It has often been remarked that we are living in the age of the image.

In virtually all modern academic

disciplines dealing with questions of human interaction, from multimedia studies to literary criticism
to philosophy, there is an increasing consensus that the phono- and logocentric orders of old are being
broken up in this new era of smartphone photography, on-demand television, digital marketing and
social-media memes. Images, however, have always been important to humankind. We have always
been predominantly visual animals: the earliest known forms of inscribed human communication are
cave paintings; medieval manuscripts overflow with illustrations; political caricature continues to be
popular even today. In preliterate times, moreover, the image was perhaps the single most prevalent
means for the transmission of information, ideas and innovations across space and time.
It is for these reasons all the more surprising that it should be precisely those scholars who
are most interested in our past and, in particular, precisely those scholars who are most interested in
the development of our past ideas and identities, who have been least interested in counting visual
sources among their primary research materials. This has largely been the case, for example, within
the field to which we will turn our attention here, which is to say historical studies into the evolution
of the idea and identities of Europe.1 Nevertheless, in the course of recent decades, there have been
some efforts made to rectify this longstanding oversight. One such effort has been Michael Wintle’s
voluminous The Image of Europe (2009), which presents, charts and examines visual representations
of Europe, ranging from the Hellenistic Period to the contemporary moment, in order to discover what
they might tell us about the development of the idea and identities of the region over time.
Although the contribution of this volume has been nothing short of seminal within the sphere
of historical identity studies, it is not our object to repeat its arguments here – namely, that any belief
in the superior truth value of written accounts as against alternative forms of historical evidence is
unfounded; that processes of identity formation are perforce rooted in oppositions between the Self
and the Other and that visual representations of Europe as well as of the other continents have been
no exceptions in this regard; that visual representations of Europe as well as of the other continents
have affected as much as reflected the evolution of the idea and identities of the region. All of these
points have been made well enough by the author himself. Our aim, rather, will be to build upon the
work of this foundational study and to supplement it in those places where it is lacking.
In this vein, then, let us waste no time in observing that the primary weakness in Wintle’s
study is methodological in so far as it relies upon only two analytical strategies. On the one hand it
charts changes in visual representations of the continents at the macrohistorical level – which is to
say from one historical epoch to the next. On the other hand it examines the manner in which various
modes of visual representation have portrayed the continents in different or similar ways at the
ahistorical level – which is to say with no regard to historical epoch. In no way, in other words, does
it attempt to trace the development of visual representations of the continents, across various visual
media, at the microhistorical level – which it to say within and over the course of one specific historical
epoch. One might thus be led to believe, in the light of such an omission, that visual representations
of the continents remained mostly unaltered during periods like the Middle Ages, the Renaissance
and the Age of Enlightenment. In reality, however, this was anything but the case.
In this essay, therefore, we will endeavour to analyse the evolution of visual representations
of Europe as well as of the other continents, across various visual media, in the course of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, an age which has long been considered to be a watershed in the history
of the idea and identities of the region (e.g. Delanty 1995: 30). In order to do so we will focus our

1
One exception is the precocious study of Denys Hay (1968) which features eight black-and-white plates.
attention upon two types of visual source – the one maps, the other personificative imagery. It should
be made clear, furthermore, that our study is deliberately Eurocentric, in that it only includes maps
and images produced within Europe and by Europeans, since it is precisely our intention to investigate
changes in how the peoples of this region perceived themselves over time. In relating turning points
in the evolution of visual representations of the continents to real-world historical events, and vice
versa, finally, it is hoped that we might gain a fuller and more rich understanding of the development
of the idea and identities of Europe within and over the course of our chosen historical era.
In respect of this chosen historical era, then, the sixteenth century is hardly an inappropriate
place at which to begin a partial analysis such as this one. It was in the early parts of this century, after
all, that the nouns ‘Europe’ and ‘European’ first came into common usage (Hale 1993: 46) and that
the former first came to denote an independent politico-cultural concept (Wintle 2009: 281). In times
prior to these, of course, the idea of Europe had been largely synonymous with the metageographic
notion of Christendom,2 with ‘Europeans’ constituting Christians banded together in order to defend
the faith from Moorish and later Ottoman onslaught. In spite of intermittent success in such religious
conflicts, moreover, there was little for ‘Europe’, to the extent that it existed, to be self-assertive about
in the centuries preceding the late Renaissance period: the Great Schism within the Christian Church
had taken place in 1054 and had only proceeded to widen; the Nasrid Dynasty had continued to thwart
the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula during the thirteenth century; the city of Constantinople had
fallen to the Turks in 1453 and the last possession of Europe in Asia had been lost in 1461.
Observations such as these are reflected in the visual representations of the time. A twelfth-
century candelabra reportedly hailing from Liège, for example, portrays the three known continents
as three more or less indistinguishable noblewomen (cf. Wilson and van der Dussen 1995: 50). In like
fashion, paintings common in the Late Middle Ages, in which the continents are personified as the
three Biblical Magi, tend to depict the men as three different but equal tributaries. As late as the mid-
fifteenth century, in fact, visual representations of the continents continued to refrain from casting
the three known parts of the world as anything other than natural peers. The ‘Mappa Mundi’ (plate
one) in Jean Mansel’s La Fleur des Histoires (ca. 1460), for instance, depicts the continents according
to their mytho-religious genealogies, as the sons of Noah, on an allegorical T-O map. Indeed, if any
one of the brothers is to be seen as superior in this image, then surely it is Shem, or Asia, set apart as
he is by his elevated position, his greater landmass, his many cities and his regal blue robe.
All of this was soon to change, however, in the wake of events which would occur toward the
end of the century. It has long been shown by scholars that the threefold fortune of the rounding of
the Cape of Good Hope (1488), the completion of the Reconquista (1492) and the discovery of the so-
called New World (1492) paved the way for a profound shift in the manner in which Europe viewed
itself as well as the rest of the world (e.g. Pagden 2002: 50). Firstly, in exploiting the prospect of riches
offered by the New World and fresh trade networks in the Far East, the continent became increasingly
wealthy, allowing it to flourish economically, culturally and civilisationally. Secondly, in attempting to
exploit such riches as effectively as possible, rapid advancements were made in maritime navigational
technologies, which had a knock-on effect in various other technological spheres, from locomotive to
administrative to military. Thirdly, in coming into contact with peoples in the Americas who were so
patently civilisationally inferior to themselves, which had never been the case with Asia, and in view
of the lack of any comparable overseas expansion on the part of the latter, the region gradually came
to regard itself as rightful sovereign of this new earthly order. Harmonious fables such as that of three

2
A more detailed discussion of the concept of metageographies can be found in Lewis and Wigen (1997).
equal kings, in other words, no longer viable in the light of the discovery of a fourth continent, ceased
to apply, and Europe began to suppose itself heir to the throne: ‘Europeans were no longer sons of an
abducted and defiled princess but rather scions of the queen of all the world’ (Hay 1968: 104).
It was not long before such newfound self-images of supremacy and regality found their way
into visual representations. One of the earliest known examples of this might be an allegorical map
entitled Europa Regina (plate two) which was first drawn by Johannes Putsch in 1537 and which was
later adapted and reproduced in countless other publications. In the drawing, the European landmass
has metamorphosed into the figure of a queen who bears a sceptre in the one hand and a globus
cruciger in the other while a crown rests atop her head. In the centre-frame position, she takes up the
majority of the map, with the other continents being relegated to the margins, in an inverse image of
what we have seen in the Mappa Mundi discussed above. In numerous reprintings, moreover, she is
coloured royal red whereas the other parts of the world are coloured yellow. Aside from the fact that
she is shown to be very much separate from Asia by way of a narrow body of water, finally, and on
account of the composition of the drawing, she also appears to crush Asia beneath her foot.
A more subtle cartographic statement of supremacy came toward the middle of the sixteenth
century in the form of Gerardus Mercator’s Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio (plate three). As any
number of critics have proven in recent decades, the method of projection proposed and employed
by Mercator in his map serves to flatter Europe in two principal ways: firstly, it causes lands far from
the equator (i.e. most of Europe) to seem larger than they really are while depicting lands close to or
on the equator (i.e. many parts of the other continents) true to size; secondly, since it places the newly
discovered American continents to the west of Europe, rather than to the east of Asia, the European
landmass is conveniently pushed into the centre of the map. It would of course be fallacious to claim
that Mercator’s map was the first ever to exaggerate the size of continents or to place Europe at the
centre of the earth (Hay 1968: 91). Nevertheless, it was the first to do so under the pretence of an
avowed scientific and mathematical realism – and it was certainly the most influential.
Of special interest among the cartographers who subsequently adopted the Mercator method
of projection in their own maps are Abraham Ortelius, whose Tipus Orbis Terrarum (plate four) was
published in 1570, and Matthias Quad, whose Tipus Orbis Terrarum (plate five) appeared in 1592. In
the latter, in particular, the projection is brought to an absurd extreme such that Europe is made to
seem roughly the same size as Africa or South America. What is perhaps even more interesting in
these maps, however, is the manner in which they draw borders. In spite of the fragmentation which
had torn Europe apart over the course of the sixteenth century, in the form of the Reformation and
consequent Wars of Religion, for example, both maps dispense with plotting internal borders in favour
of marking distinct continental ones reinforced by colour-coding. It would thus seem that European
maps of the world in the sixteenth century strove literally to paint over the politico-religious cracks
which marred the surface of the continent and to contrive an outward-facing sense of unity among its
inhabitants via sharp cartographic distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (cf. Neumann 1999: 52).
In the same work in which Ortelius’ map first appeared, which is widely considered to be the
first modern atlas, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), there were also visual innovations of another
variety afoot – namely, personificative images of the continents in the peritext. As Wintle has pointed
out, personification, unlike cartographic representation, afforded artists the opportunity to proclaim
not only that Europeans were superior to all other peoples but equally to illustrate ‘precisely why they
were better than all the rest, and therefore to describe and publicise a European identity, oftentimes
in juxtaposition with identities ascribed to the other continents’ (2009: 137). In the frontispiece (plate
six) to Ortelius’ atlas, then, five gynomorphised parts of the world are present. In the bottom third of
the page, the hypothesised continent of Magellanica is only partially drawn, whilst America is shown
reclining on the floor, entirely unclothed, surrounded by primitive instruments of war, and holding a
severed human head in reference to the stereotype of cannibalism which had been popularised in the
wake of Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus Novus (1505). Africa, for her part, in the middle third and on the
right hand side, stands upright and is somewhat more clothed, though she bears no objects save for
the sprig of some green plant. Asia, on the left hand side and with the same posture, is fully clothed
and bears only a thurible of fragrant incense. In the centre of the upper third, finally, sits Europe atop
her throne, sporting queenly robe, mantle, crown and sceptre, and handling the cross of the globus
cruciger as if it were the tiller of an earth-like ship and she the indisputable captain. As the poet Luis
de Camões was singing in his epic Os Lusíadas (1572) at about the same time:

Array’d in green, beneath indulgent skies,

The queen of arts and arms, fair Europe lies.
(Cited in Drace 2013: 24)

Ortelius’ pioneering technique of asserting hegemony through contrasts in personification would have
far-reaching effects on later visual representations of the continents. In the famed frontispiece (plate
seven) to his Atlas Sive Cosmographicae (1595), for instance, the man from whom Ortelius had taken
his method of cartographic projection, Gerardus Mercator, in turn adopted from him the practice of
personifying the continents.3 It did not take long, moreover, for these ubiquitous images to enter into
the popular consciousness and to be codified in iconographies and prosopographies. One such work
was the Prosopographia (ca. 1585) of Philip Galle, wherein the four continents (plate eight) appear in
almost exactly the same manner as in Ortelius’ frontispiece, with the exceptions that Africa here has
even less clothing and America is shown with a severed human leg as well as the usual head.
Subsequent to their codification in such widely available publications, personificative images
of the continents proliferated across the region and across various visual media – from printed books
to textiles to ceramics (Hale 1993: 49-52). Adriaen Collaert’s Four Continents (plate nine), a tetraptych
of engravings made circa 1588 after drawings by Maarten de Vos, for example, once more depicts the
four corners of the world in gynomorphic form and with mostly the same attributes as those we have
listed above. One notable addition, however, apart from the vine of plenty which has come to replace
the globus cruciger in the left hand of Europe and the animals upon which three of the continents are
sitting, are the landscape scenes which appear in the backgrounds of the images, each one populated
by elements typically associated with the region, from flora to fauna to geological features to warring
armies. In this final detail we might at last discern an acknowledgment of the divisive conflicts which
had plagued Europe throughout the sixteenth century and which, as we have seen above, tended to
be glossed over in cartographic portrayals of the continent. Nevertheless, even within the unflattering
context of intracontinental warfare, the overarching theme of European superiority remains, since
the European troops are shown in formation, with modern armour and weaponry, while the American
warriors, for instance, clash chaotically, without clothes, armed only with stone axes and clubs.
As the practice of personifying the continents continued to gain in popularity toward the turn
of the seventeenth century it was perhaps only natural that those other practitioners of continental

3
One interesting difference between the two is the absence of the globus cruciger in Mercator’s depiction of
the European continent. It is certainly possible to read this slight change in visual representation as symptomatic
of the slow shift toward more secular conceptions of Europe, rooted in notions of culture rather than in ones of
religion, which, as some (e.g. Wintle 2009: 33) have argued, took place over the course of the Renaissance.
representation, cartographers, realising the appeal of such images, soon began including them in their
own work. An early manifestation of this influence was Petrus Plancius’ Orbis Terrarum Tipus (plate
ten), which appeared in 1594 and borrowed heavily from Collaert with regard to the six gynomorphic
parts of the world which adorn its borders. Not that it borrowed wholesale, however, for although the
map makes few changes to the repertoires of the five other women, it takes the liberty of attributing
several new objects to the figure of Europe: the cornucopia of agricultural plenty, the tome of higher
learning, the lute of artistic genius, the morion of military might, the musket of technological brilliance
and the spherical astrolabe of scientific progress. Objects associated with the region even go so far as
to invade the space of the map itself, with Dutch fluyts and Spanish galleons, emblems of European
maritime navigational prowess, patrolling the waters which surround the other landmasses.4
If it was at about this time, then, that more and more self-assertive symbols of identity were
beginning to accumulate around the figure of Europe in visual representations of the continents, as in
the case of Plancius’ map, the timing was certainly no accident. Approximately one hundred years on
from the threefold fortune of events which had afforded it the opportunity to flourish across various
politico-economic and socio-cultural spheres, the region was in the midst of shifting into an altogether
new gear of self-importance. The Holy League, for example, had recently routed the Ottoman fleet in
the Battle of Lepanto (1571), thereby assuming total control of the Mediterranean Sea. The Spanish
and Portuguese, furthermore, were rapidly expanding their overseas colonial empires, and imports of
bullion from the New World were more or less at their peak (Elliot 2002: 184). Meanwhile, the British
and the Dutch, focusing their attention in the other direction, were soon to establish their respective
trading companies in the Indian Ocean.5 Goods from the Transatlantic Slave Trade, moreover, as well
as profits from the trading of these goods, were benefiting the continent as a whole. On top of all of
this, finally, the scientific and rational revolutions were starting to take shape, with the work of men
like Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei and René Descartes ensuring that Europeans
were all the time increasing their ability to master the natural world and to bend it to their will.
Conditions were prime, in other words, for an intensification in the identity-building processes
going on within Europe, already rooted in inklings of superiority over the other continents, and now
seemingly confirmed in the light of continuing serendipity and success. Impressions of superiority, of
course, always imply comparison with those purportedly in the position of inferiority. It was in coming
into contact with peoples utterly unlike themselves at the dawn of the Age of Discovery, as we have
remarked above, that Europeans had initially begun to make such value judgements. Approaching the
turn of the century, however, as they broadened their colonial and trading horizons, explored greater
and greater tracts of uncharted territories, gathered more and more knowledge about the unfamiliar
peoples living there, and as they increasingly began to exercise their imagination vis-à-vis such peoples
in history books, literature and visual representations of the type we have been considering here, the
denizens of Europe were being provided with ever larger amounts of real and imagined alterity against
which to sharpen their own sense of self (Hay 1968: 99). As Edward Said has observed, employing the
term ‘Orient’ in reference to Asia as well as to America in the case of the Renaissance: ‘The Orient has
helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’ (2003: 1-2).
Visual representations of the continents, as we have seen in nascent form in Plancius’ double
hemisphere map above, soon came to mirror as well as to further this newly reinvigorated project of

4
These landmasses, in addition, are drawn according to the Mercator method of cartographic projection and so
exhibit the same tendencies to flatter the European continent as those we have highlighted above.
5
The British East India Company was founded in 1600 while the Dutch equivalent was founded in 1602.
assertive-contrastive identity construction. Queen Europe, therefore, seated upon her throne, in her
regal robes and mantle, with a crown atop her head and a sceptre in her hand, rapidly began amassing
symbols of culture and civilisation about her feet, while the other continents remained comparatively
empty-handed. In Cesare Ripa’s landmark Iconologia (1603), for example, which was to be edited and
re-edited numerous times over the course of the following two centuries, and which was to serve as
an essential point of reference for any number of allegorical painters and poets in its lifetime, the ‘four
parts of the world’ (Ripa in Drace 2013: 32) are once again cast as female figures (plate eleven). In the
woodcuttings, as per usual, the three non-European continents remain largely unaltered. What strikes
the eye first when examining the depiction of Europe, however, is the sheer volume of objects which
appear around her. To the symbols proposed by Plancius in the borders of his map Ripa adds at least
five more: the temple of religious righteousness and architectural excellence, the crowns of civilised
government, the owl of ancient wisdom, the stallion of noble zeal and the palette of fine art.
In a coincidental, or perhaps not so coincidental, turn of events, it was at precisely this point
in history, when illustrators and iconographers were beginning to associate expertise in the fine arts
with Europe in personificative representations of the continents, that fine artists themselves began to
adopt the practice of personifying the continents in their work. One of the earliest known paintings in
this vein is the baroque Four Rivers of Paradise (ca. 1615) by Peter Paul Rubens (plate twelve). In the
painting, the four great rivers, each signifying the part of the world through which it flows, and their
accompanying river gods, are depicted in anthropomorphised form. Although the contrasts between
the figures are more subtle than in the cases we have considered above, given the conventions of the
visual medium in question, they are nevertheless present. The Danube, or Europe, for instance, sat in
the top left hand corner of the frame, occupies the highest position in the composition, while the light
which shines upon the Ganges, or Asia, on the right hand side, seems to emanate from her. Aside from
the fact, moreover, that her god is the most vigorous of the four, she herself is shown to be the most
desirable of the women, as attested by her fair complexion, the manner in which her hair has been
swept back into an intricate bun and the longing gaze of the god of the Río de la Plata.
A more unequivocal artistic assertion of European superiority came some fifteen years later
in the form of Frans Franken’s Allegory on the Abdication of Emperor Charles V (plate thirteen). In this
painting, amid many other happenings, the three personified continents of Asia, Africa and America
appear to be paying tribute to the Holy Roman Emperor. On their knees, in the bottom-right corner
of the frame, they proffer chests filled with the produce of their lands. Europe, meanwhile, located to
the right hand side, above the other continents, is not kneeling but sitting, is not paying tribute but
bearing witness, and is adorned with the customary symbols of regality. Indeed, in so far as Charles
ruled over many parts of Europe as well as vast swathes of the New World during his reign, we might
even venture so far as to suggest that he also stands, at least in part, for the idea and identities of the
region within the context of the painting, the tributes of the other continents thus being directed as
much toward the Holy Roman Empire in particular as toward the greatness of Europe in general.
In the same way that trends in the visual representations of atlas frontispieces impacted upon
those in prosopographical works, and trends in the personificative imagery of engravings exerted an
influence on illustrations in the borders of maps and iconographies, the visual motif of Europe in the
position of a sovereign collecting tribute from its subjects, which are the other parts of the world, was
to prove a popular one over the course of the seventeenth century. A fine example of such popularity
is the Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis (plate fourteen) of Henricus Hondius (1630).6 In the bottom portion

6
Hondius, like Plancius, employs the Mercator method of projection, with the same flattering results.
of the map, in the centre, the four continents are depicted in gynomorphic form. Europe, seated upon
her throne, which has been placed upon an elevated dais, receives offerings and gifts from the other
three continents, her vassals, recording their nature and amount in her ledger. Images such as these
served to reinforce the notion that Europe existed in order to flourish while the other three corners
of the world existed solely in order to facilitate this flourishing. As Samuel Purchas was taking care to
explain in his four-volume collection of travel stories, the Hakluytus Posthumus (1625): ‘Asia, Africa
and America, have first been discovered to our Reader, not as enjoying the first and best place, but as
offering their ready service and best attendance unto Europe’ (cited in Drace 2013: 34).
It was not merely in fine art and ornate atlases, in costly reference works and splendid printed
books, accessible only to the wealthy and well-educated classes, however, that visual representations
of the sort we have been analysing appeared. As Wintle has remarked: ‘It is impossible to exaggerate
the ubiquity of these images in and around the early modern period, especially in the late sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries: they literally covered the visual environment, and formed a backdrop to
public and private life at almost all socio-economic levels’ (2009: 266). In the sixteenth century it was
quite common for actors to dress up and play the roles of the continents in street theatre, at festivals
and during public ceremonies (Wintle 2009: 240). It has been recorded, for example, that when the
future King Philip II of Spain rode into Antwerp in 1549 for his Joyous Entry: ‘Asia, Africa, and Europe
knelt, in a tableau vivant, to pay him homage’ (le Corbeiller 1961: 209). In the seventeenth century it
was public architecture which served to popularise such images. In Amsterdam, for instance, the rear-
façade tympanum of the Royal Palace (plate fifteen), upon which work commenced in 1648, takes up
the tributary motif and portrays the continents in much the same manner as we have seen in atlas
peritexts and prosopographies above. Similarly, in Rome, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (1651) draws
upon the fluvial symbolism at play in Ruben’s painting, with a childlike andromorphisation of the Río
de la Plata, signifying the Americas, for example, seated upon a stash of treasure (plate sixteen).
Visual representations of the continents continued to develop in this vein for the remainder
of the seventeenth century. In the domain of atlas frontispieces, for instance, the frontispiece (plate
seventeen) to Johannes Blaeu’s Atlas Maior (1662) reduces the four personified continents to their
essential qualities – savagery for the Americas, fertility for Africa, sensuousness for Asia and regality
for Europe. Regarding works of codification, furthermore, the countless translations and re-editions
of Ripa’s Iconologia proceeded to attribute ever more symbols of culture and civilisation to Europe
whereas the surroundings of the other three parts of the world were left characteristically bare.7 As
for cartographers, they, too, persisted in adopting while at the same time making changes to earlier
practices and trends. Nicolaes Visscher’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis (plate eighteen), which appeared
in 1652, for example, employs the Mercator method of projection and presents four gynomorphic
continents in the corners of its borders, the latter of which are clearly indebted to Collaert. Yet the
map also features a set of smaller images, along the edges of its borders, focusing on more specific
locations, such as Havana or Tunis. In the realm of fine art, finally, the Four Parts of the World (plate
nineteen) by Juan Correa, produced some time toward the end of the century, represents five pairs
of anthropomorphic continents, each with one male and one female. Although the other continents
have been somewhat ennobled in the biombo, it is once more the Europeans who stand out.
What all of these visual representations have in common, with each other as well as with the
earlier seventeenth-century ones we have analysed above, and over and beyond the manner in which

7
In a Dutch version of the Iconologia, published in 1677, for example, additions include printing machinery, not
one but two cornucopiae, an ensign and various maritime navigational instruments (Okayama 1992:183).
they depict the continents, is their reluctance to engage with any of the more problematic elements
in the European identity they seek to construct. During the first half of the century, for instance, the
brutal Thirty Years War had threatened to rip the region asunder and had resulted in the deaths of
approximately eight million people (Clodfelter 2017: 40). The Peace of Westphalia, moreover, which
was signed and enacted in 1648 in order to bring an end to the conflict, perhaps led to even greater
antagonisms within Europe to the extent that it established the system of state sovereignty. Out of
this new political order would emerge the age of absolute monarchy, with powerful autocratic rulers
such as Louis XIV of France and Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I vying for control of the low countries
and constantly seeking to expand their intra- and intercontinental empires (cf. Hale 1993: 54).
Observations such as these, as we have seen above in the form of cartographers toning down
the politico-religious and linguistic fragmentation of Europe during the Reformation, are by no means
bound to the seventeenth century alone. Nor are they bound exclusively to issues within Europe. As
has been ably demonstrated by both Hale (1995: 38-50) and Pagden (2002: 11), throughout the early
modern period, the civilisations of Asia were in virtually no respects inferior to those of Europe, even
when measured by European criteria, and educated Europeans knew it. Similarly, even in the case of
the patently civilisationally inferior Africans and Native Americans, several authors had begun to argue
for the moral superiority of the so-called ‘natural man’ (e.g. Montaigne 2009). Nowhere in the visual
representations which we have been studying, however, do such intra- or intercontinental challenges
to the European project of identity construction appear. It is certainly true that Asia is consistently
shown to be second only to Europe; that the other two continents are often portrayed as possessing
an Edenic purity; and that subtle references to intracontinental animosity are made. Nevertheless, it
is unfailingly Europe who is shown to be consummate and superior in all things. Cognitive dissonance
of this kind is perhaps best exemplified by Samuel Purchas: ‘And if in some of these things Asia, Africa
and America may seem equal, or in any one thing superior, yet even therein also they are inferior, by
just and equal inequality made Tributaries and Servants to Europe’ (cited in Drace 2013: 35).
It would appear, in other words, that visual representations of the continents in sixteenth and
seventeenth century Europe functioned as much to envision the region as it aspired to be as they did
to document it as it truly was; that they acted to iron out and smooth over the contradictions inherent
in the project of European identity formation. As we have witnessed over the course of this essay, as
these aspirations and contradictions developed over time, so too did the visual representations. Thus
maps, starting out from allegorical T-O specimens which portrayed three different but equal parts of
the world in the fifteenth century, had evolved into express assertions of European supremacy by the
early sixteenth century in the wake of a series of opportune events. Thereafter the power of maps
to propagate this newfound sense of superiority-based identity constantly improved thanks to new
methods of cartographic projection which enlarged and centralised the landmass; to the practices of
border-drawing and colour-coding which unified at the same time as they distinguished; and to the
subsequent vogue of including personificative imagery borrowed from other forms of visual media in
the borders of the map. In like fashion, these personificative images had initially depicted the three
continents as natural peers before the visual motif of Queen Europe emerged in the first decades of
the sixteenth century; portrayals of the continents began to take on an increasingly contrastive and
valuational character; ever more symbols of culture and civilisation came to amass in and around the
figure of Europe; and such triumphalist personificative practices started to appear across many visual
media, each influencing the next in this one region-wide process of artistic identity construction.
As the star of Europe rose throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, in all
things geopolitical, economic, technological, cultural, civilisational and martial, visual representations
of the region, as well as of the other continents, evolved in order to reflect newfound impressions of
worldwide hegemony. In turn, newly self-assertive visual representations served to further nourish
and to reinforce such impressions, and so on and so forth. Omnipresent as these images were, across
various visual media, in public as well as private spaces, in virtually all social milieux and in almost all
corners of the continent, they inevitably ‘passed into the mind’ (Hale 1993: 52), thus contributing to
the formation of a certain European consciousness and later self-consciousness. Contrastive as they
were, in so far as they seldom depict Europe by itself but, rather, often present it alongside the other
parts of the world, such images equally gave rise to what we might call an ‘other-consciousness’, by
means of which Europeans built an identity as much upon what they shared with each other as upon
what they did not, or believed they did not, share with the peoples of the other continents.
Not that such contrasts between ‘us’ and ‘them’ were anything new in the history of the idea
and identities of Europe. In Antiquity the Other had been despotism. In the Middle Ages it had largely
been Islam. During the late Renaissance, however, and as evidenced by the accumulation of cultural
objects in the personificative images we have analysed above, the grounds upon which Europe was
differentiating itself from the rest of the world were increasingly secular. Visual representations of the
sort we have been considering here therefore contradict the thesis that ‘Christendom was virtually
interchangeable with the concept of Europe for all of the sixteenth and for much of the seventeenth
century’ (Hay 1968: 115). They likewise challenge or at least qualify the prevailing view that notions
of ‘civilisation’ and ‘civilisational superiority’ did not exist in the late Renaissance and would not exist
until the Age of Enlightenment (cf. Wintle 2009: 44). While it is certainly the case that these notions
remained inarticulate throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, images from the period
unquestionably evince the birth and development of such ideas at the subconscious and subverbal
level. It was, to be sure, no perfectly coherent or continuous process. Nevertheless, the overarching
narrative is plain to see: a one-dimensional abducted princess, with little to rely on but her faith, over
time became a multi-faceted dirigiste queen, leader of all the world and greatest in all things. Visual
representations of the continents in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe therefore constitute
anything but a homogenous whole and as such reflect the forever evolving conception of the region
during this period. It remains to be seen whether further studies of this nature will provide similarly
useful insights into the evolution of the idea and identities of Europe in other historical epochs.
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