Imagining America: indigenous objects in andalusian Renaissance noble houses

Abstract

Andalusian nobility of the Renaissance had an early interest for the gathering and exhibition of American indigenous objects. The double aim of this article is to remark the scarcely known presence of these early ensembles, and furtherly it is to analyse the coetaneous 16th Century regards on the objects. Although literature commonly focused on the novelty of these pieces and their role in the European notion of otherness, this essay intends to interpret these particular collections from their vicinity with other “artificialia” and “naturalia” of the humanist cabinet, and also from their continuity of the previous conceptual categories of the noble genealogical cabinet.