Allegorical Groups Representing the Four Parts of the World: America

In early modern Europe, the earth was generally understood to be divided into four parts: Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. From the 1500s to the 1800s, the symbolic depiction (“allegory”) of these four geographical areas was widely popular and often known as “The Allegory of the Four Continents.” Artists used generalized representations of men and women holding or wearing items that European viewers understood to represent the “continent” or part of the world from which they came. In this grouping the figure of Europe contrasts markedly in complexity with the others, of which the artist and his patrons knew much less.

America: The European view of America, the New World, as fierce and primitive is represented by the semi-nude female warrior wearing feathers, who has shot an opponent with an arrow. She supports a man who stands on an alligator that looks strangely like a lizard. The gruesome detail of the little boy lifting a decapitated head on a spear refers to European assumptions about cannibalism in America.

Little is known about Francesco Bertos, a highly original artist who created a considerable number of complicated pyramidal groups in a distinctive, ingenious style that mirrors the lightness and airiness of contemporary Rococo painting in France.

Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Spiradon, Paris; Jacques Seligmann and Co., Inc., New York, Sale, February 17, 1917; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1917, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.