Every February, Villa Rossa holds events in connection with Black History Month. This year the Villa offered a special screening of a new TV documentary, “The Black Italian Renaissance”, available in Italy and the UK on Sky TV. This 90-minute program features animation, theatrical reconstructions, and interviews with various experts including our own Professor Jonathan Nelson. He also served as the art historical consultant and introduced the event at Syracuse. The TV program addresses some basic questions about the many Black figures that appear in paintings and sculptures in the halls of the Uffizi Gallery, the great Venetian Palaces, and the most important churches in Rome. Who were they? Where did they come from? Why were they portrayed, and why did they remain unobserved until these days?
Even in the Sistine chapel, Black figures appear in Botticelli’s Youth of Moses. Black Africans were depicted regularly in Italian Renaissance paintings, but until quite recently, they remained largely unseen by scholars and viewers alike. Several recent studies focus on paintings and sculptures showing Blacks as servants, thus reflecting the presence of African slaves in Italy. Many works, however, including those by Botticelli and Michelangelo, also depict and even celebrate Christian Africans. The strategies used by artists to depict Black figures can provide keys to better understanding specific works and the society that produced them.
For more details and images, see https://www.tiwi.it/en/project/the-black-italian-renaissance/