The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6

The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6

Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This engraving depicting the conquest of the New World is one of the earliest printed images of the Americas. It belongs to a series of twelve prints celebrating the Habsburg Emperor Charles V’s military victories around the world, and is dedicated to Charles’s son and the future king of Spain and Portugal, Philip II. The print portrays cannibalistic activities in the left foreground and a battle scene with European ships at a harbor in the background. The Latin inscription explains that the emperor sought to bring "civilization" to the natives. The indigenous peoples’ nudity and cannibalism both derive from a visual tradition established in the early sixteenth century and based on the writings of the first explorers.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6The Imperial Troops Bringing Civilization to the Indians, from The Victories of Emperor Charles, plate 6

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.