Union of Saint and Venus
- On View
- Visual Arts Gallery
- Museum Maps
- Objects in this Location
- Exhibition
- Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience.
- Created by
- Ekpuk, Victor, Nigerian American, born 1964
- Subject of
- Baartman, Saartjie, Khoekhoen, died 1815
- Date
- 2012
- Medium
- acrylic paint with paper, plastic and glass on Masonite
- Dimensions
- H x W: 72 × 42 × 2 5/16 in. (182.9 × 106.7 × 5.8 cm)
- Caption
- The Union of Saint and Venus was created in response to the exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe that was on view at the Walters Museum in Baltimore in 2012. According to Ekpuk, the painting "was inspired by the portrait of Alessandro de Medici, also known as il Moro ("the Moor"), the black Duke of Florence and Penne (1530-1537). He is rumored to have been born out of a relationship between Pope Clement VII from the Medici family and a black slave woman, Simonetta da Collevecchio."
- In the painting, two of the pope's golden croziers, or staffs, are literally translated into a symbolic phallus that penetrates, or more specifically rapes, the figure of Sarah Baartman. Baartman (c. 1770s-1815) was a South African Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited in Europe in the early 19th century as a medical oddity because of her large buttocks and given the moniker the "Hottentot Venus." After her death her body was dissected and her brain, skeleton and genitals were displayed at public museums in Paris for over a century. Her remains were not returned to South Africa until 2002. Baartman’s violated body is also symbolizes the continent of Africa.
- Description
- Painting depicting the pope's mitre composed of red-tinted textual clippings and encrusted with faux-jewels. The text includes both Latin and English copies of the Dum Diversas, images of the Brookes Slave Ship, and advertisements for the purchasing of enslaved persons. A white line figure wears the mitre and uses two golden croziers as a symbolic phallus to penetrate the black abstract figure of the South African Khoikhoi woman Sarah Baartman, which lies horizontally beneath the pope figure. The light grey background is composed of many varied and repeating abstract figures including a ship carrying enslaved persons, shackles, a trio of enslaved figures, and crosses.
- Place made
- United States
- Place depicted
- Africa
- Europe
- Portfolio/Series
- Slave Narrative
- Classification
- Visual Arts
- Topic
- Africa
- Art
- Catholicism
- Christianity
- Gender
- Religion
- Slavery
- Trans Atlantic slave trade
- Violence
- Women
- Credit Line
- Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Object number
- 2019.23
- Restrictions & Rights
- © Victor Ekpuk
- Permission required for use. Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.