• Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    Or hear me out, most depictions are from the renaissance when “Not being white” was a relatively new concept to Painters?

    • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.org
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      19 days ago

      This is a pretty flawed understanding of history.

      Humans have always travelled, in Europe even serfs would hope to go on pilgrimage and Lords generally had to allow it. Although it may only be to a nearby cathedral. Italy was a trade hub, and a relatively short trip by boat to north Africa.

      European painters knew that people came in different shades. As proof, go look at the school of Athens painting.

      • nutomic@lemmy.ml
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        19 days ago

        The average peasant in medieval Europe would certainly never see an African person in his lifetime.

        • NaevaTheRat [she/her]@vegantheoryclub.org
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          19 days ago

          Across all of Europe and all of the middle ages? Sure probably. Never hear of them, see them in art? I dunno, it’s hard to say because we don’t have a lot of documentation on what normal people’s lives were like.

          In the cosmopolitan cities like Prague you probably would. Also any major Mediterranean trade port. Anyone who went on pilgrimage to those places, or along them, probably would. Cutting off Jerusalem to pilgrimage being such a big political deal indicates that many people went there or wanted to, and people loved sharing stories of places.

      • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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        19 days ago

        Are you trying to say any historical event involving white people is racist in and of itself (As opposed to it merely being limited to the tragically high amount of ones directly linked to the exploitation of minorities) or that you are racist and believe renaissance era artwork to be proof of white racial superiority? Which brand of idiocy am I dealing with?

        • IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Demand fuels supply. Art style reflects a population. It’s not hard to guess where the Renaissance is hinting at when everything is ripped white dudes.

          https://asu.pressbooks.pub/race-in-the-european-renaissance-classroom-guide/chapter/teaching-race-in-renaissance-italy/

          Race as a concept and part of Renaissance life, however, has not been a central conversation in scholarship on Italy. This has made it difficult [189] for instructors to know where to start if they do want to bring the subject of race to the classroom. But the primary sources are brimming with racialized references: Petrarch extolled a white beauty, Dante condemned Mohammed to Hell, and Ariosto and Tasso both marshaled crusading themes and deified the violent expeditions of Christopher Columbus in their respective epics (and Tasso borrowed from the Aethiopica to create his heroine Clorinda, a white woman born to Black Ethiopian royalty). Racialized narratives around non-Italians, especially Muslims, Jews, and Black Africans, as well as the violent oppression of ethnic and religious minorities throughout the city-states, influenced this cultural production, and are important parts of Italian Renaissance history.

          • el_abuelo@programming.dev
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            19 days ago

            Are there a plethora of examples of black artwork depicting ripped white dudes? Or are we just saying that White Racism existed in a vacuum?

            • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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              19 days ago

              I was thinking the same. It’s white people painting for rich white people, why would they EVER even think about the color of his skin? The right color is the color of whoever is paying you to paint it.

    • finestnothing@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Jesus is white and ripped because of several very prominent renaissance painters using their hot twink lovers as their models