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(Blog 3) Italy and the New World- Takeaways

adblue1 — 2025-10-13 12:07:31 UTC

My biggest takeaways from Italy and the New World are the artistic hybridity and the "othering" of indigenous peoples. Though Europeans were fascinated with indigenous art and materials, they used their art more so as a trophy/ curiosity rather than work that came from a living civilization. Europeans collected and displayed indigenous work as it was admired by them, yet they reconstructed the work to fit in more of a European perspective. This image, The Mass of St. Gregory, shows how indigenous materials and techniques were used, but adjusted to include christian iconography. Feather mosaics were a sacred form of art from the Indigenous people, but Europeans reconstructed the meaning to fit catholicism, such as Christ and saints. Just as Jews and women were thought to be "others", the indigenous Americans were "others" in the new world. This idea connects directly to Unit 1’s theme of othering. Very similar to how Jews and Women were considered inferior and were filtered through the lense of a white European male, indigenous people's voiced were filtered through colonial translation and perspective, as the codex vaticanus reveals. Indigenous people inspired and were admired for their art, yet were treated as inferior. They were seen as uncivilized, or "animalistic". Europeans justified this othering as they didn't fully see indigenous peoples as humans deserving of the same things they were, even though they still admired their artwork and redefined it to fit their Eurocentric style.

(Blog 3) Canonical Renaissance

adblue1 — 2025-10-13 12:31:09 UTC

Learning about the New world expanded my knowledge of the Renaissance beyond the European standpoint. The inclusion of the Americas and indigenous people shifts our view from the Renaissance being Eurocentric to a connected and transatlantic world that helped shape it, not just the Europeans. In our class lecture "Collecting the Americas", we looked at how artists such as Medici collected objects from the Indigenous people, especially featherwork and manuscripts as part of his own work. I learned from this unit that the Renaissance was a period of cultural hybridity, rather than just Europeans innovations.

(Blog 3) De Bry- "Their Sitting at Meate" (Another image to support biggest takeaway)

adblue1 — 2025-10-13 15:13:29 UTC

This image further supports the claim that indigeneous people were "othered". You can see that they are portrayed to be sort of homely in a sense that they didn't have much money or importance compared to the Europeans. It's images like these that helped "justify" the mistreatment and othering of indigenous people.

(Blog 3) Connections in contemporary society

adblue1 — 2025-10-13 15:21:09 UTC

In the present day, "othering" is still applicable to minority groups, such as immigrants and indigenous communities. There is still an ongoing battle of Indigenous culture and land going unrecognized and indigenous creations and discoveries and being colonized. In elementary school, we all learned about Christopher columbus discovering the Americas with no recognition towards the people who had already discovered it. This is just one example of the continuous misinformation and lack of credit given to Indigenous communities.