Feather shield with coyote

The Weltmuseum Wien has other featherwork items from Mexico, including some from the colonial period, but two pre-Columbian items that also came to the Weltmuseum via Schloss Ambrass are the more interesting. An insignia (or fan?) has a large blue feather ring with more brightly colored inner rings and a butterfly at the center. The feather shield with a coyote is one of only four that survived to the present — the other two are in Stuttgart while Maximilian returned the fourth to Mexico. Many more were imported to Europe but were destroyed when the European nobility used them in parades or at fancy dress parties. (This one was long wrongly described as a Chinese sunshade with a dragon.)