Monster Gods in India: the Negation of Art in the Discourse of French Travellers to the East Indies (17th Century)?

In the 17th century, the theme of monster gods is recurrent in accounts of French travel to the East Indies. Faced with translating iconography of Indian reality, which was foreign to outsiders, artists of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance illustrated these images yet painted them with a Western imagination. However, despite the vision of an India divided between Greco-Roman heritage and Christianity and hybrid representations, the illustrations of Hindu religious scenes and monster gods also demonstrate the attention that travellers paid to this new reality.