Allow me to history wonk at you for a minute.
A few years ago (all right, about 10 years ago) I got this amazing, astounding art-history coffee-table book of Renaissance-era fresco reproductions. Ben will probably remember this huge volume; it's one of the main works I use when I research 15th-century costuming and whatnot. One of the frescoes is the famous "Ascension of the Magi" which shockingly enough still to this day adorns a Medici palace.
"Ascension of the Magi" is one of those frescoes that reminds you that humans are something pretty damn special in this universe. Go look at it when you get a chance. The four "magi," or kings, ride with full kit and procession up a hill toward Bethlehem to go visit the Christ child in his manger.
What got my attention so many years ago was not just the sumptuous costumes and amazing variety of red hats (which led to a really nice piece I did for an SCA A&S competition and one of my first forays into historical writing), but the presence of a black servant among the hundreds of other figures in the fresco.
The first time I saw this fellow, I went into overdrive. He's done in the foreground, not the background; he's in a nice servant's outfit, not tattered slave gear; he's clearly got a function and purpose and isn't just there for eye candy. Now, one of the magi, Balthasar, is traditionally black, or "Moorish" as the Renaissance Italians often put it. But this wasn't a king. This was just a guy, put there as just one of a few dozen servants in the foreground, presented without context or explanation because apparently one wasn't really needed because this was pretty normal shit. He probably had some artistic meaning, like everything else Renaissance artists put into their work, but what that might be was a mystery to me at the time.
I found myself fascinated with the idea of black people in the Renaissance. I decided to add a character of African descent into the novel I'm writing about Rome. But here I encountered an unexpected block: a total lack of information about the subject. The more I tried to research the subject the more stymied I got. Why hadn't anybody thought about this before, I wondered, and why wasn't there more about it? I found precisely ONE book in the Amazon catalog that talked about it, and it was hardcover and cost about $150. But surely, I thought, surely there was more than this.
No, not really.
Until now.
Baltimore is having an exhibition of the Black presence in Renaissance art and has an exhibition book/catalogue available for purchase, and that book I'd mentioned a minute ago is now in a new edition and in softcover for considerably less; I'll review it on the Amazon page when I get it and finish it. And there are other sources available that discuss the matter, like a new edition of the Menil Collection's groundbreaking collection series from the 1960s, updated with new stuff and commentary. (Oh, Menil Collection, I love you so much. I miss your gorgeous museum in Houston.) From nothing suddenly there is an explosion of new research, analysis, and information, a Big Bang of sorts.
A Renaissance is occurring anew under our very noses. And I'm excited about what I'll learn exploring it.
"Ascension of the Magi" is one of those frescoes that reminds you that humans are something pretty damn special in this universe. Go look at it when you get a chance. The four "magi," or kings, ride with full kit and procession up a hill toward Bethlehem to go visit the Christ child in his manger.
What got my attention so many years ago was not just the sumptuous costumes and amazing variety of red hats (which led to a really nice piece I did for an SCA A&S competition and one of my first forays into historical writing), but the presence of a black servant among the hundreds of other figures in the fresco.
The first time I saw this fellow, I went into overdrive. He's done in the foreground, not the background; he's in a nice servant's outfit, not tattered slave gear; he's clearly got a function and purpose and isn't just there for eye candy. Now, one of the magi, Balthasar, is traditionally black, or "Moorish" as the Renaissance Italians often put it. But this wasn't a king. This was just a guy, put there as just one of a few dozen servants in the foreground, presented without context or explanation because apparently one wasn't really needed because this was pretty normal shit. He probably had some artistic meaning, like everything else Renaissance artists put into their work, but what that might be was a mystery to me at the time.
I found myself fascinated with the idea of black people in the Renaissance. I decided to add a character of African descent into the novel I'm writing about Rome. But here I encountered an unexpected block: a total lack of information about the subject. The more I tried to research the subject the more stymied I got. Why hadn't anybody thought about this before, I wondered, and why wasn't there more about it? I found precisely ONE book in the Amazon catalog that talked about it, and it was hardcover and cost about $150. But surely, I thought, surely there was more than this.
No, not really.
Until now.
Baltimore is having an exhibition of the Black presence in Renaissance art and has an exhibition book/catalogue available for purchase, and that book I'd mentioned a minute ago is now in a new edition and in softcover for considerably less; I'll review it on the Amazon page when I get it and finish it. And there are other sources available that discuss the matter, like a new edition of the Menil Collection's groundbreaking collection series from the 1960s, updated with new stuff and commentary. (Oh, Menil Collection, I love you so much. I miss your gorgeous museum in Houston.) From nothing suddenly there is an explosion of new research, analysis, and information, a Big Bang of sorts.
A Renaissance is occurring anew under our very noses. And I'm excited about what I'll learn exploring it.