In Europe, slavery became increasingly associated with blackness from the 17th century onwards.[1] However, slaves before this period were predominantly white. The black in European art is not the same topic as the slave in European art: slaves were not always black and black people not always slaves.[2] The article also concentrates on European art rather than Western art in general.
Slaves in art
This and three other statues of chained slaves, placed at the base of the Monument of the Four Moors at Livorno, Italy, might have been made with actual slaves as models, whose names and circumstances remain unknownThomas Alexandre Dumas
From the Renaissance onwards, a substantial number of bound figures, often naked and crouching, illustrate enslavement.[3] This imagery had for one of its roots the ancient tradition of Roman Triumph, but its contemporaneous relevance was greatly magnified by the prevalence of slavery within European countries. In particular, galley slaves were often used by artists as models for muscular nude bodies.
Sometimes the name of an individual who was a slave is known. One instance is Juan de Pareja (1606–1670) who was a slave of Velázquez and was trained as a painter by the artist. Velázquez freed Juan de Pareja in 1650 and the document of manumission survives.[4][5] Juan de Pareja became a successful artist himself.
Alexandre Dumas of The Three Musketeers fame, was the son of a slave, also known as Alexandre, who rose to be a general in chief in the French army. His portrait hardly suggests his early life as a slave. He was pawned by his father who was a French nobleman but was lucky enough to be retrieved by the father and brought up in France.[6]
Frans Post (1612—1680) and Albert Eckhout (c.1610–1665) were two early Dutch painters to depict slavery. Post painted pictures of slaves working in idyllic rural landscapes which do little to reflect the harsh realities of their life.[7] Eckhout's work is a visual record of the ethnic mix in Dutch Brazil.[8][9]
Iconographic aspects of slavery
The trade in black Africans was widespread in Europe long before the Triangular Trade involving Europe, Africa and the Americas. Numerous portraits of high-class Europeans show them in the company of black figures, often children, whose status may be advertised by the silver slave collar being worn. A silver collar is usually worn in conjunction with luxurious clothes and other finery, which allowed the artist to show off his repertoire and the owner of the slave to show off his or her wealth. In fact, in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was the fashion among some wealthy Europeans to have their black household slaves or servants wear silver collars; these were often inscribed with the name of the owner or employer. The slave collar is seen in contemporary paintings.[3]
Chains, fetters, manacles, slave collars are the familiar iconographic markers of slavery with the broken chain being particularly useful for dis-enslavement.[citation needed]
Slaves were chattel and so it is no surprise to see that they were on occasion branded like cattle in life and in art. Another sign of slavery, less obvious and much less gruesome, was the cropped pony tail or topknot which marked an enslaved Turk in the galleys.[10]
Often slaves were prisoners captured in war and there is an iconographical overlap between the two. Michelangelo's Dying Slave was not given this title by him. He instead talked of such figures as prisoners.[11] The slave status of Caryatids is similarly open to interpretation.[12]
Abolitionism
Anti-Slavery Medallion by Josiah Wedgwood
With Abolitionism, the imagery of enslavement was turned to a social and political purpose. An instance of this is the medallion devised for the movement by Josiah Wedgwood which shows a pleading black slave. People wore the medallion as a token of their commitment to abolitionism.
An example of an anti-Abolitionist image is that by George Cruikshank, New Union Club. It satirises what supposedly took place at a celebrated dinner organised by Abolitionists.
↑ Also note the ambiguity of the term "Turkish slave": a Turkish slave may be a Turk or someone enslaved by a Turk. See Turkish Slave for yet another layer of confusion about a picture by Parmigianino.
1 2 The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed. Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
↑ See Carmen Fracchia's article in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
↑ The document which was discovered by Jennifer Montagu is in the Archivio di Stato in Rome. See Burlington Magazine, volume 125, 1983, pages 683-4.
↑ Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012).
↑ See Ernest van den Boogaart article in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
↑ See Jean Michel Massing in Studies in Imagery II: the World Discovered. London 2007.
↑ See Rebecca Parker Brienen, Albert Eckhout, 2010.
↑ See articles by Elizabeth McGrath and Rick Scorza in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
Black is Beautiful: Rubens to Dumas, ed Esther Schreuder and Elmer Kolfin, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam (Nieuwe Kerk), 2008
The Image of the Black in Western Art ed Ladislas Bugner, various volumes
The Slave in European Art eds Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing 2012
Related Research Articles
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter during the Second Empire under Napoleon III.
A page or page boy is traditionally a young male attendant or servant, but may also have been a messenger in the service of a nobleman.
William Wells Brown was an American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 19. He settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working for abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time. It was later published in the United States.
Pietro Tacca was an Italian sculptor, who was the chief pupil and follower of Giambologna. Tacca began in a Mannerist style and worked in the Baroque style during his maturity.
Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Foggini was an Italian sculptor active in Florence, renowned mainly for small bronze statuary.
Mary Prince was the first black woman to publish an autobiography of her experience as a slave, born in the colony of Bermuda to an enslaved family of African descent. After being sold a number of times and being moved around the Caribbean, she was brought to England as a servant in 1828, and later left her enslaver.
A slave catcher is a person employed to track down and return escaped slaves to their enslavers. The first slave catchers in the Americas were active in European colonies in the West Indies during the sixteenth century. In colonial Virginia and Carolina, slave catchers were recruited by Southern planters beginning in the eighteenth century to return fugitive slaves; the concept quickly spread to the rest of the Thirteen Colonies. After the establishment of the United States, slave catchers continued to be employed in addition to being active in other countries which had not abolished slavery, such as Brazil. The activities of slave catchers from the American South became at the center of a major controversy in the lead up to the American Civil War; the Fugitive Slave Act required those living in the Northern United States to assist slave catchers. Slave catchers in the United States ceased to be active with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The history of slavery spans many cultures, nationalities, and religions from ancient times to the present day. Likewise, its victims have come from many different ethnicities and religious groups. The social, economic, and legal positions of slaves have differed vastly in different systems of slavery in different times and places.
The Dying Slave is a sculpture by the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. Created between 1513 and 1516, it was to serve with another figure, the Rebellious Slave, at the tomb of Pope Julius II. It is a marble figure 2.15 metres in height, and is exhibited at the Louvre, Paris.
Frans Janszoon Post was a painter during the Dutch Golden Age. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of the Americas, during and after the period of Dutch Brazil. In 1636 he traveled to Dutch Brazil in northeast of South America at the invitation of the governor Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen. His works were widely collected in The Netherlands, Europe, and Brazil, with the works showing an idealized vision of Dutch colonial rule.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas.
Jean Michel Massing, is a French art historian and academic. He taught at the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge from 1977, rising to become Professor of History of Art in 2004 and twice head of the department. He was also a fellow of King's College, Cambridge from 1982. He retired in 2016.
Elizabeth McGrath, is a British art historian, curator, and academic. Spending all of her career at the Warburg Institute of the University of London, she was curator of the photographic collection from 1991 to 2010 and Professor of the History of Art from 2000 to 2010. She additionally held the Slade Professorship of Fine Art at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 1990. Since her retirement in 2010, she has been Emeritus Professor and an honorary fellow of the Warburg Institute.
Eugene Warburg was an African-American sculptor. Born enslaved from birth in New Orleans in the mid-1820s, he was legally manumitted by his father, who was also his owner, at four years old. Warburg initially apprenticed as a marble cutter and later worked as a sculptor in New Orleans in the 1840s and early 1850s. He moved to Europe in 1853, where he worked as a successful sculptor until his death in 1859.
Moses and his Ethiopian wife Zipporah is a painting of 1645–1650, by the Flemish Baroque painter Jacob Jordaens. The painting is a half-length depiction of the biblical prophet Moses, and an Ethiopian woman, possibly Zipporah.
Abolitionist children’s literature includes works written for children by authors committed to the movement to end slavery. It aimed to instill in young readers an understanding of slavery, racial hierarchies, sympathy for the enslaved, and a desire for emancipation. A variety of literary forms were used by abolitionist children’s authors including, short stories, poems, songs, nursery rhymes and dialogues, much of it written by white women. Pamphlets, picture books and periodicals were the primary forms of abolitionist children’s literature, often using Biblical themes to reinforce the wickedness of slavery. Abolitionist children's literature was countered with pro-slavery material aimed at children, which attempting to depict slavery as a noble pursuit, and slaves as stupid and grateful, or evil.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
