Pictorial Fragment of Indians in Vatican Painting

Edit: Silvia Poggoli never loses n opportunity to attack the Church. The black legends surrounding the pontificate of Alexander VI is a fairly outworn implement in the arsenal of anti-Catholic propagandists. But this Italian journalist gets her information on the Catholic Church mostly from her contempt for it, and popular television programs. In any case, she manages to find in a very interesting fragment of the Church's artistic patrimony, a worthy cause for her blithe hostility.

[NPR] The painting was commissioned by Pope Alexander VI. Anyone who has followed the TV series The Borgias knows he was the infamous Rodrigo Borgia, a Spaniard who fathered several children and became a symbol of church corruption.

Alexander VI became pope in 1492, only a few months before Columbus made landfall.

Art historian Paolucci is convinced the entire Pinturicchio fresco cycle for the Borgia Apartments inside the Vatican had been completed by the end of 1494.


http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/05/180860991/long-hidden-vatican-painting-linked-to-native-americans