Burgkmair's Peoples of Africa and India (1508) and the Origins of Ethnography in Print Author(s): Stephaine Leitch Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 91, No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 134-159 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40645477 . Accessed: 10/10/2013 15:54 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.186.158.219 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:54:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Burgkmair'sPeoples of Africa and India (1508) and the Originsof Ethnographyin Print StephanieLeitch A broadsheetprinted in the townof Augsburgin southern dinarilyearly departure from stereotypes. These peoples are Germanyin 1505 (Fig. 1) representsthe initialpublic offer- presentedin recognizablefamily units; their bodies are pro- ing of New World Indians to a European audience.1The portionatelyconstructed and are modeled to rotatein space feather-skirtedbarbarians featured here stand in fora tribeof usingan artisticvocabulary developed in the ItalianRenais- BrazilianTupinamba Indians that Amerigo Vespucci saw for sance. thefirst time in theNew World. This feisty group of wild men Unlike earlier images of newly discovered indigenes, and womenillustrates passages from his letterMundus novus, Burgkmair'smonumental printed representation of the in- summarizedin the textbeneath the image, that describe the habitantsof coastalAfrica and the MalabarCoast of India is Indians'communality, their penchant for free love, and their a precociousstudy in humandiversity.5 This woodcut series is culinarypreference for human flesh: based on Die Merfartund erfarung nüwer Schiffung und Wegezu vilnunerkanten Inseln und Künigreichen (The Voyageand Dis- coveriesof New Pathsto UnknownIslands and No one has of his but all are com- Many King- anything own, things theTirolese merchant Balthasar a mon.And the men takewomen who doms) by Springer, report please them,regard- thatrecords his travelsin 1505 and 1506with the mission led less of whetherit is theirmother, sister, or friend.In this by FranciscoAlmeida that establishedthe firstPortuguese matterthey make no distinction.They also fightwith each viceroyaltyin India.6 other. They also eat one another and theyhang and Burgkmairtranslated Springer's written report into a visual smokethe fleshof thosekilled. They live to be 150. And accountof the places and peoples encounteredby the mer- have no government.2 chant, producinga multiblockwoodcut, which, when set together,measures approximately seven and a halffeet long. The sweepingnature of the caption's spurious claims is The friezefollows the journey in a series of consecutive matchedby the broad brushused to illustratethem. While framesshowing the peoples of Guinea, the region around the thebroadsheet's anonymous artist portrays these Tupinamba Cape of Good Hope, the eastern seaboard of Africa,an fantastically,in Europe,these elements solidified into a con- assemblyof assortedindigenes from India, and lastly,a pro- ventionalvisual motif: the image of an Indian in a feather cessionon India's MalabarCoast. This document'semphasis crownand matchingskirt, an "exotic"who quicklybecame on theworld's peoples suggeststhe interventionof the local the prototypefrom which subsequent stereotypes of Indians humanistKonrad Peutinger,who formedthe link between weredrawn.3 The illustrationsof newlyencountered peoples the merchantand the artist. accompanyingthe earliestprinted reports by Christopher In itsorderly presentation of peoples,the friezedetaches Columbusand Vespucci(which appeared between 1493 and Africanand Indian inhabitantsfrom their representational 1505) did not reflectreal culturaldifference between the historyin exotica,where theywere entirelydivorced from Europeansand indigenouspeople but reliedinstead on re- empiricalobservation.7 In earlierdepictions, the inhabitants cycledimagery that dwelton theirperceived warlike and of theseregions and othersheretofore unknown to Western cannibalistictendencies. Unruly bands of crude,cartoonish, Europe inheritedtheir exotic statusfrom both local and and bloodthirstywild men in featheredskirts quickly calcified classicaltraditions.8 Before Ferdinand Magellan's circumnav- into the standardiconography for renderingnewly discov- igationin 1522,confusion was widespread about which Indi- ered peoples,regardless of wherethey were found. ans wereto be foundwhere; visual generalizations and verbal Contrastthis with another account of foreignpeoples re- misunderstandingscompounded the problem.Additionally, centlycharted by Europeans,Hans Burgkmair'sPeoples of the tendencyin the earlymodern period to call manyexotic Africaand India (Fig. 2), also printedin Augsburg,a short thingsCalecutish, an adjectivemisapplied to all but the prod- threeyears later. Whereas Burgkmair's subjects are the na- ucts of the westerncoast of India, also frustratedclear dis- tivesof coastal Africaand India, the leap fromprints of tinctions.9Remarkably, in lightof these misleadingconfla- Amerindiansto ones of Africansand Asiansis not as coun- tionsand thisrampant pictorial nomadism, with his images of terintuitiveas it mayappear. To begin with,the distinction nativesof Africaand India, Hans Burgkmairneither played betweenthe Americasand Asia is anachronisticfor the pe- into iconographiepresets nor inventednew stereotypes. riod. Furthermore,stereotyped images of the inhabitantsof To explain the rupturethat Burgkmair's images mark in both the Americasand Asia oftenconflated them. Artists' thehistory of representation,scholars have characterized the proclivityto costumeall newlydiscovered peoples in the friezeas amongthe earliest recordings of unfamiliarpeoples feathercrown and bustle of the BrazilianTupinamba, a based on empiricalevidence. A primaryreason that these phenomenonthe anthropologistWilliam Sturtevant dubbed images differfrom earlier ones that also describednewly the tupinambizationof the world,contributed to the confu- discoveredpeoples is thatBurgkmair worked them up from sion.4Burgkmair's images of nativepeoples markan extraor- visualmodels, probably sketches made by an artisticallyin- This content downloaded from 128.186.158.219 on Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:54:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BURGKMAIR'S PEOPLES OF AFRICA AND INDIA (1508) '%§ 1 Broadsheetwith text from Vespucci, Dise Figur anzaigt uns das Folck und Insel,Augsburg: Froschauer, 1505, handcoloredwoodcut, 10 X 13% in. (25.5 X 35 cm). BayerischeStaats- bibliothek,Munich, Einblatt SammlungV, 2 (artworkin thepublic domain) clinedtravel companion and broughtback by Springer.10 But Peutinger,who also collecteddata, artifacts, written accounts, a precedentin sketchesalone does not fullyexplain this and physicalevidence from both antiquityand the remote change.Burgkmair's woodcuts, more precisely, signal a turn cornersof theever expanding world. Both artist and human- to representationalaccuracy and the idea that the visual istsat at the crossroadsof empiricalinvestigation, and their experienceof Springer'sencounters could be reproduced. discoveriesfunctioned symbiotically. Burgkmair's frieze col- The artisticcriteria for empiricismin the earlymodern lected informationin a unique formatthat announces and periodcan be foundin contemporaryprinted genres, such as organizesnovelty. The confluenceof epistemologicaland travelaccounts, maps, and physiognomies,that made similar artisticcurrents that converged in Augsburgart makingin and clues as to how their claims to documentation give thisperiod equipped theprint to takeon theanalysis of other could be frieze authority visuallyreproduced. Burgkmair's culturesin an ethnographicfashion. adheres to the two fromwhich it descends formally genres On the side of representation,Burgkmair pushed the most travelaccounts and the coor- directly, maps. Locating boundariesof printmakinginto the realmof verisimilitude, dinatesof travelwas the de factotask of each of thesegenres, advancednaturalism in theform of the chiaroscuro woodcut, and bothwere instrumental in and some tracking recording monitoredthe rediscoveryof the antique,developed formu- of the noveltiestheir authors came across.In their important las for and made refinementsin portraiture- to the travelaccount and the proportion, attempts reportexperience, technical evolutions that better render the empirically map providedboth textualand visual precedentsfor the observedworld. In the earlieststages of Burgkmair'sdevel- frieze,which is a hybridof both. - opment, some of these were still conventional indeed, Whereas"ethnography," as a methodof investigationchar- Burgkmair'sprimary contribution rests in deployingthese acterizedby comparison, classification, and historicallineage, conventionsin more meaningfulmatrices. Importing ideals would not be applied to images or textsfor centuriesto and techniquesof portraiturefrom antique coins, Burgk- come, Burgkmair'sfrieze invitesa prescientuse of that mairinscribed into the conceptof likeness.Us-