"They are Our Brothers": Raphael and the American Indian

"They are Our Brothers": Raphael and the American IndianAuthor(s): Charles ColbertSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer, 1985), pp. 181-190Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2540911 .

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The Sixteenth Centuryjournal Volume XVI, No. 2, 1985

"They are Our Brothers": Raphael and the American Indian

Charles Colbert Boston College

Ever since Columbus's landing in San Salvador, the New World and its inhabitants have been a source of fascination for Europeans. It did not take long for this interest to find its way into the visual arts, where it grew in significance as the new continent came increasingly into the ken of the old. Efforts to identify and discuss this process were particularly stimulated some years ago by the celebration of the American bicentennial.' However, one instance of the use of a native of the New World in Renaissance painting seems to have escaped notice. It occurs rather unobtrusively in Raphael's Repulse ofAttila (P1. 1), yet it appears to allude to hotly debated questions regarding the responsibil- ities of the papacy towards the natives of the recently discovered lands.

This fresco belongs to a series which decorated the Stanza d'Eliodoro in the Vatican Palace, Rome. While these paintings represent events of the dis- tant past, they are generally believed to refer also to some of the most pressing concerns of the Church. In the case of the Repulse of Attila, we see the encoun- ter between Pope Leo I and Attila which took place in 452, but it seems likely that it was also intended to recall in the minds of contemporaries the parallels between that successful confrontation with the barbarian and recent efforts by Julius II to drive the French invaders from Italy. A number of historians have noted that alterations appear to have been introduced into the cycle through the summer of 1513 in order to endow the work with the utmost contemporaneity.2

Besides this involvement with recent political developments, there is another aspect of Raphael's painting which requires consideration before advan- cing to the suggestions we propose here. Throughout the Repulse of Attila a great deal of effort has been devoted to the costumes. The barbarians in particular are attired in a wide variety of exotic garb executed with close attention to the detail. Redig de Campos views such passages as an anticipation of the sort of Mannerist overabundance found in the Sala di Costantino,3 yet Raphael may have intended more than the mere accumulation of picturesque effects.

If we consider the center of the scene, we notice a rather unexpected inci- dent. One of Attila's horde does not turn away from the pope but actually ex- tends his hand towards the papal entourage (P1. 2). This figure is unusual also

'See especially Hugh Honour, The Nezv Golden Land: European Images of Americafrom the Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon, 1975); and Fredi Chiapelli, ed., First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old, 2 vols., (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).

2For a review of the various political interpretations applied to the frescoes see Luitpold Dussler, Raphael: A Critical Catalogue of his Pictures, Wall-Paintings and Tapestries, trans. by Sebastian Cruft, (Munich: Bruckmann, 1966; London, 1971), pp. 78-82.

3Deoclezio Redig de Campos, Raffaello nelle Stanze (Milan, 1965), p. 30.



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Plate 1. Raphael. The Repulse of Attila. Vatican, Stanza d'Eliodoro (photo: Alinari).



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Plate 2. Detail of The Repulse of Attila.



184 Sixteenth CenturyJournal

in that he wears an American Indian feather bonnet over his helmet. This remarkable detail raises several questions about the artist's intentions. Was it Raphael's purpose to allude to the inhabitants of the New World by means of this particular attribute? And, if this proves to be the case, were there any spe- cific circumstances which might have induced him to make this inclusion?

Admittedly, if Raphael did intend to depict an American Indian, he leaves a great deal to be desired in terms of anthropological illustration. The features of this member of Attila's band are decidedly European. Raphael, however, can hardly be faulted for this inaccuracy. Knowledge about the actual appear- ances of the Indians was scanty, and authentic renderings do not occur until the seventeenth century.4 A woodcut of around 1505, purporting to represent the inhabitants of the New World (P1. 3), endows them with beards and Cau- casian facial characteristics similar to those in the fresco. The only correct identifying feature in the print is the feather ornament.5

For artists of the Renaissance, feather costumes were the primary means of indicating that a particular figure was indeed a native of America.6 Once this identity was established, elements of European dress could be introduced. For example, in Portugal around 1505, when the Master of Viseu came to depict the youngest of the Magi in his representation of the Nativity, he selected an inhabitant of Brazil. The feather headdress is there, but so also are a shirt and breeches. The scant apparel comfortable in the tropics was apparently thought inappropriate for one in the presence of the Virgin. Considerations of propri- ety and artistic consistency no doubt outweighed the desire to render appear- ances accurately.7

Raphael probably also felt obliged to make some adjustments so that his figure would not contrast excessively with those surrounding him. Such no- tions display a remarkable longevity. Despite the century of exploration and observation which separates Raphael's rendering of an Indian from that of

4William C. Sturtevant, "First Visual Images of Native America," in First Images of America, 1:419.

5Ibid., p. 420. Raphael may have had ulterior reasons for depicting his Indian with a beard. It has been suggested recently that their frequency among the Huns was intended as a pun playing on the similarity between the words barba (beard) and barbaro (barbarian). MarkJ. Zucker, "Raphael and the Beard of PopeJulius II," The ArtBulletin 59 (1977): 524- 533, 531.

'Suzanne Boorsch, "America in Festival Presentations," in First Images of America, 1: 513.

7A review of the distinctions between American feathered ornaments and those em- ployed in antiquity will be found in Nicole Dacos, "Presents Americains a la Renaissance L'Assimilation d L'Exotisme," Gazette des Beaux-arts 73 (1969): 57-64. The headgear which Raphael represents, with its series of pointed feathers attached to a band, is distinctly different from the Roman and Etruscan costumes discussed by Dacos. It is also quite unlike the exotic plumes that Raphael renders elsewhere. The contrast can be seen by comparing the detail presently under consideration with the helmets of the soldiers in the Triumph of David in the Vatican Loggie. For an illustration of the work by the Master of Viseau and a discussion of his apparel see Honour, p. 53.



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Plate 3. The People of the Islands Recently Discovered, c. 1505, German, probably Augsburg or Nuremberg (photo: Bayerisches Stattsbibliothek, Munich).




Giulio Parigi (P1. 4), the results are much the same. Both make imaginative combinations of American and classical garments. Both place a feather bonnet over a helmet fashioned on those from antiquity. The similarities are sympto- matic of the license permitted by aesthetic decorum.

In the Loggetta of the Cardinal of Bibbiena and the Vatican Logge, Raphael displays no particular reluctance to depict motifs from the New World with those of the Old. There he includes South American birds within the traditional vocabulary of grotesque decoration.8

We noted above that the frescoes in the Stanza d'Eliodoro allude to recent developments in the realm of politics. The program seems to have been improvisatory with the selection of incidents for depiction occurring as events evolved in Italy.9 The most commonly adduced instance of this process is the introduction of Leo X as Leo I, an adjustment which must have been made after his election to the papacy on March 13, 1513.10 This year, then, represents a terminus in our search for the Church policy which might have induced Julius II or Leo X to request the inclusion of an American Indian in the Repulse of Attila.

Several events from the early years of the second decade of the century are suggestive in this respect. In August 1511 Julius II decided to establish several bishoprics in the New World.11 In 1513 two Venetians, Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini, addressed a treatise to Leo X in which they urged him to send learned preachers with a command of native languages to the new lands so that they might help in converting the Indians.12 A third possible source for Raphael's allusion to the inhabitants of America is found in an oration delivered by Tomasso Fedra Inghirami to Julius II in 1510. He interpreted the recent discoveries and conquests made by Portugal and Spain as the revelation of a divine plan. The acquisition of these new territories was a compensation to Christianity for lands lost to the Turks. It was a sign that the momentum of history no longer favored the infidels and would reward an expedition against them with success.13

8Honour, pp. 35-37. 9S. J. Freedberg, Painting of the High Renaissance in Rome and Florence, 1 (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1961): 152. 10For the evaluation of this detail as an indication of the degree of completion at the

time of the death ofJulius II see Redig de Campos, p. 31. Drawings in Oxford and the Lou- vre (No. 3873) have been cited frequently by historians as indicating various stages in Raphael's attempts to devise the composition. Both were executed by assistants and are of questionable value in documenting the master's ideas, Dussler, pp. 81-82. The figure discussed above appears only in the drawing in Paris, and in this instance he is without the feather bonnet. However, as Oberhuber notes, many details were omitted in this design. Konrad Oberhuber, Raphaels Zeichnungen, Entwurfe zu Werken Raphaels und Seiner Schule im Vatikan 1511/12 bis 1520 9, Raphaels Zeichnungen: Oskar Fischel (Berlin: Mann, 1972): 92.

11Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, 5th ed., ed. and trans. by Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, 6 (St. Louis: Herder, 1950): 441. 12John W. O'Malley, "The Discovery of America and Reform Thought at the Papal

Court in the Early Cinquecento," in First Images of America, 1: 193-194. 13Ibid., pp. 190-191.



Raphael & the American Indian 187

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Plate 4. Giulio Parigi. Costume Design, early seventeenth century (photo: Bibhotece Marucelliana, Florence).




Perhaps Inghirami's words inspired the decision to include a barbarian in an Indian bonnet reaching towards the pope.'4 No record survives to inform us who devised the programs for the several rooms decorated by Raphael. However, it has been suggested that the Boston portrait of Inghirami was executed as an expression of gratitude for advice offered in planning the Stanza della Segnatura.'5 This likeness was painted around 151316 and permits us to speculate on the possibility that the humanist exchanged some of his ideas regarding the natives of America with the artist.

The relationship between Raphael and Inghirami is interesting given the latter's views on the New World, but our point need not rest on this. The na- ture of the problem is such that it is unnecessary to maintain that any one of the above mentioned possibilities accounts solely for the presence of an Indian in the fresco. One event remains to be discussed. To my mind it appears to offer the most compelling motivation, though not necessarily to the exclusion of the others.

On the island of Hispaniola shortly before the Christmas of 1511 a dominican friar, Antonio de Montesinos, delivered a sermon in which he de- nounced the wars against the Indians and the cruel servitude in which they were kept.17 Needless to say, this outraged the colonists. They considered the friar's pronouncements as tantamount to a denial of the king's right to rule in the Indies. The disagreement between the Dominicans who supported Montesinos and the settlers continued until word of it reached Spain.'8 In response, Ferdinand I established a commmission in 1512 to enumerate the rights of the Indians. Out of its deliberations came the Lawvs of Burgos, which sought to insure a more humane treatment of the natives. To the Spaniards the

"40f course, Inghirami was hardly alone in expressing such ideas. In his "Concerning the Rule of the King of Spain over the Indies," Matias de Paz distinguished between the In- dians, who had no knowledge of God, and the Jews, Saracens, and Turks, who had been given the opportunity to receive Christianity and had rejected it. A similar distinction, in- volving the Indians and the French, may also be intended in Raphael's fresco. Paz's treatise, written in 1512, sought to justify the Spanish conquests by contending that they were neces- sary for the propagation of the Christian faith. Such efforts, however, were legitimate only if they had the authorization of the pope. Lewis Hanke, TVe Spanishi StruggleforJustice in the Conquest of America (Boston, 1965), pp. 27-28. Giulio Romano was to employ somewhat comparable imagery for a triumphal arch erected to celebrate the entry of Charles V into Milan in 1541. An equestrian of the emperor was placed above the vanquished figures of a Turk, a barbarian, and an Indian. Boorsch, p. 509.

"5Paul Kunzle, "Raffaels Denkmal fuir Fedra Inghirami auf demletzten Arazzo," in Melanges Eugene Tisserant (Vatican City, 1964), 6: 499.

'6Dussler, p. 34. 17Hanke, p. 17. The following paragraphs are based primarily on the first three chap-

ters in Hanke. 18For a discussion of the close ties betweenJulius II and the Dominicans, and the artis-

tic consequences of this relationship, see Helen S. Ettlinger, "Dominican Influences in the Stanza della Segnatura and the Stanza d'Eliodoro," Zeitschriftfar Kunstgeschichite 46 (1983), 176-186.



Raphael & the American Indian 189

amelioration was to be achieved by requiring the Indians to receive some in- struction in the Christian faith; the problems of forced detention and working conditions were not addressed.

Yet certain issues concerning the Spanish dominion over the New World and its inhabitants remained. While it was generally believed that the Bulls of Alexander VI written in 1493 legitimized the Spanish conquests on the condi- tion that they convert the natives to Christianity,'9 the obligation of inform- ing the Indians of this stipulation still bothered minds given to legal niceties. To meet this objection another council was convened in 1513, and it drew up a rather unusual text called the Requerimiento. This document was to be read to the Indians by the conquistadors as they penetrated into unchartered territories. In brief, it called on the natives to accept Spanish rule since it had been granted by the pope for their own benefit. If they acquiesced, they would be gathered into the Spanish empire peaceably and informed of the principles of Christianity. If they resisted, however, they were warned that dire consequences would result.20

From our perspective the Requerimiento is significant because it revived the issue of papal donation to the Spanish throne at the very time Raphael was working on the Repulse of Attila. It asserted that the license for Spanish activi- ties in America derived ultimately from Rome. The belief that worldly authority receives its legitimacy from papal sanction sets the tenor of the document. It is epitomized in the following passage:

Therefore, we request that you understand this text, deliberate on its contents within a reasonable time, and recognize the Church and its highest priest, the Pope, as rulers of the universe, and in their name the King and Queen of Spain as rulers of this land, al- lowing the religious fathers to preach our holy Faith to you.21

A similar reasoning informs the decoration of the Stanza d'Eliodor, for, ac- cording to Dussler:

These paintings are not primarily concerned with representing concrete facts, however; more important is the representation of higher ideal qualities of the Papacy: the divinity of its institutions and hence its leadership and freedom, the triumph of righteous- ness, faith and trust.22

The gesture of peace which the pope directs towards his adversaries23 in the

19Luis Weck-Mufioz, "The Alexandrine Bulls of 1493: Pseudo-Asiatic Documents," in First Images of America, 1: 202.

20The complete text of the Requerimiento can be found in Bartolome de las Casas, His- tory of the Indies, ed. and trans. by Andree Collard (New York: Harber & Row, 1971), pp. 192-193.

21Ibid., p. 193. 22Dussler, p. 78. 23For the significance of this gesture in terms of the political aspirations of Leo X in

1513 seeJohn Shearman, "The Vatican Stanze: Functions and Decorations," The Proceedings of the British Academy 57 (1972): 7-28, 18.




Repulse of Attila is welcomed only by the extended hand of one of their number. While barbarians of one kind, the soldiers of France who refused to ac- knowledge papal authority, are threatened with divine retribution by Peter and Paul, a different type of barbarian, one whose geographic situation has precluded an acquaintance with the teachings of Christ, is offered peace and salvation.24 The Church, no doubt, anticipated a response to the Requerimiento when read in the wilds of the New World similar to the embrace of Christian- ity enacted by Raphael's figure. The question of the American Indian's humanity remained problematic to Eu- ropeans of the sixteenth century. Despite the Bull of Paul III which declared them "true men" in 1537, the matter continued to be a source of contention throughout the century.25 Explorers of the New World returned with tales of cannibalism, sexual promiscuity, and other practices among the natives deemed so odious as to deprive them of membership in the human race in the eyes of many Europeans.26 The visual expression of this attitude is found in de- pictions of hell, where among the population of infernal tormentors, we en- counter those with the attributes of Indians.27 Michelangelo himself seems to have concurred with this view since we discover one such figure near Charon's boat in his LastJudgment.28

To my knowledge, the Repulse ofAttila contains the first expression of the Church's ideas about the Indian in a monumental decorative cycle. The state- ment it makes is quite difference from that discussed in the preceding para- graph. By gesturing towards the pope, the figure wearing a feather bonnet demonstrates his receptivity to divine grace at the very moment when his Eu- ropean companions reject it. In this respect he anticipates the more positive imagery developed in countless Baroque paintings. In Pozzo's ceiling for S. Ignazio, for example, we find a "bizarrely dressed Amazon"29 who defends the Christian community from the forces of impiety. Raphael's fresco, then, seems to reflect the sort of attitude expressed by Giustiniani and Quirini, who, when addressing the pope about the American Indian, urged him to recognize that "they are our brothers."30

24Honour, p. 57. 25John H. Elliot, "Renaissance Europe and America: A Blunted Impact?" 1: 17. 26Honour, pp. 56-58. 27Ibid., p. 55, and pl. 44. 28Frederick Hartt, Michelangelo (New York: Abrams, 1976), p. 148. 29Honour, p. 98. 300'Malley, p. 195.

