Before and After the Eighteenth Century: The John Blanke Project

This chapter, authored by Michael Ohajuru, describes the origins and mission of the John Blanke Project of which he is the creator. John Blanke was a black trumpeter for the Tudor Court, pictured twice in the Great Tournament Roll of Westminster, and the first person of African descent in Britain for whom there is an identifiable image and documentation. Because so little is known of Blanke’s life, the Project commissions artists to portray Blanke in a variety of artistic mediums including poetry, rap, music, visual arts and the stage, letting history inform their imaginations. The Project also invites historians to contribute written pieces to add dimension to an understanding of what Blanke’s life might have been like in this time and place. The chapter attributes the genesis of the project to presentations Ohajuru gave with Dr Miranda Kauffman entitled Image and Reality: Black Africans in Renaissance England (IRBARE) in which he discussed images of the black magus or black king in art and the inclusion of Blanke in commissioned paintings by Stephen B. Whately on the life and times of Henry VII.