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The Renaissance revisited
is really about the importance

of going back to history in general,
and understanding all the things

that we haven't been
paying attention to.

The idea of centralising
figures in history

is really a lot about point of view.

Because for me, black African
figures in Renaissance painting

have always been central.
I was looking for them.

I was interested in why
Africans were obviously present

but they were never spoken of
by our historians today.

Most art historians
are white people.

Very few, if any, are black.

So they tend to follow the
prejudices of their own societies.

History responds always to fashion.

I say that from the centre,
from the heart,

of the historical profession.

Now people are interested,
but 50 years ago they weren't.

I decided to look not only
at black enslaved people

but also to look at Africans who
had been successful in some sense,

who had a skill, an occupation,

and had a life here.

My research on black figures

in Renaissance art is a response

to the Black Lives Matter
movement in the United States.

I wanted to find
a topic that ideally

could speak to students of colour.

That could have meaning
for their lives

and the lives that
they wanted to create.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Visual and material culture
are absolutely central

to tell a richer and a more
nuanced and complex story

about European history
as well as African history,

and the ways in which they were
entangled and shaped each other.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(UPLIFTING MUSIC)

The reason one starts with Florence

as the place to look
for things like this,

is that Florence
is reputed to have the best

15th century archives in the world.

Not only were the Africans

in many of the most famous
Renaissance paintings,

of course I'd seen them all my life
and I just also, like other people,

hadn't paid attention to it,

but there was the most enormous
documentary trail

of the lives of these people
in the archives.

They were enslaved figures.

They were free men or free women,

who were able to have lives
of their own.

Black pilgrims,

there were black priests,
there were ambassadors.

There was even an example
of a ruler in Florence,

who almost certainly
was a black origin.

He was a member
of the Medici family.

It's really quite extraordinary,
but in Florence...

the first duke,

was almost certainly
the son of a black woman.

Probably a servant.

He was an illegitimate child.

His name was Alessandro.

There were a number of surprises

of Africans in different
social positions.

Of course, very few at the top,

like Alessandro de' Medici,

who was unique.

I've worked on Renaissance
for 40 years, more than 40 years,

and one thing I have learned...
(LAUGHS)

is that status matters.

It is status that trumps
almost everything else.

This person was a Medici,
the family were protecting him,

the family were
giving him patronage,

therefore, the rest of it
mattered much less.

Alessandro was born in 1510 or 1511,

and his father died
eight or nine years later,

so leaving a young child behind.

He received a humanistic education,

he was frequently
in the papal palace.

There's controversy
over who his father was,

whether it was
Giulio de' Medici,

who became Pope Clement VII,

or whether it was
Lorenzo de' Medici,

who became duke of Urbino.

I believe that
Lorenzo was his father

because Lorenzo stayed
in the palace of his mother,

Alfonsina Orsini,

and Alessandro's mother,
Simonetta da Collevecchio,

was a servant in Alfonsina's palace.

I think she was brought
as a slave to the palace.

And so, Lorenzo, he would have
had easy access to her.

It's a practice of the aristocracy

to engage in sexual relations
with servants.

We have a lot of different images

of Alessandro Medici

and those are interpreted
in different ways.

And it's interesting simultaneously
to think about the ways in which

we might be able to perceive
his blackness through art.

How do we know that
Alessandro was black?

We have a small image of Alessandro.

It's the size of
half a sheet of paper.

And it shows Alessandro
looking a little bit stern,

and there's a freshness
to the image.

This is a work which is probably
the very first portrait

of Alessandro done by Pontormo.

It's important to keep in mind
that these artists,

Giorgio Vasari, Jacopo Pontormo,
Benvenuto Cellini,

the artists saw Alessandro,

they knew what he looked like,
and they captured his appearances

in paintings and in coins.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Art can serve, in part,
as a document.

An artist had to keep
a delicate balance.

On the one hand the painting
had to represent a certain ideal,

on the other hand the portrait
had to be accurate enough

to be recognised.

When I look at images of Alessandro,
I noticed,

'this looks rather different
from other pictures of the time'.

These are clues to how
Alessandro actually looked.

This allowed viewers
who look at this work,

and Alessandro himself
to look at this and say,

"Yes, that's me!"
or "Yes, that's our duke."

Jacopo Pontormo was considered

one of the finest painters
of his day in Florence.

Pontormo made this larger work
that shows Alessandro,

full length, he's making a drawing.

The ruler of the city
is shown as an artist.

That'd be surprising today,

it's absolutely unprecedented
for the Renaissance.

And this portrait
was given by Alessandro

to a woman named
Taddea Malaspina,

she was his lover.

(METALLIC SCRAPE)

Vasari's portrait is in keeping
with the ways in which

the ruling class
wanted to be portrayed,

in armour,

and it has to do with the ways in
which portraiture,

but also sculptural history

had this connection
to a certain military dominance.

This is a public portrayal of him.

Depicted seated on a,
kind of a throne or a chair,

looking out over the city to show
his role as guardian of Florence.

You can see in it that his hair
is still depicted as

kind of frizzy and dark,
his skin is still beige,

his nose is more aquiline.

And this might have been
the artist's choice

to give him a more
acceptable appearance

in his role as Florence's leader.

So, by looking
at these two portraits

we could see a more public image
and a more private one.

Alessandro as the ruler,

with the baton of power.

Alessandro as the lover,

as the cultured man holding
the silver point stylus

and making a drawing.

My favourite portrait of
Alessandro is of course

the one by Bronzino,
or by a student of Bronzino.

It was painted in 1553,

when long after Alessandro was dead.

Bronzino was a painter of the court

and was personally familiar
with Alessandro

and that's why you also have
this certain intimacy and access.

The veil is down
in the Bronzino work.

I think it's probably
the most true to life

of what Alessandro's
appearance was.

The curly hair, or the frizzy hair,
it's a little bit of both,

the broad nose, the broad lips

and the beige colour of his skin.
I think it's a private portrait.

There would have been
very little reason on his part

to have exaggerated his appearance
or to have covered it up.

The reason that we don't have much
documentation on Alessandro's reign

is because after Alessandro
was assassinated,

Cosimo became duke

and in order to enhance
their reputations,

he destroyed Alessandro's reputation

by commissioning histories of
Alessandro that were negative.

Descriptions of his personality
and his actions,

which cast him as a tyrant,

as a generally
morally degraded person.

Alessandro was a Medici,

so he was the famous
illegitimate child

and he managed to
hold his position in life

without being knocked off it,
as it were,

because of his supposed background.

The Medici, like most of
the patrician families,

had illegitimate children.

In Florence, at the time,
of course there are large numbers

of illegitimate children, most of
these people were not orphans.

They had parents, but the parents

either couldn't or wouldn't
look after them.

Reasons we know that is
because of the existence of the

Ospedale degli Innocenti.

The Ospedale degli Innocenti
took in unwanted babies.

It's striking how many of these

had been fathered
by Florentine patricians.

We have the record books
of the entry of these babies

from the 1450s, I think.

It just coincides with the arrival

of some of our enslaved
African women

to work as domestic slaves.

In 1470, we have a small black baby

and in the records it says
that the mother was a black slave

called Lisabeta...
(BABY CRIES)

..and the father, Galeotto,
was black too.

The first black couple in Florence.

The father asked for the child
to be given the name Lucia,

but her second name was Negra

so, she inscribed into her name,

so inscribed on to her body
as it were forever.

One good reason possibly,

for why the father, Galeotto,

might have taken Lucia to the
Ospedale degli Innocenti

is that every child
at the Innocenti was free...

(BABY CRIES)

..and a child born to two slaves

in Florence would be enslaved.

So, the Istituto degli innocenti is
this really incredible institution,

that has an incredibly long history.

I think that for me,
there is something fascinating

thinking about the possibility
of black Africans

born on the Italian territory

going all the way back
as far as recorded history exists.

Alessandro's life would prove
to be very different

from that of the children
of the orphanage, the Ospedale.

On the other hand, the life of his
mother, Simonetta diCollevecchio,

an enslaved black woman,
was much harder.

Like many other enslaved black
women, she ended up in an oblivion.

Since we have no representations

of what Alessandro's mother,
Simonetta, looked like,

perhaps one of the ways
in which we can understand

what her condition was,
is by examining portraits

of other Africans who were enslaved.

One by Albrecht Durer
is of a woman, a slave,

definitely African.

The thing which strikes me most
about this portrait is,

she's depicted as a normal person.

There's not a caricature.

She's wearing the kind of treatment
that many African women today

will give their hair.

She's depicted in her personality.

She's very conscious
of being painted

and the artist is very conscious
of wanting to give her

an accurate representation

which maintains her dignity
and individuality as a person.

Durer, is one of the most
canonical painters of the period.

He is a German based,

but he works in Europe broadly

and some of the most
iconic images of that period

were created by his
pen and his brush.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

In most of Italy, enslaved Africans

would have been enslaved
in urban situations,

in cities, in households.

Typically, it had been
the practice of aristocratic women,

after they gave birth,
to put out their infants

for wet nurses
who were peasant women.

After the Black Death,
there were many fewer

and so we see many African women
being imported into Italy

to serve that role.

(BABY BABBLES)

What I found when I tried to map

where the enslaved Africans
were living in Florence,

there were clusters of them.

And there were, you know,
four or five on one small street,

you know, but owned by
completely different families.

In English we have this expression,
keeping up with the Joneses,

so it became clear to me that
somebody got one over there

and you looked out of the window and
"Mmm, look what they've just got."

And you knew that this kind of
behaviour was in operation, I think.

When we see the representation
of black figures

in works of art,

we need to read it at two levels.

On the one hand, sometimes
these figures represent

figures that were actually
visible in the city.

But also, and more importantly,

works of art served
to create reality.

By placing black figures
in a certain location

by having them in the foreground,

or more often in the background.

By having them at the margins,

the artist and the society
as a whole

is projecting an image of how they
thought blacks should be seen.

Paintings are active.

They construct the world that they
want you, the viewer, to see.

You, the viewer, in the 1400s,

but also you, the viewer, today.

One example is by
Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Ghirlandaio was one of
the most important

and respected painters
in the late 1400s.

He even worked for the Pope
in the Sistine Chapel,

but most of his paintings
are in Florence,

he did fresco cycles.

One scene in particular,
we see what appears to be

the four daughters
of the Sassetti family.

But if you look very carefully

at the very far left,

literally on the margins,

there's a black figure.
Who is she?

Wearing more simple clothes,

she seems to have
a linen head covering,

as opposed to the woman wearing
silk in the Sassetti family,

she's must be a servant.

This black figure,
until very recently,

has been completely overlooked.

I looked at the painting
over and over again,

and she was never seen,
never noticed, never mentioned.

All the famous art historians who
have discussed these frescoes

from the 16th century,
almost not a single person,

has mentioned this slave
on the left hand side.

For them,
she must have been considered

unimportant, uninteresting.

Of course for us
it's absolutely gripping.

Because in the 15th century
they chose to include her,

so she was important
and interesting.

Because there would have been many
servants and probably slaves,

in the households of those
daughters and of the Sassetti.

It's possible, and this is an
exciting possibility,

that we even have a clue
as to her identity.

We know that Francesco Sassetti,
about 10 earlier,

had purchased a slave,
she came from Portugal,

so she was probably black,
because the Portuguese

were the merchants
of black servants and slaves.

Maybe this figure,
who we know from the documents,

actually appears in his painting.

We don't know her African name

but we know who we think is

because we've got in the records
of the Cambini bank,

that had a big presence in Lisbon

in the 15th and 16th century.

Unfortunately, a Florentine
called Bartolomeo Marchionni,

was really, the first slave trader
in Renaissance Europe, we could say.

So, a rather a grim title.

He was connected
to the Cambini bank.

Because there was a sizable
Italian merchant community

in Lisbon, operating out of there,

where the boats come into Lisbon,
with enslaved people,

and then from Lisbon,
people are sent on to Tuscany.

It's not possible to understand
what's going on in Renaissance Italy

in terms of bringing in
enslaved Africans,

if one doesn't look first at
Renaissance Lisbon or Portugal.

And one can see that in this
painting of the King's Fountain,

the Chafariz d'El Rey.

You can see how many black people

that are on the streets.

So, we are on the docks near the
fountain of Chafariz d'El Rey

which is a place where servants,

enslaved or not,

would come to fill water for the
house in which they would work.

And boats are coming back and forth,
musicians are playing,

there is this delightful detail
of a poor servant

who was carrying a chamber pot

and the bottom broke and he
becomes soiled with the content.

But what is interesting beyond
the delightful anecdotes there

is to see a city
bursting with activity

and people of many
different backgrounds.

Undoubtedly, a lot of them
went to Lisbon and stayed there,

probably as urban slaves,
as servants,

in various occupations,
manual occupations

and enjoyed a considerable
degree of freedom.

I don't think there were
stereotypical representations

of Africans at this time.

We can see a variety
of representations.

And we have a very interesting
example of a Knight,

a black knight
of the order of Santiago.

And that's a military order,
so he was made by the king.

He was this famous
Joao de sa' Panasco,

who was a black court jester

and he spent his whole life
at the court,

he got given one of the
highest honours in Portugal

for his work at the court.

And one of the wonderful things is
that we've got books of his jokes.

We also have jokes told against him.

We know that many people,
you know, made jokes against him

on the basis of his skin colour

and of his ethnicity.

You can understand some of what
it must have been like

to be a successful black person

at that level in the court,

surrounded entirely otherwise
by white courtiers.

He ended his life
by drinking too much,

and could have been
driven to drink,

but many people in
unhappy circumstances

take to the bottle,
and it probably did happen to him.

If we look at the Cantino map

which is basically
a representation of the world

from the perspective of Portugal,

we can see the ways in which Africa

is very much at the
centre of that world.

It's made clear for Europeans

that their world
was really one among many

and they were confronted with
these sophisticated civilisations,

that had existed for millennia

and that were really giving them

a mirror against which
constructing their own identity.

Africa could be the source
of servants sometimes enslaved,

but also the source of marvels

and a wondrous object of
sophisticated craftsmanship.

Ivories that were made in the Congo,

in Benin, Sierra Leon,

and had arrived in Europe
in the 16th century,

and that were considered as
the most precious object

fit for royal collections.

So, it is in the encounter
with Africa,

with the Americas also

that Europe finds its own
identity and its own contours.

The presence of the Pope in Italy

was one of the main reasons

why African travellers,

pilgrims in some cases

and ambassadors in others,

would come to the Italian peninsula.

A movement that was parallel and
also different in important ways

from the movement of people
that came through

the networks of
the slave trade, for example.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

The Coronation of the Virgin...

could be the first example
that we know of,

of a painting
commissioned by a black man.

The work was done
by Davide Ghirlandaio,

Domenico's brother.

He was not quite as good,
but he was more accessible.

You see God
crowning the Virgin Mary.

In the lower part,
you see a figure in profile

just from the upper part
of his body,

looking up, but what's remarkable

is that this is a black man.

We see that not only
in the skin tone

but also in his
physiognomic features.

We see an African in
Italian Renaissance painting.

Why is he there?

In Italian Renaissance paintings,

it was absolutely standard
for the person who paid for it,

to have himself or herself
depicted in the lower corner

usually kneeling,

looking up in prayer.

This is definitely, definitely,
definitely, a black donor,

and therefore, really exciting.

What we don't know is who he is.

So, he's got a little bit
of white linen shirt

peeping out of the top
of his black garments.

And that makes it far more likely

that he's wearing secular dress,

that he's actually not a priest.

He realised what you did
in Christian society

if you were at a certain level,
is that you commissioned a painting

with yourself in it,
and that gave you added status.

So, he got it.
He'd understood the society

that he'd come to join, as it were.

However, because he's black,

various people tried to deny
that he could be a donor.

It's still absolutely fabulous,
that we have this...

Italian Renaissance painting
with a black donor in it.

One of the most popular subject
in Renaissance Italy

was The Adoration of the Magi

or The Three Kings.

And there was a long tradition that
these kings were of different ages

and they came from
different parts of the world.

More often, you'd see
all three kings as being white,

but they would include
some black people

in the entourage, in the background.

For example,
there's an important painting

by Domenico Ghirlandaio that shows
the Adoration of the Magi.

The kings are white,
but one of the attendants

is very clearly black.

He's dressed as if he was a page
in a Florentine household.

He probably was. I suspect
Ghirlandaio saw this black servant

and decided to include him
in the painting.

In northern Europe, sometimes one of
the kings is shown as being black,

but it took a long while
for that tradition

to work its way into Italy.

And perhaps, the very first painting

to show the Adoration the Magi
with the black king in Florence

is a work which is only
recently discovered.

It was done by a member
of Ghirlandaio's workshop.

Certainly, there was a black man
who commissioned an altar piece

from Ghirlandaio's workshop,

The Coronation of the Virgin.

We have this
absolutely unprecedented

Adoration of the Magi,
where one of the kings is black

and this king's in the foreground.

I'd like to think
that it's the same patron.

There's a before and after.
And so, there's a way in which

one of those kings starts
showing up as a black African,

mainly in the tradition that's
coming from the north of Europe.

And that picks up and it starts
to pick up also in Italy

through figures like
Mantegna and others.

So, this is the case where
we are seeing social changes

influencing art, just as much as art
influences the social environment.

The more African people on the
Italian streets and in the courts,

the more prominent and central
they become in paintings.

And Andrea Mantegna
is the perfect example of this.

He places the black king in the
centre of the composition

and this is very likely about
the increased African presence

in his environment.

Andrea Mantegna was the most
famous artist in the late 1400s.

The most respected,
more so than say Leonardo.

This is an artist
who looked at black figures,

he understood the facial type,

and we see it in the skin tone, yes,

but also the hair
and the physiognomic features.

So finally, with
Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi

the black king is entered
into Italian Renaissance art.

In the painting
of Filippino Lippi,

painted in the very late 1400s,

there's a black figure
who struck my attention.

Filippino Lippi shows this man
large in the foreground,

he has a golden earring
in his left ear,

he has a pearl...

hanging on his neck,

so he's a man of some wealth.

And yet there's a white man
in front of him,

who is literally
showing him the way.

So, in an Adoration
of the Magi painting

the crowds of people
represent the first Christians.

So, a black figure
evidently represents

the idea that one
of the first Christians was black.

The fact that Christianity
arrives in Africa.

But also that, according to
this Eurocentric world view,

you need a white man in order
to show the black man the way.

Artistically, this period
is very interesting

because we can see the challenge

of representing difference
of African characters

in a way that is readable
by a viewership.

Earrings and a nudity

are becoming markers of figures

from the African continent.

And that process is exactly
what we call exoticism.

We see the beginning
of a visual discourse

that continues to be so present

in many aspects of our own
visual environment.

So, we can think of
the ways in which

every spring collection
of haute couture

will be ethnic,
and will have some of these markers,

the feathers, the nudity,

their prominent jewellery that
would mark in the European imaginary

a certain outfit or a certain figure

as coming from Africa
or from the Americas.

There is another very interesting
painting by Lippi

that helps us take stock

of the paradoxical views of Africa

that Europeans had at the time.

This is the most important
work that Filippino did

for Filippo Strozzi,

the Church of Santa Maria Novella
in Florence.

On the right-hand side, you see a
scene from the life of Saint Philip.

But on the painting,
on the right-hand side,

you see there's
a very prominent figure.

He is standing tall,

in his bearing
he looks extremely dignified,

he has a handsome face,
he has more jewels on him

than anyone else in the scene
or in the entire chapel.

He has this very large headgear.

The white robe he is wearing,
a shamma,

is the traditional robe worn
by Ethiopian Christians,

that was worn in the Renaissance
and to the present day.

On the one hand, Africa could be
a place of dispossession

and nudity and savagery,

but on the other hand
it's a place of great riches

of sophistication
and of mythical characters

with amounts of regalia
that make them greater than life.

I was trying to understand
who this figure could be

and why Filippino would include him.

He was the treasurer
of Queen Candace,

the Queen of Ethiopia.

The Ethiopian is seen as being
the first African to be converted.

In fact, there was a community

of Ethiopians living in Italy,
living in Rome.

Finally in the late 1400s,

Italians started actually seeing
Africans live in the flesh.

These legendary...

black African Christians.

What was happening
in Rome in this period?

Why were there Ethiopians in Rome?

Florence was a relatively small
commercial city,

filled with successful merchants.

But Rome,
Rome was a seat of the Pope.

There was a much more
international community there,

people from different parts
of Europe and from Africa.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

This painting was done in 1481,

and the same year,

four ambassadors from Ethiopia
came to Rome.

The Pope welcomed them.

He celebrated mass with them.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

All of Rome was fascinated.

One of these fascinated viewers
was Sandro Botticelli.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(MENACING MUSIC)

(METALIC SCRAPE)

Prester John was a central figure

for understanding blacks
in Renaissance Europe.

Today he's considered a legend,

but in the middle ages,
in the Renaissance,

no one doubted
that he really existed.

Prester John was thought
to be a descendant

of the black Wise Man

who came to adore the Christ child,
and he had become,

according to this legend,
the Emperor of Ethiopia.

In the history of Renaissance art,
all across Europe,

there are very, very, few portraits

of individual black people.

But one of the first examples,

is a portrait of a man
who the label lists

as the Emperor of Ethiopia.

And according to the inscription,
it says he's known as Prester John.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

The Pope decided that
this ephemeral event

should be made permanent.

So, the Pope ordered that
a death mask be made

of the African ambassador

and that was the basis
for a marble statue.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

This is an extraordinary event.

First of all, that we have

a portrait of a specific
identifiable African.

Secondly, that it was made
in a very expensive material.

And third, that is commissioned
by the Pope himself.

And fourth, that it is placed
on very public view.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Interest in black Africans

was found not only
in Florence and in Rome,

but also throughout Italy
and indeed throughout Europe.

And specifically
in the city-state of Mantua

there was great interest
among the ruling family

in black Africans.

Who was calling the shots
in Mantua in the late 1400s?

A noblewoman named Isabella d'Este.

Isabella d'Este was well-known
as being one of the most

important art patrons of the day.

She had money, she had power,

and she had taste.

She also had a great interest
in black Africans.

Isabella d'Este
is very important, I think,

for an understanding
of Africans in Renaissance Italy,

not only because she tried

to have in her entourage,

as many enslaved Africans
as she can,

but also because she came from

the Este court in Ferrara,

which always had an interest
in the overseas exploration.

We have an extraordinary letter
by Isabella d'Este

in which she asks her agent

to go to Venice and find her

an enslaved girl
"as black as possible."

That's the quote.

She embarks on acquiring
small African children.

There's always this discussion
about if enslaved Africans

are lighter skinned,
do they have more value,

if they're darker skinned,
do they have less value?

Well, Isabella shows that
in her court, at least,

darker skin meant
they were worth more.

That's what she really wants.

What's difficult
is to work out precisely

what she wanted
these children for.

Except she thought they were
entertaining in some way.

She wanted them young,

that's another thing
that's alarming for us,

18 months to 24 months,

but it's probable that it's more
likely she wanted them at that age

because then they'd learn
perfect Italian,

they weren't coming
with preconceived views on things.

They were objectified, there's
absolutely no doubt about it.

Isabella d'Este was not
the only person interested

in having enslaved
black people in her court.

The ruling couple in the city-state
of nearby Ferrara,

wanted to obtain black Africans
for their court

so they went to Venice.
And why Venice?

Because there's a very large
population of black figures there.

This rather disturbing story
serves as the background

to help us understand a very
beautiful painting by Titian.

If we take a look at the portrait
of Laura Dianti,

we see a work of great beauty

by one of the most important
painters of all time.

Together with the protagonist,
the woman Laura,

we see a young black page.

This painting started a fashion,
if you will,

for noblemen and noblewomen
across Europe.

Titian was so famous
and this work was so appreciated

that people wanted to be depicted
with a black page.

In the case of the female figure,

there is already a play
in the skin colour,

the depiction of her hand
that is pale,

in juxtaposition to the darker face
of this small figure

that is representing
a racial difference.

In the case of the male figure

it is a feature
that really marks domination,

in the same way
that you could have a sceptre

or you could have
the hand on a globe

or on a map
to talk about possession,

and it is something
that will carry over

in the history of European
portraiture for centuries to come.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Isabella's also has an interest

in representations
of African women

in some of the paintings
she commissioned.

The artist in Isabella's court
was Andrea Mantegna.

Shortly after Isabella
came to Mantua,

Mantegna made a very
finished drawing

showing the old
testament story of Judith

with the head of Holofernes.

And you see the beautiful
young widow, Judith,

together with her maid,

who is holding the head
of the evil Holofernes,

who Judith had just decapitated.

But Mantegna was the first artist
ever to show the maid as black.

So, I think this reflects
not the biblical story,

but the reality
of the court life in Mantua.

And so, when you see Mantegna
introducing black African figures

as assistants or servants in the
case of Holofernes and Judith,

you have this sort of relationship
that gets developed

where it's also speaking to
who's commissioning that work.

And so, it's not only influenced
by the actual presence

of black Africans in the court
that Mantegna sees.

But it's also influenced by this
desire to actually make sure

that that's being seen
as a gesture of wealth, of power.

There is also the development
of visual discourse,

that is gendered in this case,

that sees the juxtaposition

based on a contrast
between the female figure,

that is a princely figure,

and that becomes marked
as white and virtuous,

and a servant that
is coming from Africa,

that has darker features,

that serves as an aesthetic foil

but also, in some cases,
as a moral foil

to highlight, literally,
the qualities

of the main European female figure.

And at that moment
we can see a real turn

towards ideological use

of the African figure.

Is a very much the early moment

of the story of racialisation.

What roles did black Africans have
in Italian Renaissance courts?

They served as pages, as attendants,

pilgrims, they were priests,

they were soldiers.

But they were also musicians.

We have a number of documented
examples of African musicians

in Italian cities

and one of them appears
in a painting by Mantegna.

In one of the Triumphs,
we see an African musician.

But the original viewer, they have
must be reminded of the fact that,

yes, they have actually seen
in some procession

or some court event,
a black musicians.

The presence of
black African musicians,

black African entertainers,

and in many different courts
is well documented.

We have in the painting
Piero di Cosimo,

Perseus freeing Andromeda.

There's this incredible figure
in the foreground of a musician,

and it's an instrument that's
as inventive as the dragon

that's in the picture.

It's it has this stringed part
and it has this reeded part,

and it brings together
in a certain sense

something that's unimaginable.

I think that the fantasy of that
is being carried forth

and exaggerated through the hands
of the imaginary then

of the black African performer.

But I think that mainly when
it becomes fashionable

to have enslaved individuals
that are recognisably

connected to distant lands...

This is about power,
it's about access

to all these distant
reaches of the Earth.

And it's about being able
to dominate or control those things.

It's so crucial to recognise

that many of the same
cultural aspirations

in demonstration of worldly
knowledge existed

also within powerful
African Kingdoms.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Venice had a large slave market,
it was perhaps the greatest

that had existed
since the Middle Ages,

when slavery was not focused

on people of any
particular skin colour.

But undoubtedly,
a lot of Africans were captured,

were swept up in this net

and were sold on slave markets
into... into Italy.

If we think about the presence of
representations of black Africans,

Venice is definitely this place
where we find

a really massive number of them.

And the ways in which
it's documented in paintings

is really intriguing,

because it gives us insight
to some of the roles

and positions that
black Africans had in society.

In the paintings of Carpaccio,

who's a master at showing
scenes of everyday life...

we see a number of these
black gondolier rowers.

So, on the one hand
these figures looked exotic

because they came from
a foreign land.

On the other hand,
they look familiar because

it's what people would see
as they would ride on the boats

around this... the canals of Venice.

There was somebody who asked me,

"Kate, why are there black
gondoliers in the Carpaccio,

what's going on there?"

Who made me think that I should
go and check this out.

And yet nobody, again,
nobody had bothered to look,

to see whether
they corresponded to reality.

I started doing more work
on Venetian wills.

Some African men, who'd worked in
the households of patricians,

when they were freed,
were bought a position

in one of these
gondoliers associations.

There are lists
of gondoliers associations.

These books are called Mariegole.

They're not allowed
to be released,

even to people like me,
but in fact I got them!

So, there are
28 of them or something,

and if you look you can
normally distinguish in each case,

a couple are a few Africans.

These gondoliers associations
are also very important

because they were
hierarchical structures.

This was a democratic organisation

that elected by secret ballot

the head of the organisation.

And one of the most wonderful
things we found was that

one of these Africans became head

of one of the
gondoliers associations.

He was called, Zuan Saracino.

We've got quite a lot of examples
where we're absolutely certain

that somebody described
as Saraceno is actually African.

And he seems to have been
elected at least twice.

One can see that there was already
a germ of possibility

of being inserted properly
into Renaissance society.

So, the people in them
were involved at every level

in real participation
in Italian life.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

We also read that Africans were
famed for the skill as swimmers.

And in fact, there are paintings
from the period where you see

an African standing on the side
ready to jump into the water

to help save a relic.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

The imaginary that's created

through the language
of painting and art in Venice

of black African servants
that are super exoticised

is carried out also later
through a furniture style

that in English a lot of times
is termed 'blackamoores.'

In Italian it's a little bit
more slippery, it's called 'mori'

which is not really so specific.

We have simultaneously
a representation of servitude

and we have objects that
actually physically serve.

So, they will hold the candle,
they will hold the light,

they will hold the table.

(EXPRESSIVE DRUMMING)

These are objects
that get reproduced

over and over again in Venice,

and they become a part
of the glass tradition,

they become part of
the wood tradition.

In some cases,
like at Ca' Rezzonico,

we have images by Andrea Brustolon

that are sort of like
shamefully beautiful.

Black Africans that are nude

and that have rusted chains on them

and it's phenomenal the ways
in which there is a seeking out

of fragments of black history
in this context...

..so under discovered,

unknown to many of the Italians

that have been living
in this environment.

In the late 1500s,
there was an extraordinary artist

who was able to capture the feasts,
the ceremonies in Venice

and that's an artist
known to us as Veronese.

He was a follower,

a younger contemporary of Titian.

One of his most magnificent works

is the Feast in the House of Levi.

But that wasn't the original name.

This was commissioned
as The Last Supper

and then something
rather remarkable happened.

Veronese includes
such a range of character

that are brought together,

regardless of their differences,
into a single scene

and a scene that is considered
as almost insolent

to its original topic,

which was the Last Supper.

We are at the time
of the inquisition in Italy.

Veronese was called
in front of the inquisition.

He was asked why
he included certain details

which were considered disrespectful.

The presence of buffoons
and black figures

who included, they thought,
for a comic effect in the work.

The representation
that Veronese comes up with

in his Last Supper,

perhaps more similar
to everyday moments in life,

is so scandalous that he has to
change the title of the painting

from The Last Supper to
The Dinner in the House of Levi

in a way of making it
more acceptable.

Veronese had a specialisation
in large canvases.

And one of the best examples of this

is a scene showing
the first miracle of Christ,

The Wedding at Cana.

And here we included dozens
of figures, almost a hundred,

and among these,
six of them are black.

Some of them are waiters,
some of them are servants,

but most surprisingly,
in the painting you could see

that a guest
at the table is black.

He's wearing green silk,

he's obviously a person
of great importance,

because he is seated
next to all the nobles at the table.

So finally, in the late 1500,

a black African was allowed
a place at the table.

It's one thing if you have
an African represented as a patron

or biblical king,

but for viewers
in 16th century Venice,

it was quite another to see a
painting with guests at the table,

dressed just like them,

but with a black African
seated in their midst.

Not many years
after this work was made,

we have the story
of an Ethiopian nobleman

who came to Venice.

His name was Sagga Krestos.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

So, amongst the range of figures
that we find in Venice,

we have everything
from pilgrims to servants

and amongst those we have this
figure of Sagga Krestos

who finds himself
in the context of Venice

and who brings with him
this extraordinary story

that I think is amplified to the
more extraordinary through fantasy.

Prof. Matteo Salvadore,
the biographer of Sagga Krestos,

tells us that Krestos arrives
at the Venetian embassy in Cairo

in 1632. He was about 16 years old,

and said he was the son
of the deceased Emperor Jacob.

In reality, he could not
have been the son of Jacob

because Jacob had died around 12
years before the boy was even born.

Nonetheless, given his tellings
of noble origins,

Krestos was chosen by the
Franciscans to facilitate

the spread of
Catholicism in Ethiopia.

Salvadore describes him as being
sent to Rome to meet the Pope

and everywhere he went he was
welcomed like a great celebrity.

He was hosted by
the Barberini family,

he was sponsored not only
by the pontiff, by Urban VIII,

but by the entire family.

Sagga Krestos travels to Venice

and the four Franciscans
who accompanied him

waited to board the ship
for Ethiopia.

They soon realised
that he in actuality

had no intention
of returning to Ethiopia.

From there, he continued
his journey and arrived in Turin

where he stayed for a longer period
as a guest of the Savoy family

as he had fallen ill.

And in Turin,
we have a portrait made of him

dated 1635.

The key to the story is the artist.

And here's a surprise,
it's a woman artist.

There were not many
in the Renaissance,

and one of them
was Giovanna Garzoni.

And she worked
for the house of Savoy.

The painting shows Sagga Krestos

as if he was a European nobleman,

by which I mean his attire,
his clothing,

his turn of his head.

But the artist also showed
her respect for the sitter

in another way,
perhaps a more private way.

On the back of this miniature,

she included her name,

that's not unusual,

and she also included her name
written once again

in Ethiopian.

She must have asked him, "How could
I say my name in your language?"

And with rather uncertain lettering,

she tried to reproduce that
on the back.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Who decides what we
remember of history?

Who decides what's commemorated
and who's commemorated?

This is a turning point in the
European perception of African men.

After Sagga's death, as is typical,

common opinion changes radically.
He is seen as an imposter,

not because he didn't have the
documentation to prove his identity,

but simply because
he was an African visitor.

He was assigned a series
of negative stereotypes

which emerged in the 17th century,

which would become
increasingly popular

in relation to the African continent
and above all to African men.

It focuses on
uncontrollable sexuality,

a lack of reliability,

and these are just some of the
indications the times were changing.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

There was a time when people
could recognise their differences

and work around them,
they did not assume

that there were negative
characteristics

that were assigned
to a particular person

on the basis of race.

So, I think that racism
has not always existed,

then we can get rid of it.

It can be gotten rid of and we
needn't live with it in perpetuity.

That's a hope.

Slavery's always been a topic that
one could write about in history,

but that sees
enslaved people as objects,

that's really concerned
with objectification.

And instead, what we're
trying to look at now

is look at enslaved people
as subjects, as people.

And that's probably
the difference too.

We're trying to do
something different.

More work! More work!
We need more work.

(SPEAKS ITALIAN)

Renaissance art doesn't just
reflect the world,

but it helps create the world.

The way black figures
are represented in art

formed a prototype, a model,

which continued for centuries,
even to the present day.

The way black figures appear today

in movies, in commercials,

in society,

in some ways can be traced
right back to the Renaissance.

When we focus on these characters,

who have been present
but overlooked to a large extent

for almost 500 years,

we give ourselves an opportunity

to learn from their presence

and to learn from their absence a
better understanding of their time

and a better understanding
of our own societies.

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