A Black Man Among the White Marbles: Depicting the 'Other' in Late Nineteenth-Century Visual Arts

Christos o Arapis (Christos, the Black Man, 1873) is a sculpture by the Greek sculptor Ioannis Vitsaris (1844-1892), depicting an Afro-Greek resident of Athens, Christos Monastiriotis (or ‘Arapis’, i.e. the 'Black Man'). The work was exhibited in Athens at the Third Panhellenic Olympia Exhibition in 1875 generating negative responses. Christos also sat as a model for renown contemporary Greek painters such as Nikolaos Gyzis (1842-1901) and Nikiforos Lytras (1832-1904), whose portraits of the Afro-Greek sitter enjoyed success unlike Vitsaris’s creation. Neither the painted nor the sculptural portraits of Christos have been studied in Greek art historiography, despite the fact that Vitsaris's work constitutes the only documented portrait of a Black man in nineteenth-century Greek sculpture. This lacuna is related to the general absence of studies on the role of race in Greek visual arts. Contributing to the filling of this gap, this paper will apply a reading informed by Post-colonial and Critical Whiteness Studies to Christos's visual portraits - with a special focus on controversial 1873 sculpture - to reflect on the relation of race, white supremacy and the construction of the Other in the visual arts of the then young Greek state. Particular emphasis will be given on the role medium-based conventions and issues of decorum played in Orienatlist painting and Neoclassical sculpture. Were Black Bodies received differently in painting than in sculpture? To which extent white marble as the preferred medium in Neoclassical sculpture shaped the reception of the non-white Other?