Framing the Indies: the Renaissance aesthetics of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557)

Abstract

In the Sumario and the Historia general, Oviedo applies the knowledge of Renaissance art and artists that he had acquired in his youth in Spain and Italy, and that is reflected in the Batallas y quinquagenas. These artistic precepts inform the illustrations that he includes of the natural and ethnographic realities of the New World as well as his exploration of the indigenous artistic practice of bodily decoration. At the same time, Oviedo’s reflections on the tattoo are an extension of his life-long interest in material displays of social and moral hierarchies, like those embodied in Renaissance portrait medals. Oviedo’s informal aesthetic education provided him with the tools necessary to apprehend visually this New World and to make sense of its native cultural practices.