'Black but Human' by Carmen Fracchia;

Author:Carmen Fracchia; [Fracchia, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191080838
Publisher: OUP Premium
Published: 2019-10-03T00:00:00+00:00

5

Commodification

Is There Any Caste Lower Than Blacks and Slaves from Guinea?

(Francisco Nuñez Muley, 1566)1

The Miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian

The Miracle of the Black Leg, also known as the Miracle of SS. Cosmas and Damian (see Colour Plate 5.1) by the sculptor Isidro de Villoldo,2 in Valladolid (Spain), seat of the Hapsburg court, is perhaps the most remarkable image by Castilian artists in Spain which both allegorizes the violence of the institution of slavery and sets up the iconography of the enslaved Afro-Hispanic subject. This is a uniquely Castilian iconography which articulates this religious legend in the first half of the sixteenth century, as we will see in the second section of this chapter. It is a small panel in polychrome and gilt wood, now in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid, that shows the in vivo amputation of the leg of an African man represented in the foreground of the composition.3 He lies on the floor of an elegant room, and the chopping block on which his stump rests adds a contemporary visual motif to this scene, since in early modern Spain this was an essential tool for surgeons (who dealt with wounds, ulcers, tumours, and fractures) to perform amputations on the battlefield to save the lives of wounded soldiers. The amputee’s left leg has been removed and grafted onto the patient, who holds the stump of his limb with his right hand. The amputee lies in agony by the side of the bed (see Fig 5.1), where a European man is being tended by these two physicians: St Damian on the left is grafting the African’s amputated leg on to their patient while St Cosmas, on the right of the composition, is taking the sick man’s pulse and examining his urine in a vessel. Their patient might be sedated, probably with opium, mandragora, or alcohol, unlike the African man.4 This horrific scene takes place in a sumptuous setting, where there is a lavish application of the New World gold that was readily available during the sixteenth century. Painting and gilding highlight the surface of the wood and foregrounds the rich textures of the short tunic worn by the suffering African man, the long, red, Spanish academic gowns and the golden capes of the holy physicians, their shoes, the sheet covering the patient’s body, his pillow cases, and the base of the four-poster bed that occupies the centre of the panel. This technique of the magnificent estofado—the ‘painted and gilt decoration imitating the textiles or stuff (estofa) of the draperies’—found in Spanish sculpture had originated in the Netherlands in the late fifteenth century.5

Fig. 5.1. Isidro de Villoldo, Detail: Mutilated African Man. Isidro de Villoldo, The Miracle of the Black Leg, 1547: © Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid (Spain). © Photo: Javier Muñoz y Paz Pastor, CE0362.

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