Post by anansi on Nov 25, 2014 22:39:32 GMT -5
This image is part of a weekly series that The Root is presenting in conjunction with the Image of the Black Archive & Library at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.
Standing beside the august figure of King Solomon, a black attendant silently witnesses a novel dispensation of justice by the great king of Israel. The attendant wears a double-layered tunic, cinched at the waist, with closely gathered sleeves around the wrists. The only trace of pigment now remaining on the figure, once brightly painted, is a durable coating of black covering his hands and the characteristically African features of his head. In his left hand he holds a large sword within its scabbard, most of which has been broken away. When it was intact, the lower end of the mighty weapon rested directly on the footstool of Solomon’s throne.
Out of view to the right, a horizontal frieze of figures relates the dramatic struggle over a newborn infant between two women. Only one can be right, and so Solomon adopts the unorthodox but cunning strategy of proposing to split the child between them. The true mother nobly offers to give the baby to the false claimant rather than see it suffer such a horrible fate. Upon hearing this selfless demonstration of maternal love, Solomon reunites the mother with her child.
The moving scene is set over a monumental portal on the north side of the great cathedral at Chartres, not far from Paris. The magnificent building stands as the first fully developed example of Gothic architecture. Carved around 1220, the nearly life-size figures display the recent mastery of naturalistic human form and psychological expression by a host of talented though anonymous sculptors.
In related medieval scenes of execution, the agent of oppression is often a grimacing black soldier or headsman who personifies the very nature of the miscarriage of justice. Here, however, the treatment of the incident is anything but disturbing. The medieval narrator leaves the precise moment of the story tantalizingly vague. Most scholars feel that the black soldier beside the king is drawing his sword from its scabbard in preparation for executing the dreadful order. An equally justifiable point of view, however, is that Solomon’s decision has already been rendered, and so the swordsman sheaths the instrument of death, looking down contemplatively as he does so.
Standing beside the august figure of King Solomon, a black attendant silently witnesses a novel dispensation of justice by the great king of Israel. The attendant wears a double-layered tunic, cinched at the waist, with closely gathered sleeves around the wrists. The only trace of pigment now remaining on the figure, once brightly painted, is a durable coating of black covering his hands and the characteristically African features of his head. In his left hand he holds a large sword within its scabbard, most of which has been broken away. When it was intact, the lower end of the mighty weapon rested directly on the footstool of Solomon’s throne.
Out of view to the right, a horizontal frieze of figures relates the dramatic struggle over a newborn infant between two women. Only one can be right, and so Solomon adopts the unorthodox but cunning strategy of proposing to split the child between them. The true mother nobly offers to give the baby to the false claimant rather than see it suffer such a horrible fate. Upon hearing this selfless demonstration of maternal love, Solomon reunites the mother with her child.
The moving scene is set over a monumental portal on the north side of the great cathedral at Chartres, not far from Paris. The magnificent building stands as the first fully developed example of Gothic architecture. Carved around 1220, the nearly life-size figures display the recent mastery of naturalistic human form and psychological expression by a host of talented though anonymous sculptors.
In related medieval scenes of execution, the agent of oppression is often a grimacing black soldier or headsman who personifies the very nature of the miscarriage of justice. Here, however, the treatment of the incident is anything but disturbing. The medieval narrator leaves the precise moment of the story tantalizingly vague. Most scholars feel that the black soldier beside the king is drawing his sword from its scabbard in preparation for executing the dreadful order. An equally justifiable point of view, however, is that Solomon’s decision has already been rendered, and so the swordsman sheaths the instrument of death, looking down contemplatively as he does so.
www.theroot.com/articles/history/2014/11/blacks_in_western_art_black_swordsman_in_king_solomon_s_court_a_watershed.html?wpisrc=see_also_article#
This is new to me we are all aware of the St. Maurice sculpture but this is the first seeing this the Root is doing an excellent job on this series.
