Foul Biting, or Diego Valadés and the Medium of Print

Abstract

Published in 1579 in Perugia, Diego Valadés's Rhetorica christiana is best known today as the first illustrated publication to show evangelisation efforts in the Americas to audiences across the Atlantic. Yet too often the Rhetorica's status in the history of art is that of exotica, a book seen as rare and valuable due to its American subject matter and its presumed mestizo authorship. This essay argues that these persistent miscategorisations exemplify a systemic failure to look beyond the images' representational content and account for the book's specific production history. The etched illustration programme of the Rhetorica not only details European proselytising efforts and Indigenous customs, but the book's facture also repositions colonial experience as central to artistic ambition and innovation in Europe, prompting a reassessment of print cultures of the early modern transatlantic world.