The new view of Mesoamerican land and the Maya ruins through the drawings of the English artist Frederick Catherwood

Abstract

The present work intends to investigate the construction of a new vision about Mesoamerica from the images produced by the English artist
Frederick Catherwood during his trip through the Central American lands in the middle of the 19th century, accompanied by John Lloyd Stephens.
Through the artist’s biography, recovering the importance of travel and his writings from the first contacts between Europe and America, and reviewing the journey made by these two characters, we will focus on the analysis of the images published in 1844 under the title of Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan. With this work we seek to recover the importance of this artist in the history of the
contacts between Europe and America and the subsequent exploration of the American territories from new paradigms that gave more value to
American antiquity.