Caroline Pennock has compiled a thread on Native/Indigenous Americans in Tudor England here. I’m delighted to say I’m learning quite a lot from them! A few highlights:
Tarairiu Dancers
Netherlands/Dutch Brazil (c. 1640s)
Oil on Canvas, 172 × 295 cm.
Jaspar Beckx
Portrait of Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo
Netherlands (c. 1643)
Jaspar Beckx
Portrait of Diego Bemba, Servant of Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Soyo
Netherlands (1640–47)
Oil on Panel, 75 × 62 cm.
This picture by the Dutch still-life painter Jaspar Beckx belongs to a triptych owned and likely commissioned by Johann Moritz of Nassau, who served as Dutch Brazil’s governor-general from 1637 to 1644 and was an employee of the Dutch West India Company. It depicts Diego Bemba, one of two servants who accompanied the envoy from Soyo to Dutch Brazil. Dressed in a green garment accentuated with a wide white collar and metal buttons, Bemba holds a lidded woven basket receptacle for precious articles. Moritz assembled a collection of Brazilian taxidermy, rare fauna, paintings, weapons, and articles of indigenous apparel and gave choice items to Friederich Wilhelm of Brandeberg, Frederick III of Denmark, and Louis XIV of France. Moritz gave this painting, along with several others and objects collected in Brazil, to Frederick III of Denmark.
medievalpoc reblogged
Illustrations from a Guide to the World:
Portugal/Brazil England/Russia Netherlands/Spain Turkey/Italy Africa/Siam
Japan (1714)
[Source]
Every other example of this type of illustration I’ve seen has had specific African nations and regions listed, rather than having one illustration to represent an entire continent.
Hey there, everything good? First of all I am a fan, as a history enthusiast and as an art enthusiastic, and for all your good work, thank you very much. I am also a brazilian man, and for the last picture, thank you again, but I think i can contribute somehow. We have here quite a few black artists, not only moderns, but in all eras. One of the most famous was "mulatto" (sorry if that is offensive in some way, I just dont have any other word for it). (continues...)
And for the collars and shakles: I dont think that was that common, at least in Brazil, because I have never seen nothing affirming that. And I can guarant that slavery here was as harsh as in any other place it happened. Thank you again, and sorry for any mistakes.
Thanks for the contribution. The art history of Brazil as taught in the U.S. is somewhere between non-existent and completely horrible. I mean, the English Wiki page for it is just…god-awful:
Yes, this person said “primitive state”.
Anyone reading this, please do me a favor and read this: Why Native American Art Doesn’t Belong in Natural History Museums.
Artwork by and of people of color is routinely marginalized and devalued in museums, education, and popular culture. Pay attention to sources and citation-how many works are held by “ethnography” or “Natural history” museums?
After all, the Yale Center for British Art has sold off a large portion of its Augustino Brunias collection because it’s somehow not British enough, according to this curator:
I would recommend the sale of the Brunias paintings…for the arguments below:
1. Brunias is not English and very, very minor.
2. The paintings are Mr. Mellon’s and we have told him that we intend no further changes to the lists of sales.
3. His books on West Indian subject matter are classed among his “Americana”.
4. We have the prints. The paintings may or may not be for or after the engravings. They are not of high quality.
5. Prof. Thompson has the photographs and slides.
6. They have tenuous connection with British Studies but, I suppose, could, if Mr. Mellon were persuaded, be offered to the Afro-American Cultural Center (if they have anywhere to look after them) or to the Ethnography department at the Peabody. He added: “I do not think we ought to stub our toe over such an unimportant pebble.”
The paintings being discussed can be viewed here under the tag “Agostino Brunias”.
So, it comes as very little of a surprise to me that a lot of what was written about this painting on the source website seems to be trying to come up with some sort of explanation for its existence, and tries to fit it into some kind of already-existing narrative:
When maybe what we need to do is change the narrative.
aseantoo submitted to medievalpoc:
Unknown artist, possibly of the Brazilian School
Black Artist Completing a Portrait of a White Female Aristocrat
Brazil (early 1700s)
Oil on canvas
Philadelphia private collection
[x], [x]
I was thrilled at first to see this image - a pre-modern Black woman artist, portrayed at work! But then I saw this:
Although this black artist appears to be wearing a dress, it is likely to be a male figure. As the scholar Sheldon Cheek explains, the artist wears an earring and a silver collar, both common articles worn by black male servants/slaves in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries, the collar traditionally indicating slave status. Women rarely, if ever, wore the silver collar. The artist also appears to be wearing a silver “shackle” on the arm.
Ugh. Pretty awful.
I think we should all be pretty critical of what’s written about this painting. Especially the part you’ve quoted above about how they have assigned the gender of the artist in the painting. I find it bizarre that something that is supposed to indicate enslaved status (not gender) somehow trumps this person wearing women’s clothing (that’s also a woman’s hat to the best of my knowledge).
The Americas, including Brazil, have a long tradition of transgender and third gender people. This is one of those images from the past that falls quite easily through the cracks because it is a collection of “exceptions”; it doesn’t fit nicely into categories that have been created and therefore, it’s more or less ignored.
If anyone’s hesitant to be critical, maybe you should also note that both the articles linked above make claims that slavery in Brazil was “less harsh” than other places. What???
How many of our assumptions are being projected onto this painting? Are the “contradictions” present in it a product of the painting itself, or is the problem with the categories we try to place it in? How many layers do we have to fight uphill through when we even look at this image? After all, History teaches us:
- women weren’t artists
- Black people weren’t artists
- Black people were enslaved
- Enslaved people didn’t do anything of worth
- Transgender, genderqueer and third gender people didn’t exist before the 1960s
- white people control how Black images are perceived, but not the other way around
- gender must be immediately perceivable and fit into our categories of “male” and “female”
^ So this is the baggage we bring with us when we look at this image. We look at this painting, and we actively search for indicators that allow us to continue to believe the above assumptions.
If we take away those assumptions, if we try to move past them and see this portrait with new eyes, what are we left with? Whose History do we see here? Maybe it’s mine; maybe it’s yours.
disneybird submitted to medievalpoc:
This submission is about the artist; he has several paintings with poc. Another find from the National Gallery in London. Frans Post, as they call him in a painting on loan that I saw, was from Haarlem and painted scenes inspired by the time he spent in a colony in Brazil. I included the Rijksmuseum link since they have many more of his paintings in a better image quality than the National Gallery.
Unfortunately, “A Landscape in Brazil”, the painting I saw in the National Gallery, is not on the Rijksmuseum site but a low-res version can be found on the National Gallery site in paintings/frans-post-landscape-in-brazil.
Thanks for the awesome submission! A reminder, you can view all of these full paintings at high resolution for free at the link above.
Jean-Baptiste Debret
A Brazilian Woman with her Children and Servants, Going to the Country for Christmas
France (1826)
Lithograph after original Watercolor, Voyage pittoresque et historique au Br 'esil.
Rio de Janeiro, Museus Raymundo Ottoni de Castro Maya. Museu Chácara do Céu.
Adoration of the Magi
Portugal (1501-06)
Oil on wood 132 x 79 cm.
Vasco Museum, Viseu
This piece is fairly unique in the sense that Balthasar, usually depicted as a Black man bearing gifts of gold and gems, has been replaced with an Indigenous Brazilian man. The early date of the piece (right around 1500) is before the heyday of colonialism and chattel slavery; there is a very good chance that the Brazilian King here represents the same thing as the Black King in most Adoration paintings from this era: wealth through global trade, especially since it's Portuguese. Comparing this depiction with Eckhout's series of portraits 140 years later shows a definite shift in attitude towards indigenous Brazilians: from autonomous trade partners to colonized subjects.
Albert Eckhout
Tupuya Woman Holding a Severed Hand
Dutch Brazil, Netherlands (1641)
oil on canvas
265 × 157 cm
National Museum of Denmark
This Week on MedievalPOC: Eckhout’s series on Dutch Brazil Albert Eckhout was a Netherlandish still-life painter commissioned by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, to paint the plants, animals, and human beings that inhabited the newly colonized Brazil.
This painting of a Tupuya woman by Eckhout is probably the most famous painting of the series, due to its sensationalized depiction of "New World Savagery".
It's fairly obvious that many of these paintings were meant to serve as fantasy and wish-fulfillment for Europeans, and yet were touted as faithful depictions of the inhabitants of Brazil. Although the setting and costume are different, many aspects of this life-size painting are taken from Medieval European Wodewose myths, literature, and artwork.
For example, this tapestry (which also depicts Wodewose or "Wild Men" fighting some Moorish soldiers ensconced in a castle) also has a scene in which Wild Men appear to be bringing tidbits of human flesh to feed their forest bride:
The connection between the Medieval Wodewose and the "New World Savage" in regards to the European artistic and literary imagination is made obvious in the Shakespeare's character Caliban...According to Shakespearean scholars Vaughan and Mason:
Caliban conforms strikingly to the wild-man tradition, and Shakespeare's audiences may have recognized him accordingly. That of course does not rule out the possibility that Shakespeare added touches of his own-from the New World, where the wild man's savage ways were often attributed to Native Americans, or from other literary traditions.
They go on to describe the European Medieval fascination with grotesque, people-eating monsters who supposedly lived in far-away lands, as well as the revival of such literary traditions during the age of colonization.
This depiction has a lot more to do with what Europeans wanted to see than what Albert Eckhout actually saw.
Virginie Spinle goes into the popularity of this motif further:
Indeed, the female cannibal with a severed foot in her basket became a popular motif in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The motif was introduced by the Dutch painter Albert Eckhout, who stayed in what is now Brazilian territory from 1637 to 1644 to document, along with other artists and scholars, the achievements of Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen in Dutch Brazil.
Eckhout based his figures on members of the Tapuya (actually Tarairiu) tribe who inhabited the coastal hinterland of eastern Brazil. Upon returning to Europe, Eckhout painted from oil sketches (now lost) the large-format pictures, with life-size figures, presented by Johan Maurits in 1654 to King Frederick III of Denmark to decorate the Copenhagen Kunstkammer (fig. 3).
The paintings might seem to view the indigenous peoples of Brazil objectively. However, the painter exploited stereotypes that had become commonplace in European painting. Since the sixteenth century, the severed limbs of victims had figured as principal attributes of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
The woman carrying a severed foot undoubtedly represents a nod to the previously mentioned series of engravings published by De Bry, who had stigmatized the Tupinambá, the tribe whose territory adjoined that of the Tapuya, as cannibals. It was, in fact, the unlikely combination of studied allegory and empirical observation that made Eckhout’s paintings so successful.
In fact, the De Bry series of engravings was the predecessor of this series, which shows once again that the inhabitants of Brazil were no more than political tools for Europeans engaging in a religious and social war with Brazil as their batleground:
Though he made them more "familiar" with scenes of peaceful communal life and classical European physical forms, it seems he did so in order to turn them into more useful victims, to give Spain's slaves a human face and consequently stir up sympathy for the more "benevolent" Protestant colonizers. They retain their basic pagan inferiority, their barbaric habit of cannibalism that Europeans, like their representative Staden, must disapprove of.
At their best, when they are obstacles to Spanish colonial interests, de Bry's Indians have shapely bodies and humble souls. At their worst, when they are obstacles to Protestant colonial interests, they degenerate into the howling, contorted, blade-wielding baby-killers ubiquitous in colonialist propaganda.
For de Bry, the Indians, although "human," were still ripe for enslavement, just not by the papists who had driven him and his family from Flanders. And the cannibals? They were quaint, just as long as it was a Spaniard on the butcher block.
Too many modern Art Historians still seem to view Eckhout's series of paintings in a vacuum, but it is clear that a painting like the one above is adhering to an agenda-one of bloody conquest, enslavement, and cultural as well as physical genocide.
This depiction of sexualized violence, debauchery, and the juxtaposition of innocence with vice, ripe for conversion, subversion, and exploitation would have been nigh-irresistible to European viewers. This painting is not about Brazil as it is, or ever was. It is about European desires and very little else.
Albert Eckhout
Tupi Couple
Dutch Brazil, Netherlands (1641)
oil on canvas
265 × 157 cm
National Museum of Denmark
This Week on MedievalPOC: Eckhout’s series on Dutch Brazil Albert Eckhout was a Netherlandish still-life painter commissioned by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, to paint the plants, animals, and human beings that inhabited the newly colonized Brazil.
One of Eckhout's colleagues in Brazil, the natural historian Zacharias Wagener, made sketches of the paintings as part of his own ethnographic notes which, although accurate to a certain extent, nonetheless echo the typical European misreadings of non-European culture. About the Tupi, for instance, he wrote,
"the women are short and stocky. They have sinewy figures and walk very straight.... They are very faithful to their husbands, whom they accompany to wars carrying their children, dogs, as well as baskets and bags, like mules."
[x]
Many things written by Europeans about the Indigenous inhabitants of Brazil continue to reflect the ignorant legacy of colonization. For example, many of the people in the area who were cast as "less civilized" by the Dutch were called "Tupuya", which is a Tupi word that means "not Tupi".
More on the differences in the way Tupi and Tupuya were depicted by Eckhout and his contemporaries to come.
Albert Eckhout
Afro-Brazilian Warrior
Dutch Brazil, Netherlands (1641)
oil on canvas
265 × 157 cm
National Museum of Denmark
This Week on MedievalPOC: Eckhout’s series on Dutch Brazil Albert Eckhout was a Netherlandish still-life painter commissioned by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, to paint the plants, animals, and human beings that inhabited the newly colonized Brazil.
The...carries weapons of status typical of those owned by the elite of the Akan peoples of Ghana. Carried on his back and in his right hand are several assegais, or metal-tipped spears. Tucked into his waistband is a tasseled ceremonial state sword, the akofena. It is sheathed in a ray-skin scabbard decorated with a highly prized, imported pink oyster shell. This particular kind of sword was often used by emissaries of an Akan king on official diplomatic missions and conveyed the right of the bearer to deal on his behalf.
The series was intended ostensibly as a record of New World ethnography. As recent investigations have made clear, however, much more is on view than a straightforward presentation of its subjects. This is especially true of the black pair, whose dress and other accoutrements do not conform to the actual appearance of enslaved blacks in the colony. In both images the nonnative origin of the figures is stressed.
The black man and woman stand in two worlds, one the land of their origin and the other an unchosen place of forced servitude. This dual reference was motivated by the rather high-minded "scientific" conception of the series: defining the presence of Africans in Brazil in terms of natural history, tinged with references to commerce, but with no clear acknowledgment of the institution of slavery.
Scholars have suggested the intended placement of the series -- as a prominent feature within one of the residences of Johan Maurits, either in Brazil or in his magnificent new home in Amsterdam. The paintings, however, seem never to have been installed in this fashion. After the failure of the Dutch colony in Brazil in 1654, their relevance may have seemed moot. In fact, that very year the series was given to the king of Denmark. Today it is found in the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, displayed in an ethnographic context among actual artifacts from African tribal cultures, some of which had also been part of Maurits' donation.
[x]
Albert Eckhout
Tapuya Man
Dutch Brazil, Netherlands (1641)
oil on canvas
265 × 157 cm
National Museum of Denmark
This Week on MedievalPOC: Eckhout’s series on Dutch Brazil Albert Eckhout was a Netherlandish still-life painter commissioned by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, to paint the plants, animals, and human beings that inhabited the newly colonized Brazil.
Eckhout’s paintings also have historical value as well: this series contains the only available representations of the Tapuyas (Tarairius), a group which had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In fact, they are currently engaged in a desperate battle against being displaced by the Brazilian Government.
[forgive my terrible translation]
In recent days, a conflict occurring for years in the federal capital is finally making the news, a few pages of the mainstream press and relative attention of Brasilia. In the center of the dispute is the Northwest Sector, an area of environmental protection, with springs and rich flora and fauna.
On one side is an indigenous community Fulni it Tapuya which states reside at the place for over 40 years and battle for recognition and demarcation of land. Another, contractors and Emplavi Brasal (and all political power that money can buy), interested in uplifting the newest and desirable neighborhood of upper middle class of Brasilia, where a square meter costs around £ 8000.
The Action of GDF (Vice Governor Thaddeus Filipelli / PMDB-DF) and TERRACAP (Filipelli and Ivelise Longhi / PMDB-DF) that on August 16, 2011 raided, intimidated and destroyed part of the cerrado vegetation of indigenous land, violated indigenous rights, human rights and the Constitution, was an act of aggression in an attempt to deprive the indigenous community Tapuya the Shrine of the Shamans of its historic territory of traditional use, thus originating a deprivation of the right to land, a violation of the home, a violation of indigenous spiritual values, a violation of the memory and history of the indigenous presence Candanga and pioneer of the Holy Shrine of the Shamans in the Federal District.
These violations are ongoing, and are only increasing as Brazil moves forward with preparations to host the World Cup.
2013: Indigenous people who have been occupying a museum in protest of displacement since 2006 were forcibly evicted by police in March so that it could be torn down for use as a parking lot for the FIFA 2014 World Cup Stadium. The media refers to them as "squatters".
"...the Tapuyas (Tarairius), a group which had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth century."
"...the Tapuyas (Tarairius), a group which had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth century."
"...the Tapuyas (Tarairius), a group which had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth century."
Or, you can join in supporting the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, who are fighting for their lives right now.
Info:
Action:
Indigenous blogs:
Albert Eckhout
A Black Brazilian Woman and Her Son
Dutch Brazil, Netherlands (1641)
oil on canvas
265 × 157 cm
National Museum of Denmark
This Week on MedievalPOC: Eckhout’s series on Dutch Brazil Albert Eckhout was a Netherlandish still-life painter commissioned by John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, to paint the plants, animals, and human beings that inhabited the newly colonized Brazil.
The purpose of this series of paintings was to advertise the benefits of colonization to wealthy, white European men. In contrast to the painting of the "Mameluca" (mixed/Mestiza) Woman, this painting is meant to emphasize strength and fertility...not as admirable qualities of this woman, but as a resource that European men could consume, exploit and control. The dark-skinned laborers in the background, the ships on the ocean, and the son who is lighter-skinned than the mother all serve to promote the promise of property wealthy Dutch men could own if they came to Brazil.
The legacy of kidnapping and enslavement of people from various African nations by the Dutch mars Brazilian society still. "New Holland" was the destination for more than 1,500 poor souls every year between 1636 and 1641. This acceleration of human trafficking by the West India company continued until 1730.
Today, Brazil is a minority-majority nation, but despite a great deal of press depicting racial harmony and joyful diversity, persistent structural inequality persists as a pyramid with White Brazilians at the top:
Nearly all TV news anchors in Brazil are white, as are the vast majority of doctors, dentists, fashion models and lawyers. Most maids and doormen, street cleaners and garbage collectors are black.
A decade of booming economic growth and wealth-redistribution schemes has narrowed the income gap between blacks and whites, but it remains pronounced. In 2011, the average black or mixed-race worker earned just 60 percent what the average white worker made. That was up from 2001, when black workers earned 50.5 percent what white workers made, according to Brazil's national statistics agency.
Nubia de Lima, a 29-year-old black producer for Globo television network, said she experiences racism on a daily basis, in the reactions and comments of strangers who are constantly taking her for a maid, a nanny or a cook, despite her flair for fashion and pricey wardrobe.
"People aren't used to seeing black people in positions of power," she said. "It doesn't exist. They see you are black and naturally assume that you live in a favela (hillside slum) and you work as a housekeeper."
"Here it's a racism of exclusion," de Lima said.
Many copies of this painting were made and spread throughout Europe, in order to promote the "benefits" of colonization, including a set of tapestries that were sent to Louis XIV in France. These copies included various revisions, including replacing the flower with fruit, and placing a brand on the woman's breast to indicate her enslavement.
Stereotypes like these affect Black Brazilian women to this day. The coordinator of the Black Consciousness group at the University of São Paulo (USP), Haydee Fiorino, says:
[...] for women, the burden of discrimination is even greater. “Black women are always doing subordinate work. Or they are seen as the wife of the carnival, the lecherous mulatto, who only gains visibility in the carnival and then goes back to her place, sweeping the floor," she added.
Race in Brazil (English)
Brazil for the Happy Few (English)
Ambivalent Ethnographies (English)