Post-Slave Studies Slavery & Abolition: A Journal Of Slave And

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This article was downloaded by: [Fondren Library, Rice University ]On: 27 March 2013, At: 12:32Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKSlavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave andPost-Slave StudiesPublication details, including instructions for authors and /loi/fsla20African Abrahams, Lucretias and Menof Sorrows: Allegory and Allusion inthe Brazilian Anti-slavery Lithographs(1827-1835) of Johann Moritz RugendasRobert W. SlenesVersion of record first published: 08 Sep 2010.To cite this article: Robert W. Slenes (2002): African Abrahams, Lucretias and Men of Sorrows: Allegory andAllusion in the Brazilian Anti-slavery Lithographs (1827-1835) of Johann Moritz Rugendas, Slavery & Abolition:A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, 23:2, 147-168To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/714005238PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEFull terms and conditions of use: nsThis article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that thecontents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae,and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall notbe liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of thismaterial.

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 147Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013African Abrahams, Lucretiasand Men of Sorrows:Allegory and Allusion in theBrazilian Anti-slavery Lithographs(1827–1835) of Johann Moritz RugendasR O B E RT W. SLENESThe burial procession, rising into view from the valley below, has halted forthe priest to read from his book of ritual (Figure 12). The dark skin of thedeceased and of the mourners, together with the palm trees on the left,remind the early-nineteenth-century observer that this is not Europe, despitethe Italianate church dome in the distance. Indeed, the legend to thislithograph identifies its subject as the ‘Burial of a Black Man in [Salvador]Bahia’. This is the last of 100 illustrations in J.M. Rugendas’s MalerischeReise in Brasilien (‘Artistic Travels in Brazil’), a book published ininstalments, in separate German and French editions, between 1827 and1835.1‘Black’ (neger), as used by Bavarian artist Rugendas, has the meaningthat was current in Brazil at the time; Portuguese negro, while denotingcolour, strongly connoted ‘African’, ‘slave’ or ‘ex-slave’. Whether or notthe deceased in this picture is a bondsman, his simple bier indicates modeststatus. Yet he has clearly ‘died well’. His body merits the attendance of apriest, several acolytes, pall-bearers dressed in their ‘Sunday best’ and asubstantial cortège. Furthermore, it is not destined for the municipal field(located in the valley, far to the right), where indigents and most slaves wereinterred; thus it must have been en route to a church or churchyard forconsecrated burial.2Rugendas, however, is not concerned here only with ethnographicaccuracy. He insists on associating the corpse of the ‘black man’ withanother body: that of the suffering Christ, the ‘Saviour’ honoured by thecity’s name. Shown explicitly on the crucifix at the head of the processionand implicitly in an acolyte’s banner bearing the sign of the skull (symbolof Golgotha, the place of the Crucifixion), Christ’s body is present above allin the church of ‘Our Lady of Mercy’ (Piedade, or Pietá), which presides in

232s&a09.qxd14816/07/200216:08Page 148REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV EDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013F I GURE 1 2‘ B U R I A L O F A B L A C K M A N I N B A H I A’(JOHANN MORITZ RUGENDAS)the background, metaphorically bringing the Virgin, mourning her Son,centre stage.3 The ‘black man’ here has not just died ‘in Christ’; he hasbecome the ‘Man of Sorrows’ – a striking image, particularly given its placein the sequence of Rugendas’s prints. Artistic Travels is organized in aHumboldtian manner, first presenting Brazilian ‘landscapes’ (human beingsin the natural environment) and then focusing on people, with sectionsdevoted sequentially to ‘portraits and dress’, ‘manners and customs of theIndians’, ‘European life’ and finally ‘manners and customs of the blacks’.Why does Rugendas leave the section on blacks/Africans/slaves to the end,and why does he want the Christianized ‘black man’ – indeed, the ‘blackman’ subsumed to the suffering Christ – to be the last image the readerreceives from Brazil?The lithographs in Artistic Travels have usually been regarded asmimetic in character, based (as their legends insist) on sketches ‘drawnfrom life’. Indeed, Rugendas spent three years in Brazil (1822–25) as theartist in a Russian scientific mission led by naturalist G.H. vonLangsdorff. Although he broke with Langsdorff shortly before returningto Europe, his Brazilian work reflected his employer’s concern for

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 149Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S149accurate representation of mankind in nature, as well as his own solidartistic training.4 The combination much impressed the doyen ofnaturalists at the time, Alexander von Humboldt, on whoserecommendation the Artistic Travels was published.5 The book’s prints,for their part, largely remained true to Rugendas’s final pictures; clearly,the artist closely supervised the lithographers.6 Thus, one may properlyspeak of ‘Rugendas’s lithographs’, even though he signed his name toonly three of them.Yet, despite the artist’s concern for accuracy, I argue here that theMalerische Reise was more of a ‘lamp’, directed with political intent, thanit was a ‘mirror’. Rugendas had an intellectual and artistic agenda thatguided his ‘documentary’ work and that must be understood before hisscenes may be safely scanned for other purposes. An examination of thesubjects and sequence of his prints in conjunction with his text (written byhis friend and collaborator, the journalist Victor Aimé Huber7 ) demonstratesthe artist’s repudiation of the slave trade and slavery, his defence of the‘moral character’ of Africans and his optimism for the future of Brazil as aracially mixed nation. A close reading of ‘Burial of a Black Man’ and otherlithographs that highlight the suffering bodies of male and female slavesthen reveals the central place of allusion and allegory in his argument. Byassociating Africans with biblical moral figures and perhaps a classicalheroine, Rugendas exalted them as worthy founders of the new Braziliannation. Yet, his unusual images, conceived in Paris largely between 1826and 1828, did not express a radical political vision; rather, they expoundeda conservative Christian reformism that was typical of mainstream Frenchanti-slavery thought of the time.The illustrations regarding ‘the manners and customs of the blacks’begin with a dramatic portrayal of the Middle Passage. In ‘Blacks in theShip’s Hold’ (Figure 13), the frequent dearth of water on the slavers,referred to explicitly in the text of Artistic Travels, is personified in theAfrican who is straining to obtain drink through the hatch and in the deadbody being removed by sailors; indeed, ‘lack of water’ is transformed bythese figures into a powerful metonym of desperation and death.Subsequent prints then follow Africans from their disembarkation in aBrazilian port to their sale in a slave market, their trip into the interior ofthe country and their integration into the slave quarters on their newowner’s estate. In other scenes, bondspeople are portrayed working hard– and being punished – in rural, then urban contexts. ‘Black’ dances andamusements are shown next: the batuque, the lundu and the ‘game’(martial art) of capoeira. Although these are clearly of African origin,Rugendas’s interpretation of them is that of English traveller Henry

232s&a09.qxd15016/07/200216:08Page 150REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV EDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013F I GURE 1 3‘BLACKS IN THE SHIP’S HOLD’(J.M. RUGENDAS)Koster, whose book Travels in Brazil (1816) he quotes at length. Kosterbelieved that Africans were rapidly being assimilated into a new LusoBrazilian culture. Dances brought by the slaves ‘are now as much thenational dances of Brazil as they are of Africa’. Furthermore, culturalborrowings between masters and slaves bring ‘the superior and hisinferior closer together’. Rugendas adopts the same viewpointelsewhere in his book, by showing people of the master class dancing alundu in front of a plantation ‘big house’; clearly, the ‘black’ lundu of thelast section must be seen in this context.8Indeed, the penultimate illustration in the book (Figure 14), portrayingthe ‘Festival of Our Lady of the Rosary, patroness of the blacks’, with its‘King and Queen of Congo’ elected by the Rosary brotherhood’s members,makes Koster’s influence explicit. For Koster, such holidays, even withtheir ‘Congo’ royalty, had the effect of distancing Africans ‘from anythought of the customs of their own country’. Luso-Catholic Christianity, heargued, rapidly brought Africans under the aegis of European civilization,unlike English Protestantism in the Caribbean. Rugendas cites Koster onthis question in his text, making the same comparison with the Englishcolonies, and then transforms argument into image. He shows the King andQueen of Congo wearing European clothes (a detail stressed by Koster) and

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 151A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S151Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013F I GURE 1 4‘ F E S T I VA L O F O U R L A D Y O F T H E R O S A RY,PAT R O N E S S O F T H E B L A C K S ’ ( J . M . R U G E N D A S )places a Catholic church prominently in the background. The point isreiterated in the final ‘Burial of a black man in Bahia’, where integrationinto Christianity appears complete. By the time Rugendas’s readers reachedthis point, however, the book’s text had informed them that manumissionwas common in Brazil and that freed people of colour had some access tosocial mobility. As a result, they probably concluded that the protagonist ofthis lithograph had not only ‘died well’ spiritually, but also socially – at thevery least as a freedman.9With some reflection, Rugendas’s readers also would have perceivedthat he had taken them ‘full spiral’, to the original point of departure butat a higher level in the story: for the Christian death of the ‘black man’ inBahia is implicitly contrasted to the death of the African in the initial slaveship. The text explains this opposition, still echoing Koster: ‘One maythink it strange to find among the blacks [Africans] of Brazil so few tracesof the religious ideas and customs of their country; but in this fact onesees proof that for the blacks the crossing which takes them to America isa veritable death’ [my italics]. In Brazil, however, Africans ‘begin a newlife’, and ‘rapidly become devout Christians’. In sum, the dead man in the

232s&a09.qxdDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 201315216/07/200216:08Page 152REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV Eship’s hold is not just a metonym for the horrors of the slave trade; he alsorepresents the original African’s social and cultural death. In contrast, thefinal burial in Bahia portrays the black’s rebirth in Brazil, nowincorporated into free society under the sign of European civilization andChristianity.10The argument may sound familiar: when, in 1933, Gilberto Freyreformulated his thesis about the acculturative nature of BrazilianCatholicism, he based his conclusions heavily on Koster.11 Yet, neitherKoster nor Rugendas had Freyre’s concern with constructing an integrativeLuso-Brazilian ‘tropicalism’ as a final objective. If they gave Brazil and theEnglish Caribbean different scores on their acculturative powers, they didthis primarily as a strategy for demonstrating the ‘moral capacity’ ofAfricans and their descendants: that is, the capability of these people toassume work responsibilities, feel the higher sentiments of family love andaltruism and assimilate Christianity.12To be sure, both Koster and Rugendas took pains to representthemselves as dispassionate observers. Rugendas’s text, for instance,advocates gradual not sudden abolition for Brazil. Furthermore, althoughhe rejects racist arguments for the defence of slavery, he also distanceshimself from those ‘philanthropists’ (meaning the Abbé Gregoire, widelyconsidered a social radical) who affirmed the total intellectual and moralequality of Africans and Europeans. In fact, Rugendas even declares that‘every day things occur which, putting aside the advantage of civilization,prove the real and physical superiority of whites over blacks’. At the sametime, however, he leaves open ‘the possibility that “blacks” may one daybecome equal to whites in every respect’.13 The two phrases are notcontradictory, when examined in the light of the dominant theory of thetime regarding human origins: that which affirmed both ‘monogenesis’(common ancestry), and ‘recent’ creation. As the historian Philip Curtinobserves:With polygenesis disposed of, it was necessary to assume that these‘inferior races’ had become inferior at some finite point in time – andnot long ago, since the creation itself was thought to be only a fewmillennia away. If their ‘inferiority’ had been acquired so quickly, itmight disappear with equal speed.14Indeed, evidence that Rugendas viewed racial natures as fluid and‘blacks’ as ontologically close to Europeans, can be found elsewhere in thetext and particularly in his illustrations. Evoking contemporary ideas aboutthe malleability of racial characteristics under the influence of climate andenvironment, Rugendas asserts that ‘Crioulos’ (blacks born in Brazil) are

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 153Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S153proof that the ‘African race’ has improved in the New World, not only‘spiritually’ but also ‘physically’.15 He illustrates this idea in his portrayalof the Rosary festival (Figure 14), where several blacks to the left of theKing of Congo, in a group which rises above the level of the crowd and ispositioned beneath an araucária pine tree (a native species), have moreEuropeanized features and ‘single-plane’ faces than most of the others inthe scene. Some of those in the main crowd, in fact, are convenientlyprofiled to display their prognathism and receding foreheads and chins –surely a reference to Petrus Camper’s and Julien Joseph Virey’s thesesabout the reclining ‘facial angles’ of Africans compared to those ofEuropeans. Indeed, the musician with protruding stomach, just to the rightof the bagpipe player, is an exact representation of Virey’s 1824 descriptionof the physical characteristics of blacks, offered in a book which later (inEnglish translation) contributed to the resurgence of polygenism in theAmerican South. Virey’s blacks, in addition to being characterized,irrespective of habitat, by prognathism, a ‘retreating chin’, ‘lowerforehead’, and ‘teeth set obliquely and projecting’, had a stomach organwhich was rounder and extended further upwards than in Europeans;F I GURE 1 5‘ DWE L L I NG OF T HE BL ACKS’ (J.M. R U G EN D A S)

232s&a09.qxdDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 201315416/07/200216:08Page 154REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV Efurthermore ‘almost all’ had ‘slender calves, knees always half-flexed, atired demeanour, the body and neck inclined forwards [and] protrudingbuttocks’.16 Yet, although Rugendas includes this strange figure, mostpeople in his crowd are not caricatured in this way; witness especially thestanding flag-bearer to the left and the King and Queen of Congo, withtheir elegantly-proportioned bodies, erect postures and much lessprognathic profiles. In sum, Rugendas alludes to Virey’s theses aboutAfrican facial angles and bodies, only to subvert them, first as reliabledescriptions of most Africans and second as measures of innate, permanentdifferences between blacks and Europeans.All of this is consistent with the fact that Rugendas’s defence ofAfricans’ moral capacity begins on their home continent. His text qualifiesAfrican societies as ‘civilized’ (albeit less so than European), not ‘barbaric’or ‘savage’ as they were more commonly portrayed.17 Drawing attention tothe existence in Africa of powerful empires, large cities and commerce, itblames the continent’s current woes on the disruptive impact of the slavetrade. The message is clear: Africans transported to the New World had noinner impediment to achieving ‘civilization’ anew.18The argument is continued in the lithographs. In ‘Dwelling of theBlacks’, portraying slaves in front of their quarters during their time off,Rugendas asserts Africans’ capacity for self-directed labour (Figure 15).There are clear signs here of industriousness, not just leisure: a man plaitinga mat, assisted by a woman preparing palm-leaf fibres for the task; two othermen who, although resting, seem to have just finished another mat,stretched on a frame; finally, a water-carrier in the background. Lest therebe any doubt about the meaning of this scene, Rugendas insists that‘everyday experience shows with what indefatigable activity the slaves takeadvantage of all free moments, indeed even their periods of rest from heavylabours’. The words and the image challenge the presumption of slavery’sdefenders, that ‘blacks’ ‘only work under compulsion.’19‘Dwelling of the Blacks’ also confounds slave-owners’ beliefs thatAfricans did not have the moral capacity to form strong family ties. To besure, the several adults and children portrayed in this scene, certainlyresidents of more than one hut in the slave quarters, are not explicitlyorganized into family groups. Rugendas’s intentions, however, are clearfrom his composition, which in the context of his contemporaries’ disputesover slavery establishes an ‘internal narrative’ of family formation. Most ofthe human figures are arranged in a triangle, with the couple that is linkedby pipe and firebrand – or, more precisely, the woman who emerges fromthe hut, in command of the firebrand and the ‘hearth’ from which it came –positioned prominently at the upper apex. With this central couple thus

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 155Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S155highlighted, many viewers of the time would have perceived thesignificance of the representations of certain children. Immediately belowthe apex of the human triangle, two youngsters direct their gaze at thecouple: one (the infant) with arms outstretched towards them, the other (thestanding figure) with a posture that suggests quiet admiration.The ‘keepers of the hearth’ could be these children’s parents;alternatively, in view of the two adult women who seem to mediate theirrelationship with the youngsters, they could represent the founders of anextended family. Whichever the case, politically aware observers of the timewould have recognized that Rugendas was invoking an argument dear toopponents of the slave trade, but inverting the terms in which it was usuallypresented. Artists and writers more commonly asserted the capacity ofAfricans to have strong family feelings by showing their anguish uponbeing separated – thus simultaneously confounding the slavocrats’ denial ofthis capacity and denouncing the consequences of forced labour. This wasthe strategy pursued by Sophie Doin, in her novel La Famille Noire (1825),and before her by English artist George Morland in the painting ‘ExecrableHuman Traffic’ (1788, reproduced as a print in Paris in 1794), which wasprobably one of Doin’s points of reference.20 (In both Doin’s and Morland’sworks, an African mother and her child are separated from their respectivehusband and father.) Rugendas himself may have deliberately played uponhis readers’ acquaintance with Morland’s image in constructing his picture.The firebrand demonstrating the union between the central couple in‘Dwelling of the Blacks’ sharply contrasts with the raised stick of the slavetrader, which threatens their separation in ‘Execrable Human Traffic’.Likewise, the standing child observing this couple in Rugendas’s lithographis portrayed from the same angle as the Africans’ son in Morland’s pictureand has similarly upraised arms; his (or her) erect body, however, expressesserenity, not the desperation conveyed by the English painter’s figure withhis forward-leaning posture, backwardly-thrust head and arms raised evenhigher, as he clings to his mother.In any event, politically-attuned viewers would have perceivedRugendas’s unusual concern to show family creation, not disruption. Andthey would have understood this reversal, not as a defence of slavery, whichthe artist condemned explicity in his text, but as evidence for a prospectivecase in favour of ‘black’ moral character in Brazil and elsewhere. Rugendaswas keen on showing Africans’ success in integrating themselves into EuroBrazilian civilization, because he knew that this would be powerful proof oftheir innate ability to do so in other parts of the Americas. A scene showingthe destruction of families by Brazilian slavery would not have suited thispurpose. Neither would it have contributed to his argument about the

232s&a09.qxd15616/07/200216:08Page 156REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV EDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013F I GURE 1 6‘NEW BLACKS’ (J.M. RUGENDAS)acculturative nature of Brazilian institutions, particularly the country’sallegedly mild form of forced labour, to which he refers repeatedly: mostnotably in an illustration highlighting the palm paddler rather than the whipas the typical ‘domestic’ punishment.21The proof of these assertions is that when his theme was the slave trade,Rugendas was quite willing to demonstrate Africans’ moral capacity byshowing their pain at parting. In ‘New Blacks’ (Figure 16), picturingrecently arrived Africans awaiting sale in a Brazilian slave depot, the twofemale figures almost certainly would have called to readers’ mindsstandard images about the trade’s impact on family ties. To be sure, thebared breasts of the larger woman might, on first sight, have evokedstereotypes about Africans’ sensuality, contradictory to bourgeois ideals offamily. Rugendas counters this impression, however, by giving this woman

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 157Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S157a stooped posture – head and shoulders drooping forward, the back curvedin such a way as to make the belly prominent and the breasts somewhatreceding – which suggests modesty, and at the same time is in keeping withher dejected mien. The result, in this case, is nudity ‘naturalized’, relievedof sexual connotation. Thus the desolate central figure, her eyelids ladenwith melancholy, and the smaller woman looking up at her with sadsolicitousness would have recalled stories such as those told by Doin andMorland: here again were a mother and her child, torn by sale from theirrespective husband and father.Some of Rugendas’s more specialized readers, however, would haveperceived a deeper meaning in this illustration; for the artist would seem toallude here to the description of a particular case of separation recounted byLuiz António de Oliveira Mendes in an 1812 memorial on the Portugueseslave trade, published by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon andwell-known to students of Brazil.22 Indeed, Rugendas’s scene appears toillustrate several points in Mendes’s text. The enclosure in which the slavesfind themselves could well be the Brazilian depot described by Mendes: ‘alarge [humid] storeroom on the ground floor, which is underneath themaster’s residence’. Furthermore, the figure at the left, examining his bigtoe with one hand, while pinching his other thumb and index finger together,as if securing a small object, seems to bring to life Mendes’s description ofthe bicho do pé. This scourge of newly-arrived Africans ‘was like thesmallest flea’, and especially proliferated ‘in the feet, in the corners andaround the edges of the toenails’. Finally, the leaves on the floor – placedby the artist next to the renowned reinvigorant, sugarcane, to indicate theirmedicinal nature – resemble those of the castor-oil plant or of the ‘herb ofSaint Caetano’, which Mendes says were commonly used by traders to treatthe skin ailments of slaves awaiting sale.23It is Rugendas’s two women, however, who seem to leap from the pagesof the Portuguese author’s book. Mendes describes a family separation thathad occurred in Luanda: ‘In one of the lots [of captives] there had been acertain slave woman, with a daughter aged seven to eight years, who hadlost all taste for food because of the effects of banzo [extreme melancholy].’The cause of the woman’s depression was that she believed ‘her husband,whom she loved deeply, had given her, with ingratitude, to harsh slaveryand, with her, her much-esteemed daughter, as if returning her pledge ofmarriage’. The woman’s ‘eyes were two rivers’ – the drooping eyelids anddownturned mouth of Rugendas’s protagonist fit the description – and she‘continually sat with her head on her knees’, as does the seated slave in thelower right corner of our artist’s illustration, conceivably portraying theemotion of the scene’s central figure at a different moment. The Luanda

232s&a09.qxdDownloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 201315816/07/200216:08Page 158REPRESENT I N G T H E B O D Y O F T H E S L AV Ewoman’s refusal to eat eventually brought about her death, upon which theEuropean witnesses to the event ‘esteemed her child as the daughter of aheroine of love and constancy’.24Mendes’s text, actually written in 1793, ostensibly proposes reforms inthe African trade with a view towards making it more lucrative for colonistsand king. Yet it is also a defence of the moral character of Africans.Although Mendes’s story about the woman begins as if it were anarchetypical slavocrat’s tale – note the husband/father’s apparent perfidy –in fact it subverts planter prejudice by making its protagonist a model ofconjugal love, who surrenders herself to death when convinced of herpartner’s treachery. Furthermore, the story is not extraneous to Mendes’sbook, but an essential part of the argument. Mendes is careful to give itauthority before his readers by attributing it to a slave trader, who could notbe suspected of undue ‘afrophilia’. In addition, the characteristics of thisheroine are those which he recognizes in Africans in general, whom he calls‘faithful, resolute, extremely constant [constantíssimo] and susceptible, inthe utmost degree, to feelings of love and hate’.25 Mendes here may evokestereotypes of the passionate nature of peoples of ‘hot climes’, but he alsoengages in battle with contemporaries who portrayed non-Europeans asinconstant and therefore fundamentally different from whites in their moralcharacters.One suspects, then, that Rugendas was moved to ‘illustrate’ Mendes’stext because the cause it defended resonated with his own and because manyof the scientists in his audience, beginning with Humboldt, would haveunderstood the allusion and appreciated its meaning.26 Yet it may have beena peculiar detail in an alternative version of Mendes’s text that triggered hisdecision. I refer to an allegory that is present in a limited ‘second printing’of the Portuguese author’s essay, which may have reinstated the originalmanuscript in reaction to earlier censorship.27 The allegory is constructed bygiving the African ‘heroine’ a name that makes her story compellinglymemorable. Mendes here adds the crucial information that the child ‘waslater called Lucretia’, and notes that ‘this having occurred more than 20years past, only two years ago there were letters [received attesting] thatLucretia was alive’.28In so baptizing the daughter, the intent was clearly to honour thecharacter of the ‘heroic’ mother. Given the context, readers would haveperceived the name as an allusion to the chaste Lucretia of Roman legendwho, when raped by the Etruscan king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, preferredsuicide to dishonour for herself and her beloved husband. This Lucretia’saction supposedly provoked the uprising which overthrew the much-hatedTarquin dynasty (which had already ‘raped’ Rome) and founded the

232s&a09.qxd16/07/200216:08Page 159Downloaded by [Fondren Library, Rice University ] at 12:32 27 March 2013A L L E G O RY A N D A L L U S I O N I N R U G E N D A S ’ S L I T H O G R A P H S159Republic. The story of the African Lucretia does not have these overtpolitical overtones.29 Still, the two women are similar in other ways: in theirdesire for death after being ‘violated’ and above all in the peculiar moralqualities which lead them to ‘suicide’. Like the African woman in Mendes’saccount,

Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: . for the Christian death of the 'black man' in Bahia is implicitly contrasted to the death of the African in the initial slave ship. The text explains this opposition, still echoing Koster .

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