Collection of Sand

How New the New World Was

Discovering the New World was a very difficult enterprise, as we have all been taught. But even more difficult, once the New World was discovered, was seeing it, understanding that it was new, entirely new, different from anything one had expected to find as new. And the question that spontaneously arises is: if a New World were discovered now, would we be able to see it? Would we know how to rid our minds of all the images we have become accustomed to associate with the expectation of a world different from our own (images from science fiction, for instance) in order to grasp the real difference that would be presented to our gaze?

We can instantly reply that something has changed since the time of Columbus: in the last few centuries man has developed a capacity for objective observation, a scrupulousness about precision in establishing analogies and differences, a curiosity for everything that is unusual and unexpected, and these are all qualities that our predecessors in the ancient world and in the Middle Ages apparently did not possess. It is precisely from the discovery of America, we can say, that the relationship with what is new changes in human consciousness. And it is for that very reason that we usually say that the modern era began then.

But will it really be like this? Just as the first explorers of America did not know at what point they would either be proved wrong or have their familiar preconceptions confirmed, so we too could walk past things never seen before without realizing it, for our eyes and minds are used to selecting and cataloguing only that which responds to tried and tested classifications. Perhaps a New World opens up every day and we don’t see it.

These thoughts came to mind while visiting the exhibition America Seen by Europe, an exhibition that brings together more than 350 paintings, prints and objects at the Grand Palais in Paris. All of them represent European images of the New World, from the earliest reports that came back after the voyage of Columbus’s caravels to the gradual understanding that emerged from accounts of the exploration of the continent.

These are the shores of Spain: it was from here that King Ferdinand of Castille gave orders for the caravels to set sail. And this stretch of sea is the Atlantic Ocean which Christopher Columbus crossed to reach the fabled islands of the Indies. Columbus leans out from the prow and what does he see? A procession of naked men and women coming out of their huts. Barely a year had passed since Columbus’s first voyage, and this was how a Florentine engraver represented the discovery of what at that time people did not know would become America. Nobody yet suspected that a new era in the history of the world had opened up, but the excitement aroused by this event had spread throughout Europe. On his return, Columbus’s report instantly inspired an epic in octaves in the style of a chivalric poem by the Florentine Giuliano Dati, and this engraving is in fact an illustration from that book.

The characteristic of the inhabitants of the new lands that most struck Columbus and all the early explorers was their nakedness, and this was the first detail that worked on the illustrators’ imaginations. Men are portrayed as still having beards: the news that the Indians had smooth cheeks apparently had not yet spread. With Columbus’s second voyage and especially with the more detailed and colourful reports by Amerigo Vespucci, another feature as well as their nakedness fired the European imagination: cannibalism.

Seeing a group of Indian women on the shore—Vespucci tells us—the Portuguese sent ashore one of their sailors, who was famous for his handsomeness, to talk with the Indian women. They surrounded him, lavishing embraces and expressions of admiration on him, but meanwhile one of their number hid behind his back and clubbed him on the head, stunning him. The unfortunate man was dragged away, cut into pieces, roasted and devoured.

The first question Europeans asked about the inhabitants of the New World was: are they really human? Classical and medieval traditions spoke of remote areas inhabited by monsters. But the lie was soon given to such legends: Indians were not only human beings, but specimens of classical beauty. That was how the myth arose of their happy life, unburdened by property or labour, as in the Golden Age or Earthly Paradise.

After the crude engravings on wood we find the depiction of Indians in paintings. The first American we see portrayed in the history of European painting is one of the Three Magi, in a Portuguese painting of 1505, in other words barely a dozen years after Columbus’s first voyage, and even less time after the Portuguese landing in Brazil. It was still believed that the new lands were part of the Far East of Asia. It was traditional for the Three Magi in paintings of the Nativity to be represented in oriental garments and head-gear. But now that the explorers’ reports provided direct evidence of how these legendary inhabitants of ‘India’ looked, painters brought themselves up to date. The Indian Magus was portrayed as wearing a feather headdress, as certain Brazilian tribes do, and carrying in one of his hands a Tupinambá arrow. Since this was a painting for a church, this character could not be portrayed naked: he has been given a Western waistcoat and trousers.

In 1537 Pope Paul III declared: ‘The Indians are truly human . . . not only are they able to understand the Catholic faith, but they are extremely keen to receive it.’

Feather headdresses, weapons, fruits and animals from the New World started arriving in Europe. In 1517 a German engraver drawing a procession of inhabitants from Calcutta, mixes Asiatic elements (such as an elephant and its mahout, bulls draped in garlands, rams with huge tails) with details that come from the recent discoveries: a feather headdress (and actually clothes made of feathers that are totally imaginary), an Ara parrot from Brazil and also two corn cobs—maize was the cereal that was destined to play such a major role in the agriculture and diet of Northern Italy, but its American origin would be soon forgotten since the Italian word is ‘granturco’ [literally Turkish grain].

It is thanks to the work of the great cartographers of the sixteenth century that we see not only the new territories taking shape, but also the fauna, flora and customs of these peoples giving us their first true images. Working at close quarters with the explorers, the map-makers had access to information at first hand. The outlines of the Atlantic coasts were largely known when the new lands were still thought to be an appendix of Asia. Thus in a silver globe of 1530 the Gulf of Mexico is called ‘The Sea of Cathay’, and South America is ‘Cannibal Land’.

It is in a German map that the name America appears for the first time, meaning ‘Amerigo’s Land’, because it was mainly through the reports of Vespucci’s voyages that Europe had taken on board the geographical significance of the discoveries. It was only after the arrival of the Florentine merchant’s letters that Europe realized that what was opening up for the old continent was indeed a New World, of enormous dimensions and with its own characteristics.

Now suddenly in maps of the time America is detached from Asia. All that is known of North America (here called ‘Land of Cuba’) is a small strip of coastline, and it is thought to be near Japan (called ‘Zipangri’). The name ‘America’ is applied only to Southern America, also called ‘Terranova’ and inhabited, of course, by cannibals. The continent has by now acquired an autonomous outline, but it is still seen—even in its shape—mainly as an obstacle, a barrier separating us from China and India.

In maps drawn up by Mercator, the inventor of a new method of cartographic projection, the name ‘America’ is now applied to the northern part of the continent as well, and the word is placed alongside Labrador, which was then called the Land of