The aim of this thesis is to fill in certain gaps in the iconographic treatment of South American women. Due to the lack of art schools and printing workshops in Gran Colombia through the first half of the nineteenth century, images in general are rare. The existing works are portraits of such extraordinary women as saints or wives of important officials, thus representatives of a wealthy Creole minority. Local artists tended to choose as subjects prominent men, notably the heroes of the young Republics. By contrast, the daily lives of most women, whether Indian, Métis, Black or even Creole, were rarely featured. In addition, like New Granada, Gran Colombia suffered from a relative lack of attractiveness. In the imagination of European travelers this region never represented the legendary wealth of Viceroyalties like Peru or New Spain (Mexico). It was only at the dawn of the nineteenth century that this equatorial zone attracted significant interest due in large part to the great scientific exploration of Humboldt and Bonpland. Thanks to their many publications, a large number of French travelers decided to follow their footsteps. Among them, a small group wrote and published illustrated volumes. Their engravings and lithographs provide the material needed to restore at least partially the lack of female images. To this point such iconography has not generated in-depth historical study, since it has long been considered merely ornamental and secondary to the text. This thesis proposes to demonstrate the contrary by focusing upon the sizeable role of this iconography, its symbolic power and its contribution to the discourse then characteristic of travel literature. Based upon specific observations or drawn purely from imagination, these pictorial and literary descriptions enable the identification of the principal stereotypes developed to characterize Gran Colombian women, despite the fact of their rich cultural multiplicity.
