The Slaves’ Meal

The Flemish painter, engraver, and art dealer Cornelis de Wael spent much of his career in Genoa. He spent a brief period in Rome in the mid-1620s, where he came into contact with the Bamboccianti and their paintings depicting the city’s most humble inhabitants. Many of the paintings and engravings Wael made in Genoa represent daily life in the thriving port city. Muslim slaves of Turkish and Moorish origin were a familiar sight there, as they were used primarily as oarsmen on galleys, alongside condemned criminals and free men. When not at sea, these men were responsible for loading and unloading cargo, equipment, and other supplies, and for maintaining the ships. At the same time, some sought to earn supplementary income by performing tasks such as basic dentistry, creating handicrafts, and engaging in minor trade, as well as cooking and baking for their fellow oarsmen. Although other artists, for example Stefano della Bella, included depictions of both Africans and Muslims from the Near East in his prints (fig. 1), Wael was remarkable for dedicating an entire set of twelve prints to the activities of the enslaved men present in Genoa. First issued in 1645 with a dedication to the Spanish ambassador to Genoa, Juan de Eraso, a staunch supporter of Carlo Doria’s request to rearm the Genoese galleys in 1643, the volume proved such a success that Wael reissued it again in 1647. Wael represented some of the engravings’ subjects in paintings as well, as in the present work.

At the left of the canvas, three slaves prepare a meal for four other captives seated on the ground before them. Their close-shaven heads, with a single lock grown out at the back, and the iron shackles that they wear on their ankles denote their status. At the canvas’s right, two figures serve as reminders that these men were subject to constant surveillance. While one is attired in the garments of a gentleman, perhaps even a shipowner, his more practically dressed companion holds a whistle attached to a chain slung across his chest, denoting his role as a guardian and disciplinarian. In the print related to the painting (fig. 2), the group at the left includes a few further figures, while the two men at right are accompanied by a third figure dressed in oriental fashion, unshackled and wearing a turban. Such individuals were employed to provide captive Muslims with spiritual guidance, and to represent them to their masters. Called a ‘papasso’, he would have had freedom of movement, a private abode both on and off the ship, and managed his community’s place of worship.

Several of Wael’s paintings of such subjects are recorded in Genoese collections, often in groups. In particular, in the list of possessions belonging to the Genoese physician and collector Francesco Maria Ruffo in 1666, ten small canvases by Wael are recorded in his picture gallery, including one depicting slaves drinking from a fountain and another showing them gambling. Two further of Wael’s slave paintings are also mentioned in the sale contract of the collection of Jacques Thierrij in Amsterdam in 1692. As an art dealer as well as an artist, Wael must have been keenly of the popularity of his paintings and prints of these subjects, which were a sort of Genoese equivalent of the bambocciante paintings he had seen in Rome. Though it is not clear whether the paintings preceded the prints or vice versa, it is possible that the commercially minded Waels appreciated the success of the paintings and made the prints after them to capitalize more widely on the taste for works of these genre subjects.

Another painting depicting slaves drinking from a fountain, vertical in format but also related to one of the prints in the series, is in a private collection.[1]❖

Laura Stagno

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