Keynote: Cécile Fromont, 'Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola'

Friday 8 April, 11:30 - 12:45

Early modern central Africa comes to life in the vivid full-page paintings of Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of the Kongo and Angola missions composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. Though European in form and craftsmanship, I argue in this talk that these visual creations did not emerge from a single perspective but rather were and should be read as the products of cross-cultural interaction. With this intervention, I aim to model a way to think anew about images created across cultures, bringing to the fore the formative role that encounter itself played in their conception, execution, and modes of operation.

Speakers:
Kate Cowcher, Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews
Cécile Fromont, Associate Professor African and South Atlantic Art at Yale University

About Cécile Fromont:
Cécile Fromont’s writing and teaching focus on the visual, material, and religious culture of Africa and Latin America with a special emphasis on the early modern period (ca 1500-1800), on the Portuguese-speaking Atlantic World, and on the slave trade.