Thevet’s sloths and Léry’s demons

• In Event: Beyond Feathers: Visualizing Brazil in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

This paper focuses on illustrations found in various editions of two early and influential accounts of Brazil: André Thevet’s Singularitez de la France Antartique (Paris, 1558) and his Protestant critic Jean de Léry’s Histoire d’un Voyage (La Rochelle, 1578). When Léry’s publisher, Antoine Chuppin, issued another edition in Geneva in 1580, he added an illustration that features a complex panoramic scene including a Brazilian sloth lifted from Thevet’s account and two monstrous flying demons. The paper examines the precedents, evolution, and long afterlife of this iconography through various editions of accounts by Léry as well as other authors (Hans Staden, Walter Ralegh), in order to interrogate how authors, printers, artists, and readers understood the alternately authenticating and exoticizing functions of travel account illustrations in relation to both the natural and the supernatural world.

Author

• Lisa B Voigt, Ohio State University