1. Hannah Kate Simon
May 2015
Black Africans in the Art Collection of Isabella d’Este
A pioneer, a champion of feminine intellect, a proto-feminist; a woman ahead of
her time. These are common attributes given to Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua. Her
vast artistic patronage is known by many and surpassed by few. There were very few
artistic endeavors that Isabella did not have a hand in, though there is one aspect of the art
under her patronage that has been relatively overlooked, and that is the inclusion of black
Africans.
Without being able to ask her personally, it is difficult to precisely discern her
intentions and influences for the inclusion of black Africans in the artwork she collected,
or why artists under her benefaction sought to satisfy her with images of blacks. Based on
research aimed towards unraveling this mystery, it can be determined that Isabella’s
interest in black Africans stemmed from a compulsive form of self-aggrandizement
paired with an innate sense of European superiority.
In this day and age, we take for granted how easily social media can be used to
make ourselves known to the world and how simple it is to reach out to those around us
to market ourselves, our products, and our services. Every day we are bombarded with
the news surrounding our friends, neighbors, politicians, and celebrities on the Internet
and television. Of course, such forms of mass media did not exist in quattrocento and
cinquecento Italy. But art and sculpture did.
Isabella d’Este was born in 1474 to Ercole I d’Este and Eleanor of Naples, the
rulers of the Italian state of Ferrara. Betrothed at age six and married at the age of 16 to
Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, together they ruled as Marchese and Marchesa. Her status

2. of wealth and nobility brought with it the finest education as well as access to unending
luxury and comfort. Today she is known as one of the most extensive art collectors and
significant patrons of the Italian Renaissance. While this fact is uncontestable, her
political nature cannot go unconsidered. Isabella would have been the most powerful
woman in Mantua and, much like today’s royals, had a particular image that she was
expected to maintain. Beyond maintaining a mere persona, though, would have been
Isabella’s constraint to present herself as the quintessence of the Renaissance woman, a
woman transcendent among her subjects and contemporaries.
Art was the ideal medium through which she could have promoted and made
herself the envy of any woman as well as propagandized herself as the personification of
perfection. To emphasize her superior status, we can consider Titian’s Portrait of
Isabella d’Este, completed in 1536 when Isabella was in her sixties. Yet, “She requested
Titian paint her as if she were in her twenties.”1
Even at an advanced age, she wished to
be shown as a timeless display of beauty and perfection. More significantly, however, are
the expectations of noble women in 16th
century Italy. A contemporary of Isabella,
Baldesar Castiglione, articulates in his Book of the Courtier proper Renaissance behavior,
the behavior that would have been embodied by Isabella d’Este.
Castiglione writes that a woman, as must a courtier, have “prudence,
magnanimity, continence…kindness, discretion…ability to manage her husband’s
property and house and children, if she is married, and all qualities that are requisite in a
good mother.”2
Furthermore, she “will show herself a stranger to all boorishness; but with
1
University of Chicago. Titian 1534 - 36 Portrait of Isabella d'Este.
http://people.ucls.uchicago.edu/~bwildem/art_hist_labb/old_ren_flash/isabella.html.
2
Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Anchor Books (1959): 207.

3. such a kind manner as to cause her to be thought no less chaste, prudent, and gentle than
she is agreeable, witty, and discreet.”3
That Isabella completely met Castiglione’s standards may be questionable, but
that she did, in fact, meet many of them is not. Scholars and historians alike tend to
discuss Isabella as either an uncontested patron and collector of the arts and champion of
women in her time and in times to come, or as a self-centered woman obsessed with her
own image and in constant pursuit of material wealth. This essay does not seek to prove
nor deny that she fit either of those roles, but that she, along with her favored artist
Andrea Mantegna, was simply the product of her time who, while managing to have one
hand in some of the most influential art of the Italian Renaissance, had another hand in
practices and trends thought by today’s values to be unattractive and prejudice. More
importantly, however, is that the black Africans in her care and their inclusion in the art
she commissioned made Isabella “a stranger to all boorishness,” as Castiglione puts it.
Isabella’s collection is not only unique due to the monumental works included in
it, but also because of its inclusion of black Africans. Few patrons commissioned works
with black subjects, so it is their presences in the art commissioned by Isabella that make
her collection so significant. To make this clear, consider another Renaissance patron,
Ludovico Sforza, whose work included black subjects because of his nickname, ‘il
moro,’ meaning ‘the moor.’ His nickname is due to “good evidence that at an early age
he was known as ‘the Moor’ on account of his dark hair, eyes and complexion: one
courtier asserted that from childhood he was ‘rather black’…and for this reason took as
his impresa a moor in a headband.”4
Though the representation of black Africans in
3
Castiglione, Baldesar. The Book of the Courtier. Anchor Books, (1950): 207.
4
McGrath, Elizabeth. “Ludovico il Moro and His Moors.” Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 65 (2002): 67-94.

4. Ludovico’s art collection may be interesting, their inclusion is for a very simple reason
and cannot compare to their significant role in the collection of Isabella d’Este. The
works in Isabella’s collection that include black Africans present not just Isabella, but
also the black Africans themselves in more critical and crucial ways than a namesake.
This essay will examine such works by Andrea Mantegna made for Isabella d’Este;
Judith, the Gonzaga family’s Camera degli Sposi, and Pallas and the Vices. By doing so,
light will hopefully be shed on the role of the black African in art and the intentions
behind their inclusion in works showcasing the virtues of white Europeans.
Paul H.D. Kaplan’s chapter “Isabella d’Este and black African women” in Earle
and Lowe’s Black Africans in Renaissance Europe has created a topic of conversation
unaddressed in the scholarly work about Isabella d’Este, and has thus provided much of
the basis for this essay. Kaplan explores black Africans in Isabella’s life and in the
artwork of her most favored artists. Decades of scholars have proved Isabella to be an
influential woman, but Kaplan shows a new version of her, never studied, yet influential
nonetheless. He identifies Isabella’s borderline obsessive behavior with Africans as a
fascination with “a female version of an already venerable iconographic type: the black
African attendant to a white European protagonist.”5
Let’s consider Kaplan’s quote alongside Castiglione’s standards for women—
there is a certain sense of servants and slaves revolving around Isabella as players do for
a leading actor, but more so is the impression of Isabella being “the leader of a cause; a
champion.”6
In her mind, Isabella undoubtedly acted in ways she thought most
5
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.
6
The Free Dictionary. Protagonist. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/protagonist.

5. acceptable, noble, and decent. She was the example for all people under her political rule
and social influence. But beyond that, we must ask, what could art do for Isabella d’Este
that nothing else could? This question is essential to shedding some light on her
preoccupation with black Africans, specifically in art. No doubt she was concerned with
promoting herself as a public figure, specifically as a protagonist, as Kaplan puts it.
Kaplan also suggests that, while not pioneered by the marchesa herself, Isabella was
highly interested in a current trend in “aristocratic practice” in which black female
servants became incredibly popular.7
This trend can account for her preference for their
inclusion in artworks commissioned by Isabella; it was fashionable.
But, it stands to reason that the art that includes black Africans is a culmination of
multiple interests, self-promotion and fashion. In the artwork of her collection, there is an
undeniable sophistication and maturity of Renaissance ideals. Chief among these is
humanism and the importance of man (or woman) and his role in the universe. In these
works of art, Isabella aligns herself with figures of virtue and importance, such as Judith
and Minerva, while casting black Africans as figures of subordination, lowliness, and
dependency. We see Kaplan’s argument at play here; Isabella is represented as a heroine
while black women are represented as objects of subordination and subjugation.
Mantegna completed a number of drawings for Isabella depicting the Biblical
account of Judith and Holofernes. Judith, who slayed the Assyrian general Holofernes
upon his siege of her city, is a story often found in Renaissance art. In the story, Judith
and her maid are allowed out of their besieged city by taking advantage of his intoxicated
state, which allows her to seduce him and decapitate him with his own sword, freeing her
7
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.

6. people from his cruelty and oppression. Her maid, of course, has aided her in her plan to
be caught and brought to Holofernes, and helps her sneak his disembodied head out in a
food sack.
Biblical historian and studies professor Robin Gallaher Branch investigates the
textual evidence of the story of Judith and Holofernes, which incorporates her maid more
than one might expect. Judith and her maid must have been absolutely loyal to each other
and dedicated to their task if they were to succeed. This indicates closeness and a bond
that was perhaps shared by Isabella and her own servant, or at the very least suggests her
servant was always by her side. Yet, there is no indication that Judith’s maid was of an
age or race different than Judith herself, contradicted in Mantegna’s art based on this
story. Judith’s Biblical account uses language that suggests a beauty shared by the two
women, a likeness of sorts. The Assyrians say to them “Who can despise these people
when they have women like this among them?”8
(emphasis added). So why depict a
European Judith with an African maid as Mantegna does in multiple Judith works for
Isabella? We might venture to guess that Isabella, represented in these works as Judith,
wished, in a sense, to call more attention and celebration to herself. A white maid would
not have set quite so clear a distinction between maid and master. Mantegna’s depictions
of Judith, then, purposefully depict black servants in the aim of calling more attention and
praise to the white European protagonist, Judith.
Though black servants were found in Europe before Isabella’s reign as marchesa,
black servants reflected a power that white servants did and could not; elsewhere in
Europe, the “social use of [black] servants…was to suggest the potentially universal
8
Jth.10:12

7. reach of imperial power.”9
If Isabella wished to be depicted alongside black
maidservants, then she wished to show both her social and political reach. In Violence in
Fifteenth-century Text and Image, Edelgard E. DuBruck and Yael Even confirm that “By
the late fifteenth century, black slaves were scarce, in high demand, and very expensive;
hence they were only found in the households of wealth members of court cultures…
Young black children were purchased for pleasure and amusement, as surviving archival
records of Isabella d’Este’s letter indicate.”10
Kaplan makes note of this too, quoting
Isabella’s letter “We couldn’t be more pleased with our black girl even if she was
blacker…we think she’ll make the best buffoon in the world.”11
We might apply this quote to the figures represented in the oculus of the Camera
degli Sposi, commissioned by the Gonzaga family of which Isabella was married into.
Mantegna, who completed the room, paints a number of identifiable figures including
members of the Gonzaga family court. However, he renders a number of unknown
figures, most specifically on the oculus of the room’s dome. Mantegna’s oculus, of
course, is fictive; it was constructed via incredibly realistic painting in lieu of an actual
opening in the ceiling such as the one adorning the Pantheon of ancient Rome. In
Mantegna’s oculus, there is one figure in particular which catches the viewer’s eye, and
that is the figure of a black woman.
While the inclusion black figure herself is interesting, it is more significant to
9
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.
10
DuBruck, Edelgard E., and Even, Yael. Violence in Fifteenth-century Text and Image.
Camden House. 27 (2002): 166.
11
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.

8. consider her in the context of the entire oculus, especially her role amongst the other
figures depicted. Of the 14 beings depicted, nine of them are putti. Putti, by nature, are
impish creatures. Some even threaten to excrete on the innocent viewer below.
Additionally, the women in the painting hover dangerously close to a delicately balanced
potted plant, capable at any moment to send it freefalling towards the viewers’ heads.
This demands us to consider all figures, including the black woman, as amusing,
mischievous characters. This, of course, aligns quite seamlessly with Isabella’s
description of her young black girl whom she hopes in her letters to make a “buffoon.”12
Between the black woman of the oculus and the dwarf woman in the court scene of the
Gonzaga’s Camera degli Sposi, the noble’s interest in the exotic is solidified. More
importantly, however, is the fact that we see Isabella’s perception of black Africans
developing from an exotic people belonging to the servant class to having different
behavioral characteristics than their white European masters.
Depicting black Africans as not only as an exotic other, but also as socially,
morally, and ethically inferior is a theme throughout the art of Isabella’s collection in
which they are included. The disparity between the white European protagonist and the
black African cannot be made more clear than in Mantegna’s Pallas and the Vices
(Minerva Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue). In this work, we see Minerva,
goddess of wisdom, dispelling the vices from her garden. Among the vices and
undesirables cast from the garden are figures of lust, represented by Putti, satyrs, and a
centaur. Also included with them is “a black-skinned, monkey-headed hermaphrodite.”13
12
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.
13
Campbell, Steven J., The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the
Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. Yale University Press (2004): 149.

9. This creature sticks out as the only non-white being in this painting. Mantegna has
identified it as Suspicio, or Deceit. In his Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Painting and the
Studiolo of Isabella d’Este, Stephen J. Campbell has articulated the relationship between
blackness and vice: “The black skin of the hermaphrodite in Mantegna’s picture probably
reflects a particular association between Africa and monstrosity; Mario Equicola,
drawing upon the well-known opening of the Ars poetica of Horace, wrote disparagingly
of painters who ‘in their license become like Africa, which continually gives birth to new
monsters.’”14
To truly solidify Isabella’s fascination with depicting black Africans in her
collected art works, we can turn a work in her collection by Antonio da Correggio in
order to show that it was not solely Mantegna’s interest to include them in his pieces
created for her. Correggio’s Allegory of Virtue depicts an attractive black woman seating
to the left of the representation of Virtue. In contrast to Mantegna’s Pallas and the Vices,
this black subject is welcomed in the garden, not expelled. A first impression may lead to
the assumption that Isabella, having a “‘recently captured…apparently 16 or 17 years old
and very pretty…very well made” young black woman in 1522, a year before Correggio
began his work for her, had a change of heart through which she wished to depict black
subjects in a more positive light. Kaplan asserts that the black woman “gestures towards
the earth and the sky in the background” and may lead the viewer to think that “she
embodies knowledge of, and implicitly power over, the world and the cosmos” yet
“Correggio has constructed an image (paradoxical to the modern viewer, at least) in
which a woman of colour represents at once European expansionism and the peoples
14
Campbell, Steven J., The Cabinet of Eros: Renaissance Mythological Painting and the
Studiolo of Isabella d’Este. Yale University Press (2004): 154.

10. whose subjugation accompanied it.”15
We do not see a shift in the sentiments towards
Africans; despite the attractiveness of the black woman in Correggio’s work, she is
actually a confirmation of extensive European political reach along with the white
European protagonism and superiority associated with Italian Renaissance aristocrats and
rulers like Isabella.
Using the artwork in the collection of Isabella d’Este, we may be able to not only
understand the marchesa herself in a different dimension, but also understand the
mentality amongst noble class citizens in quattrocento and cinquecento Italy. In a most
base form, patronizing art was a way of making one’s wealth and status public
knowledge. Furthermore, art allowed nobles like Isabella to represent themselves in the
highest, most virtuosic regard. Art that includes black Africans, in the cases of Mantegna
and Isabella, accomplish these tasks while managing to achieve several other
propagandistic qualities. In Mantegna’s work, he is able to represent Isabella as virtuosic
figures that are highly contrasted with the perceived social, intellectual, and biological
inferiority of black Africans.
15
Kaplan, Paul H.D. “Isabella d’Este and black African women.” In Black Africans in
Renaissance Europe, edited by T. F. Earle and J. P. Lowe. 125-154. University Press,
Cambridge, 2006.