Touch Me Not: One in a Litany of Painted Princes
The "Painted Prince" was a tattooed Filipino man encountered by English explorer William Dampier around 1690. Dampier enslaved the man and brought him to England, where he was exhibited as a curiosity, sensationalized for his intricate tattoos and exoticized appearance. Known to contemporaries only as “Jeoly” the “Painted Prince," he died of smallpox in 1692. Following his death, his skin was removed and displayed at Oxford University's Anatomy School, underscoring a grim history of exploitation and objectification of colonized peoples.
The only known representation of the "Painted Prince" is an engraving by John Savage, who fabricated his subject’s origins while employing classical European artistic conventions to enhance the appeal of his exhibition. This image reflected broader colonial practices that dehumanized non-European peoples, presenting them as exotic novelties for Western audiences.
In 2023, a program hosted by the Menil Collection revisited this history, bringing it into dialogue with broader colonial narratives. Artist Matt Manalo and curator Paul R. Davis discussed connections between Savage's engraving and 19th-century depictions of Marquesans, as well as its influence on surrealist Max Ernst’s works. They highlighted the multi-generational perpetuation of the "noble savage" archetype, a romanticized yet dehumanizing trope that shaped Western understandings of non-European cultures. The program illustrated how this archetype reverberates through art history, linking colonial exploitation to the aesthetic frameworks of Western Modernism, while urging a critical reevaluation of these legacies in contemporary art and curation.
