Artist Renee Cox:

… “It’s just that African-Americans are invisible, especially in Renaissance art. And Christianity is big in the African-American community, but there are no representations of us.”

First, It’s hard for African Americans to exist in the 15-16th century. We were’nt even a country yet. DUH. Second, I think the hyphenating ‘orgin and country of residence’ is a almost purely American thing. People of African decent in Britian are “British” (If what I’ve hd if right.)

I wish we could all just be “American” here, but that won’t happen. We’ve got to define ourselves to larger subset since, I think, we have very little history of our own, and most people inthe USA aren’t bothered to ln world history. So as a whole we’re a bunch of stupids, and reconized as such by the rest of the world and get all offended for being caught red-handed, offtimes on video, being stupid. Guess what folks, we’re stupid, do something or stop whining about why the rest of the world can kick educational sand in our twerpy pimply faces. it does matter we’re a laughing stock, it does matter an it’ll prove it in about 50 years. Europe understands the long run they’ve had a few dozen centuries to know 50 years is a blink in the history of a people. 200 is a nap. We’re napping folks.

Lastly (and back on topic that I started with), Miss Over-Educated Self-important Artist Doofus, those would have been just plain “Africans”. And yes there were some at least, you can see them especially in the works of Bosearch (1, 2) and a few others have portraits, so there as some, I just can’t name the others I’ve seen off hand withotu spending a few hours to find them.

I’ll grant you it’s rare, but so were they in Europe. Medieval French writer Peter Abelard mentions black clergy and nuns with little more than a passing glance.

The thing about the great pieces of religious art - they weren’t made for the hell of it (sorry had to). They were made because rich patrons (sponsors if you will) wanted to gift a church or hang it in their house to looks especially pious, and filthy rich of course. The patrons usually got themselves painted INTO the picture with their families, which is the high point of commissioning artwork if you like, just like King James commissioning a bible, you can ask it say or look anyway you want.

So these rich sponsors of the great artists are usually slipped into the paintings in cameos sometimes as attending the wounds of Christ or the like. So no, unless the Black person had money, and some did and some had portraits made (I just can’t find them) especially in Italy.

They weren’t American though, I’ll give you that. Let’s get into our way back machine and fix that, maybe we can get our “Great Nation” ruin world’s history, and not just the future too.

And I’m pretty sure if you look at anything from Ancient Egypt you’ll seen some Africans too. Yup, willing to be money on it.