Racial Diversity

medievalpoc:

Ashburnham Pentateuch

f. 65v: A mother and father grieve for their child

Spain or Italy (5th or 6th C.)

Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 2334

Consider this manuscript in light of the article I posted 2 days ago about historical European mixed race families. A lot of similar articles go right from Roman Britain to Renaissance Italy, but documents like this that often bridge the historical “gap” because go unremarked upon because they’re often not considered analgous to written records or artistic depictions. What they do, rather, is show that in the imagination of artists during this time, racial diversity was part of their social consciousness and how they envisioned concepts like “a family”. My thanks to Dr Caitlin R Green on bringing this manuscript to my attention.