An Unprecedented worship: the first Representation of the “Other” in the sixteenth century’s Portuguese painting

Abstract

It would be just another representation of the classic scene from the New Testament Bible, where the newborn Jesus is presented by three wise men. However, in this case, the artists surprised and literally replaced the black king, Belshazzar, by a figure that immediately brings to mind an Indian of Brazil’s territory, so far, “newly discovered” and named Terra de Vera Cruz. Reflection of the great globalization process started in the late fifteenth century and continued during the sixteenth, we have in Adoration Of The Magi, perhaps in a pioneering way, clear indications of the future miscegenation
between colonizer and colonized, between the Christian and the pagan, revealing not only the process of “incorporation” of this “other” within the current regime, Christianity, but also making us reflect about the friction that this process would naturally cause.