The Spanish Empire’s mid 1600s decline not only invited pirates and loggers into its prized dominions but also marked Spain’s downfall from the heights of fashion. As the monarchy’s stock fell, so too did black. The Thirty Years’ War, Spain’s economic woes and the rising financial might of Protestant merchant states rattled Hispanic Habsburg power. In the meantime, the colourful styles of the increasingly prominent French court became steadily more fashionable, not only among women but also men. The Spanish resisted this change well into the middle of the century and continued to don themselves – and their slaves – in black. For example, master painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez famously portrayed his slave Juan de Pareja in this style in 1650.
Portrait of Juan de Pareja
Portrait of Juan de Pareja, enslaved, painted by his Spanish master Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez in 1650, likely in Rome. Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Portrait of Juan de Pareja (Metropolitan Museum of Art; public domain).
Adrian Masters
Further reading
- Colomer, J.L., and A. Descalso (eds.) (2014) Spanish Fashion at the Courts of Early Modern Europe, vol. 2 (Madrid: CEEH).
- Contreras Sánchez, A. (1990) Historia de una tintórea olvidada: el proceso de explotación y circulación del palo de tinte, 1750–1807 (Mérida: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán).
- Cooper, M. (1974) Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York, NY: Weatherhill).
- Elliott, J.H. (1990) Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London: Penguin Books).
- Harvey, J. (1995) Men in Black (New York, NY: Columbia University Press).
- Jarvis, M.J. (2010) In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680–1783 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press).
- McDonald, K.P. (2018) ‘“Sailors from the woods:” Logwood cutting and the spectrum of piracy’, in The Golden Age of Piracy: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Popularity of Pirates, edited b Head, 50–74 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press).
- Netherton, R., and G.R. Owen-Crocker (eds.) (2007) Medieval Clothing and Textiles, vol. 3 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press).
- Pastoureau, M. (2008) Black: The History of a Color (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
- Record, S.J., and R.W. Hess (1943) Timbers of the New World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).
- Richmond Ellis, R. (2012) They Need Nothing: Hispanic-Asian Encounters of the Colonial Period (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).
- Roquero, A. (2006) Tintes y tintoreros de América (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura).
- Tiesler, V., and M.C. Lozada (eds.) (2018) Social Skins of the Head: Body Beliefs and Ritual in Ancient Mesoamerica and the Andes (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press).
- Valentini, M.B. (1704) Museum Museorum, oder Vollständige Schau-Bühne aller Materialen und Specereyen (Frankfurt am Main: Verlegung Johann David Zunners).
