which the virtuous black heroine, Yarico, falls victim to the machinations of the wicked Englishman,
Inkle. In Samuel Johnson’s fictional work The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) Abyssinia
is represented as a paradise governed by noble savages. The other positive stereotype was that of the
“gallant Moor” – the good, genteel black familiar from the midseventeenth century onwards in ballets,
carnivals, fêtes galantes and the commedia dell’arte (Bindman, Boucher and Weston, 2011b, 104;
Bindman and Weston, 2011, 156–158).
Fantasy, fiction and the discourses of empire often combined with confused and inconsistent iconography
in representations of the home nations and continents of black subjects. For much of the eighteenth century
the parts of Africa best known to Europeans were its western and southern coastal regions, although
knowledge of the continent increased throughout the century. Benjamin West’s lateeighteenthcentury
paintings distinguished between the physical characteristics of North Africans, deemed to share the
ancient wisdom and spirituality of Egyptians, and subSaharan African peoples. Distinctions were made
increasingly between different tribes. However, stereotypical allegorical representations of Africa, as
well as of the other “three” continents (identified from the sixteenth century as Europe, Asia and America)
persisted, especially in public art where notions inherited from antiquity and outdated travel literature
still prevailed. The attributes of Africa included the classical motif of the cornucopia, a reference to its
wealth and natural resources such as ivory and gold, a black magus, and wild animals – for example,
elephants’ tusks and heads, or crocodiles.
Allegorical representations of Africa were frequently confused with those of Asia and America
(Bindman, Boucher and Weston, 2011a, 18–20, 117, 209–215). America was often represented
allegorically as a seminaked Indian, with headdress, bow and arrow; Asia as a source of sensory
pleasure such as floral perfumes. Decorative tapestries, for example, Desportes’ “New Indies” series,
contained a profusion of exotic costumes, flora and fauna. These generally revealed little respect for
geographical or ethnographic accuracy, their main aim being to express pride in French exploration and in
the hold of the Bourbon monarchy over its colonial territories and trading bases. Their representations of
flora and fauna revealed some new knowledge of the natural world, but also some glaring errors, such as
a confusion of the “New” Indies with the “Old.” Essentially works of fiction and state propaganda, they
were based on earlier seventeenthcentury designs by the Dutch artist Albert Eckhout ( c.1610–1665),
which had actually represented Brazilian scenes (Ford, Cummins, McCrea and Weston, 2011, 259–288).
The 1593 allegorical representation of Europe in the Iconologia, the manual of emblems by Cesare Ripa
(c.1560–c.1622), was among many others that stressed the cultural superiority of the continent. Europe
was often represented as bestowing on the “lower” continents the gifts of prosperity, knowledge, the arts
and religion, as is seen in Giambattista Tiepolo’s ceiling painting at the Würzburg Residenz, in which
Apollo (representing ancient European culture) brings enlightenment and the arts to the world (Bindman,
Boucher and Weston, 2011a, 26–31). It was common in prints, map illustrations, decorative wall and
ceiling paintings for the other continents to be represented paying homage to Europe.
In some contexts representations of black subjects demonstrated a greater concern for closer, more
accurate observation. As black peoples became more visible in urban life; for example, as assistants or
servants in artists’ studios, artists responded by attempting more detailed and diverse facial likenesses,
including subtler gradations of skin color. Watteau, Hogarth, the painter, dramatist and set designer Louis
Carrogis Carmontelle (1717–1806), the pastellist Quentin de la Tour and the sculptor Pigalle,
experimented with observational accuracy as scientific interest increased in the causes of differences in
skin color and hair texture. Watteau used his “three color” pastel technique to catch the nuances of light
falling on black skin and made black subjects as individualized as white figures (Bindman, Boucher and
Gates, 2011b, 96–97). The “Head of a Black man” (1777–1783) by SingletonCopley ( Figure 3.7)