbesides in Brussels many beautiful things, and in particular I have seen there a big fishbone as if it had been mured together from freestone blocks.” Immediately precedingDürer’s praise of the Mexican artifacts we find the passage: “I have seen in the king’shouse in Brussels looking out into the back the springs, labyrinth, menagery, that I havenever seen more pleasant things, more agreeable to me, like a paradise” (Rupprich1956–1969, 1: 155). This accumulation of emphatic praise for heterogeneous thingscertainly supplies a rather different perspective on Dürer’s supposedly unique admira-tion for the Mexican works. As Dürer’s editor and translator William Conway (1889:144) has pointed out more than a century ago, the consideration given to unusual phe-

3

nomena in the Low Countries Diary is noteworthy: the bones of St. Ursula and theAntwerp Giant, the big fish, or the crook-nosed Italian named Opitius take an equalplace next to the “things ... from the new golden land.”

The attention devoted by Dürer, an apprenticed goldsmith as well as a goldsmith’sson, to the golden sun and silver moon may be significant. They are the only items forwhich he mentions the material from which they were made, and which for theirmaterial value alone would have been regarded as “costly,” and which therefore alsotook center stage in other contemporaneous descriptions of these objects.

Dürer’s interest in exotic artifacts was not limited to the pieces from Mexico. Whilein the Low Countries, he obtained such things as a “Calecutish wooden shield,” “sev-eral feathers, Calecutish things,” “an old Turkish whip,” “2 Calecutish ivory salt cellars,” and a “Calecutish small target, made of fishskin” (Rupprich 1956–1969, 1: 152, 156.165. 166). Whereas the ivory salt cellars may be clearly identified as Afro-Portugueseivories (Bassani and Fagg 1988: 53), “Calecutish” seems to stand for “exotic” in gener-al, and could equally mean “Indian,” “Brazilian,” or “African.” In the “Triumph ofMaximilian I,” for example, published a few years prior to Dürer’s purchases, the “peo-ple of Calicut” shown on three woodcuts after drawings by Hans Burgkmair are for themost part dressed in Brazilian (Tupinambá) featherwork – an indication not only for thebroad usage of the word “Calicut,” but also for a confusion between India and theAmericas continued from Columbus’s days (Appelbaum 1964; cp. Sturtevant 1976:420–422; Colin 1988: 335–336). Dürer had himself used similar items of Tupinambáfeather work in a 1515 marginal drawing in a “Book of Hours” for Maximilian I(Sturtevant 1976: 423; Colin 1988: 335–336).

The literature has commented repeatedly on the fact that Dürer had made nodrawings of the Mexicana seen in Brussels. Honour (1975: 29) takes this to be signifi-cant, but does not propose what it could have been significant for – perhaps the visu-al counterpart of the artist’s speechlessness? Schneider (1987: 144) suggests “anxietiesof contact, which were triggered in him by the astonishing otherness,” whereasNowotny (1960: 17) thinks that Dürer may not even have had the opportunity to makesketches under the circumstances of the display. A drawing attributed to HansBurgkmair showing a black man wearing Tupinamba feather clothing and carrying aMexican shield probably belonging to the group seen by Dürer shows that there wereno principle obstacles for sketching these objects (Rowlands 1988: 187–188; Feest1990: 25). Dürer’s own rendering of Tupinamba items and his collecting of exotic arti-facts noted above similarly illustrate his lack of “anxieties of contact.”

In a somewhat wider perspective, an answer to some questions raised by Dürer’sremarks may be attempted: How unique was his evaluation of indigenous Americanworks? Was it related to his specific experiences as an artist? Was it specificallyGerman?

There are fortunately a number of more or less extensive descriptions of theMexican objects, first displayed in Sevilla and Valladolid, and later in Brussels, whichmay profitably be compared here. Bernal Díaz del Castillo (1956: 74) saw them inMexico (but described his impressions only four decades later); Bartolomeo de lasCasas (1875–1876, 4: 484–486) recorded his reactions to their showing in Sevilla notquite as late, whereas Petrus Martyr, the official chronicler of the Spanish Indies, had

4

looked at them both in Sevilla and Valladolid only two years before the first publica-tion of his “review” (Martyr 1521: 36–39; 1530: fol. 61 v–62 r; Richard Eden’s ratherfree translation of Martyr is remarkable for its additional emphasis on the objects’ strik-ing character – despite the fact that Eden had never seen them; cp. Martyr 1555: fol.163 r–164 r.) Besides these three major texts, there are a number a shorter accountswhich may likewise be compared here (cp. Feest 1990: 33, 52–53). In addition, thereis report by Gasparo Contarini, the Venetian ambassador to Charles V, who had seensimilar objects sent from Spain between 1521 and 1525 (Alberi 1840: 53).

Martyr’s description of the objects includes a digression entitled “Laudat industri-am artificium Indorum” [‘He praises the industry of the artificial works of the Indians’],which closely parallels some of Dürer’s sentiments. In front of the headdresses, belts,and fans made of feathers Martyr confesses his speechlessness (in Eden’s rendering “...I wott not what I should say,” “... of which I am not able to write”), and he feels boundto stress their superior “ingenia” (“wyttes and inuentions”). He, too, claims never tohave seen “any thing whose bewtie myght so allure the eyes of men,” just as headmires the “elegantia” (“artificial bewtie”) of the featherwork. But Martyr differs fromDürer in explicitly stressing that he had been more impressed by the technical execu-tion than by the material value – although this claim recurs almost as a set phrase(Martyr 1530: fol. lxi v; 1555: fol. 163 v).

The word “subtle” used by Dürer to characterize the Mexican’s “ingenia” is notused by Martyr, but by several other observers: “It is like subtle and beautiful things,”says an anonymous writer, whose words from Vera Cruz were reported in a Germannewsletter of 1520. The same newsletter also quotes another anonymous observerfrom Sevilla, who called the big metal disks “uncommonly subtle” (Nowotny 1960: 15,16). Las Casas similarly speaks of a gold-trimmed wooden helmet as “very subtle,”while Contarini found the featherwork to be “miraculous” and thought he never beforeseen “such subtle work” (Las Casas 1875–1876, 4: 484, cp. 437; Alberi 1840: 53).

Las Casas (1875–1876, 4: 486, 484) shared Martyr’s feeling that “the beauty andworkmanship” exceeded the value of the material (which he nonetheless notes) andadds that the objects had been made with such “skillfulness (artificio), that theyseemed to be a dream and not made by human hands.” Francisco López de Gómara(1553: fol. xxv r), Cortés’s secretary, agrees that (except for the precious metal disks)the Mexican objects had been “more beautiful than valuable” (“mas lindas que ricas... y valia mas la obra que las mesmas cosas”). Las Casas concludes by saying that allthose who had seen those “precious and skillfully made and most lovely things ... wereto the greatest extent equally surprised and delighted” (Las Casas 1875–1876, 4: 486).

One should not, however, suppose that these delighted observers had in fact cor-rectly seen, recognized, and understood the artifacts they had gazed at in astonish-ment. The huge golden disk, for example, carried according to Las Casas in its centerthe image of the sun, surrounded by rays and foliage, as well as figures of animals;Martyr thought that he could recognize the image of a king seated on his throne andwearing a dress reaching to his knees, surrounded by trees and flowers, such as if hewas sitting in a meadow. An anoymous reporter saw a crouching woman surroundedby several wild animals, López de Gómara speaks of foliage and animals, Díaz delCastillo could only remember “many kinds of images,” whereas the official packing list

5

simply describes the representations as “monsters” (Las Casas 1875–1876, 4: 485;Martyr 1530: fol. lxi v.; Nowotny 1960: 16, 21; López de Gómara 1553: fol. xvii r;Díaz del Castillo 1956: 74).

One should not be overly surprised to find that the Aztec sources on this groupbarely note the two metal disks which so enraptured their European viewers: They arecalled “golden suns, one yellow, one white” by an anonymous Aztec writer of the 16thcentury (Mengin 1939). Sahagún’s Aztec informants do not mention them at all in theirextensive account of “Moctezuma’s presents.” Precious metals, after all, were not val-ued in Aztec Mexico as much as other materials, such as greenstone.

It is obvious that no correct perception was possible in the absence of adequateconcepts, and this deficiency also may be identified as the root of the frequent speech-lessness already noted in the discussion of Dürer’s and Martyr’s texts. It reappears inthe words of the two anonymous correspondents quoted by the 1520 newsletters(Nowotny 1960: 14, 16). Even earlier in the encounter between Europe and the NewWorld the same phenomenon is highly prominent. In the first letter by ChristopherColumbus (whose text has only been preserved in a paraphrase written by Las Casas),the interior of a house on one of the islands is described as “a wonderful work, likerooms, made in a way which I cannot describe” (Colón 1982: 71–72). Las Casas him-self equally lost his language skills when reporting on the 1519 shipment from Mexico:of the feather shields, for example, he felt it impossible to describe neither “their skill-fulness, nor their delicacy, their richness and their beauty”; the ornaments of gold andsilver, feathers and leather were such “that one could not well express their make orbeauty” (Las Casas 1875–1876, 4: 485).

The impossibility to do verbal justice to the feather shields is obviously based notonly on the use of exotic feathers, but also on the specialized development of the craftof feather mosaic, unknown in Europe, among the Aztecs (cp. Anders 1971). As far asobjects of precious metals were concerned, López de Gómara (1553: fol. xxv r)observed that the hollow cast golden ornaments of the Mexicans presented a techni-cal enigma to the Spanish jewellers who looked at them.

As far as the aesthetic evaluation of these objects is concerned, one has to assumethat for Dürer and his contemporaries (as well as, for that matter, for indigenousAmericans) “beauty” was not something that could be judged without respect to otherthan purely aesthetic properties of a product or work. The origin of the idea of “art” inmodern Europe is significantly related to the separation (based on specialization) ofform and function and to the displacement of the products of a craft from their origi-nal context. This separation occured in close relation to the beginning of systematiccollecting, and only slowly gained ground outside the elites directly concerned (cp.Alsop 1982).

An instructive parallel is afforded by the description of human beauty, which thechroniclers of the European discoveries and conquests obviously perceived within theframework of a “physiognomic” theory, by which physical and mental properties wereseen as interdependent: ugliness was thought to be an indication of moral deficiencyand mental inferiority, whereas beauty was linked to goodness and reason. Las Casas,for example, was a representative of the idealizing school, which saw in the Indian onlythe good and beautiful – and thus we need not be overly surprised at the intensity with

6

which he used positively charged aesthetic terms in his descriptions of indigenouscraftsworks (Erdheim 1982: 61).

The opposing viewpoint may be illustrated by the chronicler of Spanish AmericaGonzalo Fernández Oviedo y Valdés, who described the idols of the inhabitants of themainland as horrible (“espantable”), terrible (“temeroso”), and much like those figures,which the Spanish painters represented at the feet of the Archangel Michael or of SaintBartholomew. In describing the images of deities from Yucatan, Oviedo was horrified bytheir perceived indecency und sinfulness, without the least attempt to debate their tech-nical or aesthetic merits (Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés 1526, 1851–1855, 1: 533).

Many authors did, in fact, make distinctions according to the ambivalent Europeanimage of the “Indian” between the good and noble variety and the savage kind. Thelatter were well represented by the canibals of whom Martyr had reported (after per-sonally inspecting some that had been brought to Medina del Campo) that because oftheir frightful appearance and the horrible threat originating from their man-eatingpractice, there was “no man able to behowlde them, but shall feele his bowelles gratewith soo terrible menacynge, and cruel aspecte.” In other part of the West Indies, how-ever, there seemed to be well-shaped and good women, of which the Spanish quick-ly came to believe “they had seene those most beawtyfull Dryades or the natyuenymphes or fayres of the fontaynes wherof the antiquites speake so muche” (Martyr1530: fol. vi r, xii v; 1555: fol. 7 r, 23 v).

Such favorable and partly even enthusiastic assessments of the craft skills of theinhabitants of the trans-Atlantic lands were by no means limited to the choice presentsdelivered from Moctezuma to Cortés. Already during his first voyage, Columbusrepeatedly referred to the beauty of the natives’ dugout canoes, and noted how muchpleasure it afforded to view their workmanship (Colón 1982: 70). Commenting uponthe “treasures” of the “Queen of Anacaona,” which consisted only of ordinary house-hold goods, Martyr not only noted the “great arte and cunnyng” shown in their execu-tion, but also stressed that the superlative work had to be performed without iron tools(Martyr 1530: fol. xiii r–v; 1555: fol. 26 v). And even Cortés praised the pots offeredfor sale on the market of Tlaxcala as equal to the best works of Spanish potters (Cortés1972: 67).

Elsewhere I have tried to analyze the changes in the European assessment of NativeNorth American craft products (Feest 1988, 1991). During the incipient period of sus-tained contact in the 17th century, European observers generally accepted the natives’craftsmanship and described it in favorable terms, such as “artificial,” “ingenious,” or“cunning,” but also “handsome,” “pretty,” or “delicate.” The major exceptions fromthis nearly universal praise were body painting and carvings of a religious nature: Bothof these were rejected on moral grounds, but the rejection was commonly phrased inaesthetic terms. (For Mexico also cp. Bankmann 1991).

The same is only partly true for the 16th century reports from the West Indies andMexico here discussed. Martyr compares the “Ciguaian” with their bodies painted inmany colors with incarnate hell hounds; he also suggested that it was easier to realizefrom looking at the actual objects than just from descriptions, how much the idols ofthe Taíno of Hispaniola resembled painted devils (Martyr 1530: fol. xvi r, xix v). ButColumbus appears to have cared little whether the “very well made” carvings he had

7

seen in Hispaniola had been erected there because of their beauty or for purposes ofpagan veneration (Colón 1982: 47). Martyr concluded that the native peoples’ inge-nuity enabled them to make their idols “very beautifully” of gold or of gilded wood(Martyr 1530: fol. lix r.). And Contarini was not even deterred by the fact that theAztecs were idolatrous canibals, to call their golden ornaments “most beautiful andvery well made” (Alberi 1840: 53).

The entry in Dürer’s diary of 1520 thus can be shown to be far from unique as afirst reaction in a confrontation with new things from a New World. Except perhaps forDürer’s expertise as a goldsmith, there is nothing that even implicitly reflects a point ofview based on his specific personal configuration; there is absolutely nothing thatwould make it particularly German. What remains is a very common expression of sur-prise at the technical quality and the otherness of the exotic works, which defied easyverbalization.

For Europeans who in the 16th century came face to face with decontextualizedproducts from the New World, the spectacular otherness of the indigenous crafts wasalluring, rather than threatening. This experience may have reinforced the naivenotion that their makers would happily accept a European superiority ultimately basedon the possession of the universal truth of Christianity. For those involved in the trau-matic process of the actual conquest, however, these sentiments and assumptions wereultimately turned upside down. As Richard Eden added to Martyr’s glowing descrip-tion of the Mexican treasures: “If they had changed their gold for owre Iren, they hadnot so soone byn subdued” (Martyr 1555: fol. 163 v).

Note

The central portion of this paper was first presented in German and in a slightly different format the 1991 meeting of the Willibald-Pirckheimer-Gesellschaft in Nürnberg (Feest 1992).

References

ALBERI, E. (ed.). Relazioni dagli ambasciatori veneti al Senato (15 vols.). Vol. 4 (= Ser. 1, vol. 2).Firenze, 1840.

ALSOP, J. The Rare Art Traditions. Bollingen Series XXXV, 27. New Haven—London, Harper &Row, 1982.

ANDERS, F. Las Artes Menores. Minor Arts. Artes de México 137, México, 1971, 4–66.APPELBAUM, S. (ed.) The Triumph of Maximilian I: 137 Woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair and

Others. New York, Dover, 1964.BANKMANN, U. Kunst und Kunsthandwerk Alt-Mexikos in europäischer Sicht. Ein Beitrag zur

Rezeptionsgeschichte. In: Wedewer, R.; Bankmann, U. (eds.). Steine und Orte.Altmexikanische Steinskulpturen und Plastiken der Gegenwart. Leverkusen, MuseumMorsbroich, 1991.

BASSANI, E.; Fagg, W.B. Africa and the Renaissance: Art in Ivory. München und New York,Prestel, 1988.

8

BERNAL, I. A History of Mexican Archaeology. London, Thames & Hudson, 1980.BILANG, K. Völkerkundliche Motive im Schaffen Dürers. Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für

Völkerkunde zu Leipzig 36, Leipzig 1971, 1–10.COLIN, S. Das Bild des Indianers im 16. Jahrhundert. Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 102. Idstein,

Schulz-Kirchner Verlag, 1988.COLON. C. Textos y documentos completos. Varela, C. (ed.). Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1982.CONWAY, W.M. The Literary Remains of Albrecht Dürer. Cambridge, 1889.CORTÉS, H. Letters from Mexico. Pagden, A.R. (ed.). London, Oxford University Press, 1972.DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, B. The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico. Leonard, I.A. (ed.). New York,

Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956.ELLIOT, J. Renaissance Europe and America: A Blunted Impact? In: Chiapelli, F. (ed.). First

Images of America. 2 vols. Berkeley—Los Angeles—London, University of California Press,1976, vol.1, 11–23.

ERDHEIM, M. Anthropologische Modelle des 16. Jahrhunderts. Über Las Casas, Oviedo undSahagún. In Kohl, K.-H. (ed.). Mythen der Neuen Welt. Berlin, Frölich & Kaufmann, 1982,57–67.

FEEST, C. F. European Criticism of Native American Art. Unpublished manuscript of a paperdelivered at the meeting of the College Art Association, Houston, Texas, 1988.

—- Vienna’s Mexican Treasures. Aztec, Mixtec, and Tarascan Works from 16th Century AustrianCollections. Archiv für Völkerkunde 44, Wien, 1990, 1–64.

—- Collecting American Indian Art: A European Habit? Beatrice Blackwood Lecture, Pitt RiversMuseum, Oxford, 1991. (In press.)

—- “Selzam ding von gold da von vill ze schreiben were”: Bewertungen amerikanischerHandwerkskunst im Europa des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts. Jahrbuch der Willibald PirckheimerGesellschaft 1992, Nürnberg 1992, 105–120.

FERNANDEZ DE OVIEDO Y VALDÉS, G. Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias. Toldeo,1526.

—- Historia General y Natural de la Indias. Amador de los Rios, J. (ed.). 4 vols. Madrid, RealAcademia de la Historia, 1851–1855.

HONOUR, H. The New Golden Land. European Images of America from the Discovery to thePresent Time. New York, Pantheon Books, 1975.

HUTCHISON, J.C. Albrecht Dürer. A Biography. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990.IMPEY, O.; MACGREGOR, A. (eds.). The Origins of Museums. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1985.JANTZ, H. Images of America in the German Renaissance. In: Chiapelli, F. (ed.). First Images of

America. 2 vols. Berkeley—Los Angeles—London, University of California Press, 1976,vol.1, 91–106.

KOPPLIN, M. “Was frembd und seltsam ist”. Exotica in Kunst- und Wunderkammern. In:Osterwold, T.; Pollig, H. (eds.). Exotische Welten — Europäische Phantasien. Stuttgart, Canz,1987, 296–317.

KUBLER, G. Esthetic Recognition of Ancient Amerindian Art. Yale Publications in the History ofArt. New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 1991.

LAS CASAS, F.B. de. Historia de las Indias. Fuensanta del Valle, M. de la; Sancho Rayon, J. (eds.)5 vols. Madrid, Miguel Ginesta, 1875–1876.

LOPEZ DE GOMARA, F. Conquista de México. Secunda parte de la Chronica general delasIndias, que trata de la conquista de Mexico. Medina del Campo, Guillermo de Millis, 1553.

MARTYR DE ANGLERIA, P. De Nuper svb D. Carolo Repertis Insulis, simulque incolarum mori-bus. Basle, 1521.

—- De Orbe Nouo. Alcalá, Michel d’Eguía, 1530. Reprinted in: Martyr de Angleria, P. Opera.

9

Graz, ADEVA, 1966.—- The Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India. London, Guilhelm Powell, 1555. Reprint:

s.l., Readex, 1966.MENGIN, E. (ed.). Unos Annales Históricos de la Nacion Mexicana. Baessler-Archiv 22(2–3),

Berlin, 1939.MILLER, M. E. The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec. London, Thames and Hudson,

1986.NICHOLSON, H.B.; with KEBER, E.Q. Art of Aztec Mexico. Treasures of Tenochtitlan.

Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 1983.NOWOTNY, K.A. Mexikanische Kostbarkeiten aus Kunstkammern der Renaissance. Wien,

Museum für Völkerkunde, 1960.PALM, E.W. Tenochtitlan y la ciudad ideal de Dürer. Journal de la Société des Américanistes n.s.

40, Paris, 1951, 59–66.PANOFSKY, E. Albrecht Dürer. 2 vols. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1945.—- Das Leben und die Kunst Albrecht Dürers. München, 1977.PIERCE, D. The Mission: Evangelical Utopianism in the New World (1523–1600). In: Mexico.

Splendor of Thirty Centuries. New York, Bulfinch, 1990, 243–249.ROWLANDS, J. The Age of Dürer and Holbein. German Drawings 1400–1550. London, British

Museum Publications, 1988.RUPPRICH, H. (ed.) Dürer. Schriftlicher Nachlaß. 3 vols. Berlin, Deutscher Verein für

Kunstwissenschaft, 1956–1969.SAHAGUN, B. de. Florentine Codex – General History of the Things of New Spain. 13 vols.

Anderson, A.J.O.; Dibble, C.E. (eds.). Santa Fe—Salt Lake City, The School of AmericanResearch and The University of Utah, 1950–1969.

SCHNEIDER, H. Verfremdende Spiegelungen. Europas Dialog mit der Kunst der Welt. In:Osterwold, T.; Pollig, H. (eds.). Exotische Welten – Europäische Phantasien. Stuttgart, Canz,1987, 142–149.

STURTEVANT, W.C. First Visual Images of Native America. In: Chiapelli, F. (ed.). First Images ofAmerica. 2 vols. Berkeley—Los Angeles—London, University of California Press, 1976,vol.1, 417–454.

10