A pair of Italian polychrome and giltwood carved figural torchères, Venice, 19th century

Representations of people from the African continent have featured in various art forms in Western Europe for centuries, but it was really with the strengthening of European trade links between Africa and Asia from the latter part of the 17th century, a time when Europeans were engaged in the slave trade, that the fashion for depicting Black people developed. In particular, Venice, with its vast maritime trading empire, specialized in this kind of representation. This form of art was also a response to the North African occupation of Southern Europe, in particular the Iberian Peninsula where the North African influence was felt for more than 800 years. In the 17^th and 18^th century there was a curiosity in and an exoticization of the black body, there being few Africans in Italy and Northern Europe at the time.