Hello.
I am Borja Franco, associate professor at the UNED.
And I am going to talk about the representation of captives, slave
and conversos in the Mediterranean.
The sea was a space of trade, commerce, war,
and also the place for movement of people.
There were many population groups that moved to one shore
to another, from north to south, from east to west.
Historiography has usually focused on portraying deep polarization
between Muslims and Christians, but is increasingly interested
in other individuals who were fundamental in confirming
early modern identities
such as captives, slaves and converts. From the point of view of art history
some scholars have started to reflect
about these issues based especially on literary texts
and the few preserved images, they try to show how these groups
were treated by Christian artists. Here in this session
I will give you a few brief ideas about these representations.
We will start with the captives.
The images of the captives is totally linked to the orders
that were in charge of the redemption, such as Mercedarians and Tritarians.
In other words, their images are subject
to the glorification and economic justification
of their key role in the Mediterranean politics.
The ecstasy occurred mainly with the Council of Trent
and the following centuries, when a new type of holiness
and apostolic action was generated.
The position occupied by this captives can vary,
depending on the intentions of the iconographic program,
more positive with respect to the muslims
that will be exchanged for Christians, or more intransigent in
they tried to prove how they never wanted to be converted.
Due to the short space of time available to me
I will focus on a brief case study the vision of saint John of Matha.
These aludes to an episode described
in a text written by an unknown author from the 13th century,
where it is narrated how on January 28,
1193, The future Saint, while celebrating his first mass,
experienced a mystical episode, seeing Christ holding with his hands
the two chained men, one of them black and the other white
in relation to the iconography the first representation that you
can see in this slide
is preserved
in the Roman church of Saint Thomas in Formis
and dates from 1210
Behind it
there is a figurative lagoon until the 17th century,
finding some isolated cases in the medieval French context,
either for the episode linked to the formation of the order
or for the inmates of San John of Matha or his collaborator
Felix of Valois.
As have been said, the position of the hands, who appears chained
and the ethnic aspects varied depending on the salvific message,
although as constant is usually maintained: the muslim is shown
to be very different from the Christian, accentuating
his North-African or Ethiopian features although
Some of these captives were renegades
they were Christians
and they were ethnically a white as the other captives.
It seeks to show the difference as is usual
in these cases.
You can find these in these examples
that were preserved in some Italian churches.
You can see how the position of the hands changed depended
of the message of the artwork and how these ethnical features
are very exaggerated in both cases.
The second
point is the representation of slaves,
For their part was many linked to the war trophies.
We can find them for a very early age in the collective imagination
in the triumphl entranaces of the Middle Ages,
where kings appear Carrying slaves in their parades
or appear under the feet of saints or other royal figures.
The intention was not to show initially the concept of slavery
with what lose of freedom entailed, but rather the submission
and victory of the Christian troops against the infidels.
For this reason,
it is very interesting to be able to define these slaves.
Hence, we find two possibilities to do it through racialization,
Showing them black or with North African features,
or on the contrary, to illustrate them as Ottoman Turks
through turbans or through the lock they wore like
slaves protruding from the shaved head.
This kind of images are
related not only to the Greek Roman iconography, the defeated enemy,
but also as it was aforementioned, to the ephemeral royal entries.
In fact, in the entry of Alphonse the Magnanimous in Naples in 1443,
defeated enemies were fundamental as a counter immage of the king.
It was a model for the old Italian
Trionfi created in the early modern period.
This trend continued during the times of Charles V royal entries,
but after the battle of Lepanto, the humiliation of the Turks enemy
enchained as a slave at the feet of the triumpher became even more popular.
You can find here the representation, a genoese representation
in which the battle Lepanto were presented
at the feet of the tapestry,
we find the image of this slave.
But the most important image
is that created by Titian.
The allegory of the victory of Lepanto held at a Prado museum in Madrid.
This canvas crystallized an iconographical scheme
that will be repeated in several of other paintings.
He's the reproducing
this model created in the medieval period.
But making even more visible, these difference
and this victory of the faith against the infidels.
These images circulated around the Mediterranean
and this scheme of the Muslim at the feet of the ruler
gets adapted for monumental sculpture and is found again
in the Monument of the Four Moors in Leghorn in 1621,
when Pietro Tacca added these four bronzes slaves
of different ethnicities
to the Carrara marble statue of Ferdinand I Medici,
The artist was inspired by the physiques that he had seen
in the Port of Leghorn, as well as in the neighboring bagno.
dei forzati, the city prison.
So his four figures represented chained turkish and black slaves
in different poses and stages of life.
Obviously, we can also find other kind of images of slaves,
mainly black servants in some other artworks in 16 or 17 century
that still proves the superiority of old Christians against the other.
But this topic will be a topic for another video in itself.
I would like to finish with the Moriscos, the conversos.
There are few images of converts from Islam,
and none of them produced by Moriscos themselves. Between 1501,
the year of the first forced conversion
and the contest announced by Philip IV
for the best illustration of the Morisco expulsion in 1627,
there are only a handful of this representations
and they are all full of contradictions.
In general,
they are at a remove of the reality that they depict, since
most were created by foreigner artist and had a very clear intent
which was not verism or objective portraiture.
The earliest of this presentation can be found
in the polychrome reliefs in the Royal Chapel of Granada,
which were produced by Felipe Bigarny in around 1521
They depict the forced conversion of Mudejares from the former Nasrid kingdom.
While old Christian are shown with white skin,
the Moriscos were portrayed as having a range of skin colors
from white to olive-toned,
as they were described in some contemporaneous sources
and even one black that maybe could be a slave
andcould be linked to the spectator to North African slaves.
These multiethnic tableau is framed against two different backdrops.
First, the reliefs attempt to depict a society of converts
that this is the result of seven centuries of coexistence
and ethnic mixture between the Muslim conquerors
and the underlying conquered population.
The diversity represented in the reliefs also corroborates
Charles V universalist ambition.
He was inclined even during this period to show
that his empire included people of diverse provenance.
And then the Ceasar placed them all on equal footing
as long as they added to his empire's wealth and glory.
Skin color in this case had no negative connotations.
Interestingly, these reliefs
from Granada are followed by a long period of silence
on the Moriscos and the visual arts
of the Iberian Peninsula.
There were just some minor examples until the beginning of 17th century.
In 1609, Philip III
published the edicts of expulsion of this minority
and to make visible the decision, the Marquis of Caracena
Viceroy of Valencia, ordered as a present for the King
a series of canvases to be painted
by different artist showing the Moriscos
been banished to North Africa.
These well-known canvases which are now part
of the collection of Bancaja and were suposedly cartoons
that were to be made into tapestries to be taken
with a king and displaying his triumphal entries
show a Morisco very different from the one
we talked about before.
The Morisco is represented as black, as black are the African tribes
that received them in the exiles in Oran.
I am of the opinion that this darkening of the skin is intentional
and its intent
is to differentiate the Moriscos from the old Christian,
despite the fact that archival sources, an other texts about
the period indicate that it was impossible to distinguish
one from the other by their appearance.
Thus, there is no doubt that the canvases construct
a non existent morisco, an other who is marked by difference solely
to justify the political decision to banish him.
It is here where the concave mirror that was mentioned
by historiography is represented
The Morisco is as black and as the Africans
and they were not part of the Christian church.
So is an imagined Morisco disfigured that travels around
the Mediterranean as other scholars display in these same panel.
Summing up
I tried to show very briefly how these three groups
were represented by Christians over two centuries.
In some occasions artworks present a real portrait
of the Muslim, other, converted or not. In others
there is a stereotypical view as propagandistically tool,
but all of that proves the variety of population
with different religions and social classes
that were circulating around the Mediterranean
confirming multiethnic and pluri-religious societies.