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VESPUCCI REDISCOVERS AMERICA: THE PICTORIAL RHETORIC OF CANNIBALISM IN EARLY MODERN CULTURE
Author(s) -
Schreffler Michael J.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
art history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8365
pISSN - 0141-6790
DOI - 10.1111/j.0141-6790.2005.00465.x
Subject(s) - rhetoric , cannibalism , visual culture , representation (politics) , counterpoint , subordination (linguistics) , power (physics) , colonialism , ideal (ethics) , history , aesthetics , subject (documents) , art , sociology , anthropology , linguistics , epistemology , philosophy , political science , law , archaeology , ecology , pedagogy , larva , computer science , biology , quantum mechanics , physics , politics , library science
Studies of the representation of cannibalism have noted that the discourse on that practice that emerged in the sixteenth century operated as a differencing mechanism, a counterpoint to ideas about the ideal and individuated Christian subject of early modern Europe. But how were these associations and differences articulated within visual culture? This essay examines Jan Van der Straet's Amerigo Vespucci Rediscovers America and other visual images that present cannibalism as an attribute and/or practice of the inhabitants of the Americas. It identifies the strategies of visual rhetoric through which that association operated in the construction and maintenance of relationships of colonial power and subordination in the early modern Atlantic world.