Johann Moritz Rugendas was a German painter, famous in the first half of the 19th century for his works depicting landscapes and ethnographic subjects in several countries in the Americas. Rugendas is considered "by far the most varied and important of the European artists to visit Latin America." He was influenced by Alexander von Humboldt.

Georg Heinrich Freiherr von Langsdorff was a German naturalist and explorer, as well as a Russian diplomat, better known by his Russian name, Grigori Ivanovich Langsdorf.