Post by anansi on Sept 8, 2021 23:28:52 GMT -5
The following is some very interesting Picts of the Kongolese delegation to Brazil.
Figure 2b
− Albert Eeckhout, Portrait of a Kongo Ambassadors to Recife, ca. 1637-1644, oil on paper, 30 x 50 cm, Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, Libri Picturati 34, folio 9 and 11. Photograph courtesy of the Jagiellonian Library Photographic Services.
Eeckhout composed the portraits of the five emissaries who visited the Dutch court in Recife in 1642-1643 as part of his duties as official painter.14 The paintings did not stage the Kongo ambassadors in elaborate compositions but rather, as studies, seized their appearance in a documentary mode. The three high ranking men wear colorful mpu caps adorned with shells as well as metal chains, medals, crosses and long strings of coral beads favored across the kingdom.15 (Figure 2a) Two of the three men have draped great lengths of heavy dark wools over their bare shoulders and combined them with wrappers of the same fabric or made of central African dark dyed patterned cloth.16 The third ambassador, probably ready to dance in the typical Kongo martial performance the men staged in Recife, sports a shorter, lighter wrapper of yellow brocade that leaves his bust and arms uncovered and ready to grab his bow and arrows in the course of the acrobatic dance.17 All three senior legates cinched their waist with a red sash, a neatly folded animal pelt, and in two cases a band of white and blue checkered cotton. Their bare-headed attendants draped on their shoulders net-like textiles resembling nkutu. Their jewels, while still opulent, are less exuberant than those of their senior counterparts. They wear simpler wrappers of Kongo cloth adorned with loosely hanging, rather than neatly folded cat skins.
From Lopes’ 1591 descriptions, to Eeckhout’s 1642 paintings, and up to friar Bernardino’s 1750s watercolors, a consistent image of the Kongo Christian elite regalia thus appears across time in these European accounts that, significantly, closely correspond to the findings of archeological explorations of the kingdom of Kongo. The 2012-2013 reexploration of the Ngongo Mbata cemetery in the former province of Mbata, and the new excavation of an elite cemetery at Kindoki, in what was once the Nsundi province, uncovered the remains of men and women interred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century prepared to face the other world armed and adorned with swords, crucifixes, medals, and textiles echoing those worn by their counterparts in the watercolors.
Kongo Christian Fashion
− Albert Eeckhout. Portrait of a Kongo Ambassadors to Recife, ca. 1637-1644, oil on paper, 30 x 50 cm, Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, Libri Picturati 34, folio 1, 3, 5. Photograph courtesy of the Jagiellonian Library Photographic Services.
The defining trait of Kongo Christian regalia, the space of correlation on which this essay focuses, revolved around artful juxtapositions of local and foreign elements, combined and redefined into a new look. The 1591 engravings illustrating Filippo Pigafetta’s edition of Portuguese merchant Duarte Lopes’ eye witness accounts of the region are the earliest European depictions of Kongo Christian sartorial practices. These partly fanciful, partly accurate images come in sharp focus in a series of oil studies painted in Brazil around 1642. Albert Eeckhout, court painter for the governor of Dutch Brazil Johan Maurits van Nassau seized the likenesses of the five diplomatic envoys that the ruler of Soyo sent to Recife around 1642, in five images of men of varying rank within the central African elite, offering a detailed visual record of upper class clothing practices of seventeenth century Kongo.9 The oil on paper paintings are part of the Theatri Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae, a group of images collected and edited in five volumes by the physician Christian Mentzel for the Elector of Brandenburg who had bought the series in 1652 from their original commissioner, the former governor of Dutch Brazil, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen.10 After many movements along the centuries, the volumes are now in the collection of the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow, Poland.11 The five full length portraits of the nobles are part of the third volume of the Theatri Rerum; they appear on pages 1, 3, 5, 9 and 11.12 (Figure 2a and b) The older men are almost certainly Miguel de Castro, Bastião de Sonho and António Fernandes, the three ambassadors sent from Soyo to Recife, high ranking and well educated nobles, who could converse with the Dutch officials in Latin.
− Albert Eeckhout. Portrait of a Kongo Ambassadors to Recife, ca. 1637-1644, oil on paper, 30 x 50 cm, Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, Libri Picturati 34, folio 1, 3, 5. Photograph courtesy of the Jagiellonian Library Photographic Services.
The defining trait of Kongo Christian regalia, the space of correlation on which this essay focuses, revolved around artful juxtapositions of local and foreign elements, combined and redefined into a new look. The 1591 engravings illustrating Filippo Pigafetta’s edition of Portuguese merchant Duarte Lopes’ eye witness accounts of the region are the earliest European depictions of Kongo Christian sartorial practices. These partly fanciful, partly accurate images come in sharp focus in a series of oil studies painted in Brazil around 1642. Albert Eeckhout, court painter for the governor of Dutch Brazil Johan Maurits van Nassau seized the likenesses of the five diplomatic envoys that the ruler of Soyo sent to Recife around 1642, in five images of men of varying rank within the central African elite, offering a detailed visual record of upper class clothing practices of seventeenth century Kongo.9 The oil on paper paintings are part of the Theatri Rerum Naturalium Brasiliae, a group of images collected and edited in five volumes by the physician Christian Mentzel for the Elector of Brandenburg who had bought the series in 1652 from their original commissioner, the former governor of Dutch Brazil, Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen.10 After many movements along the centuries, the volumes are now in the collection of the Biblioteka Jagiellonska in Krakow, Poland.11 The five full length portraits of the nobles are part of the third volume of the Theatri Rerum; they appear on pages 1, 3, 5, 9 and 11.12 (Figure 2a and b) The older men are almost certainly Miguel de Castro, Bastião de Sonho and António Fernandes, the three ambassadors sent from Soyo to Recife, high ranking and well educated nobles, who could converse with the Dutch officials in Latin.
Figure 2b
− Albert Eeckhout, Portrait of a Kongo Ambassadors to Recife, ca. 1637-1644, oil on paper, 30 x 50 cm, Jagiellonian Library, Krakow, Libri Picturati 34, folio 9 and 11. Photograph courtesy of the Jagiellonian Library Photographic Services.
Eeckhout composed the portraits of the five emissaries who visited the Dutch court in Recife in 1642-1643 as part of his duties as official painter.14 The paintings did not stage the Kongo ambassadors in elaborate compositions but rather, as studies, seized their appearance in a documentary mode. The three high ranking men wear colorful mpu caps adorned with shells as well as metal chains, medals, crosses and long strings of coral beads favored across the kingdom.15 (Figure 2a) Two of the three men have draped great lengths of heavy dark wools over their bare shoulders and combined them with wrappers of the same fabric or made of central African dark dyed patterned cloth.16 The third ambassador, probably ready to dance in the typical Kongo martial performance the men staged in Recife, sports a shorter, lighter wrapper of yellow brocade that leaves his bust and arms uncovered and ready to grab his bow and arrows in the course of the acrobatic dance.17 All three senior legates cinched their waist with a red sash, a neatly folded animal pelt, and in two cases a band of white and blue checkered cotton. Their bare-headed attendants draped on their shoulders net-like textiles resembling nkutu. Their jewels, while still opulent, are less exuberant than those of their senior counterparts. They wear simpler wrappers of Kongo cloth adorned with loosely hanging, rather than neatly folded cat skins.
From Lopes’ 1591 descriptions, to Eeckhout’s 1642 paintings, and up to friar Bernardino’s 1750s watercolors, a consistent image of the Kongo Christian elite regalia thus appears across time in these European accounts that, significantly, closely correspond to the findings of archeological explorations of the kingdom of Kongo. The 2012-2013 reexploration of the Ngongo Mbata cemetery in the former province of Mbata, and the new excavation of an elite cemetery at Kindoki, in what was once the Nsundi province, uncovered the remains of men and women interred in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century prepared to face the other world armed and adorned with swords, crucifixes, medals, and textiles echoing those worn by their counterparts in the watercolors.
