The Black Face of Renaissance Europe, History Today, 21st May 2013.
Miranda Kaufmann crosses the Atlantic to see Africans from 16th century Europe.
In the case of Giulia de’ Medici, the African presence was literally painted out of European history for almost four hundred years. The granddaughter of an enslaved African woman named Simonetta, Giulia was portrayed by Jacopo Pontormo in 1539 with her guardian, Maria Salviati. Her father, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, had been assassinated two years before. At some point in the following century, her image was painted over. The child uncovered during cleaning in 1937 was only identified as Giulia in 1992. Pontormo’s portrait is thus the earliest of a child of African descent in Europe, and became the inspiration for this exhibition, which includes those of African descent, like Giulia, in its definition of “African”.
Just as we have only recently re-discovered Giulia, we are also only just beginning to learn about the Africans who arrived in Europe during the “long sixteenth century,” from around 1480 to 1610. This exhibition is full of revelation, especially for an audience so unused to the idea of Africans in Europe that I heard someone refer to the “African-American” exhibition.
In fact, the Portuguese first made contact with Africa in the fifteenth century and by 1550, Africans made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. There were smaller African populations in Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, and scattered elsewhere in Europe (my research shows there were over 360 in England and Scotland between 1500-1640). The host of African faces in European costumes and settings gathered here, their expressions expertly delineated by artists including Rubens, Dürer and Veronese, illustrates most clearly the point that there was a black presence in Renaissance Europe.
However, the greatest revelation is that not all Africans in Renaissance Europe were enslaved. As slavery was not for life, or hereditary, there were growing numbers of free Africans or people of African descent. They made up 20% of Lisbon’s black population in the sixteenth century. We can see this most strikingly in Chafariz d’el Rey in the Alfama District, c.1570 -80, which shows Africans at all levels of society gathering around the King’s Fountain in Lisbon: from a man on horseback, identified as João de SáPanasco (fl.1524-1567), who rose from court jester to become a knight of the Order of Santiago, to a man caught in the unfortunate moment when the ewer balanced on his head smashes and falls round his neck. This variety is echoed throughout the exhibition and across Europe. We see rulers, such as Alessandro de’ Medici, and ambassadors such as Congolese Antonio Manuele de Funta, who visited the Pope in 1608, alongside African lawyers, churchmen, schoolteachers, authors, artists, musicians, dressmakers, and gondoliers.
The identity of some of the most striking individuals remains a mystery. Who was the “Wealthy African” wearing a red turban, painted around 1530-1540 by a Flemish or German artist? What was the name of Carracci’s dressmaker, with pins in her bodice, holding a gold clock, whose arresting portrait survives where her mistress’s does not? Was the young man described as “servant” to Domenico Giuliani in 1579, in fact his illegitimate son? More research is needed to answer these and many other questions provoked by curator Joaneath Spicer and the works she has collected here.
An empty frame at the end of the exhibition stands for all those Africans in Renaissance Europe who were not portrayed. The plaque draws our attention in particular to Juan Latino (1516/18-1596?), the humanist scholar and published author who taught at the University of Granada. A play written about him around 1610 suggests that Don Juan of Austria (1547-1578), the half-brother of Philip II of Spain, commissioned a portrait, but it has not been found.
Perhaps there should have been another frame for all those who were portrayed but were not exhibited for practical reasons. For there are far more images of Africans in Renaissance Europe than the eighty displayed here. The Image of the Black in Western Art photographic catalogue, which contains over 30,000 images of Africans in Europe from Ancient Egypt to the present, can attest to that.
The fabulous, near life-size, golden statue of St Benedict of Palermo (1526-1589) which bids us farewell at the end of the exhibition, leaves us with a far more positive image than is usually conjured up when thinking of Africans in Renaissance Europe. The first African to become a saint (beatified in 1743, canonized in 1807), he was already venerated soon after his death: in 1611 Philip III had his bones reinterred in a silver casket. St. Benedict is now the patron saint of African-Americans. Nonetheless, he and the other Africans portrayed here lived in Europe, not America, and so it is a great shame that the show, which originated at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, before spending some months in Princeton, will not be crossing the Atlantic.
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 14 October 2012- 21 January 2013.
http://thewalters.org/exhibitions/african-presence/
Princeton University Art Museum, 16 February 2013- 9 June 2013.
http://www.princetonartmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/1507
In the case of Giulia de’ Medici, the African presence was literally painted out of European history for almost four hundred years. The granddaughter of an enslaved African woman named Simonetta, Giulia was portrayed by Jacopo Pontormo in 1539 with her guardian, Maria Salviati. Her father, Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, had been assassinated two years before. At some point in the following century, her image was painted over. The child uncovered during cleaning in 1937 was only identified as Giulia in 1992. Pontormo’s portrait is thus the earliest of a child of African descent in Europe, and became the inspiration for this exhibition, which includes those of African descent, like Giulia, in its definition of “African”.
Just as we have only recently re-discovered Giulia, we are also only just beginning to learn about the Africans who arrived in Europe during the “long sixteenth century,” from around 1480 to 1610. This exhibition is full of revelation, especially for an audience so unused to the idea of Africans in Europe that I heard someone refer to the “African-American” exhibition.
In fact, the Portuguese first made contact with Africa in the fifteenth century and by 1550, Africans made up 10% of the population of Lisbon. There were smaller African populations in Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, and scattered elsewhere in Europe (my research shows there were over 360 in England and Scotland between 1500-1640). The host of African faces in European costumes and settings gathered here, their expressions expertly delineated by artists including Rubens, Dürer and Veronese, illustrates most clearly the point that there was a black presence in Renaissance Europe.
However, the greatest revelation is that not all Africans in Renaissance Europe were enslaved. As slavery was not for life, or hereditary, there were growing numbers of free Africans or people of African descent. They made up 20% of Lisbon’s black population in the sixteenth century. We can see this most strikingly in Chafariz d’el Rey in the Alfama District, c.1570 -80, which shows Africans at all levels of society gathering around the King’s Fountain in Lisbon: from a man on horseback, identified as João de SáPanasco (fl.1524-1567), who rose from court jester to become a knight of the Order of Santiago, to a man caught in the unfortunate moment when the ewer balanced on his head smashes and falls round his neck. This variety is echoed throughout the exhibition and across Europe. We see rulers, such as Alessandro de’ Medici, and ambassadors such as Congolese Antonio Manuele de Funta, who visited the Pope in 1608, alongside African lawyers, churchmen, schoolteachers, authors, artists, musicians, dressmakers, and gondoliers.
The identity of some of the most striking individuals remains a mystery. Who was the “Wealthy African” wearing a red turban, painted around 1530-1540 by a Flemish or German artist? What was the name of Carracci’s dressmaker, with pins in her bodice, holding a gold clock, whose arresting portrait survives where her mistress’s does not? Was the young man described as “servant” to Domenico Giuliani in 1579, in fact his illegitimate son? More research is needed to answer these and many other questions provoked by curator Joaneath Spicer and the works she has collected here.
An empty frame at the end of the exhibition stands for all those Africans in Renaissance Europe who were not portrayed. The plaque draws our attention in particular to Juan Latino (1516/18-1596?), the humanist scholar and published author who taught at the University of Granada. A play written about him around 1610 suggests that Don Juan of Austria (1547-1578), the half-brother of Philip II of Spain, commissioned a portrait, but it has not been found.
Perhaps there should have been another frame for all those who were portrayed but were not exhibited for practical reasons. For there are far more images of Africans in Renaissance Europe than the eighty displayed here. The Image of the Black in Western Art photographic catalogue, which contains over 30,000 images of Africans in Europe from Ancient Egypt to the present, can attest to that.
The fabulous, near life-size, golden statue of St Benedict of Palermo (1526-1589) which bids us farewell at the end of the exhibition, leaves us with a far more positive image than is usually conjured up when thinking of Africans in Renaissance Europe. The first African to become a saint (beatified in 1743, canonized in 1807), he was already venerated soon after his death: in 1611 Philip III had his bones reinterred in a silver casket. St. Benedict is now the patron saint of African-Americans. Nonetheless, he and the other Africans portrayed here lived in Europe, not America, and so it is a great shame that the show, which originated at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, before spending some months in Princeton, will not be crossing the Atlantic.
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD, 14 October 2012- 21 January 2013.
http://thewalters.org/exhibitions/african-presence/
Princeton University Art Museum, 16 February 2013- 9 June 2013.
http://www.princetonartmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/1507
