The Sibyl Agrippina is a circa 1630s oil painting of a Black woman in the guise of the Sibyl Agrippina (also known as Sibyl AEgyptia). The painting is one of a series of Sybils by Jan van den Hoecke, only recently being re-attributed after being known as an early portrait of an African woman by Abraham Janssens. It is held in the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf.[1]

The Sibyl Agrippina
Sibyl Agrippina
Year	c. 1630s
Dimensions	1,065 mm (41.9 in) × 800 mm (31 in)
[edit on Wikidata]

The motif of a Black woman as "Egyptian" Sybil follows the style of various engravings of sybils in Western religious art. The Sybil is shown here with a whip and a crown of thorns, both attributes of Christ's Flagellation. It was given the Jan van den Hoeke attribution in the 2008 exhibition Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas by prof. Elizabeth McGrath. The inscription reads Siccabitur ut folium (he will be shrivelled like a leaf).[2]

• 
  Sybil Agrippina, by Jan Luyken
• 
  Sybil Agrippina, by Crispijn van de Passe
• 
  Moses and his Ethiopian wife Zipporah, by Jacob Jordaens

References

• Black is beautiful: Rubens tot Dumas, catalog nr. 22, exhibition & catalog in Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, 2008
• "Jacob Jordaens and Moses's Ethiopian Wife", by Elizabeth McGrath, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 70, 2007, pp 247-85

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Sibyl Agrippina.

http://www.duesseldorf.de/dkult/DE-MUS-038015/142769

На других языках

[fr] Sibylle Agrippina (van den Hoecke)