ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the relationship between the presence of African slaves within early modern Spanish society and their representation in Spanish visual culture. It contributes to the discussion of meanings and manifestations of marginality in relation to space and culture. The chapter outlines changing religious concepts of slavery. It highlights the spaces occupied by slaves in early modern Seville including those belonging to the city's black confraternities. The chapter examines the oeuvre of both Velazquez and Pareja against the backdrop of the broader religious, social and spatial context of early modern Seville. Seville's slave community was the largest of the Spanish kingdoms. There was a considerable early modern presence of black slaves in Spanish urban centres. The visual and symbolic process of self-Europeanization cleansed the stigma of manumission to reclaim Pareja's social status as a free man at the Habsburg court in Madrid.