Toussaint Louverture: Agostino Brunia

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Creating “Toussaint Louverture”: A display of Agostino Brunias’ verite ethnographie and the conception of an image.

“I know how to move the people, but also where to stop in my own actions so that when I strike, I shall be felt and not seen”. Toussaint Louverture is viewed as the “hero” of the Haitian Revolution; the man who singlehandedly saved the nation of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and established a new republic, so that all who inhabited it could be viewed as free and equal. Louverture as the “man”, the “hero”, and the “image” became immortalized through material objects, establishing a lore that sets the precedent for future revolutionaries to follow. The set of late eighteenth-century buttons attributed to Italian artist Agostino Brunias …show more content…

Stylistically, why would have someone commissioned these types of buttons? Fashion played a critical role in marking codes of distinction and social positions. Buttons, for example, were seen as symbols of economic status in which the use of luxurious materials and delicacy of its craftsmanship correlated the wearer’s rank or position. There was a wide variety of button styles and the preference of decoration changed in accordance with the taste of the period. Men were the primary wearers of such buttons, as women’s clothing wouldn’t distinctly acquire buttons until the nineteenth-century; held together using lace, pins, sashes, and bows. Some buttons depicted scenes of landscapes, portraits, floral/faunal imagery, etc. and could be embroidered or worked in metal and feature ceramic, enamel, fabric, tortoiseshell, gemstone, glass, etc. decorative elements. At the time, most buttons were produced in France and typically the size of a fifty-cent piece. French goods were widely exported across French-owned territories, which make this ascription to Louverture feasible, as Saint-Domingue was controlled by France. The colony of Saint-Domingue had a large French population of about 40,000 citizens; all of whom would have been familiar with French ornamentation of style and the dissemination of European fashion trends. The variances of European clothing on the figures on the buttons are also an interesting choice that can be observed. The juxtaposition of nude and clothed figures can convey ideas of colonialism, assimilation, and possibly religion. It is unusual for the period for people of color, or Africans to be dressed in fashionable European regalia given the systematic views towards slavery and

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