Albert Eckhout

American Monsters: Images of Brazilian Nature from Early Modern Europe

3 Comments / Albert Eckhout, Brazil, Dutch Empire, Indigenous peoples, John Bulwer, Monsters, Portuguese Empire, Print Culture, Res Obscura, Seventeenth Century, Tatoos, Wunderkammer / By

“The most disgusting and nauseating thing which man ever saw.” -Spanish chronicler Andres Bernaldez on Christopher Columbus’ first impression of Caribbean iguanas, 1513. IN HIS BOOK Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World, Harvard literature professor Stephen Greenblatt argues that “the production of a sense of the marvelous in the New World is at the very …

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Paintings from Dutch Brazil

3 Comments / Albert Eckhout, Brazil, Dutch Empire, Natural History, Portuguese Empire, Print Culture, Res Obscura, Seventeenth Century / By

Dutch Brazil, which officially called itself ‘Nieuw Holland,’ was a short-lived (1630-1654) state in the north-east of Brazil that resulted from the Dutch Republic’s aggressive policy of territorial expansion at the expense of the Portuguese colonies in the first half of the seventeenth century — a policy that also led to the Dutch occupation of …

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