Ambassadors in Golden-Age Madrid: The Court of Philip IV through Foreign Eyes.

Abstract

continues to tread its own path. Fracchia’s unifying theme is taken from the title of her book, which are the opening words of a sixteenth-century Afro-Hispanic proverb. A form of resistance, this formulation deliberately stood out against the premise of the time that regarded black Africans simply as commodities like any other; they were seen as “objects” and more than that often as symbols of status. And it was as such they were depicted in material culture, when seen for example in the background of portraits. In Fracchia’s own words: “To be a black person was to be a chattel, a piece of property” (13). At the same time, however, material culture itself could become a site of resistance, and Fracchia’s work also powerfully explores this, through the lens of this same phrase—“Black but human”—and supported by concrete examples. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss how, in part, the all-powerful Spanish church was complicit, and indeed encouraging of, these practices of slavery; on the other hand, the slaves were always supposed to be able to better their condition through baptism and acceptance of Christianity. There were specifically black religious confraternities from the fourteenth century onwards, which proliferated after the Council of Trent, and in which both slaves and freed considered themselves to be a “nation.” Throughout these chapters it is made clear how a recognizable iconography of slavery emerged in material culture through such visible symbols as chains and collars. But Fracchia is also able to use the evidence of material culture to build up a more rounded picture of the realities of slavery for which little other evidence survives, as in Chapter five which uses the macabre tale, Miracle of the Black Leg, to speculate on the violence of Iberian slavery in practice. Much of the reason behind the inclusion of black figures in works of art, however, was about their integration into the wider society of what had now become a vast and diffuse empire. This can be seen most obviously in the iconography of the Adoration of the Magi, but also in the canonization of “black saints” discussed in Chapter 3, such as Benedict of Palermo, himself the child of slaves, who became their patron saint. Appropriately, Fracchia’s final chapter focusses on a different iconic image, Vel azquez’s portrait of Juan de Pareja, who was not only a slave, but also an artist, providing far more information about this fascinating figure than has been available heretofore. This reviewer’s one possible criticism with the argument in toto is that Fracchia begins abruptly in 1480 and then restricts her investigation quasi-exclusively to mainland Spain, setting aside the vast scope of the Spanish Empire. Perhaps this will be the subject of her next book? That aside, Black But Human should be recommended as a valuable and innovative resource for appraising not only this controversial topic, but also the visual culture of Early Modern Spain, afresh. Piers Baker-Bates The Open University p.baker-bates@open.ac.uk