Constructing Race in Early Modern Venice

Examines early modern constructions of race through the lens of the materials and techniques used by Venetian artists to depict African people.

Venice’s early modern workshops were celebrated hubs of creative innovation and artistic skill, and yet, as this book reveals, they also produced caricatures of ethnic minorities that not only reflected, but helped form, conceptual constructions of race across Europe during the period.

This book explores the development of these ideas through the creation of figures and symbols, it highlights how Venice, as a global trading centre with a rich carnival and opera culture, gave rise to wider European perceptions of race through its material culture. From the beginning of the 17th century, carved wooden figures known as mori or moretti were on display in the homes of the Venetian elites. Most often designed for practical functions, they also echoed the roles occupied by living servants and enslaved people. Side-lined from scholarly attention, these objects have previously been generalized as European representations of exoticism. However, drawing on extensive archival evidence and material and visual analysis of surviving objects, this book explores how they worked in service to the objectification and racialization of the Black body.

The book returns agency and significance to these sculpted wooden ‘moor’ figures as at it maps out the making process, from structural formation of the body in the woodcarving workshop, to a discussion of the symbolic function of black lacquer and the use of colourful paint, gilding, gold ornament and finishing. While it centres this phenomenon in the specific context of Venice’s social, political, and economic history, it also locates the popularity of these pieces within wider discourses related to race and enslavement. In this wider context, the book draws upon travel literature, artisanal and medical treatises, cartographic material, portraits, and costume books to reveal the subtle and powerful role the decorative arts play in the formation of cultural ideologies.