Teodoro Viero
Italy, b.1740, d.1819
Famiglia della Baja Dusky, nella nuova Zelanda
- c. 1783-1791
- Copper engraving
- Purchased, 2007
- 381 x 259mm
- 2007/014
- View on google maps
Tags: clubs (weapons), cross-hatching, families, feather (material), Māori (culture or style), men (male humans), moko, monochrome, people (agents), portraits, seas, tattoos, text (layout feature)
Venetian engraver Teodoro Viero created these prints for a large-scale folio of 360 plates, his Collection of ... prints depicting figures and costumes of various nations, according to the originals, and the descriptions of the most famous recent travellers, and of the discoverers of new countries. Viero based these three prints on illustrations from recently published accounts of James Cook’s Pacific voyages.
(Out of Time, 23 September 2023 – 28 April 2024)
Exhibition History
In the collection exhibition ‘Brought to Light’, a selection of prints by Italian engraver Teodoro Viero were juxtaposed with prints by contemporary New Zealand artist Robin White to offer two views of the Pacific, from two centuries apart. Viero offers what are some of the first European portrayals of the peoples of the Pacific. Created in Venice, Italy, Viero’s are long-distance imaginings, combining European artistic conventions with borrowings from painter-travellers such as William Hodges, who travelled to the Pacific with James Cook. (Brought to Light, November 2009)