The black saint of the Holy Roman Empire

St. Maurice (detail) 1520-25.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently published a monograph about an addition to the collection, a panel by Lucas Cranach the Elder (and his workshop) showing St. Maurice who is wearing the most gorgeous clothes in the whole world.

Here is the whole St. Maurice panel, and below, a second St. Maurice whose panel is still attached to his altarpiece in the Marktkirche, Halle.

Both of these panels are based on this drawing of a reliquary statue of St. Maurice.

Both drawings from the Liber ostensionis, 1526/27.

According to an account written about 450 AD, St. Maurice was a member of the Egyptian Theban Legion which was composed of Christians. Sent to France and ordered by the Emperor Maximian (ca.250-ca.310) to persecute Christians, they refused, and eventually were all executed. Another version of the story written a little later says that they were martyred for refusing to worship the Roman gods.

By 515 the ruler of Burgundy built a basilica and monastery in Valais for the throngs of pilgrims who were coming to visit Maurice's relics. In the 10^th century Maurice's cult was promoted by Otto the Great who ultimately pronounced Maurice patron saint of the Holy Roman Empire.

Statue of St. Maurice, ca.1240-50.
Cathedral of St. Maurice and St. Catherine. Magdeburg.

St. Maurice and the Theban Legion. 

South German Master (early 16^th C).
Private collection, NYC.

This panel painting of the Theban Legion dresses them in the spirit of the Vatican's Swiss Guards. The feathered headdresses look as if the painter knew of the tradition that produced. Ag. Alexandros from Kastoria in northern Greece.

The Meeting of St. Maurice and St. Erasmus.
 Matthias Grünewald, ca. 1520-24. Alte Pinakothek, Munich.

Finally, this Grünewald panel of St. Maurice who gives him the most extraordinarily luminous armor.

Africans in Renaissance Europe 2: Black as Accessory, Black as Human

 Circle of Bartolomeo Passarotti. 1579.
Dominico Giuliani and his Servant.Manchester City Galleries, Manchester. 

This continues the previous entry.

There are gorgeous Renaissance portraits in which a black -- smaller proportions, lower-down, looking up -- is shown as the accessory of fashion and power. The black is another possession, along with the mechanical gold clock, the pearls, the gold buttons, and the armor.  Look at the Titian portrait of Federico Gonzaga with his hand on his white dog, below, and then at the picture of Princess Juana with her hand on her black boy.

But a few of these portraits seem to present something more complex.  What does it mean, in the Bordone portrait of the man in armor, below, that he has one arm around the white page and the other arm separated from the black page by a black helmet shown with more clarity than the page? Is this painting wrongly labeled?  Was the man painted with his son -- look at those noses -- first, and then the black boy posed separately?   What about the first one here, where the black -- servant -- is shown in equal proportion?  This servant has so much the look of Dominico Giuliani, that he could be his son -- is surely his son.  I am fascinated that the word "son" came to mind immediately in looking at these two paintings, both new to me. 

Paris Bordone. Mid-16th C.
Portrait of a Man in Armor with Two Pages.
Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Titian, Federico Gonzaga.
Prado, Madrid.

 

Christovao de Morais, 1555.
Juana of Austria, Daughter of Charles V.

Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels.

 Titian, 1558.
Portrait of Fabrizio Salvaressa.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Titian, 1573.
Portrait of Laura die Dianti.
Collection Heinz Kisters, Switzerland. 

Individual portraits of blacks in the same years show complex individuals.  It is difficult for me to separate my own reaction of sadness from what I read in the faces.  I immediately begin to construct a back story for them.  My own back story: I grew up in West Africa -- I have been in the ports, up the rivers, know the scents and sounds from which these people were taken.

. Jan Jansz Mostaert, ca. 1520-25.
Portrait of a Black Man.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Annibale Carracci, ca. 1580s. Portrait of an African Slave Woman.
Tomasso Brothers, Leeds. England.

Flemish/German. 1530-40.
Portrait of a Wealthy African.
Private Collection, Antwerp.

Workshop of Gerard David. ca. 1514.

Detail, Adoration of the Kings.

Princeton University Art Museum.

 

 Rafaello Schiamiossi (?). ca. 1608.
Don Antonio Manuele de Funta,
Ambassador of the King of the Kongo to the Pope.

Baltimore Museum of Art.

Africans in Renaissance Europe 1: Drawings and Cameos

Durer, Portrait study of a black man. 
1508? Albertina, Vienna. 

 

From now through January 21, the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland, has an exhibition with the title Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe. My plans to see it have not worked out, but I have the catalogue, and will give pictures from it in this and a subsequent blog. 

The catalogue is inexpensive and well worth, acquiring, with the warning that the illustrations for the exhibition itself are crammed into a section in the back, many of them printed the size of postage stamps. This is especially disappointing in the case of the woodcuts, which would have been the images most available to contemporaries. The sculpture in several photographs is poorly lighted. There is no index. Otherwise, this is a remarkable -- often beautiful -- collection of images of black faces with lucid supporting essays. I can see this catalogue as a class text.

 

Durer, Katherina

1521, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizie, Florence

Jacob de Gehyn III, Studies from Plaster Casts,(before 1640)
Musée de Louvre, Cabinet des Dessins

Andrea Mantegna, Judith with her Black Slave
(ca. 1431-1506) Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizie, Florence

Paolo Veronese, Study of the Head of a Black Man
ca. 1573, Private collection, courtesy of MMA, New York

Paolo Veronese, Study of a Black Youth Eating
ca. 1580, Art market.

Ludovico Carracci, Head of a Black Man (1580-1600?) Philadelphia Museum of Art

Workshop of Girolamo Miseroni 16thC.
Setting by Hans Vermeyn 1602-08.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Workshop of Girolamo Miseroni 16thC.
Staatliche Münzsammlung. Munich

Workshop of Girolamo Miseroni ca. 1560.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Late 16th C

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Milanese (?) 1550-1600.
Bibliothèques nationale de France, Paris.

Blacks

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15th C. Ag. Nikolaos Orphanos, Thessalonike
Scene from the life of Ag. Gerasimos. 

 I have been saving images of blacks in Byzantine painting. I have not seen any work on this topic though surely there has to be something. I would be grateful for information, and for more images to add to the catalog here.  I have given what identifications I have, and would appreciate help with the ones that are not properly identified. This first image is unique because blacks are shown apparently in their own country, and two of them are possibly of higher status than the traveler who is going to be the beneficiary of a miracle by Ag. Gerasimos' lion.  

Otherwise, the blacks I have found -- nearly all by Cretan painters -- are with one exception slaves/servants or magi/kings. The images of slaves are reasonable.  That is how blacks would have, for the most part, been visible in the Greek-speaking world.  Since they are slaves, they get the unpleasant jobs: smashing things, cutting off heads, crucifying saints, massacring babies.

 [Ivrion ms.]

16th C Ag. Nikolaos, and do admire the slave's fashion sense.

Michael Damaskenos, 16th C.
Detail from Crucifixion of Ag. Andreas.

17th C Cretan Massacre of the Innocents
an enthusiastic combination of Herod's banquet, and Herod's massacre.

Blacks  are also shown as high-status servants, as in these details from a Crucifixion and two Adorations of the Magi.

Andreas Pavias, 3rd quarter, 15th C.
Alexander Tsoutsos Museum, Athens.

Ioannis Permeniatis, early 16th C.
Private collection, from Boulgaropoulou.

Ioannis Permeniatis, early 16th C.
Benaki Museum, Athens.
Similar icon in New York in a private collection.

But there is a second black in the Pavias icon, this one dressed like a wealthy Western merchant, completely outside the servant/king dyad of blacks in icons.  Unlike the surrounding faces, this is a portrait of a person known to the artist.

Andreas Pavias, 3rd quarter, 15th C.
Alexander Tsoutsos Museum, Athens.

In this next image, the black is the third Magus, following the pattern set in Western painting.  This icon is additionally interesting because of the inclusion of the man who seems to be portrayed as a stratiote.  I am tempted to think of him as the donor.  Donors frequently kneel, but here the first Magus is kneeling, again following the Western pattern, and standing shows the red trousers to best advantage.  There are a number of Venetian documents that refer to gifts of red cloth for the kapetanioi.

Early 16th C. Byzantine Museum, Thessaloniki.

Detail from late 15th C.  Alexander Tsatsos Museum, Athens.

A black Magus, in a late 16th C icon by Damaskenos is unusual in that the black is not the one most distant from the Child, common in Western images. It is also unusual in that there are black servants back holding the camels.

Michael Damaskenos, 16th C.
 Collection of Ecclesiatical Art, St. Catharine's, Heraklion.

A final Magus, this in a painting by Domenikos Theotokopoulos so indistinct he is best seen by his gift and stockings.

Mid-16th C. Domenikos Theotokopoulos.
Benaki Museum, Athens.

The next is a child at a Last Supper, and this is the first slave we have seen indoors.  That fits with what is known about slavery on Crete: normally, adult male slaves worked the land, or on ships.  The potential for violence in a violent culture was generally considered too great to risk male slaves in the home or the city.

Michael Damaskenos, 16th C.
 Collection of Ecclesiatical Art, St. Catharine's, Heraklion.
 

Finally, this manuscript image of the races of the world.  There is a problem with ink color, and reproduction.  Again, I need help with identification.

That makes twenty-two blacks.  All male.  I may have one more, but I cannot tell from the photograph if the dark skin is discoloration from aging, or if the man is really a black.  I speculate that there was an increase in the portrayal of blacks in post-Byzantine painting because of the new West African exploration and slave trade, in which Venice had a small part.

I found several of these images in the color catalog in Margarita Boulgaropoulou's dissertation [Thessaloniki, 2007] on the influence of Venetian painting on Greek art from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century. Επιδρὰσεις της βενεσιὰνικης ζωγραπηικὴς στην ελληνικὴ τὲχνη απὸ τα μὲσα του 15ου ὲως τα μὲσα του 16ου αιὼνα.

The other main source of images is the catalog, The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete, edited by Anastasia Drandaki for the Onassis Foundation.