New World Feathers and the Matter of Early Modern Ingenuity: Digital Microscopes, Period Hands, and Period Eyes

This paper reconsiders the emotional and aesthetic significance of New World feathers in early sixteenth-century Europe. The arrival of Central and South American feathers and feather-work prompted sheer amazement amongst Europeans. In several accounts, Europeans expressed their emotional responses to such objects in a language whose grammar centered on the concept of ‘ingenuity’. I explore the meanings of such affective responses and the general emotional appeal of feathers and feather-work from the Americas by re-approaching the material and visual aesthetics of such objects. Sixteenth-century Europeans were highly trained in observing, knowing, experiencing and appreciating how things were made. Early European visual aesthetics of the ingenuity of indigenous feather-work thus gained their meanings within a culture of making that highly appreciated materials and craft knowledge. In order to reconstruct the matter of New World feather-work in the “period eye” of sixteenth-century Europe, I use the microscope as a heuristic tool of historical research. Digital microscoping, I argue, helps to recalibrate our understanding of viewing conventions and, hence, to understand the matter of feathers in sixteenth-century Europe.