ABSTRACT
When Emperor Charles V placed his share of the plunder from Hernán de Cortés’s entrada into Mexico on public display in several European cities, he produced a pivotal change in perception of “the Indians lately discovered.” For the Habsburgs, including Margaret of Austria, governor of the Netherlands provinces, the show from 1519 to 1523, primarily at the Brussels Hôtel de Ville, made propaganda for Charles’s claim to be universal emperor. But the exhibit showed an influential audience the impressive craftsmanship and humanity of the New World population, sparked a new fashion industry, and ultimately contributed to the Papal bull Sublimis Deus (1537), one of the first declarations of Indigenous human rights.
