PART FIVE: Depictions of Black female sitters in 18th-century European art
Although, like the previous century, many images from this period represent Black women as character ‘types’, or as allegories of Africa, there are still a significant number of works which show individual (albeit often unidentified) sitters from a range of social backgrounds. Among the upper classes we see British heiress and gentlewoman Dido Bell and Italian opera singer Vittoria Tesi Tramontini, as well as finely dressed young women (for example, in one painting by an unknown French artist, or in paintings by Italian artist Agostino Brunias which depict free women of colour in the West Indies).
In other works we get a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Black women working as servants, milkmaids, and maid nurses at this time. It is often the identity of these sitters which are hardest to uncover, due to limited archival evidence. For example, the identity of a Scottish milkmaid painted by David Allen is being researched thoroughly by experts in association with the National Gallery of Scotland (where it was recently acquired).
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