Mixed Race Studies

From Kongo to Othello to Tango to Museum Shows

ARTnews
2012-10-25

Robin Cembalest

Jacopo da Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci), Portrait of Maria Salviati de’ Medici and Giulia de’ Medici, ca. 1539, oil on panel. THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM, BALTIMORE, ACQUIRED BY HENRY WALTERS WITH THE MASSARENTI COLLECTION, 1902 (37.596).

Artists and scholars are taking increasingly nuanced approaches to tracking the image—and influence—of Africans in Western art

In 1902 the Walters Art Museum acquired a Pontormo painting of an Italian noblewoman, Maria Salviati, dated ca. 1539. Back then it was considered a portrait of a woman whose hands were “in funny places,” as Gary Vikan, the museum’s director, puts it. Then in 1937, restorers removed some over-painting—and discovered a child was there. That child was assumed to be a portrait of Maria’s son, Cosimo de’ Medici.

And Then He Was a She
 
Now curators say the boy was a girl–Giulia de’ Medici. The daughter of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who was believed to be the son of a black female servant, Giulia is thought to have been the most prominent European woman of African descent at that time.

Darkness Visible
 
This discovery helped inspire “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” an inventive show at the Walters that enlists familiar faces of art history to spotlight lesser-known ones in social history. Focusing on the period between 1480 to 1610, an era of increased contact as trade routes expanded, diplomats traveled more widely, and Africans were imported to Europe en masse to serve as slaves, the show includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Pontormo, and Veronese, among many others, depicting Africans living in or visiting Europe. The museum describes the show as an effort to restore an identity to individuals who have been invisible–in various senses of the word.
 
The show uses representations of slaves in Europe to find out who they were, how they lived, and what their depictions say about Renaissance society. A Caracci portrait of a slave woman is a fragment of a double portrait of her owner, of whom a bit of veil remains. She is holding a clock, meant to announce her mistress’s Christian concern for the quick passage of time…

Read the entire article here.

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe

Walters Art Museum
600 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland
2012-10-14 through 2013-01-21
Open Wednesday-Sunday, 10:00-17:00 ET (Local Time)
Telephone: 410-547-9000

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, an unprecedented exhibition, explores the world of Renaissance art in Europe to bring to life the hidden African presence in its midst. During the first half of the 1500s, Africa became a focus of European attention as it had not been since the time of the Roman Empire. The European thirst for new markets already in the mid 1400s drove the Portuguese (and subsequently the English and Dutch) to explore the establishment of new trading routes down the west coast of Africa and, by the turn of the new century, into the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa brought the Turks into military and political conflict with European interests. These elements, along with the importation of captured Africans as slaves, primarily from West Africa, increasingly supplanting the trade of slaves of Slavic origin, resulted in a growing African presence in Europe.

1. Annibale Carracci (attributed). Portrait of a Black Servant (Fragment of larger portrait), ca. 1580s, oil on canvas, 24 x 12 in. (60.96 x 30.48cm). Leeds, private collection. 2. Jacopo da Pontormo. Portrait of Maria Salviati de Medici and Giulia de Medici, ca. 1539, oil on panel, 34 5/8 x 28 1/16 in. (88 x 71 cm). The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 3. German or Flemish. Portrait of a Wealthy Black Man, ca. 1540, oil on panel, diameter 11.7 in. (29.7 cm). Private Collection, Antwerp.

The first half of the exhibition of approximately 75 works explores the historical circumstances as well as the conventions of exoticism that constituted the prism of “Africa” through which individuals were inevitably perceived.

11. Cristovao de Morais. Portrait of Juana of Austria with her Black Slave Girl,1555, oil on canvas, 39 x 31 7/8 in. (99 x 81 cm). Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, Brussels. 12. Paolo Veronese. Study of a Black Boy Eating, ca. 1570s, black and white chalk on paper, 6 x 7 in. (15.5 x 20 cm). Mia Weiner, Norfolk, Connecticut. 13. Bronzino (workshop replica). Portrait of Duke Alessandro de Medici, ca 1553, oil on tin, 5 7/8 x 4 in. (15 x 12 cm). Uffizi, Florence. 14. Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum after Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Two Flemish Peasants (Africans), ca.1564-5, etching, ca. 5 x 7 3/8 in. (13/3 x 18.7 cm). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

In the second half, attention shifts to individuals, focusing on portraits. These often very sensitive images underscore the role of art in bringing people from the past to life. While some Africans played respected, public roles, the names of most slaves and freed men and women are lost. Recognizing the traces of their existence is a way of restoring their identity…

For more information, click here.