• IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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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      2 months 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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        2 months 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.