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Kneeling African figure

late 18th or early 19th century
Not on view
By the eighteenth century, Venice’s wealth was increasingly connected, much like the rest of Europe, to the transatlantic slave trade. In 1700 the sculptor Andrea Brustolon carved enchained African men as ornamental supports for the Ca’Rezzonico, a palace on the Grand Canal, spreading the trend for “blackamoors,” stylized and often racist depictions of Africans. Used as domestic decoration, works with such imagery proliferated throughout the Grand Tour market and were later exported to the United States. Probably from the nineteenth century, this glass figure, which once held a vessel, speaks to the subject’s disturbing popularity even in the era of emancipation.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Kneeling African figure
  • Date: late 18th or early 19th century
  • Culture: Italian, Venice (Murano)
  • Medium: Glass, furnace-worked and blown
  • Dimensions: Height: 7 5/8 in. (19.4 cm)
  • Classification: Glass
  • Credit Line: Gift of James Jackson Jarves, 1881
  • Object Number: 81.8.253
  • Curatorial Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

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