Old master portraits open windows into the lives of African individuals from all levels of European society
PRINCETON, NJ –The Princeton University Art Museum presents Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,
an exhibition exploring the presence of Africans and their descendants
in Europe from the late 1400s to the early 1600s and the roles these
individuals played in society as reflected in art. Africans living in or
visiting Europe during this time included artists, aristocrats, saints,
slaves and diplomats. The exhibition of vivid portraits created from
life—themselves a part of the wider Renaissance focus on the identity
and perspective of the individual—encourages face-to-face encounters
with these individuals and poses questions about the challenges of
color, class and stereotypes that a new diversity brought to Europe.
Aspects of this material have long been studied by scholars, but this
exhibition marks the first time the subject has been presented to a
wider American public.
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
will be on view at the Princeton University Art Museum from Feb. 16,
2013 to June 9, 2013, and will feature more than 65 paintings,
sculptures, prints, manuscripts and printed books by great artists such
as Dürer, Bronzino, Pontormo, Veronese and Rubens. Organized by the
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in collaboration with the Princeton
University Art Museum, the exhibition includes artworks drawn from major
museums and private collections across Europe and the United States,
including works from both Princeton and the Walters.
“The
exhibition focuses new attention on an important but poorly understood
aspect of Western history and the history of representation and thus
continues our commitment to expanding the borders of scholarship and
public understanding,” according to Princeton University Art Museum
Director James Steward. “This exhibition affords an exceptional
opportunity to discover great works of art and encourages us to reflect
on our understanding of cultural identity both past and present.”
The
presence of Africans and their descendants in Europe was partially a
consequence of the drive for new markets beginning in the late 1400s.
This included the importation of West Africans as slaves, supplanting
the trade of slaves of Slavic origin. There was also increasing conflict
with North African Muslims and heightened levels of diplomatic and
trade initiatives by African monarchs.
The
first half of the exhibition explores the conditions that framed the
lives of Africans in Europe, European perceptions of Africa, the
representation of Africans in Christian art, blackness and cultural
difference as well as the aesthetic appreciation of blackness, and
slavery and social status. The second half shifts to the individuals
themselves as slaves, servants, free and freed people, diplomats and
rulers—the range of roles in which Africans found themselves in
Renaissance Europe—concluding with a focus on the remarkable presence of
St. Benedict (the Moor) of Palermo, widely revered in his lifetime but
also one of the African-Europeans of the 1500s with the greatest impact
today. The trajectory traced by the exhibition is thus one of movement
from the margins to the center, both in societal terms and in
representation, enabling us to understand not only broad shifts but also
the role of specific Africans in Europe.
“Recognizing the
African presence within Renaissance society opens a new window into a
time when the role of the individual was becoming recognized—a
perspective that remains fundamental today,” said exhibition organizer
and Walters Art Museum curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art Joaneath
Spicer. “We are just beginning to understand the contributions of people
of African ancestry in that society, so the exhibition raises as many
questions as it answers.”
The Princeton exhibition of Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe is
made possible by generous support from the National Endowment for the
Arts; the David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Project; Christopher E. Olofson,
Class of 1992; the Jannotta-Pearsall Family Fund of the Community
Foundation of Jackson Hole; and the Frances E. and Elias Wolf, Class of
1920, Fund. Additional support has been provided by the Allen R. Adler,
Class of 1967, Exhibitions Fund; the Department of History and the
Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton
University; the Apparatus Fund; and the Judith and Anthony B. Evnin,
Class of 1962, Exhibitions Fund, with further support from the Program
in Renaissance Studies and the Partners and Friends of the Princeton
University Art Museum. Programming is made possible, in part, by funds
from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a
Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. This exhibition
is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and
the Humanities.
Exhibition Highlights
Portrait of Maria Salviati de’ Medici and Giulia de’ Medici, Jacopo da Pontormo, ca. 1537
Free descendants of
slaves were found at all levels of European society. The little girl
with her guardian is Giulia de’ Medici, daughter of Alessandro de’
Medici, duke of Florence, the latter thought to be born of a union
between Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici and an African slave. Giulia enjoyed
an aristocratic lifestyle and her descendants thrive today. The painting
is considered to be the first formal portrait of a child of African
ancestry in European art.
Portrait of an African Slave Woman, Annibale Carracci (attributed), ca. 1580
Paintings
representing real individuals in servitude primarily show them in
domestic roles, such as this maid from the fragment of a larger
portrait. She has remarkable presence, sensitively conveyed by the
artist through the ambiguity of her facial expression.”
Chafariz d’el Rey in the Alfama District (View of a Square with the King’s Fountain in Lisbon), Netherlandish, ca. 1570–80
This scene of daily
life in Lisbon is astonishing for the concentration of Africans from a
range of social and economic levels, from a slave in chains to the
knighted man on horseback. Black people made up nearly 10% of the city’s
population, more than anywhere else in Europe at that time.
Publication
A publication of
five essays and an illustrated checklist accompanies the exhibition.
Published by the Walters Art Museum, the soft cover book is $24.95.
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