This book, first published in 2005, explores the whole range of black African experience and representation across Renaissance Europe. It offers an interdisciplinary guide to the variety and complexity of black African life in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, and how it was affected by Renaissance ideas and conditions. List of illustrations vii List of contributors xii Acknowledgements xiv Notes on the text xv Introduction: The black African presence in Renaissance Europe 1(16) Kate Lowe PART I CONCEPTUALISING BLACK AFRICANS The stereotyping of black Africans in Renaissance Europe 17(31) Kate Lowe The image of Africa and the iconography of lip-plated Africans in Pierre Desceliers's World Map of 1550 48(22) Jean Michel Massing Black Africans in Renaissance Spanish literature 70(24) Jeremy Lawrance Washing the Ethiopian white: conceptualising black skin in Renaissance England 94(19) Anu Korhonen Black Africans in Portugal during Cleynaerts's visit (1533-1538) 113(12) Jorge Fonseca PART II REAL AND SYMBOLIC BLACK AFRICANS AT COURT Isabella d'Este and black African women 125(30) Paul H. D. Kaplan Images of empire: slaves in the Lisbon household and court of Catherine of Austria 155(26) Annemarie Jordan Christoph Jamnitzer's `Moor's Head': a late Renaissance drinking vessel 181(32) Lorenz Seelig PART III THE PRACTICALITIES OF ENSLAVEMENT AND EMANCIPATION The trade in black African slaves in fifteenth-century Florence 213(12) Sergio Tognetti `La Casa dels Negres': black African solidarity in late medieval Valencia 225(22) Debra Blumenthal Free and freed black Africans in Granada in the time of the Spanish Renaissance 247(14) Aurelia Martin Casares Black African slaves and freedmen in Portugal during the Renaissance: creating a new pattern of reality 261(19) Didier Lahon The Catholic Church and the pastoral care of black Africans in Renaissance Italy 280(23) Nelson H. Minnich PART IV BLACK AFRICANS WITH EUROPEAN IDENTITIES AND PROFILES Race and rulership: Alessandro de' Medici, first Medici duke of Florence, 1529--1537 303(23) John K. Brackett Juan Latino and his racial difference 326(19) Baltasar Fra-Molinero Black Africans versus Jews: religious and racial tension in a Portuguese saint's play 345(16) T. F. Earle Bibliography 361(40) Index 401