This dissertation examines the initial contacts and cultural encounters between Europe and the Mexica and investigates the ways in which the Mexica treasures acquired by the conquistadores played a pivotal role in shaping social, cultural, political and religious perceptions and misperceptions about the Mexica, Hapsburgs and their empire, and Europe as a whole in the early sixteenth-century. The initial shipment of art, artifacts, weapons and other goods given to King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Hapsburg by the Mexica ruler Moctezuma (via Hernán Cortés) arrived in Seville on November 5th, 1519, followed by additional deliveries soon thereafter. The objects included in these shipments would play a significant role in shaping and promoting the newly-expanded imperial identity, while simultaneously contributing to the European audience’s construction of an identity for the indigenous peoples of the New World, doing so through a European vision and recontextualization of pre-Columbian and earlypost-Conquest art and artifacts. This project explores these issues by focusing on three specific media: gold, mosaics (or small stonework) and featherwork, the three media most associated with the indigenous peoples and most coveted by European audiences. In doing so, I seek to understand what it was about these media specifically that inspired their new-found audiences to desire these materials so intensely, above all other forms of production to be found in the pre-Columbian Americas; how each art form fit into existing preconceptions and was used to shape new identities and beliefs about both cultures; and what we learn from answering these questions. / Art History