Allegory of America, from the Four Continents

Allegory of America, from the Four Continents

Godfried Maes

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This unusual male allegorical figure of the New World belongs to a set of drawings of Allegories of the Four Continents. The drawings likely served as preliminary designs for tapestries. The other three allegorical figures are represented as women; and, the tapestries and related paintings include a female figure of America as well. Maes’s allegory of America follows a visual tradition which derives from the Italian humanist Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1603). As seen in Ripa, Maes shows America wearing a feather headdress, carrying a bow and arrow, and stalked by an alligator. In the bottom register are a tropical parrot and a putto wearing a gold-filled pack and smoking tobacco, popular imports from the New World.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Allegory of America, from the Four ContinentsAllegory of America, from the Four ContinentsAllegory of America, from the Four ContinentsAllegory of America, from the Four ContinentsAllegory of America, from the Four Continents

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.