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Toradh — Andromeda
Published: 2013-10-04 14:56:50 +0000 UTC; Views: 11704; Favourites: 100; Downloads: 18
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Andromeda. At first I was planning to do a full illustration of Perseus, Andromeda and the seamonster, just to shake my head over all those illustrators before me who make Andromeda a white, half or fully naked princess in distress. For fuck’s sake, she’s the princess of ETHIOPIA, why the heck is she never dark-skinned on any illustration? Unfortunately, google failed to give me proper references for what ethiopian women might have worn some thousand years ago, so I gave up before even trying. BUT I did this little portrait with random jewelry.Some day when I‘m more motivated I should learn how to paint proper portraits and study the features of Ethiopian ladies.
Watercolours. And yes, the original is tiny!
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Comments: 52
Finally, someone who understands that there's no way Andromeda could be white because she's and Ethiopian princess, a country where the people are dark and have kinky hair. I kept looking through pictures thinking "why is an Ethiopian girl white."
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Maybe the royal family is not from the area 
But as I don’t know anything about Ethiopia’s mythological royal family, I figured there was no reason to imagine them anything else than well, Ethiopian and therefore darkskinned.
And then again, it's only a myth anyway…
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Andromeda was described as bring darkskinned by the original myth tellers. Cleopatra is like Andromeda, portrayed as Bing light skin although she wasn't...
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Well, at least she's Greek, so I expect her to have lighter skin than Andromeda…
…what's more, in contrast to Andromeda, she was real.
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You make a very good point about Andromeda; in most modern adaptations her family's kingdom is placed somewhere in Greece (usually an island) or West Asia near Israel-Palestine. I'm thinking of writing a story about her and placing the kingdom in Ancient Tunisia or Libya.
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Go ahead! I'm sure there would be classicists interested in a version set where you would think it to be set
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Thanks I studied Classics in university, so I gave everyone a hard time lol
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Nice job. I really love the character of Andromeda. This picture, your art describe exactly how I imagine this Ethiopian Princess when my Literature and Myths professor at University described her.
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I faved this long ago, but I want to point out that while "Aethiopia" always meant "land of the burnt faces" (and so was a reference to very dark skin), it originally didn't connote the modern country of Ethiopia. It more likely referred to the kingdom of Kush in northern Sudan, also known as "Nubia". Therefore, I recommend you look at ancient depictions of Kushite people. In some ways their fashion resembled that of the related (if frequently antagonistic) Egyptian culture, but it wasn't identical.
www.thebanmappingproject.com/i… (Kushites are the very dark-skinned people with the red belts and sashes)
mathildasanthropologyblog.file…
mathildasanthropologyblog.file…
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Hey, thank you very much for that! I wasn’t aware of the identification with Nubia before, lest of ancient Nubian/Kushite fashion. Thanks again!
Wish there were references for women’s clothing, too, though ^_^
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Sie ist extrem hübsch.
Das Problem mit den falschen Darstellungen kenne ich... Es ist gut, dass es auch Leute gibt, die das ganze realistischer angehen.
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Ich würde das nicht mal als falsche Deutung interpretieren, die Menschen verlieren offensichtlich nur aus dem Kopf, wo eine Geschichte eigentlich angesiedelt ist. Und ich glaube Andromeda ist auch kein sehr afrikanischer Name, das hilft beim Verdrängen 
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I've always thought the same thing! Not that previous artwork of her hasn't been lovely but it's awesome to see someone draw her in terms of where she was actually from! You made her gorgeous!
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Jepp jepp! I'm glad people agree
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Thrilled to see someone actually paint her in a non-Eurocantric way. This is beautiful!!
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I'm glad to see someone going back to the myth and leaving behind the love story, which for the ancients was secondary. Why we mostly see Andromeda white is understandable: ever since renaissance she has been portrayed as an ideal of beauty for an European audience. Though the humanists treasured the Greek mythology they gave it new significations and often simplified it, since they already had the biblical stories for the promise of heaven. These versions reached us , thus Andromeda's appearance became more important then her identity. For the ancients the fact that she was the princess of Ethiopia must have been the most important thing of her character, as she is the ancestor of Heracles. The lineage of the only mortal to be allowed into heaven must have been very important to the Greeks otherwise they wouldn't have bothered to give him family ties to all the different people in the ancient world that they had contact with and make all the divine lines of mortals meet (or most of them, I'm not sure about Helen's).
Oh, and all the ancient pot-drawings that I've seen are tiny but they do depict jewelry that looks similar to today's traditional African jewelry, at least to me. So your jewels are fine.
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Sounds sensible. It's a pity, though.
And I'm glad to hear my jewels more or less fit! I didn't even think of looking at ancient pottery, but I agree, that'd be a good point to start. I only now I'd knew how to look specifically for ancient African clothing on pot drawings, it'd be awesome
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this article has two of the clearer images of Andromeda by ancient Greeks-> www.histoire-fr.com/mythologie… as I said they're tiny. Thinking about it I believe you'd be better of looking for reference in ancient Egyptian art as it is bigger and better documented. The Greeks had little direct contact with the Africans south of Egypt, but the Egyptians had traded with them, ruled them or were ruled by them for a very long time.
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Hm, the page doesn't quite work :/. Thank you for the link anyway! I'll sure keep that in mind next time I'm looking for references, especially about Egyptian art 
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Also mir gefällt's!
Ich freu mich immer, wenn ich mal Bilder von dunkelhäutigen Menschen zu sehen bekomme. Irgendwie sind die hier viel zu selten vertreten
Auf Fall wirkt sie sehr exotisch. Der Schmuck tut das seine dazu. Die Handgeste erinnert mich allerdings mehr an thailändische Tempeltänzerinnen
Auch der Hintergrund gefällt mir sehr gut. Er hat irgendwie was afrikanisches
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Eigentlich sollte sie mit ihren Haaren rumspielen (lies: ich wollte aus unerfindlichen Gründen Hände aufs Bild quetschen, weil ich die üben wollte).
Leider hab' ich viel zu wenig Ahnung von antiker nordafrikanischer Kultur, um sie mal in einer großen Illustration abzulichten 
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Sehr schön! Obwohl mir ihr rechter Arm beim genauen Hinsehen irgendwie merkwürdig erscheint. Er wirkt wie nach vorne gestreckt, dabei greift sie sich ans Ohr (?).
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Ich wollte sie mit ihren Haaren spielen lassen, aber irgendwie gehen die dunklen Haare vor der dunklen Haut unter…
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Mir war auch nicht bewusst, dass sie dunkelhäutig sein müsste, deswegen find ich es umso toller, dass Du sie so dargestellt hast. Schöne Frau, sie sieht definitiv nach Prinzessin aus.
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Dann hab ich ja wenigstens etwas richtig gemacht
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Sorry to hear your research didn't yield anything... it can be frustrating like that (especially once you start looking outside the European box). Great job though. She's beautiful and I love the random jewelry!
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I'm glad that worked out at least 
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I fully agree with you.
As much as I love Burne Jones' series on the subject, his portrayal of Andromeda is just straight up wrong.
I can just about forgive him, but I sit here wondering what the hell the people who made the Clash of the Titans remake were thinking.
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I haven’t even seen Clash of the Titans, but somehow I don’t expect it to be any good, anyway
Burne-Jones is awesome, but yeah… Andromeda isn’t even dark-skinned on art from antiquity, so we can’t blame any modern artist, I suppose
And I can’t think of any excuse why she’s so often sexualised, either. Anywaaay.
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That is mildly perplexing, there's a surprisingly large amount of ethnic diversity in Greek mythology, so it comes across as very odd that it doesn't get shown that often.
Although, as a side note, I keep seeing Medea portrayed as a black woman, when she's from Georgia. That just seems a very odd thing to do.
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Good point. Yep it’s odd.
Though I can’t remember seeing Medea as a black woman. It’s interesting, though. Maybe somebody thought "Oh she’s a foreign sorceress, she must look exotic!".
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Beautiful work! I feel the same way about Dido, the Queen of Carthage (Tunisia). People always paint her as fair and European looking. I would like to see your take on her as well!
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Fair and European looking wouldn’t make sense for Dido, I agree, but she is actually Phoenician, so… she’d be kinda tanned and blackhaired? No idea.
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Ich wusste gar nicht, dass Andromeda aus Äthopien kam. Aber ich bin auf jeden Fall ein großer Fan historisch korrekter Darstellungen. Well done
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Hab' ich mir auch nur gemerkt, weil sie eben so beliebt in darstellender Kunst ist, aber immer ausgeblichen wird
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Wow, sieht genial aus^^ Tolle Umsetzung
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Fragt sich nur ob sie’s auch vor ein paar tausend Jahren getan haben ^^. Aber sähe bestimmt schick an ihr aus.
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Ach, ich denke schon^^ Vllt nicht so leuchtende Farben wie heute, aber pastellige töne und co gingen sicher. alleine die rote erde, da färben sich manche stämme ja heute noch die haut mit^^
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