Dressing Angelo Soliman

Abstract

Angelo Soliman, a black African, conveyed his heritage and his full participation in eighteenth-century Habsburg society through a mixture of eastern and western dress. As a freemason, Soliman's costume evoked popular conceptions of 'blackness' while asserting his equality within his lodge. Yet the costumes Soliman wore in the service of Prince von Liechtenstein or in the imperial natural history collection, where his stuffed body was placed after death, displayed political power by symbolically subjugating the African. Soliman's daily, Freemasonic, state ceremonial, and post-mortem dress reveal the complex layers of African identity in eighteenth-century Europe.

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