Brotherton Library Leeds.- Initial Research

At the Leeds Uni Library looking to gain better footing on black image in western art pre-1700's. At the moment this is as narrow as I can kinda get. Still want to look at the significance of black British historians, maybe this is how i do it. Look at the black image in western art books look at the significance of them?? i don't really know right now but there is something there.

The Image of The Black in Western Art Vol 1:

• 'From 16th Century onward the historical ideas about the blacks were shaped by the development of the Triangular Trade and the growth of overseas slaver'(Bugner, 1976) p7
• Balthazar 'the black wise man' depiction as only black wise man seems to have originated 12th century however the people charged with preserving and restoring artwork (non-cited age) have striped of the blackness off thew statues and paintings to whiten him. 
• 'The importance of the evidence depends also on the place assigned to the clack within a representation. If he is there only as an "extra" in a scene in which the white man is the principal actor, it is clear that his part is secondary. Even if his role is not degrading, and he is not added simply for contrast, his insertion in a composition shows that his image is subordinate to the other factors in which he is only indirectly concerned. It may be thought that the periods during which such insertions occur most frequently thus seems the most unfavorable to the image of the black: instances would be the art of pharaonic Egypt and Christian Europe before the fifteenth Century' (Bugner, 1976) p11
• 'His image is more than a contrast: it represents the dissonant minority' p13

The Ethiopian Seems to be a running theme in this book. maybe look into it? 

• In Ancient Egypt blackness was a sign of fecundity (fruitfulness & fertility)
• Isis the black 

•  Greece also associated black with fertility 
• The European Black Madonnas were connected with the same kind of positive evaluation 

 Christian metaphor of the Ethiopian as a symbol for sin established the image of Africa being that of the devil.

Blackness = Death, Hell, Devil & Evil

How much did this change in the association of blackness lead to the degradation of the black image?

The use of blackness to mean evil in the beginning was not necessary directly related to African people. Most demons in early Christianity were black but did not have african features.

'The blackness that marked the Old Law is whitened in the New'