Three Sub-Saharan African Magi - An African Adoration

Les Rois Mages - The three Wise Men (Mt 2,1) (1)

My Christmas card this year came from a print on my Mum’s wall.

It is the Adoration set not in a stable at night in Italy but outside a mud hut in heat of the day in Sub Saharan Africa. With camels ,horses and their owners resting from the heat of the day in the shade of trees in the distance, in the foreground we have three richly attired Africans bearing gifts for a black baby Jesus, they are attended by a servant cooling them from that African heat. The baby Jesus is presented to the prestigious visitors by the Virgin and Joseph, both African, outside their mud hut with young boys playing traditional instruments to celebrate this illustrious meeting.

The image was both a surprise and delight to me.

It was a surprise, simply because I had subconciously succumbed to the cliché Renaissance image of the Adoration which itself was a fabrication in which the artist made it a contemporary scene, setting the Adoration in a place which was familiar to anyone living in Renaissance Italy, populating the image with figures attired in dress of the day - a totally fabricated but comtempory image.

It was a delight, as here is an artist trying to re-invent the Adoration scene in order to connect with a particular group of people - black , sub Saharan Africans. Just as we have many translations of the Bible aimed at different audiences so, why not have different images aimed at different groups? I am sure St Francis of Assis (1181/1182 – 1226) the originator of the images around the Nativity would have approved as this is simply Biblical education - evangelising the Jesus story.

St Francis believed in a world of vivid images designed to communicate the stories of the Christian faith to the congregation many of whose members could not read or write.....He felt that visual images could bring men closer to God and much of his preaching was fervently visual. (2)

The site I purchased the cards from has a common vision with St Francis, almost 900 years later:

It is urgent and necessary for us to proclaim and to express the message, the life and the whole person of Jesus-Christ in an African artistic language, in our language which is the expression of our daylife, of our culture (3).

This image never ceases to surprise and delight me after seeing so many with St Fancis’s Adoration images Jesusmafa's remains a revelation and source of great pleasure – Three Sub-Saharan African Magus - An African Adoration!

(1) Copyright Vie de Jesus Mafa 24, rue du Marechal Joffre - 780000 Versailles, France

(2) Graham-Dixon, A., (1999), RENAISSANCE, BBC, ISBN 0-56337044-0

(3) P. Pondy , Direction Catholic Schools Yaounde,Cameroon

Black In the Raphael Tapestries for Sistine Chapel ?

I had the great pleasure of seeing the Raphael Cartoons and Tapestries on show at the V&A to celebrate the Pope’s visit.I was even more delighted to spot what I believe to be a Black. You can find him in far left hand scene in the border of the Tapestry of Christ’s Charge to Peter see below.

The border tells the story of the expulsion of the Medici family, previously rulers of Florence, from the city in November 1494. Encouraged and supported by il Moro the Duke of Milan , ignored by The Pope (Rome), Venice and Naples, Charles VIII of France was ready to wrestle Florence from Medici power with little or no resistance from Florence , as it was left beleaguered by its neighbouring city states.

Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici who was later to become Leo X – the Pope who commissioned the Cartoons for the Tapestries from Raphael – escaped during the night disguised as a Dominican monk in order to convey some of the Medici treasures. Those treasures he or his brother could not carry are shown being looted by a mob, represented as warriors in classical armour. The Black is shown helping carrying away some booty – see below.

The Black’s body is framed by an arched doorway, with his intricately woven head has two indistinct faces either side of it. He seems not to be wearing armour unlike others in front of him, his top appears to be made of cloth with torn sleeves in contrast to the looters. His nose is full and flared and he has characteristically negroid thick fleshy lips, unlike the Black Magus from Devon , this Black has been drawn by an artist who at least seen a black man, which is probably true as the Medici had black slaves. On the east wall panel of the Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli a naturally depicted black slave livered in Medici colours is depicted leading the Patriarch’s mule.

The Black in the Tapestry’s border is further differentiated as unlike his co-patriots he is not wearing a helmet instead he is wearing what can only be described as a Rastafarian Tam. Further he is towards the back not leading the group, typical of the Black’s position in Renaissance paintings' compositions where the Black is normally towards the rear as in Giotto Black or the V&A’s Black Magus.

His poor dress in comparison to the others , his distinctive negroid facial characteristics , his odd head gear along with his position to the rear in the group as well as his typical blackman's raggedly beard further differentiate him from the group not just making him – ‘other’ , not one of ‘us’ but making him , to my eye, a Black.

Bibliography

Cardini, F. (2001) The Chapel of the Magi in Plazzo Medici, Mandragora, Florence

Evans, M. et al, (2010) RAPHAEL Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, V&A Publishing, Italy

Hibbert, C. (1974) The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, Penguin, St Ives