The first mechanism of visual violence: the institutional process of erasure that actively omitted Black women from prominent art historical narratives. This practice was widespread because, for many Western artists, “blackness and beauty… was dichotomous,” justifying the systematic exclusion of Black figures from being seen as powerful, desirable, or worthy of serious aesthetic treatment.
The Whitewashing of Princess Andromeda
The Greek myth of Princess Andromeda provides a definitive example of how Western artists chose to ignore source material to maintain a white aesthetic standard.
The image above is an artwork titled “Perseus Freeing Andromeda“ Greek mythographers definitively placed Andromeda as a black princess from Ethiopia. Furthermore, the Roman poet Ovid specifically referred to her dark skin. Despite this, Renaissance art, such as Piero di Cosimo’s Perseus Freeing Andromeda, repeatedly depicts her as white.
In Piero di Cosimo’s painting, Andromeda is rendered as “whiter than all the figures around her,” including a black musician. Art historical records show there was an active debate about her skin colour at the time, demonstrating that artists were aware of the original descriptions. Spanish artist and writer Francisco Pacheco asked why Andromeda was so often painted as white-skinned when several sources said she was black. The consistent depiction of Andromeda as white is a defining instance of institutional erasure in Western art.
The Whitewashing of the Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba, a visitor to King Solomon in the Old Testament, also underwent massive whitewashing and sexualisation in Western art, despite her origins in East Africa.
The Queen of Sheba came from Saba, a kingdom in Ethiopia. Art historian Michael Ohajuru was “shocked to discover” that many paintings of the Queen depicted her as a white woman, such as in Claude Lorrain’s Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, where the figure is white-skinned. The Renaissance saw her whitewashing on a grand scale, jarring with earlier, darker depictions. The erasure was reinforced by changes made in Biblical translation that reflected racist attitudes that diminished Black women. In the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament, the Queen of Sheba originally declares in the Hebrew and Greek translations: “I am black and beautiful”. When this was translated into the Latin Vulgate (405 AD), the word “and” was replaced by “but,” changing the declaration to “I am black but beautiful”. The 1611 King James Bible diminished the statement even further: “I am black but comely”. This linguistic modification removed the equivalence between blackness and beauty, paving the way for her visual erasure and sexualized depiction as an “idolatrous seductress” rather than a prophesiser.