Why these four Italian paintings?

In the United States November 30th, 2015 a Manhattan man of Hebrew and African descent filed a lawsuit "to get white (Aryan) Jesus art taken down" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, newspapers report. The paintings subject to the lawsuit are four Italian masterpieces: 1. “The Holy Family with Angels” by Sebastiano Ricci, 2.“The Resurrection” by Perugino, 3. “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” by Jacopo Tintoretto and 4. “The Crucifixion” by Francesco Granacci. These paintings are collectively related as“Racist Artworks”. The consequence of such a view was the man suffering from 'personal stress'. The reason is that Jesus is not faithful to his original race features, "black hair like wool and skin of bronze color". On the contrary, Jesus is painted as a blond-haired man.

The question is: why these Italian Renaissance paintings? After all, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is full of Italian religious paintings, which depict Christ as a white man. Actually, Christ is painted as a white man in Flemish, Spanish, German and French art. Apparently, there's nothing different about them from the other religious paintings in the museum. What do these particular paintings have in common?

Important notice: numbers refer to the original list of the Italian works of art that were mentioned in the man's complaint.

2.“The Resurrection” by Perugino (Italian, Città della Pieve, active by 1469–died 1523 Fontignano), 1502, tempera on wood, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

3. “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” by Jacopo Tintoretto  (Jacopo Robusti) (Italian, Venice 1519–1594 Venice), oil on canvas, circa 1545-1550, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

4. “The Crucifixion” by Francesco Granacci (Francesco di Andrea di Marco) (Italian, Villamagna 1469–1543 Florence), tempera and gold on wood, circa 1510, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

It looks like the common feature in the above Italian Renaissance paintings confirms Christ as a blond-haired white man. In addition to the three Italian Renaissance paintings by Perugino, Tintoretto, and Granacci, the fourth painting is a Baroque painting of a lovely Baby Jesus by Sebastiano Ricci. Here Baby Jesus has curly blond hair. That's what we see when we think of angels in Italy: a chubby baby with blond hair. 

1. “The Holy Family with Angels” by Sebastiano Ricci (Italian, Belluno 1659–1734 Venice), circa 1700, oil on canvas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Regarding the rest of the paintings, for sure it was in use in the Italian Renaissance to depict people with blond hair as it was a conventional feature for nobility. Indeed in real life noblewomen dyed their hair blond, which was a status symbol for the aristocracy. The only woman thought out with brown hair in paintings is the Virgin Mary. She is rarely blond-haired.

Another important piece of information is that these paintings are located in sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that are dedicated to Italian Art. The painting by Sebastiano Ricci is on view in Gallery 619 called 'Venetian View Painting' and part of the general collection of 'European Paintings' to which the rest of the paintings belong, respectively: Perugino (Gallery 603:
Filippo Lippi to Botticelli), Tintoretto (Gallery 607: Venetian Sixteenth-century Painting), and Granacci (Gallery 609: Central Italian Painting of the High Renaissance).

For more information about the above paintings, visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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What's the matter with color?

 Carlo Crivelli, Virgin Mary with Child, circa 1480, 

 Pinacoteca Civica Francesco Podesti, Ancona

I am very interested in knowing how the issue about the alleged whitewashed paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be ending up. I am curious to know how long the trial at the Manhattan Supreme Court will take to get settled. My interest comes from the fact that the four works of art judged as stressful for the American man's sensibility are Italian Renaissance paintings by famous Italian artists. Before any comment could come to my mind, the first thing I did was look for the plaintiff on Facebook and send him a message with a special invitation. A few days later I sent an email to the Met sharing with them the reason why I had gotten in touch with the plaintiff. 

Anyway, this issue brought back to my mind a thought I developed by seeing Italian Renaissance paintings. My thought was reinforced by the Metropolitan Museum spokeswoman Elyse Topalian's statement. She said: “When they were painted, it was typical for artists to depict subjects with the same identity as the local audience. This phenomenon occurs in many other cultures, as well.” 

What I think is that important families in the Renaissance period had their features painted as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, and other saints at least for a couple of reasons: 1. They wanted to be remembered as eternal. It's the game of eternity that keeps all of us out of the picture if we take paintings by the word. Indeed we can refer to Italian Renaissance art with the same terms of communication as most of the time paintings are speaking through rhetorical figures: artists depict a subject expressing something else through metaphors, allegories, and other figures of speech. One of the latest rhetorical figures I have discovered in Italian Renaissance paintings is the so-called 'prolepsis': fruits that tell us about Baby Jesus' destiny as the cucumber represents the resurrection of Jesus. 2. By having themselves painted as religious characters, aristocrats in the Renaissance were keeping them safe from being judged or attacked. They could have these paintings shown in churches and public buildings without arousing jealousy and therefore enemies. The reason for doing this is also that in order not to be attacked we have to go from the general to the individual rather than vice-versa.

I would be interested in finding essays about this subject.  Something scientific about this matter would be highly supportive of this thesis. 

On a more practical level and going back to the American gentleman's legal case against the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I think that one has to take into consideration that the four Italian Renaissance paintings subject to attack belong to our past. They are part of a different period of time than the current one. Therefore the issue is totally anachronistic. Secondly, there is no way we can contrast this attack as there are no works of art belonging to the gentleman's cultural heritage with similar features and about which we could say the same thing. Third but not less important, a work of art's copyright expires if older than 100 years. Therefore the four works of art that the plaintiff wants the Metropolitan Museum of Art to be taken down from their walls have become fully part of our common cultural heritage and deserve to be accepted, if only by way of seniority. 

                                                                    

(to be continued)

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