Fig. 3. Lip-plated Africans in
Lorenz Fries’s edition of Ptolemy’s
Geography (Strasbourg: Johannes
Grieninger, 1522). Courtesy The
Newberry Library, Chicago (VAULT
Ayer 6 .P9 1522).
author of this arrangement, although the hand that materialized the idea
has been identified with Franz Hogenberg, Philips Galle, and Maarten
de Vos. In the preliminary pages a long poem by Adolf van Meetkerke,
alderman of Bruges, titled Frontispicio explicatio, helps clarify the
meaning of the image.
The frontispiece shows an architectural structure that houses
female allegories of the four continents. The continents are not
illustrated as a landscape where natives and local flora and fauna
coexist, but rather the concepts and ideas that each evokes are
represented in figures. Europe, on top, dominates the world. She
appears seated under a palisade of vine leaves and clusters of
grapes, symbols of the Christian Eucharist. Her head is covered
with the imperial crown; in her right hand she holds a scepter and
in her left, an orb topped with a cross, which alludes again to the
triumph of Christianity. On both sides of the title stand Asia (left),
richly adorned with jewels and holding a censer, and Africa (right),
as a barely dressed black woman (with stereotypical physical
characteristics of her race, including curly hair and a flat nose), with
a crown of flames that alludes to the proximity of the sun. She holds
a branch of balsam in her right hand, following Sebastian Münster’s
a string of bells under her right knee. She holds a club and a man’s
claim that balsam was produced only in Egypt. America is in the
head, alluding to cannibalism; a bow and arrows are on the floor,
lower level, far from Europe to mark the distance between these two
and a hammock hangs in the back. Close to her feet, suggesting
continents, and leaning against Asia’s pedestal, which evokes the
the short separation by the Strait of Magellan, lies Tierra del Fuego
long-held identification with this continent. This figure represents
as a herm with a woman’s bust, alluding to its still unknown real
the stereotype of a savage American: a long-haired, naked woman
size, and decorated with the flames that Magellan saw at night
carrying a feather headdress, with an adornment on her forehead and
and that gave name to this land. Ortelius reinvented the image of
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