The Prince of Florida held in The Green Vault
"Although facial features and skin color are a black African, but the body tattoos ethnological exactly represented have him as well as a Native of Florida, as well as the precious necklace and bracelets, jewelry chest, the feathered crown, the loincloth and the footwear that in after an engraving Dinglinger workshop were designed. Whether the two richly tattooed American Prince, who came as prisoners of war the English Captain Pecht to Dresden in 1722."
What is The Green Vault? The Grünes Gewölbe (English: Green Vault) is a unique historic museum that contains the largest collection of treasures in Europe.[1] Founded by Augustus the Strong in 1723.
Because the Green Vault was founded during and era in Europe when all people of dark skin origins would have been referred to as moors (meaning black) the art is titled as:
Moor with Emerald Level, Balthasar Permoser (sculptor), Wilhelm Kruger (sculptor), Johann Melchior Dinglinger (jeweler). Emerald: Gift of 1581; jewelery and sculptural works: probably 1724. Pear wood, painted, silver, gold, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topazes, garnets, almandine, tortoiseshell, Emerald; 63.8 x 29.0 x 31.0 cm, H 58 cm without crown. VIII 303. Green Vault © Dresden State Art Collections 2013
The statuette would be without the Baroque interior design of the Green Vault 1723-1724 did not occur, because it owes its existence to the desire of Augustus the Strong, set up a treasure of his art collection in the new museum treasury. It was here in 1581 as a gift from the Emperor Rudolf II to Elector August came, occupied with sixteen sometimes very large emerald crystals chunks of limonitic rocks. The dark green gems come from a few years earlier developed emerald mine in Chivor-Somondoco (Colombia). At the behest of Elector Augustus should this "natural wonder" in the "Chur-Princely bull and tribal, to eternal Gedächtnüß" be preserved. Balthasar Permoser created for the expansion since 1723 in the nascent treasury museum that really most original of all possible means of presentation, the sculpture of a "Moor". The young, powerful man in dark brown lacquered pearwood, the associated border on a tray of tortoiseshell presents casual and smooth the Colombian Emerald level, is not a resident of Africa but an Indian. Although facial features and skin color are a black African, but the body tattoos ethnological exactly represented have him as well as a Native of Florida, as well as the precious necklace and bracelets, jewelry chest, the feathered crown, the loincloth and the footwear that in after an engraving Dinglinger workshop were designed. Whether the two richly tattooed American Prince, who came as prisoners of war the English Captain Pecht to Dresden in 1722, have had a role model for the Mohr statuettes, devoid of probative value. However, they must have been admired as a true exotic, because the chronicler Johann Christian Crell reported that after only three years of teaching both languages well-Saxon and were eventually baptized.
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