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00:00:00The Renaissance Revisited is really about the importance of going back to history in
00:00:20general and understanding all the things that we haven't been paying attention to.
00:00:29The idea of centralizing figures or history is really a lot about point of view, because
00:00:35for me, black African figures in Renaissance painting have always been central.
00:00:40I was looking for them.
00:00:43I was interested in why Africans were obviously present, but they were never spoken of by
00:00:50art historians today.
00:00:53Most art historians are white people.
00:00:56Very few, if any, are black, so they tend to follow the prejudices of their own societies.
00:01:04History responds always to fashion.
00:01:06I say that from the center, from the heart of the historical profession.
00:01:11Now people are interested, but 50 years ago they weren't.
00:01:15I decided to look not only at black enslaved people, but also to look at Africans who had
00:01:23been successful in some sense, who had a skill, an occupation, and had a life here.
00:01:35My research on black figures in Renaissance art is a response to the Black Lives Matter
00:01:41movement in the United States.
00:01:44I wanted to find a topic that ideally could speak to students of color, that kind of meaning
00:01:51for their lives and the lives that they wanted to create.
00:02:21Visual and material culture are absolutely central to tell a richer and a more nuanced
00:02:41and complex story about European history as well as African history, and the ways in which
00:02:48they were entangled and shaped each other.
00:03:18The reason one starts with Florence as the place to look for things like this is that
00:03:37Florence is reputed to have the best 15th century archives in the world.
00:03:48Not only were the Africans in many of the most famous Renaissance paintings, of course
00:03:58I'd seen them all my life and I just also, like other people, hadn't paid attention to
00:04:04it, but there was the most enormous documentary trail of the lives of these people in the
00:04:10archives.
00:04:16They were enslaved figures.
00:04:18They were free men or free women who were able to have lives of their own.
00:04:25Black pilgrims.
00:04:26They were black priests.
00:04:29They were ambassadors.
00:04:31There's even an example of a ruler in Florence who almost certainly was of black origin,
00:04:42was a member of the Medici family.
00:04:44It's really quite extraordinary.
00:04:45In Florence, the first duke was almost certainly the son of a black woman, probably a servant.
00:04:59He was an illegitimate child.
00:05:02His name was Alessandro.
00:05:06There were a number of surprises of Africans in different social positions.
00:05:10Of course, very few at the top, like Alessandro de' Medici, who was unique.
00:05:16You know, I've worked on Renaissance relief for 40 years, more than 40 years.
00:05:20One thing I have learned is that status matters.
00:05:26It is status that trumps almost everything else.
00:05:32This person was a Medici.
00:05:34The family were protecting him.
00:05:36The family were giving him patronage.
00:05:38Therefore, the rest of it mattered much less.
00:05:45Alessandro was born in 1510 or 1511, and his father died eight or nine years later, and
00:05:51so leaving a young child behind.
00:05:59He received a humanist education.
00:06:02He was frequently in the papal palace.
00:06:04There was controversy over who his father was, whether it was Giulio de' Medici, who
00:06:13became Pope Clement VII, or whether it was Lorenzo de' Medici, who became Duke of Urbino.
00:06:21I believe that Lorenzo was his father because Lorenzo stayed in the palace of his mother,
00:06:29Alfonsina Orsini, and Alessandro's mother, Simonetta da Colavecchia, was a servant in
00:06:39Alfonsina's palace.
00:06:44I think she was brought as a slave to the palace, and so Lorenzo, he would have had
00:06:50easy access to her.
00:06:53It's a practice of the aristocracy to engage in sexual relations with servants.
00:07:00We have a lot of different images of Alessandro de' Medici, and those are interpreted in
00:07:13different ways, and it's interesting simultaneously to think about the ways in which we might
00:07:17be able to perceive his blackness through art.
00:07:23How do we know that Alessandro was black?
00:07:26We have a small image of Alessandro.
00:07:31It's the size of half a sheet of paper, and it shows Alessandro looking a little bit stern,
00:07:38and there's a freshness to the image.
00:07:40This is a work which is probably the very first portrait of Alessandro done by Pantormo.
00:07:55It's important to keep in mind that these artists, Giorgio Vasari, Jacopo Pantormo,
00:08:00Benvenuto Cellini, the artists saw Alessandro.
00:08:05They knew what he looked like, and they captured his appearances in paintings and in coins.
00:08:10It's interesting to see how Alessandro's face and skin colour change depending on the paintings.
00:08:26We have private paintings in which his phenotypic features and his skin colour make it clear
00:08:34that he didn't come from a white background.
00:08:37In others, however, we see it much clearer, with European outlines, and here we see whitewashing.
00:08:46It's a practice that tries to support the idea of white as an asomatic norm, and therefore
00:08:53to lighten the skin where it's too dark.
00:09:01Art can serve in part as a document, and artists had to keep a delicate balance.
00:09:06On the one hand, the painting had to represent a certain ideal.
00:09:12On the other hand, the portrait had to be accurate enough to be recognised.
00:09:21When I look at images of Alessandro, I notice this looks rather different from other pictures
00:09:26of the time.
00:09:27These are clues to how Alessandro actually looked.
00:09:30This allowed viewers who look at this work, and Alessandro himself, to look at this and
00:09:35say, yes, that's me, or yes, that's our Duke.
00:09:46Jacopo Pantormo was considered one of the finest painters of his day in Florence.
00:09:55Pantormo made this larger work that shows Alessandro full length.
00:10:01He's making a drawing.
00:10:02The ruler of the city is shown as an artist.
00:10:05That'd be surprising today.
00:10:07It's absolutely unprecedented for the Renaissance.
00:10:11And this portrait was given by Alessandro to a woman named Tadea Malaspina.
00:10:17She was his lover.
00:10:26Vasari's portrait is in keeping with the ways in which the ruling class wanted to be
00:10:31portrayed in armour.
00:10:34And it has to do with the ways in which portraiture, but also sculptural history, had this connection
00:10:40to a certain military dominance.
00:10:47This is a public portrayal of him, depicted seated on a kind of a throne or a chair, looking
00:10:53out over the city to show his role as guardian of Florence.
00:11:00You can see in it that his hair is still depicted as kind of frizzy and dark.
00:11:04His skin is still beige.
00:11:06His nose is more aquiline.
00:11:08And this might have been the artist's choice to give him a more acceptable appearance in
00:11:14his role as Florence's leader.
00:11:19So by looking at these two portraits, you can see a more public image and a more private
00:11:24one.
00:11:27Alessandro as the ruler, with the baton of power.
00:11:31Alessandro as the lover, as a cultured man, holding the silverpoint stylus and making
00:11:39a drawing.
00:11:45My favourite portrait of Alessandro is, of course, the one by Bronzino, or by a student
00:11:51of Bronzino.
00:12:08It was painted in 1553, long after Alessandro was dead.
00:12:18Bronzino was a painter of the court and was personally familiar with Alessandro, and that's
00:12:24why you also have this certain intimacy and access.
00:12:27The veil is down in the Bronzino work.
00:12:31I think it's probably the most true to life of what Alessandro's appearance was.
00:12:38The curly hair or the frizzy hair, it's a little bit of both.
00:12:42The broad nose, the broad lips, then the beige colour of his skin, I think is a private portrait.
00:12:48There would have been very little reason on his part to have exaggerated his appearance
00:12:54or to have covered it up.
00:13:00The reason that we don't have much documentation on Alessandro's reign is because after Alessandro
00:13:06was assassinated, Posenwell became Duke, and in order to enhance their reputations, he
00:13:14destroyed Alessandro's reputation by commissioning histories of Alessandro that were negative.
00:13:24Descriptions of his personality and his actions, which cast him as a tyrant, as a generally
00:13:31morally degraded person.
00:13:37Alessandro was a Medici, so he was the famous illegitimate child.
00:13:43He managed to hold his position in life without being knocked off it, as it were, because
00:13:49of his supposed background.
00:13:56The Medici, like most of the patrician families, had illegitimate children.
00:14:01In Florence at the time, of course, there are large numbers of illegitimate children.
00:14:06These people were not orphans.
00:14:08They had parents, but the parents either couldn't or wouldn't look after them.
00:14:15Reasons we know that is because of the existence of the Ospedale degli Unucenti.
00:14:22The Ospedale degli Unucenti took in unwanted babies.
00:14:27It's striking how many of these had been fathered by Florentine patricians.
00:14:37We have the record books of the entry of these babies from the 1450s, I think.
00:14:48It just coincides with the arrival of some of our enslaved African women to work as domestic
00:14:56slaves.
00:15:00In 1470, we have a small black baby, and in the records it says that the mother was a
00:15:06black slave called Lisabetta, and the father, Gagliotto, was black too, the first black
00:15:13couple in Florence.
00:15:19The father asked for the child to be given the name Lucia, but her second name was Negra,
00:15:25so she inscribed into her name, so inscribed onto her body, as it were, forever.
00:15:33One good reason, possibly, for why the father, Gagliotto, might have taken Lucia to the Ospedale
00:15:40degli Unucenti is that every child at the Unucenti was free.
00:15:54And a child born to two slaves in Florence would be enslaved.
00:16:06So the Ospedale degli Unucenti is this really incredible institution that has an incredibly
00:16:11long history.
00:16:12And I think that, for me, there's something really fascinating thinking about the possibility
00:16:16of black Africans born on the Italian territory going all the way back as far as recorded
00:16:21history exists.
00:16:23Alessandro's life would prove to be very different than that of the other children
00:16:28at the orphanage, the Ospedale.
00:16:32On the other hand, the life of his mother, Simonetta di Colivecchio, an enslaved black
00:16:36woman, is much harder.
00:16:41Like many other enslaved black women, she ended up in an oblivion.
00:17:11Since we have no representations of what Alessandro's mother, Simonetta, looked like, perhaps one
00:17:17of the ways in which we can understand what her condition was is by examining portraits
00:17:23of other Africans who were enslaved.
00:17:28One by Albert Durer, here is a woman, a slave, definitely African.
00:17:38The thing which strikes me most about this portrait is she's depicted as a normal person.
00:17:44There's not a caricature.
00:17:48She's wearing the kind of treatment that many African women today will give their hair.
00:17:53She's depicted in her personality.
00:17:57She's very conscious of being painted.
00:18:01And the artist is very conscious of wanting to give her an accurate representation which
00:18:06maintains her dignity and individuality as a person.
00:18:13Durer is one of the most canonical painters of the period.
00:18:17He is German-based, but he works in Europe broadly.
00:18:23And some of the most iconic images of that period were created by his pen and his brush.
00:18:36He creates a classification of human beings on a phenotypic basis.
00:18:44We see with what precision he tries to depict the lines he sees, so already distinguishing
00:18:52people for what will then be the racial types.
00:18:56So it's interesting to understand how the idea of race gradually infiltrated.
00:19:01It begins to give meanings that then become cultural and moral.
00:19:12I was very struck by the women depicted in the Renaissance paintings, the black women.
00:19:18Because if the black person was already a margin, the black woman is the margin of the margin.
00:19:26I was very struck by Annibale Carracci, this woman who wears a watch.
00:19:38She is certainly a woman from Sub-Saharan Africa, with a beautiful curly hair,
00:19:44even with a plain dress, but elegant in her own way.
00:19:50I see her very resistant, she wants to return home, to free herself from slavery.
00:19:58Here we see a black woman represented in a service function.
00:20:03In fact, she is subjugating something, she has a function.
00:20:07Yet we also notice her gaze, she looks straight at the viewer.
00:20:12It is a gaze that speaks, it is not a dehumanized gaze, we see individuality.
00:20:18This is the complexity, there is the person, but there is also her service function that defines her.
00:20:28In most of Italy, enslaved Africans would have been enslaved in urban situations, in cities, in households.
00:20:49Typically, it had been the practice of aristocratic women, after they gave birth,
00:20:55to put out their infants for wet nurses who were peasant women.
00:21:00After the black death, there were many fewer, and so we see many African women being imported into Italy to serve that role.
00:21:19What I found when I tried to map where the enslaved Africans were living in Florence,
00:21:26there were clusters of them, and there were four or five on one small street,
00:21:32but owned by completely different families.
00:21:39In English we have this expression, keeping up with the Joneses,
00:21:43In English we have this expression, keeping up with the Joneses,
00:21:46so it became clear to me that somebody got one over there,
00:21:49and you looked out of the window and, hmm, look what they've just got.
00:21:57And this kind of behavior was in operation, I think.
00:22:07When we see the representation of black figures in works of art,
00:22:11we need to read it at two levels.
00:22:19On the one hand, sometimes these figures represent figures that were actually visible in the city.
00:22:28But also, and more importantly, works of art served to create reality.
00:22:34By placing black figures in a certain location,
00:22:38by having them in the foreground, or more often in the background,
00:22:45by having them at the margins,
00:22:47the artist and the society as a whole is projecting an image of how they thought blacks should be seen.
00:23:04Paintings are active.
00:23:07They construct the world that they want you, the viewer, to see.
00:23:14You, the viewer in the 1400s, but also you, the viewer today.
00:23:23One example is by Domenico Ghilendayo.
00:23:34Now, Ghilendayo was one of the most important and respected painters in the late 1400s.
00:23:41He even worked for the Pope in the Sistine Chapel.
00:23:44But most of his paintings are in Florence.
00:23:46He did fresco cycles.
00:23:52One scene in particular, we see what appears to be the four daughters of the Sassetti family.
00:23:58But if you look very carefully at the very far left,
00:24:03literally on the margins, there's a black figure.
00:24:06Who is she?
00:24:11Wearing more simple clothes, she seems to have a linen head covering
00:24:16as opposed to the women who are wearing silk in the Sassetti family.
00:24:20She must be a servant.
00:24:21This black figure, until very recently, has been completely overlooked.
00:24:26And I looked at the painting over and over again,
00:24:28and she was never seen, never noticed, never mentioned.
00:24:36All the famous art historians who have discussed these frescoes from the 16th century
00:24:40on was not a single person.
00:24:42They were all artists.
00:24:44They were all artists.
00:24:46All the famous art historians who have discussed these frescoes from the 16th century on
00:24:50was not a single person has mentioned this slave on the left-hand side.
00:25:00For them, she must have been considered unimportant, uninteresting.
00:25:07Of course, for us, it's absolutely gripping.
00:25:09Because in the 15th century, they chose to include her.
00:25:13She was important and interesting because there would have been many, many servants
00:25:18and probably slaves in the households of those daughters and of the Sassetti.
00:25:29It's possible, and this is an exciting possibility,
00:25:31that we even have a clue as to her identity.
00:25:36We know that Francesco Sassetti, about 10 years earlier, had purchased a slave.
00:25:40She came from Portugal, so she was probably black
00:25:43because the Portuguese were the merchants of black servants and slaves.
00:25:52Maybe this figure, who we know from the documents, actually appears in his painting.
00:26:05We don't know her African name, but we know who we think she is
00:26:09because we've got in the records of the Cambini Bank
00:26:13that had a big presence in Lisbon in the 15th and 16th century.
00:26:27Unfortunately, a Florentine called Bartolomeo Marchiani
00:26:31was really the first slave trader in Renaissance Europe, we could say.
00:26:40So, a rather grim title.
00:26:44He was connected to the Cambini Bank
00:26:49because there was a sizable Italian merchant community in Lisbon
00:26:54operating out of there, where the boats come into Lisbon with enslaved people
00:26:59and then from Lisbon, people are sent on to Tuscany.
00:27:40TUSCANY
00:27:54It's not possible to understand what's going on in Renaissance Italy
00:27:58in terms of bringing enslaved Africans
00:28:00if one doesn't look first at Renaissance Lisbon or Portugal.
00:28:06And one can see that in this painting of the King's Fountain, the Chafariche del Rey.
00:28:12You can see how many black people there are on the streets.
00:28:19So, we are on the docks near the fountain of Chafariche del Rey,
00:28:23which is a place where servants, enslaved or not,
00:28:28would come to fill water for the house in which they would work.
00:28:34Boats are coming back and forth, musicians are playing.
00:28:38There is this delightful detail of a poor servant
00:28:42who was carrying a chamber pot and the bottom broke
00:28:46and he becomes soiled with the contents.
00:28:50But what is interesting beyond the delightful anecdotes there
00:28:55is to see a city bursting with activity
00:28:59and people of many different backgrounds.
00:29:05TUSCANY
00:29:08Undoubtedly, a lot of them went through Lisbon and stayed there,
00:29:11probably as urban slaves, as servants in various occupations,
00:29:16manual occupations, and enjoyed a considerable degree of freedom.
00:29:24I don't think there are stereotypical representations of Africans at this time.
00:29:28We can see a variety of representations.
00:29:35And we have a very interesting example of a knight.
00:29:43A black knight of the Order of Santiago.
00:29:46And that's a military order, so he was made by the king.
00:29:52He was this famous Raul de Salpanasco, who was a black court jester.
00:30:02And spent his whole life at the court.
00:30:05He got given one of the highest honours in Portugal for his work at the court.
00:30:11And spent his whole life at the court.
00:30:14He got given one of the highest honours in Portugal for his work at the court.
00:30:25And one of the wonderful things is that we've got books of his jokes.
00:30:32We also have jokes told against him.
00:30:36We know that many people made jokes against him
00:30:40on the basis of his skin colour and of his ethnicity.
00:30:48You can understand some of what it must have been like
00:30:52to be a successful black person at that level in the court,
00:30:57surrounded entirely otherwise by white courtiers.
00:31:06He ended his life by drinking too much.
00:31:10And could have been driven to drink,
00:31:12but many people in unhappy circumstances take to the bottle,
00:31:15and it probably did happen to him.
00:31:23If we look at the Cantino map,
00:31:25which is basically a representation of the world
00:31:29from the perspective of Portugal,
00:31:31we can see the ways in which Africa is very much at the centre of that world.
00:31:40It's made clear for Europeans that their world was really one among many,
00:31:46and they were confronted with these sophisticated civilisations
00:31:50that had existed for millennia.
00:31:55And that were really giving them a mirror
00:31:59against which constructing their own identity.
00:32:04Africa could be the source of servants, sometimes enslaved,
00:32:09but also the source of marvels
00:32:12and a wondrous object of sophisticated craftsmanship.
00:32:17Ivories that were made in the Congo, in Benin, Sierra Leone,
00:32:22and that arrived in Europe in the 16th century,
00:32:26and that were considered as the most precious objects
00:32:30fit for royal collections.
00:32:34So it is in the encounter with Africa,
00:32:37we begin to see that there is a lot more to Africa
00:32:42So it is in the encounter with Africa, with the Americas also,
00:32:46that Europe finds its own identity and its own contours.
00:32:53The presence of the Pope in Italy was one of the main reasons
00:32:58why African travellers, a pilgrim in some cases,
00:33:02ambassadors in others, would come to the Italian peninsula.
00:33:07A movement that was parallel and also different in important ways
00:33:12from the movement of people that came through
00:33:14the networks of the slave trade, for example.
00:33:38Florence becomes a very interesting city
00:33:42because it tells us that the African presence in Florence,
00:33:46as well as in many other Italian cities,
00:33:49is a very varied presence.
00:33:51So we have individuals who are obviously part of the urban elite
00:33:57and who can afford to commission a painting to a great artist.
00:34:02The Coronation of the Virgin by Davide Ghirlandaio
00:34:05The Coronation of the Virgin by Davide Ghirlandaio
00:34:08is an emblematic painting.
00:34:23The Coronation of the Virgin
00:34:28could be the first example that we know of,
00:34:31a painting commissioned by a black man.
00:34:41The work was done by Davide Ghirlandaio,
00:34:45Domenico's brother.
00:34:48He was not quite as good, but he was more accessible.
00:34:52You see God crowning the Virgin Mary.
00:34:57In the lower part, you see a figure in profile
00:35:01just from the upper part of his body, looking up.
00:35:04What's remarkable is that this is a black man.
00:35:10We see that not only in his skin tone,
00:35:12but also in his physiognomic features.
00:35:15You see an African in an Italian Renaissance painting.
00:35:18Why is he there?
00:35:20In Italian Renaissance paintings, it was absolutely standard
00:35:24for the person who paid for it to have himself or herself
00:35:28depicted in the lower corner,
00:35:30usually kneeling, looking up in prayer.
00:35:43This is definitely, definitely, definitely a black donor
00:35:47and therefore really exciting.
00:35:49What we don't know is who he is.
00:35:55So he's got a little bit of white linen shirt
00:35:59peeping out of the top of his black garment.
00:36:06And that makes it far more likely that he's wearing secular dress,
00:36:10that he's actually not a priest.
00:36:18He realised what you did in Christian society,
00:36:20if you were at a certain level,
00:36:22you commissioned a painting with yourself in it,
00:36:25and that gave you added status.
00:36:32So he got it, he got it, he'd understood.
00:36:35He'd understood the society that he'd come to join, as it were.
00:36:38However, because he's black,
00:36:40various people tried to deny that he could be a donor.
00:36:43It's still absolutely fabulous that we have this Italian Renaissance painting
00:36:48with a black donor in it.
00:36:53ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYS
00:36:58One of the most popular subjects in Renaissance Italy
00:37:02was the adoration of the Magi, or of the Three Kings.
00:37:06And there was a long tradition that these kings were of different ages
00:37:10and they came from different parts of the world.
00:37:13More often, you'd see all three kings as being white,
00:37:16but they would include some black people
00:37:19in the entourage, in the background.
00:37:24For example, there's an important painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio
00:37:28that shows the adoration of the Magi.
00:37:34The kings are white,
00:37:36but one of the attendants is very clearly black.
00:37:43He's dressed as if he was a page in a Florentine household.
00:37:47He probably was.
00:37:49I suspect Ghirlandaio saw this black servant
00:37:52and decided to include him in the painting.
00:37:58In Northern Europe,
00:38:00sometimes one of the kings is shown as being black.
00:38:04But it took a long while for that tradition to work its way into Italy.
00:38:10And perhaps the very first painting
00:38:13to show the adoration of the Magi with a black king in Florence
00:38:18is a work which was only recently discovered.
00:38:25It was done by a member of Ghirlandaio's workshop.
00:38:29Certainly, there was a black man
00:38:31who commissioned an altarpiece from Ghirlandaio's workshop.
00:38:36We have this absolutely unprecedented adoration of the Magi
00:38:40where one of the kings is black,
00:38:43and this king is in the foreground.
00:38:49I'd like to think that it was the same patron.
00:38:53There's a before and an after,
00:38:55and so there's a way in which one of those kings
00:38:58starts showing up as a black African,
00:39:00mainly in the Ferdinandian period.
00:39:02One of those kings starts showing up as a black African,
00:39:05mainly in the tradition that's coming from the north of Europe.
00:39:08And that picks up, and it starts to pick up also in Italy
00:39:11through figures like Mantegna and others.
00:39:21So this is the case where we are seeing social changes influencing art
00:39:25just as much as art influences the social environment.
00:39:29The more African people in Italian streets and in the courts,
00:39:32the more prominent and central they become in these paintings.
00:39:39And Andrea Mantegna is the perfect example of this.
00:39:42He places the black king in the center of the composition,
00:39:45and this is very likely about the increased African presence in his environment.
00:39:51Andrea Mantegna was the most famous artist in the late 1400s,
00:39:56the most respected, more so than, say, Leonardo.
00:40:03This is an artist who looked at black figures,
00:40:07he understood the facial type,
00:40:09and we see it in the skin tone, yes,
00:40:12but also the hair and the physiognomic features.
00:40:15So finally, with Mantegna's adoration of the magi,
00:40:18the black king is entered into Italian Renaissance art.
00:40:27But in the painting of Filippino Lippi, painted in the very late 1400s,
00:40:32there's a black figure who struck my attention.
00:40:38Filippino Lippi shows this man large in the foreground.
00:40:42He has a golden earring in his left ear.
00:40:45He has a pearl hanging on his neck.
00:40:49So he's a man of some wealth.
00:40:51And yet there's a white man in front of him
00:40:54literally showing him the way.
00:40:59So in an adoration of the magi painting,
00:41:01the crowds of people represent the first Christians.
00:41:06So a black figure evidently represents the idea
00:41:09that one of the first Christians is black.
00:41:11The fact that Christianity arrives in Africa,
00:41:14but also that according to this Eurocentric worldview,
00:41:19you need a white man in order to show the black man the way.
00:41:25Artistically, this period is very interesting
00:41:30because we can see the challenge of representing difference
00:41:36of African characters in a way that is readable by a viewership.
00:41:41Earrings and nudity are becoming markers of figures
00:41:48from the African continent.
00:41:51And that process is exactly what we call exoticism.
00:41:58We see the beginning of a visual discourse
00:42:01that continues to be so present
00:42:04in many aspects of our own visual environment.
00:42:11So we can think of the ways in which
00:42:14every spring collection of haute couture
00:42:18will be ethnic and will have some of these markers,
00:42:22the feathers, the nudity, the prominent jewelry
00:42:26that would mark in the European imaginary
00:42:29a certain outfit or a certain figure
00:42:32as coming from Africa or from the Americas.
00:42:40There is another very interesting painting by Lippi
00:42:45that helps us take stock of the paradoxical views of Africa
00:42:50that Europeans had at the time.
00:42:57This is the most important work that Filippino did
00:43:00for Filippo Strozzi in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.
00:43:09On the right-hand side, you see a scene from the life of Saint Philip,
00:43:13but on the painting, on the right-hand side,
00:43:16you see there's a very prominent figure.
00:43:22He is standing tall.
00:43:24In his bearing, he looks extremely dignified.
00:43:28He has a handsome face.
00:43:30He has more jewels on him than anyone else in the scene
00:43:34or in the entire chapel.
00:43:37He has this very large headgear.
00:43:40The white robe he's wearing, a shama,
00:43:43is the traditional robe worn by Ethiopian Christians
00:43:46that was worn in the Renaissance and to the present day.
00:43:52On the one hand, Africa could be a place of dispossession
00:43:56and nudity and savagery,
00:43:59but on the other hand, it's a place of great riches,
00:44:03of sophistication and mythical characters
00:44:08with amounts of regalia that make them greater than life.
00:44:15I was trying to understand who this figure could be
00:44:18and why Filippino would include him.
00:44:20He was the treasurer of Queen Candace,
00:44:23the queen of Ethiopia.
00:44:25The Ethiopian is seen as being the first African to be converted.
00:44:30In fact, there was a community of Ethiopians
00:44:34living in Italy, living in Rome.
00:44:39Finally, in the late 1400s,
00:44:42Italians started actually seeing Africans live in their flesh.
00:44:50These legendary black African Christians.
00:45:00What was happening in Rome in this period?
00:45:03Why were there Ethiopians in Rome?
00:45:06Why were there Ethiopians in Rome?
00:45:21Florence was a relatively small commercial city
00:45:24filled with successful merchants, but Rome,
00:45:27Rome was a seat of the Pope.
00:45:31There was a much more international community there,
00:45:35people from different parts of Europe and from Africa.
00:46:01This painting was done in 1481,
00:46:04and in the same year, four ambassadors from Ethiopia came to Rome.
00:46:10The Pope welcomed them.
00:46:12He celebrated Mass with them.
00:46:31All of Rome was fascinated.
00:46:33One of these fascinated viewers was Sandro Botticelli.
00:47:00He wanted to ally himself with the Christian Ethiopia
00:47:03and end Islam at once.
00:47:17There was a Christian kingdom in Africa,
00:47:20of which in Europe there were only echoes, legends.
00:47:24For example, there was the legend of this sovereign of the East,
00:47:27a Christian, but not a Catholic,
00:47:29who wanted to embrace Catholic values,
00:47:31this priest Gianni.
00:47:38Presser John was a central figure
00:47:41for understanding blacks in Renaissance Europe.
00:47:45Today, he's considered a legend,
00:47:47but in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
00:47:49no one doubted that he really existed.
00:47:53Presser John was thought to be a descendant
00:47:56of the black wise men who came to adore the Christ child,
00:48:00and he had become, according to this legend,
00:48:03the emperor of Ethiopia.
00:48:07In the history of Renaissance art all across Europe,
00:48:10there are very, very few portraits of individual black people.
00:48:17One of the first examples,
00:48:19and it's a portrait of a man
00:48:21who the label lists as the emperor of Ethiopia.
00:48:27And according to the inscription,
00:48:29it says he's known as Presser John.
00:48:49He's been living in the West African coast for over 100 years.
00:48:57One of the consequences of Portuguese explorations
00:49:01is the arrival, first of Portuguese merchants,
00:49:04and then of missionaries, in the Kingdom of the Congo.
00:49:12At the end of the 20th century,
00:49:14the kings of the Congo converted to Christianity
00:49:17and maintained political and commercial relations
00:49:21with Portugal.
00:49:23Initially, the Portuguese arrived in the Congo as guests.
00:49:28Then, in the course of the 20th century,
00:49:31the Portuguese became increasingly aggressive.
00:49:37Between the end of the 20th century and the 20th century,
00:49:40millions of people were exiled to a state of slavery.
00:49:47It was a very rich colony.
00:49:49There were iron, copper and silver mines.
00:49:52They had to defend themselves from Portuguese raids.
00:49:55And they began to develop a plan,
00:49:58that is, to let the Portuguese go
00:50:00and speak directly with the head of Christianity,
00:50:03the Pope of Rome.
00:50:13And so they decided to send an embassy
00:50:16and send Don Antonio Manuel Nevunda,
00:50:19cousin of the king.
00:50:22He had two embassies,
00:50:24one written, which remained,
00:50:26and one more secret,
00:50:28which had to be heard only from the ears of the Pope,
00:50:32which was probably the cry of alarm
00:50:35of the Kingdom of the Congo against the Portuguese.
00:50:40He embarked with 26 men on a ship and left.
00:50:44Only that this journey was a total disaster.
00:50:47The pirates ended up in Brazil,
00:50:50then from Brazil they ended up in Portugal,
00:50:53in the Iberian Peninsula,
00:50:55just by the enemies.
00:51:01And little by little he also lost pieces along the way,
00:51:04because one by one his travel companions began to die.
00:51:08Very tired, ill,
00:51:10but miraculously he managed to get to the Pope.
00:51:33And they hoped that the man would recover.
00:51:36But poor Nevunda will never be able to tell his embassy.
00:51:44But the Pope, the only thing he does is hold their hand
00:51:47until Nevunda dies.
00:51:51The Pope decided that this ephemeral event
00:51:54should be made permanent.
00:51:57So the Pope ordered that a death mask
00:52:00be made of the African ambassador.
00:52:03And that was the basis for a marble statue.
00:52:08The death mask was a symbol of the death of the king.
00:52:12It was a symbol of the death of the king.
00:52:15And that was the basis for a marble statue.
00:52:46Now this is an extraordinary event.
00:52:49First of all, that we have a portrait
00:52:52of a specific identifiable African.
00:52:55Secondly, that it was made in a very expensive material.
00:52:59And third, that it was commissioned by the Pope himself.
00:53:02And fourth, that it's placed on very public view.
00:53:16The palace of the Quirinal,
00:53:18the palace of the Presidency of the Republic,
00:53:20exactly in the courier room,
00:53:22where the President receives the foreign delegates, the ministers.
00:53:26We have frescoes of ambassadors above.
00:53:29Nevunda is richly dressed,
00:53:31he has a beautiful mantle,
00:53:33this dark complexion,
00:53:35and these somewhat atonic eyes.
00:53:39Interest in Black Africans was found
00:53:42not only in Florence and in Rome,
00:53:45but also throughout Italy and indeed throughout Europe.
00:53:49And specifically, in the city-state of Mantua,
00:53:53there was great interest among the ruling family
00:53:56in Black Africans.
00:54:09Who was calling the shots in Mantua in the late 1400s?
00:54:14A noblewoman named Isabella d'Este.
00:54:18Isabella d'Este is well-known
00:54:20as being one of the most important art patrons of the day.
00:54:24She had money, she had power, and she had taste.
00:54:27She also had a great sense of humor.
00:54:30She had a great sense of humor,
00:54:32and she had a great sense of humor.
00:54:35And she had taste.
00:54:37She also had a great interest in Black Africans.
00:54:47Isabella d'Este is very important, I think,
00:54:50for an understanding of Africans in Renaissance Italy.
00:54:57Not only because she tries to have in her entourage
00:55:02as many enslaved Africans as she can,
00:55:05but also because she came from the Este court in Ferrara,
00:55:09which always had an interest in the overseas exploration.
00:55:26We have an extraordinary letter by Isabella d'Este
00:55:29in which she asks her agent to go to Venice
00:55:32and find her enslaved girl as Black as possible.
00:55:36That's the quote.
00:55:42As she embarks on acquiring small African children,
00:55:47there's always this discussion about
00:55:49if enslaved Africans are lighter-skinned,
00:55:52do they have more value?
00:55:54If they're darker-skinned, do they have less value?
00:55:56Isabella shows that in her court at least,
00:55:59darker skin meant they were worth more.
00:56:01That's what she really wants.
00:56:06What's difficult is to work out precisely
00:56:09what she wanted these children for,
00:56:12except she thought they were entertaining in some way.
00:56:19She wanted them young.
00:56:21That's another thing that's alarming for us.
00:56:2318 months to 24 months.
00:56:25It's probable that it's more likely she wanted them at that age
00:56:28because then they'd learn perfect Italian,
00:56:30they weren't coming with preconceived views on things.
00:56:40They were objectified, there's absolutely no doubt about it.
00:56:47Isabella d'Este was not the only person interested
00:56:51in having enslaved Black people in her court.
00:56:54The ruling couple in the city-state of nearby Ferrara
00:56:59wanted to obtain Black Africans for their court,
00:57:03so they went to Venice.
00:57:05And why Venice?
00:57:06Because there was a very large population of Black figures there.
00:57:12This rather disturbing story serves as the background
00:57:15to help us understand a very beautiful painting by Titian.
00:57:20If we take a look at the portrait of Laura Dianti,
00:57:23we see a work of great beauty
00:57:26by one of the most important painters of all time.
00:57:30Together with the protagonist, the woman, Laura,
00:57:33we see a young Black page.
00:57:38This painting started a fashion, if you will,
00:57:42for noblemen and noblewomen across Europe.
00:57:46Titian was so famous and his work was so appreciated
00:57:50that people wanted to be depicted with a Black page.
00:57:56In the case of the female figure,
00:57:58there is already a play in the skin colour,
00:58:02the depiction of her hand that is pale
00:58:06in juxtaposition to the darker face of this small figure
00:58:11that is representing a racial difference.
00:58:15In the case of the male figure,
00:58:18it is a feature that really marks domination
00:58:22in the same way that you could have a sceptre
00:58:26or you could have the hand on a globe or on a map
00:58:30to talk about possession.
00:58:32And it is something that will carry over
00:58:36in the history of European portraiture for centuries to come.
00:58:45This work by Moraes is particularly intense.
00:58:50There is a clear relationship of domination
00:58:53and it is transparent from the body, for example, of the woman.
00:58:56It is also transparent from the way in which the Black creature
00:59:00that she is touching is represented.
00:59:02We don't understand a child very well.
00:59:04We know from historical sources that it should be a girl,
00:59:08but we also see how it is represented.
00:59:10We see this elongated skull,
00:59:12this very, very dark skin colour,
00:59:15lines that we can hardly see,
00:59:18while in the case of the woman we can see very well
00:59:20the clothing, the lines, the colours.
00:59:23And then the gesture is interesting.
00:59:25She places her hand on this child's hair,
00:59:28as if it were an object.
00:59:31And it is interesting to see how these habits,
00:59:34these gestures have been passed down for centuries.
00:59:37And as it still is today,
00:59:39often many children, many Black children with curly hair,
00:59:43their hair is touched
00:59:45precisely because touching the mole
00:59:48seems to bring good luck.
00:59:50It is a folkloric tradition.
00:59:53Isabella also has an interest
00:59:56in representations of African women
00:59:59in some of the paintings she commissioned.
01:00:05The artist in Isabella's court was Andrea Mantegna.
01:00:09Shortly after Isabella came to Mantua,
01:00:11Mantegna made a very finished painting
01:00:14of Isabella's portrait of Isabella.
01:00:17And you see the beautiful young widow, Judith,
01:00:20together with her maid,
01:00:22who is holding the head of the evil Holofernes,
01:00:25who Judith had just decapitated.
01:00:27But Mantegna was the first artist ever
01:00:30to show the maid as Black.
01:00:36In the 19th century,
01:00:38Isabella painted a portrait of herself
01:00:40with the head of Holofernes.
01:00:43And she showed the maid as Black.
01:00:49So I think this reflects, not the biblical story,
01:00:52but the reality of the court life in Mantua.
01:00:58And so that then when you see Mantegna
01:01:01introducing Black African figures as assistants,
01:01:04as servants in the case of Holofernes and Judith,
01:01:07you have this sort of relationship that gets developed
01:01:10also speaking to who's commissioning that work.
01:01:12And so it's not only influenced by the actual presence
01:01:15of Black Africans in the court that Mantegna sees,
01:01:18but it's also influenced by this desire
01:01:20to actually make sure that that's being seen
01:01:22as a gesture then of wealth, of power.
01:01:27There is also the development of visual discourse
01:01:31that is gendered in this case,
01:01:33that sees the juxtaposition based on a contrast
01:01:37between the female figure that is a princely figure
01:01:41and that becomes marked as white and virtuous,
01:01:45and a servant that is coming from Africa
01:01:49that has darker features that serves as a aesthetic foil,
01:01:54but also in some cases as a moral foil
01:01:59to highlight literally the qualities
01:02:03of the main European female figure.
01:02:08At that moment, we can see a real turn
01:02:12towards an ideological use of the African figure.
01:02:16It is very much the early moments
01:02:19of the story of racialization.
01:02:24What roles did Black Africans have
01:02:26in Italian Renaissance courts?
01:02:28They served as pages, as attendants, pilgrims,
01:02:32they were priests, they were soldiers,
01:02:35they were also musicians.
01:02:40We have a number of documented examples
01:02:42of African musicians in Italian cities,
01:02:46and one of them appears in a painting by Mantegna.
01:02:49In one of the triumphs, we see an African musician.
01:02:53For the original viewers, it must have reminded them
01:02:56of the fact that, yes, they had actually seen
01:02:58at some procession or some court event a Black musician.
01:03:06The presence of Black African musicians,
01:03:09Black African entertainers in many different courts
01:03:12is well documented.
01:03:14We have in the painting Piero di Cosimo,
01:03:16Perseus freeing Andromeda,
01:03:18there's this incredible figure in the foreground of a musician.
01:03:22It's an instrument that's as inventive
01:03:24as the dragon that's in the picture.
01:03:27It has this stringed part, and it has this reeded part,
01:03:31and it brings together, in a certain sense,
01:03:34something that is unimaginable.
01:03:36I think that the fantasy of that is being carried forth
01:03:40and exaggerated through the hands of the imaginary, then,
01:03:44of the Black African performer.
01:03:49But I think that mainly when it becomes fashionable
01:03:53to have enslaved individuals
01:03:55that are recognizably connected to distant lands...
01:04:00This is about, power is about access
01:04:03to all these distant reaches of the Earth.
01:04:07And it's about being able to dominate or control those things.
01:04:14It is so crucial to recognize
01:04:16that many of the same cultural aspirations
01:04:18and demonstrations of worldly knowledge
01:04:20existed also within powerful African kingdoms.
01:04:30THE ETHIOPIAN EMPEROR
01:04:38There are Italians in the court of the Ethiopian emperor.
01:04:42There's even a Venetian painter called Geronimo Bicini,
01:04:47who married an Ethiopian noblewoman,
01:04:50and who even seems to spend his time
01:04:53playing chess with the emperor.
01:05:00We have another painter who has left us numerous works.
01:05:04His name was NiccolΓ² Brancaleone.
01:05:13We have to imagine the Ethiopian court
01:05:16between the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th century
01:05:19as a renaissance court,
01:05:21where we have a small European community in Ethiopia.
01:05:30So the exchanges were also reciprocal with Ethiopia.
01:05:34Many Europeans ended up in the court of the Negus.
01:05:39They were worlds in continuous movement.
01:05:42I realized this, especially in Venice.
01:05:59THE ETHIOPIAN EMPEROR
01:06:15Venice is a plural, international city.
01:06:19It was a city of Armenians, of Turks,
01:06:22and throughout history there were also African people,
01:06:26some were born in Venice, some were mostly brought to Venice.
01:06:45Venice had a large slave market,
01:06:47which perhaps the greatest that had existed since the Middle Ages,
01:06:52when slavery was not focused on people of any particular skin color.
01:07:04But undoubtedly a lot of Africans were swept up in this net
01:07:09and were sold on slave markets into Italy.
01:07:15So if we think about the presence of representation of Black Africans,
01:07:19Venice is definitely this place where we find a really massive number of them.
01:07:23And the ways in which it's documented in paintings is really intriguing
01:07:28because it gives us insight to some of the roles
01:07:31and positions that Black Africans had in society.
01:07:45In the paintings of Carpaccio,
01:07:47who's a master at showing scenes of everyday life,
01:07:55we see a number of these Black gondolier rowers.
01:07:59So on the one hand, these figures looked exotic
01:08:02because they came from a foreign land.
01:08:08On the other hand, they look familiar
01:08:10because it's what people would see as they would ride on the boats
01:08:13around the canals of Venice.
01:08:19But it was somebody who asked me,
01:08:21Kate, you know, why are there Black gondoliers in the Carpaccio?
01:08:25You know, what's going on there?
01:08:27Who made me think that I should go and check this out?
01:08:30And yet nobody, again, nobody had bothered to look
01:08:35to see whether they corresponded to reality.
01:08:44I started doing more work on Venetian wills.
01:08:47Some African men who'd worked in the households of patricians,
01:08:50when they were freed, were bought a position
01:08:54in one of these gondoliers' associations.
01:08:59There are lists of gondoliers' associations.
01:09:02These books are called mariegole.
01:09:04They're not allowed to be released even to people like me,
01:09:07but in fact I got them.
01:09:09So, did I say there are 28 of them or something?
01:09:12And if you look, you can normally distinguish in each case
01:09:16a couple or a few Africans.
01:09:25These gondoliers' associations are also very important
01:09:29because they were hierarchical structures.
01:09:32This was a democratic organisation
01:09:35that elected by secret ballot the head of the organisation.
01:09:39And one of the most wonderful things we found
01:09:41was that one of these Africans became head
01:09:44of one of the gondoliers' associations, the Terregatatori.
01:09:51He was called Zwan Saraceno.
01:09:54We've got quite a lot of examples where we're absolutely certain
01:09:58that somebody described as Saraceno is actually African.
01:10:04And he seems to have been elected at least twice.
01:10:10One can see that there was already a germ of possibility
01:10:14of being inserted properly into Renaissance society,
01:10:18so the people in them were involved at every level
01:10:22in real participation in Italian life.
01:10:34The gondolier of Carpaccio seems to me to be a modern-day Venetian.
01:10:40He has black skin, he's elegantly dressed, but like many Venetians.
01:10:45I know many Venetians today who have black skin,
01:10:48who are Afro-Italians.
01:10:54I see him much more within the fabric of the city.
01:10:57It's a painting set in Rialto.
01:11:01Staying in Rialto meant staying in the heart of the city.
01:11:05Carpaccio puts the gondolier at the centre of the scene
01:11:09and doesn't put the miracle of the cross at the centre of the scene.
01:11:13The painting is dedicated to a miracle of healing.
01:11:16What is important is the bridge, the bridge that is still made of wood
01:11:20in the refurbishment of Carpaccio, and above all, the burning life.
01:11:25It's not just the gondolier.
01:11:27There are many Jews, Armenians, Turks.
01:11:30It shows you what the city was like, in a plural sense.
01:11:34It's very useful for today's historians
01:11:37to understand what Venice was like at the time.
01:11:47We also read that Africans were famed for their skill as swimmers.
01:11:51And in fact, there are paintings from the period
01:11:54where you see an African standing on the side,
01:11:57ready to jump into the water to help save a relic.
01:12:25The imaginary that's created through the language of painting and art in Venice
01:12:30of black African servants that are super-exoticised
01:12:34is carried out also later through a furniture style
01:12:38that in English a lot of times is termed blackamores.
01:12:41In Italian, it's a little bit more slippery.
01:12:43It's called mori, which is not really so specific.
01:12:49We have simultaneously a representation of servitude
01:12:52and we have objects that actually physically serve.
01:12:55So they will hold the candle, they will hold the light, they will hold the table.
01:13:04These are objects that get reproduced over and over again in Venice
01:13:08and they become a part of the glass tradition.
01:13:10They become a part of the wood tradition.
01:13:15In some cases, like at Carrezzonica, we have images by Andrea Brustolone
01:13:20that are sort of like shamefully beautiful.
01:13:25Black Africans that are nude and that have rusted chains on them.
01:13:29And it's phenomenal the ways in which there is a seeking out of
01:13:33fragments of black history in this context.
01:13:40So under-discovered, unknown to many of the Italians
01:13:44that have been living in this environment.
01:13:51In the late 1500s, there was an extraordinary artist
01:13:54who was able to capture the feasts, the ceremonies in Venice.
01:13:59And that's an artist known to us as Veronese.
01:14:02He was a follower, a younger contemporary of Titian.
01:14:11One of his most magnificent works is The Feast in the House of Levi.
01:14:17But that wasn't the original name.
01:14:19This was commissioned as The Last Supper.
01:14:21And then something rather remarkable happened.
01:14:28Veronese includes such a range of characters that are brought together
01:14:33regardless of their differences into a single scene
01:14:37and a scene that is considered as almost insolent to its original topic
01:14:43which was The Last Supper.
01:14:45We're at the time of the Inquisition in Italy.
01:14:49Veronese was called in front of the Inquisition.
01:14:55He was asked why he included certain details
01:14:58which were considered disrespectful.
01:15:04The presence of buffoons and black figures
01:15:07who included, they thought, for a comic effect in the work.
01:15:16The representation that Veronese comes up with in his Last Supper
01:15:21perhaps more similar everyday moments in life
01:15:25is so scandalous that it has to change the title of the painting
01:15:30from The Last Supper to The Dinner at the House of Levi
01:15:34in a way of making it more acceptable.
01:15:37Veronese had a specialization in large canvases
01:15:41and one of the best examples of this
01:15:44is a scene showing the first miracle of Christ, the wedding at Cana.
01:15:53And here we included dozens of figures, almost a hundred.
01:15:57And among these, six of them are black.
01:16:08Some of them are waiters, some of them are servants.
01:16:11But most surprisingly, in the painting,
01:16:14you could see that a guest at the table is black.
01:16:22He's wearing green silk.
01:16:24He's obviously a person of great importance
01:16:27because he's seated next to all the nobles at the table.
01:16:30So finally, in the late 1500s,
01:16:33a black African was allowed a place at the table.
01:16:37It's one thing to have an African represented as a patron or a biblical king,
01:16:42but for viewers in 16th century Venice,
01:16:45it was quite another to see a painting with guests at the table
01:16:48dressed just like them,
01:16:50but with a black African seated in their midst.
01:16:59Not many years after this work was made,
01:17:02we have the story of an Ethiopian nobleman
01:17:06who came to Venice.
01:17:08His name, Ussaga Krestos.
01:17:36In Venice, Ussaga Krestos lives
01:17:39at the Benedictine Monastery in San Giorgio.
01:17:42So he has lunch and dinner in the famous refectory
01:17:46where we find the painting by Paolo Veronese
01:17:49of Cana's wedding.
01:17:54And we can imagine Ussaga Krestos
01:17:57seeing himself in the figure of this nobleman
01:18:00and thinking about his relationship with the various personalities
01:18:05he met in all of Italy at the courts where he was hosted.
01:18:15So amongst the range of figures that we find in Venice,
01:18:18we have everything from pilgrims to servants,
01:18:21and amongst those we have this figure of Ussaga Krestos
01:18:24who finds himself in the context of Venice
01:18:27and who brings with him this extraordinary story
01:18:30that I think is amplified to the more extraordinary through fantasy.
01:18:36The professor Matteo Salvadori, the biographer of Ussaga Krestos,
01:18:40tells us that Krestos arrives at the Venetian embassy in Cairo in 1632.
01:18:45He's about 16 years old,
01:18:47and he says he's the son of the deceased emperor Jacob.
01:18:50In reality, he could not have been the son of Jacob
01:18:53because Jacob had died around 12 years before the boy was even born.
01:18:58Nonetheless, given his tellings of noble origins,
01:19:01Krestos is chosen by the Franciscans
01:19:03to facilitate the spread of Catholicism in Ethiopia.
01:19:22Salvadori describes him as being a man
01:19:25Salvadori describes him as being sent to Rome to meet the Pope,
01:19:28and everywhere he went, he's welcomed like a great celebrity.
01:19:34He was hosted by the Barberini family.
01:19:36He was sponsored not only by the pontiff, by Urban VIII,
01:19:39but by the entire family.
01:19:45Ussaga Krestos travels to Venice,
01:19:48and the four Franciscans who accompanied him
01:19:51waited to board the ship for Ethiopia.
01:19:53They soon realized that he in actuality
01:19:55had no intention of returning to Ethiopia.
01:19:58From there, he continued his journey and arrived in Turin,
01:20:01where he stayed for a longer period as a guest in the Savoy family
01:20:04as he had fallen ill.
01:20:10And in Turin, we have a portrait made of him, dated 1635.
01:20:15The key to the story is the artist.
01:20:19And here's a surprise. It's a woman artist.
01:20:22There were not many in the Renaissance,
01:20:24and one of them was Giovanna Garzoni,
01:20:27and she worked for the House of Savoy.
01:20:34The painting shows Ussaga Krestos
01:20:37as if he was a European nobleman,
01:20:42by which I mean his attire, his clothing,
01:20:46his turn of his head.
01:20:52But the artist also showed her respect for the sitter
01:20:56in another way, perhaps a more private way.
01:21:01On the back of this miniature, she included her name.
01:21:05That's not unusual.
01:21:07And she also included her name written once again in Ethiopian.
01:21:12She must have asked him,
01:21:14how can I say my name in your language?
01:21:17And with rather uncertain lettering,
01:21:19she tried to reproduce that on the back.
01:21:45He was arrested while trying to escape
01:21:49in the company of the wife of a notable Parisian.
01:21:53But he was soon imprisoned,
01:21:55thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Richelieu.
01:21:58And after a few months,
01:22:00he probably died of pneumonia
01:22:03at the home of Cardinal Richelieu.
01:22:06Ussaga Krestos left us a autobiography.
01:22:10It is the first autobiography of an African
01:22:15published in Europe by the author himself.
01:22:22We also find a fake emblem of his robe.
01:22:26And basically, this autobiography,
01:22:29which is largely and surely
01:22:32invented, is an instrument for Zagacrestos
01:22:36to impose himself as the descendant of a king.
01:22:40And so he was believed.
01:22:42Who decides what we remember of history?
01:22:45Who decides what's commemorated and who's commemorated?
01:22:53This is a turning point in the European perception of African men.
01:22:57After Zagac's death, as is typical,
01:22:59common opinion changes radically.
01:23:01He's seen as an imposter,
01:23:03not because he didn't have the documentation
01:23:05to prove his identity,
01:23:07but simply because he was an African visitor.
01:23:09He's assigned a series of negative stereotypes
01:23:11which emerged in the 17th century,
01:23:13which would become increasingly popular
01:23:15in relation to the African continent,
01:23:17and above all, to African men.
01:23:19It focuses on uncontrollable sexuality,
01:23:21a lack of reliability,
01:23:23and these are just some of the indicators
01:23:25that times were changing.
01:23:55There was a time when people could recognize their differences
01:24:15and work around them.
01:24:17They did not assume that there were negative characteristics
01:24:20that were assigned to a particular person
01:24:22on the basis of race.
01:24:25So I think that racism has not always existed,
01:24:34then we can get rid of it.
01:24:36It can be gotten rid of,
01:24:39and we need to live with it in perpetuity.
01:24:42That's a hope.
01:24:45Slavery has always been a topic
01:24:47that one could write about in history,
01:24:50but that sees enslaved people as objects.
01:24:53That's really concerned with objectification.
01:24:59And instead, what we're trying to look at now
01:25:01is look at enslaved people as subjects, as people,
01:25:05and that's what we're trying to do.
01:25:07We're trying to look at slavery
01:25:09and what we're trying to do now
01:25:11is look at enslaved people as subjects, as people,
01:25:14and that's probably the difference too.
01:25:17We're trying to do something different.
01:25:19More work, more work, we need more work.
01:25:40These relationships are important
01:25:42to understand what society we are today.
01:26:10In commercials, in society,
01:26:13in some ways can be traced right back to the Renaissance.
01:26:18When we focus on these characters
01:26:21who have been present but overlooked to a large extent
01:26:25for almost 500 years,
01:26:27we give ourselves an opportunity
01:26:29to learn from their presence
01:26:32and to learn from their absence
01:26:35a better understanding of their time
01:26:37and a better understanding of our own societies.
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