Katharina
How can we ethically engage with the lives of people who were made “invisible” by history?
“Negro faces are seldom beautiful because of their very flat noses and thick lips; similarly, their shinbones and knees as well are too bony, not so good to look upon as those of the whites…”
Albrecht Dürer, 1528
Albrecht Dürer’s 1521 silverpoint drawing, created in Antwerp, Belgium, is the earliest known European portrait of an African woman. Dürer’s notes describe her as a twenty-year-old Moor who served—or may have been enslaved—in the household of Portuguese merchant João Brandão. Black servants in Europe, whether free or enslaved, occupied very low social status.
Little is known about ‘’Katharina”, her name derived from St. Catherine, implies she had converted to Christianity. In the portrait she covers her hair, following common European practices of the time. Her modest bonnet contrasts sharply with the elaborate hoods worn by English noblewomen, while the “V”-shaped collar and surcoat reflect contemporary European fashion.
What did Katharina laugh at? What music stirred her soul? Did she dream of home? The archival silence around her life leaves us with an image that is both intimate and unknowable—a person reduced to lines on paper, a “Moor” in the eyes of Dürer, a slave in the eyes of society. What does it mean to exist in a world that does not grant your life narrative the dignity of record?