Visual Culture and Slavery

Abstract

I discuss the semiotic control imposed on the production of religious depictions after the Council of Trent (1563), achieved by the decree on sacred images and the monitoring of art production by a censor appointed by the Inquisition. I map out the visual discourses that offer representations of blackness, slavery and human diversity and I concentrate on ‘Black Sainthood’ promoted in black confraternities: Baltasar in the Adoration of the Magi, Benedict of Palermo from Sicily, Iphigenia, and Elesbaan from Ethiopia. I reveal the prohibition to members of the oldest black confraternity of participation in public processions and I provide the legal case against them. I consider the eighteenth-century legend of the miraculous blackening of the face of the sculpture of St Francis of Paula in La Habana, in Cuba, as a sign of support to the black brothers after the institution had been taken over by the white nobility.