Neapolitan school, 17th century, Allegory of Africa

Neapolitan school, 17th century Allegory of Africa Oil on canvas, 120 x 90 cm With frame, 144 x 110 cm During the 16th century, the tendency to divide the world into four continents developed: Africa, America, Asia, Europe. Each of the continents represented one of the quadrants of the world and corresponded to a cardinal point: Europe the north, Asia the east, Africa the south and America the west. This division of the continents was well suited to the rigorous Renaissance mentality of the time, which had divided the world into four seasons, four elements, four cardinal points, four classical virtues and so on. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, the personifications of the four continents were an artistic theme that enjoyed wide popularity, from painting to sculpture, from prints and engravings to porcelain services. These personifications could be found on four-sided monuments (such as the Fountain of the Four Continents in Trieste and the monument to Cervantes in Madrid) or in front of a single facade. The personified continents very often had female attributes and their appearance was based on an iconography that represented each continent: Europe was dressed elegantly and in regal clothes, Asia was dressed in exotic clothes, Africa and America were half-dressed and were characterized by various exotic attributes. A key reference for artists in the elaboration of this type of image was Cesare Ripa's text, Iconologia of 1603. Here Africa is described as a woman wearing a headdress in the shape of an elephant's head and is accompanied by some animals, such as the lion, the desert scorpion and the asps. She holds a cornucopia in her hand, which symbolizes the fertility and abundance of some areas of the continent. Other depictions from the Renaissance and Baroque periods represent Africa seminude or naked, symbolizing the European perception of the time of Africa as an uncivilized and wild land. Some iconographies of Cesare Ripa's work depict Africa with fair skin, but later the representation with dark skin spread, as it better identified the continent compared to the other four. The allegory of Africa proposed here, based on the model of Francesco Solimena, mixes the aforementioned iconographic traditions: the female figure in the center is in fact barely covered by a white cloth, supported by two cherubs, one of whom has his face covered by the veil itself. She is flanked by a third cherub, who holds the usual cornucopia, and an exotic animal, a lion. The elephant is not recalled by the headdress as for Cesare Ripa, but is present in the background.