“Savagery” and “Civilization”: Dutch Brazil in the Kunst- and Wunderkammer

Abstract

A hitherto unknown coconut cup from Dutch Brazil with carved representations sheds new light on the furthering of knowledge through pictorial representation that Count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen promoted in the mid-seventeenth century to add luster to his official image.Featuring representations of cannibals and "civilized" aboriginals, the cup suggests that "savage" Brazil was "civilized" under the peaceful leadership of the Protestant count.The same political message recurs on several other Brazilian artifacts once owned by Johan Maurits, who deliberately deployed his exotic Kunstkammer objects as diplomatic gifts to enhance his reputation as governor-general of Brazil.But when objects are integrated into a different collection context, they undergo a connotational paradigm shift.This process is easy to see in the provenance of the carved coconut cup.By the time Alexander von Humboldt owned the cup (ca.1800), its political message had long since been obscured.Rather than an object attesting to political power, the carved coconut cup, like other "Brasiliana" from Johan Maurits's collection, had come to be regarded as an objective illustration of Brazilian natural history.

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