Global Power – White Supremacy

This Master of the Knights of St. John had himself portrayed with a Black servant. In this way the boy is degraded to a status symbol, one that embodies the prince’s global claim to dominance. While from a modern-day perspective this seems hard to understand, it was by no means unusual at the time. To this can be added an aspect of church politics: the bright cross on the coat is directed towards the boy. In this way it symbolises the global missionary aspiration of the Order of St. John. All this rests on the early colonisation and missionary work of Africa undertaken by the Europeans – and the slave trade that went with it.