Step one of the cycle

Nine painting traditions, six of them African and Diaspora.

We move one tradition at a time. Study the one that's open, and the next one unlocks — with the Cast bank ready to put Nubian, West African, Afro-Latina, and Afro-Caribbean models in the picture.

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Faras Nubian Murals

Faras, Nubia (northern Sudan) · 8th–12th century

For four centuries the Christian kingdoms of Nubia covered the walls of their cathedrals with painted saints, bishops, and royal patrons. When the Nile was dammed in the 1960s, an international rescue dig lifted the murals of Faras Cathedral off the walls before the water rose. What came out was a complete painting tradition nobody in Europe had catalogued: dark-skinned haloed figures in white robes, frontal and calm, painted in earth pigments on lime plaster. It is Nubian art about Nubian people, made long before anyone needed to argue for that.

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