This art historian says Blackness in the Middle Ages wasn't viewed the same way as it is today

This weekend at Arizona State University, scholars will gather for the latest RaceB4Race Symposium — this time, focused on love. They’re asking: How does race inform the way we conceive of love? And how do we love in times of turmoil?

Well, Denva Gallant has a unique take on that.

She is an assistant professor of art history at Rice University and she’ll be speaking at the ASU symposium. She’s a medievalist and an art historian, and she studies ideas of Blackness in the Middle Ages.

But, as she told The Show, the running thread through her work is narratives.

Rice University

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Handout

Full conversation

DENVA GALLANT: What kind of narratives do we tell ourselves? What kind of narratives do we project?

LAUREN GILGER: That's really interesting. And I'm guessing that Blackness wasn't viewed the same way in medieval times as it is today.

Can you give us a little bit of historical context before we jump into this topic in particular?

GALLANT: Absolutely, absolutely. So Blackness, particularly in the Middle Ages, was seen more symbolically. We have lots of Christian texts that discuss being in the despair of Blackness, being washed clean and made white. And so the idea of sin and corruption are connected to Blackness. And then are the color black, if you will, and then we have white as its opposite, right. You want to be cleansed of your sins.

But I also have to say that I'm really interested in when we think about contact with real Black Africans as well, which doesn't happen in Italy until around the 13th century in any sustained way. So I'm looking at how ideas of Blackness symbolically transfers onto Black bodies. And it's interesting because just like today, there's no one way that people interpreted Black Africans and Blackness.

GILGER: So you are an art historian. You're interested, I'm guessing, in visuals, art. Talk about how you approached this particular topic for this symposium here at ASU.

Like, if you're imagining divine love in Blackness in medieval times, what does that mean from your point of view?

GALLANT: Yeah, this was hard. I have to say, it was hard. When I received the invitation, I almost was thinking, oh, yeah, I can, you know, talk about what I'm working on now. But the challenge was useful and was important.

So we probably don't put love in correspondence with race or any even pre-modern understandings of race, right, which we're talking about hierarchical difference. But when I started to look at this particular image that I, this angel, I just began to see that Blackness could be the source of love. And it just really intrigued me. It's a weird image. And so I was bought in by the weirdness and I stayed for the love.

GILGER: Describe this image for us, because this is radio, obviously, and it sort of looks like what I would imagine a medieval angel to look like, except that she's Black, right?

GALLANT: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So really psychedelic in a sense. She has Black hair and Black skin. Now, when I say Black hair and Black skin, there's no tonal difference. So, you know, when you're looking at a real person, you'll see differences in tone when you're thinking about Black people, obviously. She is just a very solid Black.

She has these green wings that erupt from her body, and then she's wearing this white garment and one of the kind of crazy things is it's open at her stomach to form a mandorla. And within that, mandorla — and by mandorla, I just mean this almond shape — within that is a sword. It's wild, but it's lovely.

GILGER: Yeah, it is. So what do you think this angel being Black in this particular painting represents, then? Is it about race?

GALLANT: No, it's not. It's not about race here. So to give you an understanding of the manuscript, the book that it is featured in, it's an alchemical book. And I won't get too detailed about this, but think about alchemy as this pursuit of understanding how to change one matter into another. The end goal of all alchemy is gold, right.

So this manuscript has alchemical processes, and it uses or it thinks about spiritual ascendance, like becoming really united with God through alchemical premises, right. So the thought is that you go through three stages. Blackness, redness, whiteness. That's what a material would go through, these different stages. But the author also likens it to the soul's progression.

And so often when we think about Blackness, we like the metaphors I brought up earlier. We're thinking about getting it completely away, right. We want to be sinless. But this is so interesting because the Blackness really symbolizes your contrition, your humility. You must be humbled at first to receive God's love.

It's really interesting that they chose a image of an angel to illustrate this concept, right. Because her skin and hair are the things that are Black, right. The things that are so much more human about her. And I think really talks about how no one was without Blackness in the Middle Ages.

GILGER: So it's almost like it doesn't represent race or even sin, really. You're talking about, like, humanity, like the condition of humanity.

GALLANT: Yeah.

GILGER: So what do you think that says then about how Blackness was viewed, how it might have been viewed in the context of love in that time.

GALLANT: I think that it's so interesting because Blackness can be seen generative. It can be seen as a good thing, which is rarely what we see at that time.

And it means for me as a scholar, and hopefully to others, that we can't rely on easy assumptions, right. Like we need to dig deeper and stay with an image or stay with a piece of text longer so that we might reveal its nuances.

GILGER: So this symposium in which you're going to talk about this right, here at ASU, is trying to look at something else here too, like something forward-looking, almost like what history can tell us about something about our world today. What does it mean to love in difficult times, in times of turmoil like we are experiencing right now in the world and in this country?

I mean, do you think there's something we can learn medieval times from this kind of idea of Blackness and divine love that could help us out today?

GALLANT: I do. I do. I think people feel as if when they're at their point of despair, and I think a lot of people feel that way right now that there is no hope or fewer opportunities. But what this image is saying is that actually you need to be humbled in order to receive love and also grow bigger, right.

Maybe that means for the modern context, is your Blackness or your humility might bring you with other people that have share that same kind of feeling, and from that you develop something generative, right. Blackness is not a continued state. It's temporary. And it can actually be quite generative. Instead of thinking about it in a really negative, I don't want to feel this. Sometimes feeling that is exactly what you need in order to strive for love.

GILGER: Yeah. All right. Well, that seems like a good place to end. That is Dr. Denva Gallant, assistant professor of art history at Rice University. She will be at ASU's RaceB4Race Symposium this weekend. Dr. Gallant, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I really appreciate it.

GALLANT: Thank you. This was fun.