Renaissance art linked dark skin to Satan and Muslim villainy

Evidence

During the Renaissance, the black Muslim continued to occupy a place in the Christian imaginary as a nefarious figure and enemy of Christendom, as in Figure 2.5, where he participates in the torture of Christ. Satan continued to be called a long list of names related to skin color, including the black knight, black man, big Negro, black Jehovah, and black Ethiopian. Medieval and Renaissance art are certainly not the only places we find such depictions, but they are more overtly linked to Satan than in later periods. The Disrobing of Christ is another painting featuring a villain—a Black Saracen, Moor, or Turk. In this example, a Muslim is shown harassing Christ; also of interest is a character who carries a shield with an African man’s face on it, mirroring a medieval painting of Saracens carrying shields with African men on their faces. In this case, the African is depicted with black skin, a large, hooked nose, and a turban. In these images, we see the persistence of the trope of the Black Muslim. Through his skin tone, he is implicated as a sinister enemy. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 270

Categorization

• XREF: The equation of black skin with Satanic evil in Christian visual culture parallels how the medieval West racialized spiritual enemies—color as moral code, mapping onto the reader’s monster-trope thesis.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 270