[Aztlan] Sam's hammock

[Susan Gilchrist]

I think it's meant to be funny. It's part of a set of pictures
including Columbus and Magellen, and Vespucci wasn't
really in the same league.
Historians and art historians always notice that it's like
a Garden of Eden scene, and assuming that's correct,
the outcome you're talking about is the Fall of Man.
I think there are also two more ways to see it, besides
as a picture of Adam and Eve and the animals:
1) Mars and Venus. He's in armor, she's not wearing
clothes. In the myth, her husband Vulcan throws a net
over them and all the gods laugh at them. Here he thinks
he's safe because there's a net but it's tied to the trees.
2) Joseph and Potiphar's wife. In the Bible story she
grabs his coat and shows it to her husband as evidence
that he was in her room. In the print he's standing at
a safe distance, and he's also got his banner tied to the
pole so she can't grab it.
She's also shaped vaguely like a map of Mexico
(reversed left to right in the version we have here).
Anyway I think you're right.
The early European pictures of hammocks show
the ones with crossbars, either looking unstable
like this one from Girolamo Benzoni
http://idd0073h.eresmas.net/public/artic10/5curet06.jpg
or completely sideways like this one from Ovido
http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/1492.exhibit/full-images/hammock.gif
So readers of books probably thought they looked
unsafe.--susan gilchrist

On 5/12/07, Nick Hopkins <nhopkins at mailer.fsu.edu> wrote:
>
> What a terrible hammock to immortalize!  Because of the crossbars,
> this is the kind of hammock that will flip you if you move slightly
> off center, as opposed to the Yucatec-style net that you can hardly
> fall out of.  If Vespucci responds to the apparent invitation and
> joins the lady in this hammock, he is in for a rude surprise!  Maybe
> that's the hidden message...
>
> Nick Hopkins
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