Wiser but not necessarily glad, Pacheco decided to write a sonnet about Andromeda instead of painting her, McGrath writes—a reflection of the greater transformation that had occurred between the Septuangit (Greek Bible), which had equated “black” with “beautiful,” to the Vulgate (Latin Bible), which in the fourth century had begun inserting the word “but” between them. 4th St and Constitution Ave NW Oil on wood (lid of a cigar box) As Timothy Kendall explains on the PBS website for my documentary series, Wonders of the African World: “Greek traditions told of Memnon, a legendary Nubian king who had fought in the Trojan War; they spoke of Nubia’s people, who were the ‘tallest and handsomest on earth,’ and whose piety was so great that the gods preferred their offerings to those of all other men. (The Atlas Mountains, you’ll recall, are on the African continent, though across the Sahara in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.) The Greeks, however, did not call these people ‘Nubians’ or ‘Kushites,’ as we do today; they called them Aithiopes (‘Ethiopians’), which as previously mentioned, in Greek meant ‘Burnt-Faced Ones.’ They knew perfectly well that Nubians were black-skinned, as are the Sudanese of the same regions today.”. Piero’s biographer Vasari described the landscape of Liberation of Andromeda as “very beautiful, and the coloring sweet and full of grace.”. I knew the reason, that it was because, while my husband had to do with me, I was looking at the picture of Andromeda brought down by Perseus naked from the rock, and so by mishap engendered presently a thing like to her.”, Aware of possible accusations of adultery, Persinna sends her daughter to Egypt, where she grows up to become a priestess of Apollo. The girl's parents accepted his condition and promised him a kingdom as dowry. 43, avenue de Villiers In 1587, his romance Aethiopica was translated into English by Thomas Underdowne, and was considered to be the oldest of Greek romances. Closed. Aethiopica, like scattered Greek vases here and there, created an alternative history for Andromeda on which race-conscious writers could seize centuries later, McGrath explains: the exceptional white princess in a land of black Ethiopians with the power to inspire similar transformations among those captivated by her iconic beauty. And in Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), Ovid makes the following references to the daughter of the Ethiopian king: a. Conspicuous for making direct eye contact with the viewer, this wedding guest may be a self-portrait of Piero di Cosimo. When we fail to insist on the truth implied by her home in Ethiopia, we fall into the same unfortunate trap that allowed ”enlightened” devotees of classical literature—like our earliest American presidents—to rationalize slavery as the inalterable fate of a naturally inferior people, while allowing the West to cling proudly to its belief in the ever-more progressive march of history, despite the fact that it took the U.S. Supreme Court until 1967 to bless what the king of Ethiopia had sanctioned 2,500 years before: interracial marriage between a hero and his princess. As well as the connection with Dana ë, there’s another reason why Titian may have chosen this myth for the poesie, one that is suggested by Ovid’s description of Andromeda and which gives Titian particular scope to revisit the question of the relative merits of sculpture and painting. The reason for Andromeda’s sacrifice is that her mother, Cassiopea, wife of Cepheus, has outraged Poseidon, the Olympian god of the sea, by claiming she is more beautiful than any creature on land or sea. Musicians celebrate the princess’s return. “Adhering to the ‘canonical’ text of the Metamorphosis as much as to prevailing norms of beauty seems to have assured the suppression of the black Andromeda.” As a result, artists over the centuries saw the Andromeda they wanted to see, and, for proof, pointed to alternative sources for her white-skin. Even our old friend, Joel A. Rogers, knew about her iconic impact, though as clever a researcher as Rogers was, in his list of Amazing Facts (No. The sea nymphs fell angry to hear that and complained to Poseidon, the god of the sea. In this translation by A.S. Kline, Ovid’s Perseus associates Andromeda with her country, the Ethiopians, and is stunned by her beauty. Du Bois, the father of Pan-Africanism. Piero di Cosimo: The Poetry of Painting in Renaissance Florence, Piero di Cosimo, Liberation of Andromeda, c. 1510–1513, oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells the legend of the princess Andromeda, who was abandoned as a sacrifice to a sea monster. She’s already a star. All of which gave special resonance to what Du Bois himself wrote in his greatest book of all, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903: “From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. Yet left open is whether she resembles a column of “white” marble, something Perseus had seen before, or “black” marble, something he is beholding for the first time. To drive this point home, he devoted his book’s last chapter to “Andromeda,” pointing his readers to the stars of Africa so long obscured in history and in the skies. Piero painted this version of the tale for the Strozzi family of Florence. Piero painted this version of the tale for the Strozzi family of Florence. That in terms of attraction, “Nor was Andromeda’s colour any problem/to her wing-footed aerial lover” (ii, 643-44); c. And when it came to fashion, “White suits dark girls; you looked so attractive in/white/Andromeda” (iii, 191-192). This work, done on the lid of a cigar box whose blue label can be seen through the paint, was most likely one of numerous preparatory sketches for another Andromeda painted in the same year. It is impossible to tell in isolation, McGrath writes, which is why we need to read The Metamorphoses alongside Ovid’s other writings. The beast killed . (Perseus 1 to Andromeda's parents. 7th St and Constitution Ave NW Reserve your pass. The warrior Perseus, flying on winged sandals, saw Andromeda from above and fell in love with her. was set in Ethiopia. Yes, to him, to us, the story of Andromeda matters because it reminds us we don’t have to insert all-black casts in traditionally white stories like a reverse wood-cutting but to insist on casting them authentically based on their own underlying geography. McGrath points us to a few: 1. For much of our history, the assumption was that Western civilization, from the Greeks and Romans to the Greco-Roman architecture lining the Mall in Washington, was “of, by and for” white people, with black people playing only bit roles as nemeses to slay or servants to summon. After killing the sea monster, Perseus descended to earth and laid down the head of Medusa—another hideous monster he had slain. “Whatever the case,” McGrath argues, “it seems clear that throughout the history of western art figures of female beauty, whether virginal or provocative, sacred or secular, are regularly assimilated to an ideal of European whiteness, even where ethnic origin might suggest they should be represented otherwise.”.