Familys Dark Secret Painted Out

[debby]

Family's dark secret painted out

A 16th-century mystery rivals any modern soap
opera. Darryl Fears writes from Washington.

She looks like an ordinary little girl, holding the hand
of an
ordinary woman. But the 16th-century painting of young
Giulia de' Medici with her aunt, on display at
Washington's National Gallery of Art, is now considered
to be the first European portrait to capture a girl of
African descent.

How the granddaughter of a slave came to be painted
with a member of one of the richest and most powerful
families in Italian history - and painted out many years

later - reads like a soap opera script and sheds light
on a
little-studied period of African-European relations.

The girl's identity was uncovered in 1989 by a Canadian
scholar, Gabrielle Langdon, with the help of an
independent art researcher, Mario Valdes.

The reason for the oversight, Mr Valdes said, is that
the
nation's overwhelmingly white art institution directors
and
curators have shown little interest in studying the
presence
of Africans in European works of art.

"Situations like this come to the fore and are not
exploited," he said. "The importance is that it says to
the
black community that we've had extremely powerful
people in European history already, and very powerful
families descend from them to this day."

Giulia de' Medici was the daughter of Alessandro de'
Medici, the first duke of Florence. Historians say
Alessandro, whose mother is identified as Simunetta, a
black slave from North Africa, was the son of Giulio de'

Medici, who became a cardinal and then Pope Clement
VII.

The portrait of Giulia and her aunt Maria Salviati,
painted
by Pontormo, has been in the United States for almost a
century, but Giulia's identity was not discovered until
seven years ago.

The painting was bought from an Italian collection in
1902, and went on display in Baltimore. At the time,
Maria Salviati was the only figure visible. But 35 years

later, when the painting was given a routine X-raying
and
cleaning, the museum's director, Edward King, detected
another figure in front of her. King thought he had
uncovered a rare find - a childhood image of Cosimo, the

great military leader of Florence.

In 1955, another historian discovered a 17th-century
inventory record of Pontormo's portrait describing the
child as una puttina, a common romance language
reference to a girl. Ms Langdon, a former professor at
the
University of Michigan's campus in Florence, took an
interest while researching women in Renaissance
portraiture. This child, she wrote in a thesis, was not
dressed the way a boy of that era would have been, and
the hair, which was parted, also would have been
atypical
of boys. Who, she wondered in print, was she?

Mr Valdes, who had been researching the African
presence in the Medici family, read the thesis, and
thought
he knew. The child resembled both a portrait of Duke
Alessandro and one of Giulia as a woman. He called Ms
Langdon suggesting that it could be be Giulia,
Alessandro
de' Medici's daughter.

Ms Langdon dug some more, and eventually built a
strong case for Mr Valdes's assumption and eventually
published it in the Canadian Art Review.

Giulia de' Medici was a very rich girl, even after her
father
was murdered by an insane cousin in 1537. Her brother,
Giulio, was next in line to be duke, and she could
possibly
have been a duchess. But they were both no more than
six years old. So their cousin Cosimo stepped in. Cosimo

went on to become grand duke of Tuscany and one of
the greatest warriors in Italian history. But when he
first
became duke of Florence, in 1537, many in the city knew
that Giulio and Giulia had more Medici blood than he
running through their veins, Ms Langdon said.

Cosimo commissioned Pontormo to paint a portrait of
Giulia with his mother, Maria Salviati, according to Ms
Langdon. The painting of the protective-looking Salviati

looming over the innocent girl would show Florence that
Cosimo had good intentions toward his cousin's
offspring.

Ms Langdon said Cosimo treated Giulia "extremely well",
and gave her "a handsome dowry".

But Giulia wanted more. She asked for what Cosimo
could not give her - a position equal to that of his
wife,
Eleonora de Toledo. A rift in the family followed, and
her
image was painted out of the portrait sometime in the
1600s.

The Washington Post