The Uffizi Gallery in Florence is celebrating Black History Month [1] 2020 with an online virtual exhibition to show the Black African presence in its collection On Being Present. A presence it admits that even those with an acute eye for detail might miss, it is certainly not due to the lack of Black Africans in its collection as there are over 20. Their presence says more about what they call ‘the historical and art historical frameworks within which viewers navigate these spaces contributing to their obscurity’ ie the viewer simply does not see them, the Black African figure is hidden in plain site. I am very familiar with the apparent invisibility of the Black African figure from my own tours, evidenced by the shock on many folks' faces when the Black figure is pointed out to them. In the interests of fairness it should be pointed out most times the Black African figures are not the subject of the painting, they are supporting, marginalised figures, which means they can be easily overlooked in favour of the dominant figure or narrative as portrayed by the artist. This to me is what makes the Uffizi's virtual exhibition so special as there are works in which the black figure is central and unmissable such as the two wonderful portraits of Benedetto d’Angola Silva as well as Black figure's more conventional role as a marginal, supporting, as seen in Vittore Carpaccio’s Gli alabardieri. I was delighted to see that I knew , having corresponded with them, three of the nine art historians who have written commentaries for this virtual exhibition and they had each made a contribution to my John Blanke Project - a contemporary Art and Archive project celebrating John Blanke the Black trumpeter to courts of Henry VII & Henry VIII - Kate Lowe, Paul Kaplan, and Temi Odumosu The exhibition's commentaries were insightful and informative, there was one that particularly stood out for me, that was Dennis Geronimus on Piero di Cosimo Perseus frees Andromeda. He made two related comments which made me reflect. He states that black Andromedas are rarer than Black musicians whom themselves are rare. I would argue that black Andromedas are not just rare, they are none existent from the period. This follows on from my readings of Elizabeth McGrath's work on Andromeda[2], I can find no black Andromeda from the period, Cosmo like Titan, Veronese and as other artists do without exception, paint Andromeda as white despite knowing her to be the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia. Later he argues Andrea Mantegna depicts a black African ‘drummer-fifer’ in his antique-inspired Introduction of the Cult of Cybele in Rome of 1505–6. I too once considered the figure to be black, I included him in my Image of the Black in National Gallery tour. However, having studied it for some time now and consulted others with an interest in the field. The conclusion I have come to is that I have no proof – in physiognomy, in dress or in writings on Mantegna - to say that he is black African. The closest connection to black African I can make is to compare him with the Black African flute and tabor player in Master of Frankfurt (15th century) Festival of the Archers playing the same instruments.Thus for me Mantegna's ‘drummer-fifer’ is not a Black African. To conclude, On Being Present clearly highlights the physical Black African presence in Renaissance Italy and Europe in doing so it ‘confirm[s] the presence of the continent of Africa in the consciousness of the commissioners of these works from a range of artists across time and speak to the incredible cultural exchange that was taking place when these works were being made, indeed.....[t]his presence is simultaneously a physical reality and a metaphysical one both of which guided the shaping of “Western” history with its inclusions and omissions.” This online exhibition certainly makes that explicit and implicit presence manifest and I thoroughly recommend it.
1. Black History Month in America is February in Great Britain we celebrate it in October 2. The Black Andromeda Author(s): Elizabeth McGrath, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 55 (1992), pp. 1-18, The Warburg Institute, http://www.jstor.org/stable/751417, Accessed: 05-04-2018 07:06 UTC
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5/9/2021 03:09:04 am
The Uffizi have created a volume 2 of 'On Being Present' covering more works from their collection with a Black presence:
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