as nearby children make merry with earthly creatures.14 There is also clear biblical symbolism, as the gods and nymphs recline harmoniously at the intersection of four rivers named in the Bible: the Nile, the Ganges, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.15 Rubens created this work during the twelve-year truce between the Spanish Netherlands and Flanders. The painting celebrated the peace between the two sides and offered an allegory of the abundance made possible through unification. It also contained the artist’s none-too-veiled hope that his own river town of Antwerp might, in these tenuous times of peace, return to its prewar glory.16
The Four Rivers of Paradise, inspired by Rubens’s return to Antwerp, was one of two portraits he painted that year to feature an African woman. The woman in The Four Rivers of Paradise is an Ethiopian nymph, the consort for the river god of the Nile. Her body is largely obscured by the deep blue cloth adorning her frame. But what is visible of her upper torso indicates that she has the same enviable undulating curves as the fair-skinned nymphs.
Rubens’s portrayal of an African woman in The Four Rivers of Paradise reveals the influence of Renaissance masters a century earlier. But unlike many earlier artists, Rubens portrayed an African woman who bears no marking of an inferior social status. On her head she wears not the simple headdress that would have been given her by Titian or Dürer but a tiara with glistening jewels. She is not wearing bedraggled clothes nor clutching a humbling dustcloth. Instead, she is covered with a luxurious blanket and held lovingly by the (white) god of the river Nile. In all these respects, this African woman is the physical and social equivalent of the white women depicted.17
The Four Rivers of Paradise in many ways represented a typical artistic portrayal of African women in the Low Countries at the time. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, artists from the region typically lacked access to live models and had taken to making black women appear simply as dark-skinned Europeans.18 In this respect, the portrait did reflect the era and environs, but it was not representative of Rubens’s overall take on black women.
Figure 2.2. Peter Paul Rubens, The Four Rivers of Paradise, 1615. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
A very different treatment of black femininity can be seen in another work depicting a black woman, Venus in Front of the Mirror. Produced during the same year as The Four Rivers of Paradise, Venus in Front of the Mirror is one of his most iconic works. In the portrait, a voluptuous Venus sits in a garden with her back to the viewer. The dimpled flesh of her ample backside is partially covered by a shimmering white cloth. On her left is an impish winged cupid, who holds up a mirror so that Venus might admire her own beauty. In looking at herself, she meets the viewer’s gaze in an unabashed recognition of our presumed approbation. On her right is her black maidservant. Her kinky hair is visible under a white cap. A single braid from the left side of her head barely stretches over the cap to connect with the other braid from the right. Her short curly hair is contrasted with Venus’s long, straight blonde hair, which the maidservant holds in apparent admiration. And, while caressing Venus’s sleek locks, the handmaiden lifts the flaxen hair to give the audience a better view of Venus’s hindquarters.
Figure 2.3. Peter Paul Rubens, Venus in Front of the Mirror, 1615. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
The message of Venus in Front of the Mirror and that of Bathsheba, completed in 1635, are in striking contrast to that of The Four Rivers of Paradise. In the former two, black women serve as a mirror for white women’s beauty. Their small, lean frames and short, coiled hair are used to communicate not just difference but destitution, a sense of something wanting. By contrast, the well-apportioned physiques and abundant locks of the white Venus communicated plenitude and blessedness.
Rubens’s depictions of black women in Venus in Front of the Mirror and Bathsheba signal a clear shift from the status-based social distinction that was common during the High Renaissance. These renderings were indicative of the growing aesthetic distinctions being imposed between black and white women. Black women were no longer deemed the bodily equals but social inferiors of white women. Now, black women’s very being was intended to evoke inferiority. In other words, whiteness stood not just for social supremacy, but general superiority.19
Rubens’s changing representations of black women might be better understood if we examine the context in which these works were created. Antwerp, his adopted home, had been a cultural and economic powerhouse and a key port for the lucrative slave-trading industry since 1490.20 But the fall of Antwerp in 1585 destroyed the city’s position as a center of trade activity, slave or otherwise. Throughout the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the majority of slave traders were from Portugal. Once on amiable terms with the residents of Antwerp, Portuguese merchants cut a wide arc around the city during the war, cutting the port off from valuable resources.21
Figure 2.4. Peter Paul Rubens, Bathsheba, 1635. Image courtesy of Art Resource, New York.
There is little surviving evidence to indicate the number of Africans in the city after the siege. Although many other major port cities were seeing an increase in their African populations, it is very likely that the black population in Antwerp would have plummeted. Fewer slaves were coming in. In addition, in an Inquisition-style decree, the Spanish mandated that Antwerp’s Jewish and Protestant populations convert to Catholicism or vacate the city. Tens of thousands fled, heading north to Amsterdam, the pulsing new hub of the Low Countries. At the time, many of the city’s Africans were slaves or domestic servants to the city’s large population of Sephardic Jews.22 Perhaps owing to the diminishing populations of black people in Antwerp, Rubens did not appear to have worked with black female models. His eclectic approach of representing black women as dark-skinned Europeans and small young servant girls to goddesses and high-born women appears to be a result of the lack of live models to work with.23
Regardless, Rubens did appear to have his mind made up about one thing: white women were the most beautiful women in the world. Rubens wrote a treatise on beauty and proportionality, one that contained an entire chapter devoted to the specific good looks of women. The manuscript, Theory of the Human Figure, was reminiscent of the late Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer’s Four Books on Human Proportion in its studious return to classical theories of art and beauty. Indeed, while Rubens never took to mathematical calculations of perfect proportions, he wrote a statement on female beauty that could have easily been borrowed from the Renaissance master, claiming that “the body must not be too thin or too skinny, nor too large or too fat, but with a moderate embonpoint, following the model of the antique statues.”24 Moreover, like Dürer and other masters of the prior century, he paid homage to Venus and the classical ideal while also describing in detail the value of added padding in the proper places.25 According to Rubens, “The hip, or the tops of the thighs, and thighs themselves should be large and ample, … the buttocks should be round and fleshy, … the knees should be fleshy and round.”26
Where Rubens differed from Dürer was in his admiration of a peculiarly “white” kind of beauty. In his descriptions of the proper amount of flesh and fat that should be present on a woman’s body, he also states, “The skin should be solid, firm and white, with a hint of a pale red, like the color of milk tinged with blood, or a mix of lilies and roses.” Of the voluptuous backsides he fetishizes, he prefers that they remain “white as snow.”27
Rubens made only one reference to a black woman in the text. In a section titled “How the Ancients Represented Their Goddesses,” he notes that “Venus was represented by the Lacedaemonians being armed for battle. In Arcadia, she was black. In Cyprus she had a spike, a masculine air, and feminine garb. In Egypt, the goddess of love was represented with wings.”28 The point of mentioning the legend of the black Venus in Arcadia,
