Mohrenknabe mit Schimmel

Mohrenknabe mit Schimmel (Moorish Boy with White Horse), 1636, belongs to the Bavarian series and shows Castiglione's persistent fascination with exotic human types. The 'Moor' figure — a Black youth serving as groom or attendant — appears in numerous Baroque works as a marker of wealth and cosmopolitan reach. For Castiglione the subject offered the chance to contrast the boy's dark skin against the luminous white horse, a chromatic challenge he relished. Seventeenth-century Genoese society had direct contact with North Africa through trade and the slave economy, and Black figures appeared in Ligurian households, churches, and paintings. The work sits within the broader Baroque tendency to depict the exotic Other as a foil that enhances the primary subject — here the magnificent horse.

The white horse dominates the canvas with broad, fluid strokes of lead white modulated by grey and cream half-tones. The boy's figure is rendered more summarily but his face receives careful attention — a rare moment of individual characterisation within the exotic-type convention. The horse's eye is the sharpest focal point.