Essays: Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe

[bibliogramma]

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe (ed. Joaneath Spicer) is an evocative visual record, with accompanying explanatory text, of an exhibition curated by Joaneath Spicer, James A. Murnaghan Curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art at the Walters Art Museum.

The exhibition's intent, as stated in the foreword by Gary Vikan, Director of the Walters Art Museum, is "to explore the varied roles and societal contributions of Africans and their descendents in Renaissance Europe as revealed in compelling paintings, drawings, sculpture, and printed books of the period" and "to understand the period in terms of individuals of African ancestry, whom we encoun- ter in arresting portrayals from life, testifying to the Renaissance adage that portraiture magically makes the absent present."

The artefacts which comprise the exhibition reveal a range of representations of the African presence in Europe between 1480 and 1620, from slaves and freedmen at work to ambassadorial retinues and visiting rulers, from naturalistic portraiture to caricature and exoticism.

The volume is divided into sections, each of which references a different aspect of the African presence in renaissance Europe, each richly illustrated with images of Black people in varied situations. If nothing else, this collection of visual evidence of the presence of African people and their descendants in Europe should be more than enough to refute the common claim in some parts that Europe was white, white, white until the relatively recent influx of former colonial subjects and refugees. But the information contained in the text, which ranges from examinations of the work of slaves and free blacks to explorations of European ideas of "blackness" is important to the understanding of the position of black people in European history and how that affects race relations today.