Plaque with the Personification of Africa (?)

The ebony, semi-nude body of a woman emerges from a gold ground, positioned in a decorative niche as an allegorical figure. She is in motion, with one foot lifted as she stands in contrapposto, one arm raised to grasp a loop of billowing drapery near her head and the other crossing her body, pointing past the cloth that curves around her hip and flutters in an imagined breeze. The voluptuous, sensuous figure depicted here is believed to represent Africa with her exotically patterned fabric, huntress’ boots [1] and gold bands around her arms, neck, and chest. It is unclear whether the gold atop her head is cloth woven into a turban or tresses styled in an elaborate European coiffure. Though she is figured as a non-European, her dynamic figure is contained by European architecture, framed by all’antica columns and a geometrically-patterned, perspectival floor.

Joaneath Spicer has provided an overview of the range of functions of images of people of color in early modern European art, from status symbols to allegorical foils. This image could be categorized both as a display of the worldliness, wealth, and political power of its owner, as well as an expression of an artist’s mastery of a medium – perhaps participating in the tradition of the black Venus type. Spicer has shown that luxurious mediums with a naturally black or brown hue such as iron, onyx, black marble, bronze, and rosewood were used to depict black African bodies in a dual representation of beauty and exoticism [2].

Little is known about the circumstances of the commission of this relief, though the curators at the Walters Museum have compared it to plaques used to decorate a casket commissioned by Emperor Maximilian II [1]. Images such as this were used to celebrate the expansion of European discovery of the world, and accompanied rising investments in European hegemony and cultural narratives that positioned Europe as the refined, intellectual continent with Africa, Asia, and America as foils. While this figure image may have been intended to convey messages of European conquest and global knowledge, she also possesses power and dignity as a beautiful huntress, dominating the space prescribed for her. As an allegorical figure, she is allowed a greater range of motion and activity than a depiction of a historical European woman (see, for example, the placid, bust-length portraits of Veronica Franco, Tullia d’Aragona, and Cameria). Her motion may be compared to that of Corisca, who manages to outwit and elude her captor.

[1] “Plaque with the Personification of Africa (?)” The Walters Art Museum, accessed September 30, 2020. https://art.thewalters.org/detail/24252/plaque-with-the-personification-of-africa-/

[2] Joaneath Spicer, “European Perceptions of Blackness as Reflected in the Visual Arts,” in Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, ed. Joaneath Spicer (Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2012), 4.

• Kaplan, Paul H. D. “Isabella d’Este and Black African Women.” In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, edited by Thomas Earle and Kate J. P. Lowe, 125-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Lowe, Kate. “Introduction: The Black African Presence in Renaissance Europe.” In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, edited by Thomas Earle and Kate J. P. Lowe, 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Spicer, Joaneath. “European Perceptions of Blackness as Reflected in the Visual Arts.” In Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, edited by Joaneath Spicer, 35-60. Baltimore: The Walters Art Museum, 2012. Exhibition catalog.
• The Walters Art Museum. “Plaque with the Personification of Africa (?)” Accessed September 30, 2020. https://art.thewalters.org/detail/24252/plaque-with-the-personification-of-africa-/