Abstract

Illustrations, engravings, photographs, paintings, and sculptures are the most commonly used media in the works of influential explorers, naturalists, anthropologists, and visual artists to describe and represent the Mapuche people of Chile from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Through these, we identify attributes and meanings associated with this indigenous group and their culture, as well as the process through which their graphic image evolved from enlightenment identification in the 18th century to the supposedly scientific racial classification of the turn of the 19th to 20th century, and then to << costumbrista >> and indigenist appreciation in the early 20th century.