The Dominicans as Conveyors of Mesoamerican Objects to Italy and Europe

Abstract

It has been customary to trace back to the early shipments sent by the Spanish conquistadors most of the Mesoamerican artefacts held in ancient European collections. Early 21st-century scholarship, however, has demonstrated that Dominican friars such as Domingo de Betanzos (1480–1549) had a key role in bringing indigenous objects from Mexico to Italy during the 16th century. This new understanding allows a rethinking of the ideological motivations that ignited the transatlantic circulation of indigenous artefacts; textual analysis of relevant sources, in fact, reveals that they were observed and understood within a missionary discourse on indigenous ingenuity, rationality, and convertibility. Once in Italy, the objects entered local art collections in Bologna, Rome, Florence, and other Italian cities, where they aroused an antiquarian approach to their study. The investigation of the collection history of these objects, which in some instances ended up in museums in other European countries, shows that our knowledge of many of the most iconic Mesoamerican artworks known today can be traced back to the actions of the Dominican friars.