Post #3 Investigation of the origin of the black page in portraiture

Investigating the origins of the phenomena of the black page in portraiture.

1530s Paris Bordone (Italian painter, 1500-1571) Portrait of a Man in Armor with Two Pages.

In this post I plan on taking a step back and looking at the motif that would lead to the commission of this painting.  In my first post, I took a look at the phenomena itself, and took a cursory try at analyzing the painting for motive of its creation, and balanced that against some facts of the time and talked about how it was oppressive in nature. I related it to the idea of borders in a philosophical sense through talking about how the "exotic" culture is being used in the work. In my second post I wanted to "take a step closer" and look at some specifics of the painting. Who was the artist, what can we learn about the location, zeitgeist of the time, and other information about specifics of the painting. I connected it to the idea of borders in a physical sense in talking about the actual distances between Milan and the slave trade. In this, I plan on taking a larger step back, and looking at the origin of the motif of this style of painting, how the idea of using the idea of borders and other cultures in this sense came about.

As mentioned previously, Bordone was an apprentice of the great painter Titian. Titian is quite famous for a portrait of Laura Dianti, which similarly shows a noblewoman with her hand on a black page. Laura Dianti was a very rich noblewoman who was well respected, and maintained a small court until her death. I have learned that keeping black retainers was a fashionable Italian practice, and the blacker the servants the more "valuable" they were as retainers. They were often given as gifts between noble households, often as part of estates. Essentially blacks were "expensive and rare imports" and it has been said "None but a princess in those days could indulge in the luxury of a European page". As the slave trade to Italy began to decline, owning black slaves became more expensive, and by this time many slaves were being freed. They would often work as gondoliers, rowing small ships throughout canals, and as they adapted to this role every person of "value" would own at least one gondolier for transportation purposes, thus we can infer that owning a black page or gondolier became a status symbol because of this necessity of transportation, along with the  preconception that having black retainers or slaves meant extreme wealth, We can then easily see how this would translate into portraiture, people usually pose with things that make them seem more cultured, intelligent, or wealthy. If a black page was a well known symbol of those things, the idea that they would be in portraiture, the same as posing with a book or a neoclassical column, follows. Obviously, this relates to the idea of borders because of the cultural exploitation of this race, the cultural impression they have on this important artform is essentially as an object, like how one would pose with a prized horse or vase. Throughout all of these portaits of rich noblemen with black pages the origin of the pages, beyond the most cursory information, is unknown. Simply because it was not relevant, the purpose of the page in the portrait is simply to exist to show their "exoticism". 

Overall, what should be taken from this project is the manner Africans were exploited in portraiture. They existed to show the wealth and importance of the rich nobleman that commissioned their portraits, and essentially because they were in fashion they were included. If Neoclassical columns were in fashion, the black page could easily be replaced by a column or pretty much any other object. The effect of the clashing of Italian and African borders in this sense of portraiture as an expression of this combination of cultures is rather sad, the main impression of African culture is essentially as objects of prestige. It is symbolic of not just a physical, economic, or humanitarian oppression, but also philosophically, in that these people were exploited just because of their location of origin and color of their skin, and were fundamentally replaceable in these portraits with ordinary everyday inanimate objects. 

Sources:

Kaplan, Paul H.D. "Titian's "Laura Dianti" and The Origins Of The Motif Of The Black Page In Portraiture." Antichita Viva (1982): n. pag. Print.