The Image of the ‘Others’

When this drawing was created, hardly any European had ever seen indigenous inhabitants from the ‘newly discovered’ far-off America with their own eyes. So what we see here is presumably the European image of an ‘Indian’ that prevailed at the time, as can be read to the upper left. Whether this image of an Aztec is thus authentic in any way remains the subject of research. The ‘typical’ apron made of feathers is in any case a later addition by Europeans reflecting their sense of shame. Besides descriptions and stories, scriptoria and printing workshops also used templates that were repeatedly copied, expanded and ‘painted’ in the sense of ‘imagined’ – thus leaving a lasting image of the ‘others’.