Ideology of Discovery In America as Analyzed by Suny Oneontha Art Department's Blog
A repost from Art Department's Blog, which analyzes the sketch America originally drawn by Jan van der Straet (ca. 1575). It was engraved by Theodor Galle and heavily circulated throughout western Europe.
America,
Drawn by by Jan van der Straet (ca. 1575)
Engraved by Theodor Galle ca. 1580.
"Before him is the Indian "America," a nude woman reclining in her hammock, an unnamed presence of difference, a body which awakens within a space of exotic fauna and flora. An inaugural scene: after a moment of stupor, on this threshold dotted with colonnades of trees, the conqueror will write the body of the other and trace there his own history. From her he will make a historied body --a blazon-- of his labors and phantasms. She will be "Latin" America."
Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, pp. xxv-xxvi
Snippets from: America, ca. 1580. Engraving by Theodor Galle after a drawing by Jan van der Straet (ca. 1575)
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