Whose Middle Ages? by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 2)
Published: 2019-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Blackness, Whiteness, and the Idea of Race in Medieval European Art

Pamela A. Patton

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the challenges of studying medieval concepts of race than the image type popularly referred to as the “Black Virgin,” a loosely bounded category of sculptures, paintings, and more ephemeral modern representations—from votive candles and phone cases to tattoos—that depict the Virgin Mary with dark skin (see Figure 1). Although the medieval sculptures at the center of this tradition were once believed to have been dark-skinned when first made, recent analysis suggests that many were painted brown or black only toward or after the end of the Middle Ages; a few more may have darkened as a result of physical deterioration. When deliberate, these Virgins’ retroactive darkening sometimes reflected a desire to demonstrate antiquity or to connect with Biblical passages, such as the description of the “black but beautiful” Bride in the Song of Songs, but later, in a colonialist Europe often obsessed with race, it was readily seen as promoting conversion among non-Europeans, especially in the Americas. Today, the raciality of such dark-skinned Virgins as the Mexican Señora de Guadalupe is often perceived to be integral to such figures’ identities, as well as to that of the communities that venerate them. However, whether we can apply such an understanding of race retroactively to medieval images is a more complicated question.

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