1673 Engraving of Peruvians Tending Llamas
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Peruvians tending llamas appears in this excerpted leaf from the Origins of the Americans chapter of the 1673 German edition of Arnoldus Montanus's account of the Americas.
In a mountain valley, men in feathered headdresses tend a group of llamas. One strokes the neck of a dark llama, another raises a hand beside a llama lying on the ground, and spear-bearers stand by a fenced pen. More llamas graze on the slopes behind, where two archers draw their bows. The engraving follows the text below, which quotes José de Acosta on the llama. Found only in Peru, it carries loads, lives on the grass along the roads, and comes in two kinds, the woolly paco and the short-haired moromoro. The text adds that a tired llama will stare at its drivers as if to devour them. The paco sometimes collapses under its load and will not stir even if cut to pieces, so the best remedy is to sit beside it and stroke it until it rises on its own. The engraving appears to show that moment. The reverse belongs to the book's debate on where the Americans came from. It sets out Hugo Grotius's case for a Norse origin, built partly on word likenesses such as llama and the German Lam, and Johannes de Laet's rebuttal.
Arnoldus Montanus (ca. 1625–1683), a Dutch minister and schoolmaster, compiled De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld from earlier chronicles and travel accounts without ever crossing the Atlantic. The Amsterdam publisher Jacob van Meurs issued it in 1671 with a wealth of engravings. John Ogilby's English adaptation followed the same year, and Die Unbekante Neue Welt, the German edition attributed to Olfert Dapper, followed in 1673. Its illustrations were drawn by artists who had mostly never seen the Americas either. They mix reported detail with European invention, and they shaped how a generation of European readers pictured the New World.
CONDITION
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