From the Arctic to Oceania: Overseas Visitors in Early Modern Europe
Early modern Europe has been dubbed the
“Age of Exploration” or the “Age of Discovery,” but exploration and
discovery included people from the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania visiting Europe,
often for their own, usually diplomatic, purposes. Europeans brought others without their
consent. Using written accounts and pictures—many of them portraits—we shall examine the
processes, contexts, and cultural messaging contained in verbal and visual representations of
these visitors. We shall pay particular attention to details of personal presentation
including skin modification, hair styling, and clothing. Although many have interpreted such
images as authentic depictions of regional dress, the clothes worn by the people in these
pictures often suggest complex hybridities of foreign and European garments. Who decided
what the people were to wear in these pictures? Can we infer that the clothing and
comportment in these portraits accurately represents the sitters’ values? What kinds of
self-representation were the sitters able to express? What role do clothes play
in diplomacy? Do the
values of the artist or patron responsible for a picture dominate or distort? How do such pictures
relate to written accounts? Could such visits and their representations—written
and visual—ever span cultural divides in the early stages of colonialism? 3
credits. Satisfies the non-Western or the pre-1800 requirements.