BLACK AFRICANS IN RENAISSANCE EUROPE
Review: The Bookcover
Alessandro de Medici
Pope Clement VII, his father?
Maria Salviati and a Black girl, symbolising blackness. Whitened faces
Lorenzo I, also named as Alesandro's possible father.
If one takes a look at all the other De Medici's one finds many, more or less, classical African types.
Dido Elisabeth Langsay, Jane Austen based Fanny Price from Mansfield Park on her life.
JF van der Werff, a Suriname elite member,
showing strong classical african facial traits.
Whitened portrait.
Jamnitzer Moorhead, drinking vessel, from Moritzburg
King Balthasar
Djimoun Hounsou, the rare, ultra black skinned Black.
The Blacks discussed in this book are still around. We can still study them.
Manhead, Venice, Renaissance
BLACK
AFRICANS IN RENAISSANCE EUROPE
Dear
T.F.Earle and KJP Lowe,
All history
is about Blacks as slavery of Africans in Europe and the Americas was invented
while the brown and black complexioned Europeans ruled (1100-1848). The
colonial slave masters were members of the European bourgeoisie and were brown
or black complexioned. Often fairer in looks then their slaves, but also as
black of skin as some of their slaves. They looked down on Africans not because
of looks, but as heathens and uncivilized peoples. Jane Austen (1775-1817), a
member of the brown and black complexioned gentry wrote about slavery and was herself
described as ‘a brunette of complexion.’ In ‘Mansfield Park’ Fanny Price is
based on real life Dido Elizabeth Longsay, who is portrayed by A.Ramsay as a
dark mulatto type. Dido is the favourite
niece of Lord Mansfield, who lived with his family. She was the child of his
cousin and a former enslaved woman. Fanny Price is a favourite house slave in
the noble Bertram household of her mother’s sister: yet as a half-black she has
a lower status. When visitors call, she cannot eat with the family. This is how
in reality the house slaves were often children, brothers, sisters and kin of
the masters. This accounts for their preferential status, and after manumission
could inherit and marry an European. Austen shows how Blacks misuse their own
brethren and teach others how to mistreat and look down on Blacks, and offers
this as a cause for the downfall of Blacks by their own follies.
[Lorenzo I,
also cited as father of Alessandro. Maria Salviati. This portrait for a long
time did not show the little Black girls as she symbolised the blackness of the
Medici family. So she was covered and only emerged during a restoration. They wanted
to make her into Cosimo I, to sell the painting at a higher price, but it’s a girl.]
Exceptional
is the chapter about Alessandro de Medici and the Moorhead drinking vessel by Jamnitzer.
There is a longish list of personal description of Alessandro, and they are
compared to a few depictions that confirm he was the face type we call Black
today. Its however automatically assumed he got his looks from his mother, a
servant woman from peasant stock, Simonette from a village Colle Vechio. Many
portraits of the Medici family show classical African facial traits, as the
family was Black. Non of his enemies attacked his blackness, but only his low
birth from a servant mother. This is remarked but not worked upon, as to find
out why? Mainly because they were brown and black themselves, while the elite
self-identified with heraldic images of Moors, as Black. Simonette was married,
and asked him by letter for money, meaning he was not close to his mother and
might have disavowed her, and his half-siblings. I was surprised about these
details that I had not encountered before. It was Charles V who ennobled De
Medici and made him Duke of Florence. After which he was married off to a
natural daughter of Charles V, Marguerite of Parma. She was also a daughter of
another servant, in Bruges. Yet her half-brother Philips II made her governor
of the Netherlands. She also had her bastardness thrown at her. Some 19th
century historians disputed his blackness, one suggested he just ‘looked’
Black, as his mother was ‘Eastern.’ Blackness is often presented as a ‘strain’
an infection, a disease on whites who are presented as the norm, and the
beginning of everything. As if the whites never overcame the shock of being
regarded immigrants in Europe by the Black Europeans, already among the Greek
Civilization, and want to proof their Europeanness by writing and painting the
Blacks out of history.
The many
splendid, opulent and priceless images of Blacks, and the use of splendidly
turned out Black musicians or courtiers during royal processions is never
questioned as antithetical to their supposedly low, foreign status, their
supposed ugliness and who are hated by the Europeans. Why would a royal person
antagonise the majority of his subjects by showing such outright preference for
Blacks? Why would they employ them among white servants or give them leading
positions in their households? Why display golden Black imagery like the
Moritzburg Cup? Why call a place Moritzburg? Why use so many Moors as heraldic
Symbols for families, cities and nations? If they are so low and animalistic,
why such an obsession with blackness among the supposedly white European
nobility? Why give them leading rolls in plays set among the royalty?
After study
I found that the heraldic Moors symbolised blue blood, and Black Supremacy.
These symbols are not real persons, but are regularly, without any base,
identified as slaves or servants. The European elite who brought the
Renaissance were the first Europeans who came from Africa and remained brown
and black complexioned because of intermarriage. They were called blue men in
the medieval period (500-1500), and some of their descendants elevated
themselves into a nobility called Blue Bloods. They saw themselves as true
Europeans, from the soil, while whites came from Central Asia, and became
their serfs. They even traded in the skin of these whites to line church door,
bind books, make clothing and shoes for the elite. The non-noble Blacks became
the bourgeoisie and were also looked down upon. This why the bourgeoisie
philosophers started the Enlightenment and conspired to make the French
Revolution to topple the nobility, together with the white majority
The launch
of the Modern nobility in 1100-1200 coincided with the introduction of King
Balthasar and Black Madonna’s, and Black saints like St. Maurice. They were to
present the Black identified king as a good Christian. As Christianity was
forced by this elite on the Europeans, who had kept their native religions well
after the medieval period. The French Revolution caused many of these symbols
of Black superiority to be destroyed, but many were recreated, and are still
visible in many great European churches. Like how Isis was still worshipped
during the Christian Era, the Black Madonna’s are still venerated, while the
Black noble elite has disappeared. The only way to cope is to ignore these
symbols, or assert they are blackened by candle soot. But only on the hands and
the face of these statues, not on the body etc. This is how blackness is
explained away, by putting the idea in front that there were no Blacks. And to
identify a historical person as Black, it must be shown he had a Black
great-grandfather. How does the King of Britain, Charles II Stuart, can have a
slave ancestor to cause him to be so Black? if I read well all of Europe had
only three Blacks of merit: Alessandro de Medici, Alexander Pushkin and
Alexander Dumas. But then only half-blacks with as all the merit was only caused
by their white DNA, that managed to over shadow the base, evil, stupid,
animalistic African DNA. Even in our times a biographer of Pushkin tries to
equate bad behaviour among the Hannibals as caused by their race. While there
is no proof that his noble contemporaries shunned him, or condemned him because
of his race. There must have been more like him, and he was seen as a noble
man. From my study of Jane Austen (1775-1 817) I understand that the elite
numbered 2-3%, that they were light brown, brown, very brown and black, and the
10% with classical African facial traits were regarded as ‘distinguished,’
‘pure of blood,’ and ‘proof of noble blood.’
Othello is
the most famous Black fictional character and misunderstood. The people of
Venice could not have been racist if they would make a Moor their highest
military leader. The objections against Othello are those of the bourgeoisie
against the nobility. Othello marrying Desdemona is how the nobility married
Bourgeois heiresses from trade, as nobles were forbidden to trade. Emma
Woodhouse in Emma (1816), the Queen of Highbury wants to have Mr. Elton (‘Mr.
Elton, black, spruce, and smiling’) marry her white friend Miss Harriet Smith.
Displays Austen disdain for mix-marriages, as a folly by which Blacks lost their
power. by diluting their pure blood with whites. The supposedly racist jokes
are just mild stabbings at the nobility, but not against Black superiority.
Shakespeare was a member of brown and black complexion of the gentry, and the
many Blacks in his plays are heraldic Moors, who are symbols and persons, like
Mr. Elton. The historical role of the nobility, the aspects of nobilitas and
superiority, and its weaknesses and failings are argued.
Black is a
face type, and colour is just skin deep, yet this superficial trait is used to
distinguish Blacks from others, and to define them as hardly humans. There must
be a reason for this obsessive, organized hatred, which is reflected in books
like this, expositions and articles. To show Blacks as less, as unimportant, as
permanent slaves: as if slavery is stamped on their DNA. The whites who were
treated as shoe leather for 800 years or longer by these brown and black
complexioned Europeans have an axe to grind.
But we
still have a small window of opportunity to over throw their purpose to
completely revise history and completely exercise Blacks from history. While
all of history is about Blacks, with whites in the supporting roll of
barbarians, plebeians, serfs, villains, the ordinary people, the greys (het grauw),
the pinks, rapaille and canaille. The Early Modern nobility styled itself on
the Greek nobility by claiming seniority to rule over late coming whites, as
the true Europeans ‘of the soil.’ Subsequently the Greek and the Roman
Civilizations were Black civilizations with all their rulers brown or black of
complexion. Alexander the Great was described as ‘swarthy’, which means (zwart,
schwartze) black in colour, and depicted by
Apelles as black of complexion. The nobility knew the Greek civilization was Black.
this civilization was whitened along with the whitening of European history in
1848.
They
started with over painting the portraits in 1848 claiming the paint had
darkened; yet at least confirming that the paintings showed dark people. Next
they ignored personal description in fact or fiction, printing whitened
portraits of the same person who in the same book is described as ‘more brown
then white’ (William I of Orange 91533-1584)). In this book as well, as
Alessandro de Medici is described as dark or very brown in colour, yet they
still show the (half) whitened portraits, that still show the classical African
facial traits. A strange internalised obscurantism to contradict oneself in
this regard of images. The description does not match the image, and it does
not lead to questions as its already pre-decided that a Black could never be a
ruler, or a European person of merit. So this otherwise useful method, as it is
to me as the blue blood theory is firmly based on personal descriptions: is
used to their revisionist convenience. They not even understand that fair or
even ‘blank’ does not necessarily mean white. The context shows that a person
could not have been white, if married to a noble or seen as part of the elite.
The social distance between elite and serf was too great. Africans came in all
complexions, so some nobles were lighter in colour, but did not identify as
whites, and were not looked on as whites, as those would not be tolerated among
society. This is the truth they want to bury with this racist book.
Egmond
Codfried
Curator
Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood Museum
The Hague.
19 Augustus
2013.
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I'm also
rereading Frank Snowden's Blacks in Antiquity, (1970) and he starts his book by
saying that the Blacks he found in the antique world were immigrants in Europe.
And he is discussing problems of Blacks in a white society. With all his knowledge
and sources, and resources, he could not see that the brown and black
complexioned Greeks were the elite. They were in looks between the white
Scythians and the Blacks, the Ethiops or Nubians. Yet the classical African
type, prevailed as symbol. as standard against the white barbarians. He was under pain to adapt to what the whites have done since
1848 when they were emancipated, is to turn all civilizations in Europe white.
The nobles from the 18th century still knew Greece and Rome were ruled by
people who were brown and black of sin, like them, and they all believed they
came from Africa. So they used the classical African image to establish their
identity, and superiority. If the deities are Black, the elite must be Black.
=========================================================
Black
Africans In Renaissance Europe, ed. K. J. P. Lowe, T. F. Earle
Cambridge
University Press, 2010, 436 p.
“This
highly original book opens up the much neglected area of the black African
presence in Western Europe during the Renaissance. Covering history,
literature, art history and anthropology, it investigates a whole range of
black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe, from
various types of slavery to black musicians and dancers, from real and symbolic
Africans at court to the view of the Catholic Church, and from writers of
African descent to black African 'criminality'. The main purpose of the
collection is to show the variety and complexity of black African life in
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by firmly held
preconceptions relating to the African continent and its inhabitants. Of
enormous importance for both European and American history, this book mixes
empirical material and theoretical approaches, and addresses such issues as
stereotypes, changing black African identity, and cultural representation in
art and literature.”
“Dazzling
Scholarship, September 4, 2010
By D. G.
Wright:
The
collection of essays in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe epitomizes the
best in scholarship and research. Sometimes heartbreaking, always fascinating,
the writers discuss various aspects of the effects of slavery on Africans in
Europe and on Europeans. The best of the essays -- for my interest -- are Paul
Kaplan's "Isabella d'Este and black African women"; Debra
Blumenthal's "'la Casa dels Negres': black African solidarity in late
medieval Valencia"; and Nelson Minnich's "The Catholic Church and the
pastoral care of black Africans in Renaissance Italy."
-================================================================
-================================================================
Reviewer:
Professor Francisco Bethencourt, King's College London, review of Black
Africans in Renaissance Europe, (review no. 619), URL: http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/619
At the
outset of the volume, Kate Lowe defines the editors’ key question: how were the
main stereotypes concerning black people established in this period? She
provides several examples relating to the main set of prejudices: the African
was generally identified as a naked person who would mutilate his/her face and
body with scarification, piercings, and tattoos; he/she would be considered as
carefree and characterized by immoderate laughter, unaware of his/her
condition, lazy and sexually promiscuous, physically strong, a good musician or
dancer. Lowe recognizes the existence of noble or ennobled black men in
European courts, but she stresses the role of black people as a necessary
counter-image in the construction of European whiteness and ‘civilization’ (a
notion coined in the eighteenth century). This is a necessary starting point,
although some of the chapters develop a more nuanced vision of race relations in
this period.
Anne Marie
Jordan, for instance, has a fine chapter on slaves in the Lisbon court of Queen
Catherine of Austria, where mainly women and children of different ethnic
origins were used as musicians, cooks, pastry chefs, housekeepers, pages, or
servants in royal apothecaries, kitchens, gardens, and stables. Jordan points
out how white Moorish slaves were favoured because of skin colour prejudices,
but black slaves were considered trustworthy for religious reasons. The black
slaves were a sign of social prestige and distinction in a cosmopolitan court:
this feature explains why Catherine spent so much money clothing and offering
them as exotic gifts to her favourite ladies and relatives in other European
courts. The representation of small black slaves in the portraits of Iberian
princesses, as in the painting of Juana de Austria by Cristóvão de Morais,
reinforced their image as symbols of empire building.
Jorge
Fonseca presents the results of his research on sixteenth-century Southern
Portugal, where he estimates a total of six to seven per cent of blacks in the
population, mainly in urban areas, in contrast with the Northern region, where
blacks were scarce. His analysis of the perceptions of black people by Nicholas
Cleynaerts, a Flemish scholar who taught in Louvain, Paris, and Salamanca,
spending several years in Portugal as tutor of infant Henry (the future
cardinal and General Inquisitor), is less convincing. The scholar is presented
as an ‘exotic visitor’, which is misplaced, since he belonged to the
international Renaissance elite who circulated between different European
countries. Cleynaerts bought young slaves and taught them as assistants. His
observation that they were like ‘monkeys’ (meaning capable of imitating but not
of creating) is considered by Fonseca as a sign of the contrast between two
societies, the Flemish and the Portuguese, the first unaware of black people,
the second used to them. It is disputable that Cleynaerts’ classification of
the young slaves as ‘monkeys’ was his own, and not influenced by the
Portuguese, but the implicit assumption that the Portuguese were less ‘racist’
than the Flemish is questionable.
Didier
Lahon proposes an interesting analysis of the mixed confraternity of Nossa
Senhora do Rosário in Lisbon, which split into two branches of white and black
members. The conflict that existed between them for more than one century, and
the final victory of the white branch in 1646, is interpreted as a shift from a
relatively tolerant society, open to manumission (one of the privileges of the
confraternity) and to intervention against bad treatment of slaves, to a more
rigid and intolerant society in the seventeenth century. The implementation of
the obligatory baptism of slaves throughout the second half of the sixteenth
century is also reconstituted in detail. The analysis of the impact of the
notion of blood purity in Portugal is much less convincing, with a deficient
chronology and huge gaps, while comprehensive studies are ignored. The idea
that the Iberian Peninsula dealt with the presence of Moors, Jews, and New
Christians as an anomaly from 1350 onwards is simply wrong, as Maria José Ferro
Tavares and Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros have demonstrated.
Thomas
Earle focuses his study on the work of Afonso Álvares, a mulatto poet and
playwright, cautiously alerting the reader to the lack of evidence to prove
that they were one and the same person. Álvares is one of the few mixed-race
intellectuals in Europe in the sixteenth century. He wrote satirical poems and
four plays based on saints’ lives, commissioned by the Augustinian canons of
São Vicente de Fora in Lisbon. Earle discusses the quality of the plays and
convincingly refuses the historical devaluation of the writer, who has been
seen as a minor disciple of Gil Vicente. A particularly interesting section
concerns the polemic in satirical redondilhas between Afonso Álvares and
another poet, António Ribeiro Chiado. Álvares accused Chiado of low birth and
immorality. Chiado insulted Álvares in racist terms, accusing him of being a
mulatto, son of a black woman, a slave freed by marriage. Álvares underlined
the nobility of his father—whose identity was never disclosed; it might have
been Dom Afonso de Portugal, bishop of Évora, in whose household Álvares was
educated. In his plays, Álvares reflects the dominant anti-Semitic mood. There
is sufficient material here for a deeper reflection on the racial prejudices of
the Portuguese Renaissance society and on the conflicting mechanisms of social
promotion among subaltern groups.
Jeremy
Lawrence presents a very good overview of the Black Africans in Spanish
literature, identifying the main ideas: dehumanization of slaves as chattels,
defined by bestiality, nakedness, lascivious vulgarity, burlesque behaviour,
pidgin language. He focuses his study on the ‘habla de negros’ enlarging the
already significant bibliography on the subject (the crucial study by Paul
Teyssier on Gil Vicente could have been mentioned). The author selects less
known texts and provides two excellent critical editions of pliegos in the
appendix. The originality and subversive meaning of the poems is brought out
clearly in this chapter, since they staged strong black characters with
unconventional relations with white women. Baltasar Fra-Molinero is another
author who has extensively written on blacks in Spanish literature, and has
contributed to changing the field. He has shown how this marginal and neglected
topic played an important role in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here
he concentrates on Juan Latino, the only black Latinist, scholar, and writer in
the European Renaissance, who lived in Granada. He has previously pointed out
how Juan Latino reflected on the black condition and refused a social hierarchy
based on skin colour prejudices. Fra-Molinero analyses now the poem Austrias
Carmen, dedicated by Juan Latino to Juan de Austria after his victory over
Morisco insurrection in Granada, known as the War of the Alpujarras
(1568–1572). In the text, Latino searched to establish the dignity of all black
Africans, relating them to biblical Ethiopia and refusing the idea of natural
slavery. He imagines white people subordinated in Ethiopia (a reversed irony)
and exalts blackness in the final verses.
Debra
Blumenthal addresses a very interesting issue: the role of a black African
confraternity in Valencia founded in 1472 by forty black freedmen that
collected alms and negotiated contracts of manumission on behalf of their
fellows in captivity. She knows the context of slave trade in Valencia well,
the variety of the black community in the town, and the functions of the
confraternity (‘casa dels negres’) as shelter, hospice, and hospital. She
analyses two cases of manumission, concerning Ursola and Johana, in which all
the financial, juridical, and social difficulties are analysed, as well as the
subsequent barriers to full integration.
Aurelia
Marín Casares, who has written a very good book on slavery in Granada, presents
here part of her enquiry into free and freed black Africans in the region. She
has identified most of their occupations: men were stable workers, esparto
workers, smelters and casters in foundries, carriers and vendors of water or
firewood, bakers, butchers, hod carriers, builders, diggers, pavers; women were
housewives, farmers, embroiders, maids, taverns and inns employees,
sorceresses. The author details the confraternities created by blacks and
mulattos in Granada. The notion of blackness and the different types of black
people do not become clear in this article, however, since in many cases
Moriscos were considered black by the Christian population.
The
‘Italian section’ is one of the most interesting in the book. Paul Kaplan
argues that Isabella d’Este and Andrea Mantegna created a new iconographic
type: the black attendant to a white European protagonist. In his opinion,
Judith’s servant was depicted as black for the first time by Mantegna in a
drawing from 1492. As the author points out, this idea of displaying black
servants to suggest the universal reach of imperial power had already been
coined by Frederick II. Kaplan stresses the diffusion of this idea among
European rulers, namely the Aragonese kings of Naples or the ruling houses of
Ferrara, Mantua, and Milan, in which black servants were used as human
accessories and depicted as such. The only problem in this stimulating chapter
is the uniform definition of ‘blackness’, while in several paintings (see for
example the Allegory of Virtue by Correggio) there is a gradation of skin
colour from black to brown.
John
Brakett suggests that Alessandro de’ Medici, the first duke of Florence
(1529–1537) was of mixed race, an illegitimate son of Lorenzo de’ Medici, duke
of Nemours and ruler of Urbino (and a direct descendent of Lorenzo ‘il
Magnifico’ and Cosimo ‘il Vecchio’) and a peasant woman, a freed slave,
generally considered as a ‘Moor’, but now depicted as a Black African. The
argument is based not on new documents but on the analysis of the set of images
of Alessandro de’ Medici. The problem lies in the final conclusion: the author
considers that there was no intellectual racism in the sixteenth century, since
the duke was murdered under the accusation of being a tyrant, but his racial
status was not used in political debate or in denigration of his memory, which
proves the supremacy of the innate quality of princes. This is an open issue:
as the author mentions in his text, the duke was nicknamed ‘the Moor’ and ‘the
mule’ of the Medici in his lifetime, which suggests a more complicated picture.
Sergio
Tognetti concentrates on the trade in black African slaves in fifteenth-century
Florence. The percentage of East European slaves in North Italian cities was quite
important by the end of the fourteenth century, mainly in Genoa (nearly ten per
cent) due to the Genoese trading communities in the Black Sea, but the fall of
Contantinople in 1453 ended this commercial exchange. The slave trade in black
Africans spread throughout the fifteenth century, replacing the previous trade.
Networks also changed, from Arab merchants to Portuguese ones. This careful
research, based on the account books of the Cambini bank, shows the value of
slaves (proving also how whiter skin was more appreciated than darker skin) and
the overwhelming control of the market from Lisbon, confirming the role of
Bartolomeo Marchionni as the biggest slave trader in those days.
The
pastoral care of black Africans in Renaissance Italy is the subject of Nelson
Minnich’s chapter. The zigzag policies of the Popes from Martin V to Paul III
is well documented, with successive bulls prohibiting the African slave trade
(1425) and black slavery (1462), then allowing the trade with captive people
(1455, 1456, 1493), and finally condemning the enslavement of native American
people (1537), while the citizens of Rome were authorized to hold slaves
(1548). The creation of black confraternities in Naples, Palermo, and Messina
was a result of the activity of different religious orders among slaves and
freedmen. The access of black people (slaves and freedmen) to the sacraments of
penance, communion, and marriage is well documented, while the ordination of
black priests was very rare—one Ethiopian and one Congolese bishop, suggested
by the Portuguese king in 1513, were exceptional cases.
Anu
Korhonen addresses the crucial proverb ‘washing the Ethiopian white’ in
Renaissance England. It became a metaphor for everything considered useless,
irrational, and impossible. It was widespread in England, although the
relatively frequent literary references to black people in literature were
brief and stereotyped. Africans were explicitly related to apes, defined by
unruly sexuality, a lack of reason, violence, and ugliness (English is the only
language in which the same term, fair, is used for beauty and blondness).
Although Korhonen quotes an impressive range of sources, some of them from a
very early period, it would have been interesting to establish the turning
point of the process of construction and diffusion of the stereotype.
Lorenz
Seelig studies the fascinating case of the ‘Moor’s Head’ produced circa 1600 by
the Nuremberg goldsmith Christoph Jamnitzer. It shows the features of a young
African with full lips, broad nose, and curled hair, with a headband chased
with eight ‘T’s. It as a heraldic work of art representing the armorial
bearings of the Florentine Pucci family, coupled with the coat of arms of the
Florentine Strozzi family. This splendid object, made of silver and rock
crystal, is also a drinking vessel: the upper part of the head can be taken
off, like a cover. Seelig relates the object to the German tradition of
drinking vessels, the double sense of the word kopf and the practice of
drinking from human skulls (relics of saints), which is documented until the
late-eighteenth century. He points out that, outside of the ecclesiastical
sphere, profane drinking vessels were considered signs of moral decadence such
as in the tradition of fools’ head cups. Cups, jugs, or oil lamps were
represented as black Africans (Seelig indicates an early example from the
workshop of Andrea Ricci, circa 1500, with deformed face, open mouth, and
protruding jaw to hold the wick). But on the other hand, Seelig points to the
statues or cameos of the black Venus and black Diana, or the dignified
sculptures of black prisoners and ambassadors (namely by Pietro Tacca, Pietro
Francavilla, Francesco Bordoni, Nicolas Cordier, Francesco Caporale), relating
to a notion of a rich Africa which contradicts the ideas of savagery and
poverty. The only slippery moment in the article comes when Seelig points out a
contradiction between the role of Roberto Pucci as commander of the order of
Santo Stefano, responsible for chasing African pirates, and the attractive
representation of the African head in his coat of arms. This is exactly the
origin of the fashionable heraldry of African heads in many medieval coats of
arms in Europe, following the crusades and the naval conflicts in
Mediterranean.
Jean-Michel
Massing writes a fascinating article on the representation of lip-plated
Africans in Pierre Descelier’s world map of 1550. In his typical manner of
detective research (perhaps inspired by the paradigma indiziario founded by
Giovanni Morelli), Massing shows the crucial meaning of two figures of black
men with enlarged lips, placed in central Africa, sitting opposite each other,
probably bartering a gold nugget for a flowery plant. He reconstitutes the
first accounts of the enlarged lips found in different parts of Africa, namely
by Isidore of Seville, Rabanus Maurus, Vincent of Beauvis, and Alvise da Mosto.
He traces the original image of the bartering scene, a woodcut from a
Strasbourg edition of Ptolemy’s Geography published in 1522. He rightly interprets
the scene as an expression of the notion that ‘such people’ have no idea of the
true value of things. But it is at the beginning of the article, when Massing
defines the circle of cartographers in Dieppe and the powerful ship-owners like
Jean Ango, who created huge friezes in his house and his chapel representing
peoples of different continents, that the most interesting hypothesis of the
book is produced. Massing sustains that Northern Europeans recorded in their
drawings the features and material culture of other peoples of the world
(Africans, Indians, or Americans) with greater care than the southern
Europeans, namely the Italians, who were looking for aesthetic solutions and
became relatively blind to the rich variety of non-European people. This hypothesis
requires further enquiry, but it raises a very interesting issue, related to
the idea of the art of describing studied by Svetlana Alpers for a later
period, in seventeenth century Dutch Art.
The only
problem of this book is the unbalanced space dedicated to Southern and Northern
Europe. We have thirteen chapters concerning Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain,
and Italy), and three about the rest of Europe (England, France, and Germany).
We already have a significant number of books and PhDs on black slaves and
freedmen in Portugal and Spain (Saunders, Tinhorão, Lahon, Fonseca, Stella,
Martín). We needed to have more information on Northern Europe to understand
how black Africans circulated and stereotypes in this area developed. This
would enable us to answer better the following questions: why was the theory of
races born in Northern Europe from the 1730s to the 1850s (Linnæus, Camper,
Cuvier, Gobineau)? What were the precedents of that theory, not only from a
colonial point of view, but also through an internal European dynamic of
contact with African people?
But we have
to be fair with the editors of the volume: the books published on black
Africans in Portugal and Spain have not been translated into English and some
of their main authors were invited to participate; the final result is a truly
excellent, well illustrated set of chapters, which raise new issues and provide
much information and analysis.
December 2009 ...
====================================================================
[African man
by Jan Mostaert][Dorothea of Denmark][Maurits van Saxen][Charles II
Stuart]]Leopold I Habsburg]
concept:
The essence of a Renaissance Prince:
WHY THE AFRICAN MAN BY JAN MOSTAERT IS
THE TRUE FACE OF EMPEROR CHARLES V HABSBURG
The
articles by both…and van de Bogaart in Bulettin Rijksmuseum jaargang 58 nummer,
page collide neatly with my ongoing research Blue Blood Is Black Blood
(1100-1848), after the ethnicity of the European regent, noble and royal
families. This article is a refutation, and follows the same methods to
determine this unique portrait. The failure of these researchers to recognize
this portrait as Charles V Habsburg (1500-1558) is due to the ongoing
revisionism of history to actively exclude Blacks from history.
[Portretten van Charles V Habsburg]
[portretten van Alessandro de Medici.] [andere
medici’s][dochter van alessandro][Maria Salvati met klein meisje]
The article
by Boogaard cites ‘Sex and Race’ by J.A. Rogers and talks about the ‘outing’ of
Alessandro de Medici as ‘Black’ by Rogers. Outing is usually used for gays and
suggest a person hiding his identity from the public. A Black cannot hide his
Blackness, which is also his colour of skin. Outing again suggest a Black does
not want to be known as Black. And how this ‘outing’ again surfaced in… and
in..2003, but ignored. Can a writer who has such an approach to Blacks give a
credible approach to this portrait? In 2005 this book had to be imported by the
Koninlijke Bibliotheek from the US as there was no copy in any Dutch collection.
Today I face an expense of euro 50 to buy ‘Ancient and Modern Britons’ by D. McRitchie,
who writes about Blacks in Briton, including the royal Stuart family. Again:
because there is no copy in any Dutch collection. My own books based on these
sources are classified by the KB as ‘race questions’ and not ‘Blacks’ as how
some of my sources are classified. This book by McRitchie is not digitilized in
google, and reviewed as ‘popular with afrocentrists,’ a euphemism for Black
researchers. Native Blacks in Europe, Blacks among the nobility is not an
accepted subject among white Dutch researchers and scientists. All Blacks are
foreign or recently Africa derived. Black writers are thus branded as different
and immediately as less, because they are pushing a thing that does not exists
and give irritation to whites. The slavery connection is the only way Blacks
can be included into European history, and all Blacks in Europe can only
be depicted as slaves, as socially low, degraded, uneducated, doing medial work,
making music, beggars and prostitutes. These articles in the Rijkmuseum Bulletin are an anomaly by even
considering African Man by Mostaert as a person, and as an European noble.
Their link to my research is claiming to have found beginnings of the forging
an European African identity. And its just this identity I have found and named Blue
Blood. Blackness is first an identity, next to a face type. Denying Blacks as
Europeans is a denial of an identity to Blacks, while their historical role
caused the present perception of Blacks worldwide. That’s why these articles use
the outcome as the beginning, by already claiming that Blacks were hated in
Europe. Should this hatred not have a cause, following the rule of cause and
effect, and should we not look for this cause?
[nicolaes van der meer][cornelia Vooght]
Portrait restoration and revisionism
Blacks
today are demeaned, excluded, and threatened because the portraits of
historical Blacks are fraudulently whitened. Portraits are part of our national heritage and
icons of the national identity. The maintenance of public portrait collections
is based in elaborate restorations, as moments to cleanse, view, research,
determine, restore, and correct earlier artistic or mechanical, iconographical interventions.
The physical maintenance of portraits is supposedly scientifically based, supervised by
scientists, using scientific means like electronic microscopes, x- ray,
irradiation, and different photographic methods in order to highlight and
determine the painting technique, the mechanical construction and the chemical
composition of all used materials. Every restoration entails an impromptu
experimentation with cleaning solutions to remove varnish, safely. From the
chemical research of used pigments on the Frans Hals portraits of Nicolaes van
der Meer en his wife Cornelia Vooght, we know that some pigments on hands and
faces were artificial pigments that were only available after 1720. The Frans
Hals Museum states not to know what this means. This is an example of a major
iconographic intervention, an over painting, a type of repainting to hide the
true colour of the portrait complexion. To change the complexions and hair from
brown or black to pink and beige, or the dark hair to blond. To turn a brown
person in a white person. This is a major change in the narration offered by the original work.
[van mierevelts en ravesteyns familie van Aerssen-beyeren en
schagen]
To ignore
and maintain these common interventions is a type of scientific misconduct. The
complexions are changed to arrive at a preconceived important conclusion that
the European elite was white. Could only be white. This conclusion is closely
linked with the purpose and outcome of the Enlightenment (….) to free Europe of
the Ancient Regime. Firstly accomplished with the French Revolution (1789-1794)
and next with the Final Revolutions of 1848. This year saw an important change
in the Dutch constitution; ending the ‘privileges’ of the nobility. Presumably
also the end of bondage of serfs and villains: lijfeigenen or horigen. The first slaves in
the America’s were whites, the serfs, and the emancipation of slaves (1863) was
also because many slaves resembled whites. The Suriname Blue Blood Is Black
Blood Museum (June 2012) is dedicated to the study of this revisionism of
declaring Europe a white, superior civilisation and shows the true looks of the
elite that was described as brown and black of complexion. They were also
depicted as such, but all these portraits that showed their true complexion
have been mostly amended around 1880, but likely as late as 1947. This
important fact can be easily verified by comparing photographs of exhibited
portraits by Van Mierevelt and Ravesteyn in 1915 at the Gemeente Museum, in The
Hague. And photographs of the Rembrandts exhibited in 1887 at the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam. Some portraits of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren and Schagen family show
a dark complexion; next to some also showing classical African facial traits.
The Van Aerssens were the richest Dutch family in the 17th century
and owned 1/3 of the colony of Surinam. Engravings and drawings after newly finished painted portraits inform us of the true intentin to paint a brown or blak skinned elite person. The paint could not have darkened overnight.
[alessadro Medici.[familie Medici][anna van
hannover.][charlotte van Mecklenburg-strelitz][stadhouder willem iv]
Identifying historical Blacks
Typical for
eurocentric science is not providing clear answers, so we still are not sure if
the writer agrees that Alessandro de Medici is Black. While at the same time
offering us facial traits to identify Mostaerts anonymous portrait as Black.
What more information is needed to view Alessandro de Medici, Duke of Florence
as Black? A gold medal shows him as a heraldic Moor. What does the persons, or
his relatives say about his looks? What do his grandparents, parents and
children and grandchildren look like? The Medici family shows many Black types,
and his natural daughter portrait was recognized as showing a Black woman. A little
Black girl was rehabilitated on a portrait of Maria Salvati, the mother of Cosimo I de
Medici, who succeeded the murdered Alessandro. Before the WWII their tombs were opened, the sculls stripped from flesh
to be measured. Presumably to determine their ‘Race,’ which was apparently in
doubt. A historian claimed they were not Black, alessandro just loked Black, but was of eastern extraction. Some persons claim bewilderingly there is a difference between looking Black and being
Black. Charlotte Sophie of Mecklenburg, the wife of George III is then regarded
as just ‘looking’ Black. George III’s
sister was Princes Anna of Orange, the wife of Stadhouder William IV.
Africa has many facial types, but only one has been consistently used through
the ages to symbolise Africa. This type is called Moor, and is mostly used in European imagery for
heraldic purposes. Starting in the Renaissance. But also common as such in Egypt, Greece and the Roam Empire. The heraldic Moor symbolises nobility but also Black Superiority.
[bruine en zwarte types]
Next we can
state that any modern Dutch person is familiar with the looks of mulattoes, or
that by constant admixture with whites a Black family can become white. The
different stages can become fixed if care is taken to marry only other mulatto
types. These people could resemble the Egyptians we see on tv. Some are very
dark, some very light complexioned, but from one mixed gene pool. However, to call the brown and black complexioned Europeans who were the elite, a mullatto nation, some whites will say their merit is derived from the intermarriage with whites. the white DNA will domate their beastly Black DNA. So we need to maintain that the European nobility and the European civilization started with these brown and black Europeans. The blackness is not a 'strain' as Rogers will have it, making whites the beginning, the norm. Whited did not find the European civilizations. They never found any civilization. The concept of Human Races
was rejected, after WWII because of the use the nazi's made of it, also as unscientific because looks were not a foolproof method to
identify a person’s race. People from outside Europe see the resemblance
between say mulatto Antilleans and North Africans, or Indians and Somalia’s, or
South Moroccans and Pakistanis. Both ‘De Staalmeesters’ (The Syndic of the Clothes Makers Guild)(1662) and ‘De Nachtwacht’
(The Nightwatch) by Rembrandt show in old photo’s, persons with dark complexions. The central Staalmeester
figure Johan de Neve, second from right, is the darkest and has the strongest classical African facial features,
recalling genre paintings with a central Moor. The little, golden girl in the
middle of De Nachtwacht, also identified as a ‘mascot,’ still looks white in
spite of the yellowed varnish and supposedly darkened paints. That these
paintings show only white persons today is the result of over painting, but
this manipulation and serious amendment of historical and artistic data is carefully kept out of the
restoration reports and articles in scientific publications by the same persons
who have performed these changes. This is a crude type of scientific fraud,
akin to making fake Egyptian antiquities to proof that Egyptians were blue eyed
whites. Or scrubbing away brown or black paint layers of antiquities to show
ancient Egyptians as whites. All of this was to hide the true complexion of the
Ancient Regime. The blue blood research has arrived at a phase that for the
benefit of Blacks, it narrows the problem of white supremacy and racism to the
ongoing practice of over painting and maintenance of these fakes, thus
revisionism by iconographic interventions. Once this type of scientific
misconduct has been acknowledged racism will end as racism and concomitant
white supremacy is based on fake portraits. Whites who favor integrity, and do not hate Blacks, will be aghast to find out how they are being deceived by museums.
[Jane
Austen][Moors]
Secondary sources deny Blackness
The Blue
Blood theory is based on sources, which like these two articles about the
African Man by Mostaert, are only of use when not directly addressing
blackness. The sources, like all secondary sources about Jane Austen or
Charlotte Brontë: misconstrue or deny blackness. Kate Lowe states that 'the
portrait shows the very essence of a renaissance ruler or prince; except skin
colour.' (2005:17-47). The second articles convinces as claiming a link to the
House of Habsburg by identifying the costume colours as akin to that of a
Habsburg bodyguard, also seen on a miniature of Charles V leaving Mearle
Castle. ( ). The methodology of identifying Blacks by family names rooted in
‘Moor’ is useful up to a point. Not all Blacks were named like this. These
names can be regarded as self-identifying as Black by a family name, which
could also follow the family’s 'speaking crest' showing Moors. Family crests were
the refuge of the nobility, later also used by non-nobles. Today often
misconstrued as showing family interest in African slavery. Trade was disdained
by the nobility and a cause for stripping of noble titles. They rather married
an heiress from trade, like De Charrières mother who married Baron van Tyll van
Zuilevelt. or Othello marrying Desdemona, a shipping heiress. But its more usefull to identify a person as black or Black by their personal description, nick name, and engraved portraits. If their kin is described as Black, they were Black too, as blacks did not marry whites, who had very low status. The historical Declaration of Rights of Man seems to suggest whites were not considered humans. They were shoe leather. Whites had the right to fight against these Black oppressors, but chould this controversy be carried on after 165 years. Should whites not move on?
[Charles II
stuart][Louis XIV]
Some royal
rulers had nicknames as 'The Moor' or 'The Black' like Edward of Woodstock who was
called 'The Black Prince' or Charles II Stuart who was called 'The Black Boy.'
Charles II was described in a wanted poster issued by parliament as ‘A tall
Black man.’ James Boswell called him ‘The Swarthy Stuart,’ and many prints show
a very black skinned person. James Boswell, a Scottish noble by birth,
self-identifies as ‘black’ by stating that his yet unborn natural child should
be named 'The Black Prince,' as both its father and mother are ‘black.’ The well
preserved mummy of Charles II’s cousin Louis XIV was described as ‘black as
ink.’ Elisabeth I called…her ‘little black husband.’ It’s only when
eurocentrist researchers are attempting to explain these nick names, they are
driven by the thought that ‘There were no Blacks.’ These types of faulty
explanations are fixed in the mind of the lay people too and sound infantile on
cursory inspection. Black means black hair to them, while Boswell was described as:
‘Dark, with black eyes and dark hair.’ Pieterbaas is a heraldic Moor, which was
added to the Sinterklaas celebration in 1848 to turn these celebrations into a
hysterical, national racist initiation to make little white children aware of
their whiteness. In order to fix: the hatred of Blacks as the true essence of
whiteness. This prevents rational intercourse with civilized and learned white, Dutch
persons.
[Anil
Ramdas]
Today
noticeably exacerbated by the prevailing anti-allochtonen rhetoric; reinforced
by anti-allochtonen political measures, and laws leading to social segregation.
Bloodthirsty nationalism; but at the same time denied being nationalism. Yet this
mood and propaganda is akin to that against the Dutch Jews in 1933-1945. To be
a good Dutch means to be against allochtonen. To be Dutch is to be deaf for
petitions or complaints of allochtonen who are also denied a voice in the
media. Only blue eyed, white and blond citizens are presented as true Dutch.
Blut and botem. A nation should be one race, one religion, one identity. To
challenge the veracity of icons as De Nachtwacht is akin to challenge the Dutch
identity. The Dutch live in a primitive feudal hierarchy, where every one knows his place. And foreigners come way down, and should not sas the white just above them, who is already straining under the pressure. The whites live this hierarchy, its not a debate, and an allochtonous person should just understand his place. They cannot argue this, or name this, but transgressions will be stamped out harshly. For some time some workers at the Royal Library sopied on my research and bookwriting and practiced open sabotage. Yet complaining to the 'good' others did not result in an end to the terror. The many European Holocausts are a reset and a means to stop lawlessness and
the degradation of a civilisation, by mass murder, slave labour, stealing
property, mass ejection of population, and murdering seniors and handicapped
dependents of the state, not honouring insurances paid over many decades, while
afterwards preventing persons to claim goods and rights. Today we are facing a new Euthansia religion, and we have 31 Ambulat Euthanasia teams running rampant. The suicide rate has risen, as they 'help' 60 persons a month. the aspect of consent has been taken out of the law. So the Dutch are preparing another Holocaust. Sources like
I.Lipschits and D. Hondius show the Dutch state taking anti-Jewish measures
before and after the German occupation. Heinz Lippmann wrote ‘Het Vaderland’
already in 1933, a novel set in a concentration camp, showing all the violence
and killings we are familiar with. He was prosecuted, after complaints by the
German government, for insulting a foreign head of state. Even though Europe
knows a long history of anti-Semitism and pogroms, as well as mass fleeing of
Jewish citizens, the Dutch still claim 'not to have known what faith awaited the
Jews' they deported to the German Nazi’s. And identified and helped to be
deported to Germany. The French government has conceded, like the Brussels
government that they, without any German pressure; identified and rounded up their
own Jewish citizens, and delivered them to the Germans for extermination. Some
defend this by claiming that the Vichy government was not the French
government. Surinam Dutch author Anil Ramdas, like Thomas Mann, fell from grace
when he asked if Holland was preparing a Holocaust. The inability of the Dutch
to address these fears feeds my notion that Europe and Holland is preparing
its next Holocaust against the brown, black and Muslim citizens. This
indoctrination prevents all white Dutch researchers from having a rational
discourse about their own civilisation and identity. Holocaust are part of what
Europeans understand civilisation to be.
[Maria Jacoba van Goor][Belle van Zuylen][aarnout joost van
der Duyn van Maasdam] George Keppel van Albemarle][Elisabeth Keppel][Apollo van
Belvedère] [Wetenschappelijk racisme]
“She
would have been beautiful if her throat was whiter”
Pieterbaas’
black complexion is explained as coming from chimney soot. But the soot does
not explain his frizzled hair, or his red lips. Nor how he maintained the
whiteness of his lace collar, of the cleanliness of his gloves and costume. So
the black faces on old portraits were also explained away by claiming yellowed
varnish and darkened paint by the scientists. Yet at least this confirms the figures looked dark. The yellowing and changes in
colour are legitimate, natural phenomena but exaggerated to justify often crude
over painting as an iconographic intervention to make the faces white. There is
a precedent as the Ancien Regime saw itself as the inheritors of the classical
civilization and its aesthetic ideals. Those favoured a white complexion and a
Greek profile. Artists were bound to create beauty. But its not sure how binding this was. I'm sure some Greek/Roman mural paintings were whitened afterwards. Next to the black portraits
with their true complexions, some also ordered portraits that in conception showed
them as whites, or as Greek gods, or as Shepherds. Marie Antoinette dressed as a
rustic and played at her farm, Le Hameau de la Reine, on the grounds of
Versaille. She and like many other dark
complexioned nobles and royals; painted up white and bleached with lead white
laced creams. Persuasion (1 8 ..) by Jane Austen (1775-1817) names Gowlands, a famous
facial bleach since 1760, and how it was to be used in spring for maximum effect. The vocabulary by Austen,
Isabelle de Charrière and Charlotte Brontë reserves the word 'beauty' for white
or light coloured complexion. Others are only 'good-looking,' 'handsome' or 'pretty.'
Cecile is described by her doting mother as brown and the colour of a red
sweet-pea, and she writes that Cecile ‘would have been beautiful if her throat
was whiter.’ The novel Jane Eyre (1847)
presents Saint John as white, and compares him to the Apollo of Belvedere. De
Charrière writes a poem ‘About his black brown complexion’ (1774) praising
Baron Maasdam’s complexion, comparing him to the dark complexioned war god Mars
and his rival Apollo, who was blond. Both suitors to Aphrodite who is also
called Venus, and Cythère. A sour Surinam fruit is named Pommes de Cythère.
White skin was thus revered by a civilisation that identified as Black by the
use of heraldic Moors, and Black Madonna’s, that both also symbolised Black as
superior over white. Some black complexioned painted portraits prevail in the
guise of engravings made after them. The shading depicts a dark complexion, and
is reinforced by descriptions of a person as brown or black. Most persons
understand that a dark person has dark parents and dark children. So even if we
have collected only 25 personal descriptions, they can be used as a standard to
compare other engravings, and identify them as depicting a brown or black
complexion.
[The
Philosophers at supper by Jean Huber]
Such a
group drawing by Jean Hubert of The Philosophers At Supper shows only brown or
black complexioned Europeans. Jean Jacques Rousseau (17..) was described by James Boswell as ‘A genteel black man in an Armenian
coat.’ The great coat was employed to hide a catheter. Portraits of De Ronde D'Alembert,
who was an aristocratic foundling left on the stars of the De Ronde church, and
shows classical African facial traits. This leads to the final conclusion that
both the noble elite and regent class or bourgeoisie elite was brown or black
of complexion. After his visit to Holland Boswell writes that his niece
baroness Maasdam is ‘ Mrs. Maasdam, black as chimney.’ She was married to Baron
Aarnout Joost van der Duyn van Maasdam, of old nobility stock. He was described
by Boswell as ‘her husband chimney sweeper.’ The same baron described as 'black
brown' by De Charrière. Boswell was a suitor to De Charrière.
[nobles and
kings as apes]
De
Charriere self-described herself in a pen portrait as ‘She does not have the
white hands, she knows this and even jokes about it, but this [skin colour] is
not a joking matter. This self-identification is misconstrued to claim she had
ugly hands. Even having a researcher claim she ‘artfully’ hided her hands on a
certain portrait because they were ugly. Not realising that portraits with
visible hands were more expensive, like those with pearls, which called for
greater painting skills. De Charrière wrote on the eve of the French Revolution, after
human races were invented and a hierarchy between races was invented. She has
many brown and black complexioned persons in her novels. All writers of the
Enlightenment compared Blacks to apes, seeing apes as degenerated humans. Human
degenerated because of their moral degradation. The question should be, why
were human races, an unscientific concept ever invented? The different writers could
not agree on how many human races there were and what they were. Some claiming
Arabs and others Native Americans as a human race. Scientist like Blumenthal
saw the Caucasian Race as a scull type, and not a complexion, lumping black
skinned and white, blonds in one white race. The final conclusion is, after
realising the philosophers were targeting the problem of noble oppression.
Nobles identified as superior with heraldic Moors. So racism against Blacks
should be understood as a liberation ideology, to free Europe from noble
domination. Some 17th century paintings by Tenier and Ferrand already depicted
nobles and the King and Queen as apes in a kitchen or a tavern, sometimes
magnificently dressed in the fashions wore by the nobility. These depictions
should be understood in the prevailing context of the high bourgeoisie opposing
the nobility, as anti noble propaganda, and early examples of comparing the
Black nobility to apes.
[Zwarte Grieken en Romeinen]
Scientific misconduct as crime
The Blue
Bllod research approaches sources as how the police use statements of a
suspected criminal that reveal deep and pertinent knowledge to the crime. He
might know how or where or details of a crime, without this knowledge been made
common knowledge. A criminal is also identified by motive, access and means.
His motive is to benefit from a crime, to correct or prevent an undesired
outcome, as in cases of inheritance or professional competition. A criminal
must be shown to have access, means or assistance to have committed the crime
to be successfully convicted. A criminal might be discovered to have taken
steps to cover his track, by destroying evidence, bribing or intimidating or
killing witnesses. Scientific misconduct is criminally persecuted by means of
concomitant crimes as perjury, obstruction of justice, valsheid in geschrifte
and financial fraud for personal gain. Blue blood links sources and the phrase
is then derived from blue men as how Black Europeans were called. We find
Blacks in almost all medieval miniatures, even as menacing warriors or church
grandees. But even earlier as Greeks and Romans. The usual approach is that
Greeks and Romans were all whites who looked at Blacks as outsiders, slaves or
barbarians. And that artists and the person who employed these artists were
whites. Instead we can see the depicted persons as the Black clients, and we
may assume they requested ornaments showing blackness. The Greek elite saw
itself as derived from the Greek earth, thus rightfully dominating the
barbarian newcomers who came later. The same rationale governed the European
nobility founded between 1100-1200, against the white newcomers. The nobility,
de adel, was ‘edel’ thus true Europeans with superior rights. Their reign was
heralded with a Black Maurice (1120) and Balthazar, the Black King at the birth
of Jesus, to show the Black King as a good Christian. Christianity was the
European identity, and Christian Blacks were contrasted to Black heathens and
Muslims. A Black European identity was forged as Blue Blood, and depicted as
heraldic Moors, Black Saints, Balthazar, Black Madonna’s and Black images of
divinity.
[Dido
Elizabeth Langsay][Shakespeare]
Moors were
also part of literature where there was a close connection between nobility and
noble looks. The Black knight in Parsifal…eisen.was praised as ‘his breeding
excelled all breeding.’ He was the central Moor informing us about the noble
credentials of the company. Jane Austen used the same concept by offering us
the black Mr. Elton and Mr. Crawford. They were both heraldic, central Moors,
both a symbol as well as a character. She writes: ‘Mr. Elton, black, spruce and
smiling.’ Or how Mr. Crawford was perceived by the noble Bertram ladies as :
‘Absolutely plain, black and plain, but still the gentleman.’ Yet Mr. Eltons
blackness is denied by eurocentrists claiming ‘black’ refers to his ministerial
clothes. Yet Crawford was definitely not a clergyman. Austen dedicated
Mansfield Park also to theatre and Shakespeare as the quintessential
Englishmen, like Mr. Crawford. Regarding the play Othello, the Moor of Venice,
we should understand he self-identified as a descent from a line of royal men.
He thus outranked all the other characters as a noble man among the regent
class rulers of Venice. The objection against Othello, coached in seemingly
racist invective, was actually mild, humorous anti nobility banter by
Shakespeare. His plays were performed before royalty and nobles, who subsidised
him, but also for non-nobles who were the bulks of his audience and whose
political views ought to be acknowledged. Though not necessarily embraced. Both
Shakespeare and Austen belonged to the gentry, traditionally against the noble
oppression but regarded as superior over whites and white serfs. Austen is
equally critical of the nobility striving for nobility based on merit and
accomplishment. This is also echoed by De Charrière who belonged to the old
nobility in a letter to her young cousin, in discussing a new role for the
nobility that is not only based on name and the privilege of high birth. All
the sources rightly understood are about the Black domination of Europe.
Personal descriptions and depictions compared
Members of
these groups were described and depicted as brown and black of complexion.
Those with classical African facial traits, like Jane Austen, were considered
as pure of blood. They resembled the heraldic Moor that was a symbol of blue
blood and Black Superiority in Europe. This knowledge is suppressed by state
racism through portrait restoration practices by immoral scientists that we
should view as scientific misconduct to ignore data to arrive at a preconceived
conclusion that the European elite could only be white.
[Zwarte Madonna van Halle][Medaille]
With the
medal of the Black Madonna Of Halle on his cap he identifies as Black. Black
divinity was another symbol of Black superiority, next to images of Moors. The
statues of the Black Madonna’s are found all over Europe. The Black Madonna
logically symbolised a Black God as Black People were superior, created after
gods own image. The birth dates of both the painter and Emperor Charles V, and
the date of his pilgrimage to Halle make this conclusion feasible. Recently a
miniature appeared on the web of Dorothea of Denmark. She was a daughter of
Margarita of Austria, a sister of Charles V of Habsburg. The miniature shows a
Black woman with the same type of protruding, bulging eyes as the Mostaert Portrait.
She is also depicted as a fully white woman. The Habsburgs were known for their
subnasal prognatism, yet this telltale feature was later twisted into a
‘hereditary disease’ of a pernicious prognatism due to inbreeding. Charles V
natural daughter was married to Alessandro the Medici who was Black and was the
Duke of Florence.
[Anna
Boleyn][Catharine of Aragon][Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle de Castilie][Mary
of Scots]
There are
many portraits of Charles V and all show a completely different face, but most
agree on the prognathism. But the portrait by Cranach the Elder shows the same
tilt of the head as that of this Mostaert piece. Another one by … shows the
same bejewelled bag as the Mostaert Portrait. A photo of Charles V’s mummy at
the Escorial shows a photo of a black coloured mummy, which was described as
with a black beard, and massive prognathism. Portraits and statues and
statuettes of his son Philips II show the same prognathism and frizzled hair.
Philips first wife was a daughter of Catharine de Medici. Her son Henry was
described and depicted as ‘swarthy.’ Ferdinand of Aragon was Charles V
grandfather and although a whitened image, he shows thick protruding lips. A
half-whitened portrait of his daughter Catharine of Aragon, the first wife of
Henry VIII Tudor, shows prognathism. Henry’s second wife Anna Boleyn was
described as ‘very dark, with black eyes and dark hair.’ Her daughter Elizabeth
I was famous for painting up white, and was seen as ‘dark.’
[Was Jane
Austen Black?][John Donne]Dr. Johnson][Madame de Staël]
Was Jane Austen Black?
The blue
blood research has spawned a Museum dedicated to the true looks of the European
elite. They were described as brown, black, swarthy, The Black Prince (Edward
of Rosewood), The Black Boy (Charles II Stuart), black as chimney, chimney
sweeper, not the white hands, basanè or brown black, and ugly (Jan Vos) in the
19th century. Jane Austen (1775-1817), was described as ‘a brunette
of complexion’ and ‘a brown, not a pink colour.’ All her personages were ‘light
brown or sallow, brown, very brown and black.’ Her brother Henry quoted poet
John Donne when he described his sister as ‘The eloquence of her blood showed
in her humble cheeks.’ An JASA portrait, which surfaced in 2000, conforms with
all her personal descriptions and shows dark colouring, and a broad mouth. The
fact that there is no authenticated portrait of the most famous writer in the
world might be due to her Black looks.
An analysis
of her books and letters shows a dedication to Black native Europeans and their
fate, as well to Africans enslaved by their fellow European Blacks. Yet her
minister father George Austen was also a trusty for an Antigua plantation owned
by a Mr. Nibbs, Austens godfather. Her Fanny Price is based on Dido Elisabeth Langsay,
a beloved niece of Lord Mansfield. She was a mulatto, called after a famous
African Queen. But due to her lower status as a daughter of a freed slave, she
ate with the family, but had to leave the table when there were guests. But
with Austen whites are the ‘lower orders’. She writes in Northanger Abbey: ‘The
Tilneys were brown and superior.’ In the highly allegorical Emma (1817), Emma
Woodhouse is based on Queen Elizabeth I (Heartland, Hartland), Mary of Scots
and King James (Miss Harriet, Carr) who was gay. The first descriptions of Emma
and Harriet seem to describe a lesbian friendship, complete with sleepovers.
From reactions by Mr. Knightley and Mr. Elton, to Emma’s plan to wed Harriet to
him who she presents as ‘Mr. Elton, black, spruce and smiling,’ we can
understand that Austen was against Blacks diluting their pure blood with whites
and giving whites notions of equality. From Mansfield Park we further
understand that Blacks lost power by giving positions to whites. She was
writing against the lost of power by Blacks since 1760 when human races were
invented, and the execution of Comte de Feuillide during the French Revolution
might have motivated her to write. Emma is her version of a post revolutionary
Britain, but still with the whites as servants, which she saw as ‘natural.’
Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre just in time for the final 1848
revolutions as an apology to whites. As a member of the gentry class Austen and
Brontë were both against aristocratic domination. An early review brands Miss
Brontë as ‘antichristian’ for questioning noble rule, it’s nature, symbolised
by the very dark complexioned Mr…Her descriptions of the white Sint John are
almost scientific, comparing him to the Apollo Belvedere. Europe at this period
might be considered a continent dominated by two Black tribes, somewhat
intertwined, equally oppressing the white serfs, but fighting for power.
[The Masque
of Blackness]
The remarks
against The Moor in Othello, are today wrongly seen as racist against all
Blacks, but should be understood as relatively mild and humorous worded
protests against the British nobility which identified with images of Moors.
Other Blacks were never a threat. There were many plays during this time with
central Moors, who like Mr. Elton, and Mr. Crawford, are a symbol and a
character. If there really were such strong convictions against Blacks among
the Venetian regents, how could Othello be the highest military in Venice. How
could Blacks, or Mores be members of royal families in other plays? Othello
says he comes from a line of royal men, from Africa. This idea is echoed in the
play ‘The Masque of Blackness’ by Ben Johnson that was ordered by Catherine of
Denmark, the wife of James I Stuart. The play says that Blacks came to Europe
looking for a milder sun, and that black beauty does not fade. The Queen
herself played the River Niger, a West African river, in blackened face. Which
does not mean she was white of complexion. Blacks come in many shades, but the
heraldic Moor was like Mostaerts African man, always the blackest and most
prognastic type. Anna of Denmark was portrayed for an African dress design for
her role, as a dark brown woman.
Austen
writes cryptically in a letter to her niece about ‘two and three families in a
country town as just the thing she likes to work with,’ and we may assume she
means that brown and blacks were 2-3%. With the true blue bloods who were the
highest nobility, and did not have a need for noble charters and numbered
around 1%. Blue bloods were descendents of blue men, black and brown Europeans
who were even seen among the Vikings invading England, sometimes as leaders,
and are described in old text. David McRitchie collected text and wrote about
black and brown Europeans in Ancient Britons. We also know that nobles often
painted white, and that the lead white acted as a skin bleach that indicate
they had black or brown skin. This fashion was translated to some portrait
painting as the painter in conception made his brown sitter white. Sometimes
altering the facial traits to conform to studio standards of ideal facial
measurement. One reason why different painters depicted persons very
differently. And because of licensing and infringements laws every portraitist
needed to present a very different image then those of his commercial rivals.
According to the vague descriptions by Huygens, PC Hooft and Grotius we can
understand that Van Mierevelt was one of the few that painted his clients
‘after nature.’ And his work ‘showed the softnes of the flesh’ and ‘sweet, dear
colours.’ The reality of Black Supremacy was cautiously spoken of as it was
also not something that could be debated, as noble rule was presented as willed
by god. Starting in 1100 when the oldest noble genealogies start and ended with
the final revolutions of 1848 when serfs were emancipated.
[Rousseau][Voltaire][D’Alambert
de Ronde]
The position of white serfs as shoe leather
Presumably
the trade in human skins and the life flaying in public was also abolished. The
life flaying is the cruel and unusual punishment referred to by the Declaration
of Human rights. These were white serfs asking their black noble masters for
equality. This fact is twisted around to mean Blacks asking whites for
equality. Who would then be these Blacks in Europe during this period? All
writers of the Enlightenment supported the invention of human races (1760),
that were invented to give serfs human status, and to construct a hierarchy
among races with whites on top, and Blacks way down, just above apes. The ape
was presented as a degenerated human. Even today some whites regard Black as
apes, acting as if they still fear domination by Blacks. All the writers of the
Enlightenment were depicted together by Jean Huber als black and brown persons,
and individual portraits exists that show them as brown and white. Rousseau was
described by James Boswell, who was a Scottish nobleman, as ‘a gentile black
man in an Armenian coat.’ They were members of the bourgeoisie and because of
their number we may conclude the whole elite was brown and black. The noble
class tribe was opposed by the regent class tribe, which sided with majority
white serfs to defeat the nobility. Racism was used as a liberation ideology;
as also many Black Madonnas were destroyed. For a period human skins were used
to line church doors, showing that god condoned this practice and the
domination of whites. Jonathan Swift wrote about a young woman being publicly
skinned alive and suggested that the children of the poor should be turned in
gloves and shoes for fine ladies and gents.
[lynching]
Racism against Blacks is a liberation ideology
The blue
blood theory attracts followers who are against white supremacy and oppose
racism against Blacks and understand that they need to find the root of racism
to end racism. Racism is an old liberation ideology to free societies of noble,
minority rule. Yet today 1% of the population has all the money, wealth and
political power, and they have to make sure that the other 99% does not unite.
That’s why we have trade in women and prostitution, and woman are kept out of
prestigious and religious positions to teach men that women are less and are
different to men. This is to divide the two greatest categories. Next we have
homo hatred to divide men and women among themselves. Art reflects the
political reality, and today we have accomplished a total social segregation of
allochtonen, like that of the European Jews in 1933-1945. Now every Dutch is an
agent of the state and needs to ignore and denounce foreigners. And the Dutch
have a new incentive to ignore over paints as they are resolved to fight
foreigners who they are told are a threat to European safety and European
civilisation. Any incident is blown out of proportion to show all allochtonen
as evil, criminal and murderous and on a rampage. There people are completely
at the mercy of the media, and nobody seems capable of independent and rational
thinking.
History
forms part of the means a state uses to foster nationalism, and to divide and
oppress the people. Racism has become another mean to divide working class
people, because a white worker and a Black worker suffer the same exploitation.
Museums have become churches of the revisionism of history by showing white
images of persons who are described as brown or black and also depicted as
such. The majority of the portraits on display are whitened, over paints.
Photographs of De Staalmeesters from 1880 show them as dark complexioned, which
means they were altered as far as in 1929. The scene shows the Blackest one in
the middle, to show Black Superemacy. The Gemeente Museum in The Hague showed
in 1915 portraits of the Van Aerssen-Beyeren family collection, with a few who
are not over painted and a few whitened copies. They were the richest people in
the 17th century and owning one third of the Surinam colony.
Cornelis van Aerssen van Sommelsdijck was a grandson of François van Aerssen,
and his granddaugher was described by her cousin James Boswell as ‘black as
chimney’ while her husband Baron Aarnout Joost van Der Duyn van Maasdam was
‘chimney sweeper.’ Baroness Belle van Zuylen wrote a poem ‘About his brown
black colour’ and compared Maasdam to the war god Mars who was depicted as
black. She wrote to her lover D’Hermenches that the family was famous for their
‘swarthy’ complexion. An engraving of George Keppel of Albemarle shows a very
dark skinned person, and he was a full cousin of Baron Maasdam.
[Iconographic
Interventions]
Iconograpic interventions by over paint of complexions
Blackness
on paintings was explained away in the 19th century as ‘yellowed’
varnish and ‘darkened’ paint. So restoration became a means of revisionism and
state racism. Restorers do not identify iconographic interventions that have
changed the complexion from brown and black to pink and beige. They preserve
the drastic iconographic interventions to colour the European elite white. Most
portraits on display are in the possession of the state and are whitened. Thus
white supremacy is based on fake, whitened portraits. The on and off labelling
of Rembrandts as fake or authentic or fake seems to be linked to the fake top
layers, but regarded as the hand of the master by the so-called specialists,
while we are looking at a defacement. Often this was done expertly, but it
seems that some of the employed artist wanted to leave their mark, or something
of the spirit of 1880. A portrait of Peter de Groot by Delff shows pointillist
paint strokes akin to portraits by Van Gogh. The heavy degradation of portraits
might be attributed to the restoration with inferior materials or inferior
practices, causing crumbling of paint layers, and the lost of paint layers so
we can even see the brown and grey under painting. The Mauritshuis Catalogue
talks about complete brown under paintings that are a detailed face. This feeds
into the research of the Frans Hals Museum that on the works showing Nicolaes
van der Meer and his wife Cornelia Vooght, the hands and faces were over
painted with pigments invented after 1720. Both museums claim not to know what
this means, as again it points to over painting. According to a restorer’s
handbook it’s a type of repaint that should not be identified in the
restoration file and be maintained as much as possible. This is a type of
scientific misconduct to disregard and ignore data, and maintain fake layers to
arrive at a preconceived conclusion that the European elite was white, and
could only have been white.
Jan Mostaerts African man as exhibit A?
The African
Man by Mostaert is described in the articles as if a copy because it was made
with long, flowing strokes, not the short, searching strokes of an painter
finding a good depiction. It also looks unfinished as both the red garment as
the blue green background seems to want more paint. Reading the articles it
seems to have all the right properties to be regarded as a portrait of a ruler,
but that rulers were never, could never be Blacks according to revisionist,
racist scientists. Would an Emperor joining his men in battle identify and
expose himself to the enemy in opulent clothes or rather blend among the men
who fight with him. William of Orange was educated at the Habsburg court. He
was described as ‘more brown then white,’ and ‘brown of complexion and the
beard’(Jhr. Beresteyn 1933: 1). Some of his portraits show subnasal prognatism
and frizzled hair. Races were invented in 1760 and his looks would be today
described as Black: a Negro. The present negative image of Blacks came after
1848 when history was painted white, but is due to the fact that Blacks ruled,
civilized and christianised whites that liberated themselves from oppression by
1848. The Dutch Royal family was brown and black complexioned, some with
classical facial traits, which by the 19th century was regarded as
ugly. The reasoning around the African Man today is the verbal equivalent of
the approach and the restoration practices to maintain a preconceived
conclusion, a practice very much in the media today as scientific misconduct.
Egmond
Codfried
Curator
Suriname Blue Blood Is Black Blood
The Hague
Sources:
Christophle
le More Boogaard, Rijks Museum, jaargang
JA Rogers,
Sex and Race
Beresteyn, Portretten van de Prins van Oranje(1933: 1)
Enamelling
Portretten van Hugo de Groot
Mijn Leven, Huygens.
De Portretfabriek van Mierevelt.
Belle van Zuylens oma; Maria Jacoba van Goor (1687-1737);
een beknopte studie of zwarten in Nederland en Europa door de eeuwen
heen.(2005)
Frank
Snowdon, Blacks in Antiquity, 1971
Blacks in
the Dutch World.
Kim..Things
of Blackness
English
Kings
David
McRitchie, Ancient Britons
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