MUDEC – Museo delle Culture, Milan
Acquired in 2025 · Museum inventory: PAM 1762

This portrait of Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Pope Clement IX, was made in Mexico by an anonymous amanteca artist. Its feather mosaic technique, known as emplumado, layers coloured feathers over amatl paper supported on copper.

Rooted in pre-Hispanic featherwork, the technique was adapted in New Spain to Christian imagery. Such objects travelled to Europe through religious and diplomatic networks and entered early collections of wonders.

MUDEC relates the composition to Giovanni Maria Morandi’s 1656 portrait of Rospigliosi in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, proposing it as a possible model. The museum emphasises the rarity of surviving feather portraits of this scale and their importance for understanding connections between Italy and Latin America.

Museum catalogue
Anonymous Amanteca Artist · Mexico · 1665–1675
Feathers, paper and copper · 60 × 46 cm

Read MUDEC’s catalogue entry