Images Take Flight: Feather Art in Mexico and Europe 1400–1700

"In a 16th-century triptych of the crucifixion at the Musée National de la Renaissance, north of Paris, Christ has wings. In fact the whole piece is made of feathers. The veil over the Virgin Mary is a brilliant blue, possibly from the lovely cotinga; the clothing on Saint John is bright green, either from a parrot or the quetzal; and the blood dripping from Christ’s wounds has hues of a red macaw or hummingbird. How feathers of Central American birds found their way into this biblical scene goes back to the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, and the transformation of indigenous feather art into a colonial export from New Spain. Images Take Flight: Feather Art in Mexico and Europe 1400–1700, published by Hirmer Verlag and distributed by University of Chicago Press, is the first thorough study of Mesoamerican feather mosaics from this era of change. ..."
Plumage of the Saints: Aztec Feather Art in the Age of Colonialism
University of Chicago Press