10/07/11 –Dr. Alida Metcalf:
The first representations of Brazil on European maps of the sixteenth century are significant for historical, cartographic, and artistic reasons. Not only does Brazil occupy a unique space on early world maps, but maps projected visual images of Brazil that became defining metaphors over the succeeding centuries. Portrayed as a verdant landscape with lush forests—the ideal sanctuary for beautiful exotic birds, or the source of valuable timber—or as the distant place where strange peoples known to engage in fierce warfare, sleep in hammocks, practice cannibalism lived—the early images associated with the geographic space of Brazil shaped an imagined place of wonder, riches, and horror for those who studied these maps. Initially new, but appearing with such regularity that they became familiar caricatures, a small number of images dominated the depiction of Brazil on sixteenth-century maps. These representations cast such a deep association with Brazil that they are also would shape how those who lived in Brazil would understand themselves and their relationship to a larger world. How did this imagery arise and why? Through a comparison of two very different world maps: the Cantino Chart of 1502 and the Waldseemüller World Map of 1507, Dr. Metcalf will show how the first representations of Brazil emerged from two distinct cartographic and artistic traditions, and she will explore the significance of this for the radically changing consumer of maps in the sixteenth century.
