In this Book
- The Art of Conversion: Christian Visual Culture in the Kingdom of Kongo
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
- Series: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia
summary
Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the west central African kingdom of Kongo practiced Christianity and actively participated in the Atlantic world as an independent, cosmopolitan realm. Drawing on an expansive and largely unpublished set of objects, images, and documents, Cecile Fromont examines the advent of Kongo Christian visual culture and traces its development across four centuries marked by war, the Atlantic slave trade, and, finally, the rise of nineteenth-century European colonialism. By offering an extensive analysis of the religious, political, and artistic innovations through which the Kongo embraced Christianity, Fromont approaches the country's conversion as a dynamic process that unfolded across centuries.
The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.
The African kingdom's elite independently and gradually intertwined old and new, local and foreign religious thought, political concepts, and visual forms to mold a novel and constantly evolving Kongo Christian worldview. Fromont sheds light on the cross-cultural exchanges between Africa, Europe, and Latin America that shaped the early modern world, and she outlines the religious, artistic, and social background of the countless men and women displaced by the slave trade from central Africa to all corners of the Atlantic world.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-vi
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-x
- List of Illustrations
- pp. xiii-xx
- Introduction
- pp. 1-20
- 1. Sangamentos
- pp. 21-64
- 3. The Fabric of Power, Wealth, and Devotion
- pp. 109-172
- 4. Negotiating Time and Space
- pp. 173-214
- Conclusion
- pp. 267-272
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469618739
Related ISBN(s)
9781469618715, 9781469618722, 9781469641249, 9798890847294
MARC Record
OCLC
899261580
Pages
328
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No