Laura Tanna

This fall, Jackie Ranston and Valerie Facey will rock the publishing world with an incredible book about a Jamaican-born artist, Isaac Mendes Belisario (1794-1849).

Belisario, Sketches of Character, A Historical Biography of a Jamaican Artist is gripping emotional material brought to life in Ranston's easy-to-read style. Every paragraph reveals something about our world and history, which we ought to have known and probably didn't. There's enough material in this book to provide substance for a score more, but she deftly weaves astonishing strands of material into a cohesive whole and this is the real brilliance of the book. Because Belisario was Jewish, Ranston goes right back to the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem when Jews were first scattered throughout mankind. She provides the most comprehensive introduction to the horrors of the Roman Catholic Inquisition suffered by Jews and their 1492 expulsion from Spain, accelerating their migration to Morocco, Turkey, Germany, to settlements in London, Amsterdam, Tuscany and subsequently the West Indies. Juxtaposing this story with the horrors of slavery imposed on those from Africa, who also settled in the West Indies, Ranston enriches every reader's understanding of the complexities involved in the creation of our fascinating nation, Jamaica, and the Caribbean region.

Belisario's artwork

Today, reproductions of Belisario's artwork are the best depictions we have of one of Jamaica's most treasured cultural traditions, the Jonkunnu masquerades, the roots of which Ranston explores. But, her book is so much more! Encompassing an amazing span of history, attractively presented to the reader, the book is visually and intellectually a tour de force worthy of international acclamation. Richly produced and printed in Verona, Italy, the book's large margins, thick quality paper with abundant illustrations makes reading a delightfully hedonistic experience. You'll recognise the artist's lavish portrayal of 'Koo Koo or Actor Boy', surrounded by a Jonkunnu band on the alluring purple cover while, inside, exquisitely sharp colour and black and white portraits, landscapes, maps, letters and historic objets d'art overwhelm the senses. As beautiful as the book may be, it's not just coffee table decoration. Belisario, Sketches of Character is an excellent read, the kind of book you don't want to put down though, at 432 pages and five pounds in weight, it's a little hard to take to the beach or on the plane with you!

Sprinkled throughout the thread of Isaac Mendes Belisario's biography are nuggets of information, such as 2000 Jewish children being declared slaves of the Crown by the Portuguese King Joao II who, before his death in 1494, shipped them off to Sao Tome in the Gulf of Guinea where the surviving 600 became part of the mulatto population of that African nation. Or, even earlier, that in 1070 William the Conqueror encouraged Jewish people in Rouen, France, to bring their capital and commercial expertise to London and their money helped to fight wars, build castles and cathedrals. Then, in 1186 the English Crown took back pro-perties from Jewish landowners. But, there are less dramatic tidbits of history such as Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant in 1860, combining Irish fried fish with chipped potatoes to create the iconic English fish and chips.

To give you some idea of the myriad details, not just about Jews or Africans but the world at large, over centuries of migration and the intertwining of Belisario's ancestral families throughout the ages, I took 15 pages of notes from Belisario, Sketches of Character but none disturbed me more than Ranston's account of the trial of the first white man brought up on murder charges for the horrific killing of a slave in Tortola. Belisario's father not only sat on that jury and ensured that the guilty man paid for his crime, with his own life, but Abraham Mendes Belisario kept copious notes and, at his own expense, published the report in London to influence public opinion there. He wrote another detailed report calling for explicit protections for the treatment of Africans in the West Indies, to no avail. Indeed, as a Government interpreter of Simon Bolivar's Proclamation (six Latin American Republics owe their independence to Bolivar), A.M.Belisario was sanctioned by the British for his "political error" in publishing the proclamation. And, the story of how Isaac Mendes Belisario's grandfather, Alexandre Lindo, became involved in the finances of the Haitian revolution is a book in itself. Ranston's work makes for fascinating reading!

From the 18th century

The breadth of detail, touching on everything from the 18th century Prussian Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg in present-day Ghana, to the ancestry of Adolphe Duperly, the French artist, who introduced the new printing technology of lithography from Germany into Jamaica after his arrival in 1824 is truly astonishing. The years and years of Ranston's research would have been for naught had her writing skills not been so superb as to create a seamless flow, all of it somehow relating back to the Jamaican-born Isaac Mendes Belisario.

Art experts will write about the extent and value of reproductions in this museum quality book, which Valerie Facey's The Mill Press has produced as a labour of love, including dramatic depictions of the Kingston fires of August, 1843, by Belisario and Duperly. Yet, most notably, this book is worth possessing because it includes in their entirety, in three folios, reproductions of all twelve works of art in I.M. Belisario's original Sketches of Character, In Illustration of the Habits, Occupation and Costume of the Negro Population in the Island of Jamaica, published as a set of lithographs on the eve of Emancipation, printed by A. Duperly, with text Belisario wrote from his observations of Jonkunnu and Jamaican people in 1837 and 1838.

Belisario-Sketches of Character will be launched 11 a.m. Sunday, October 26, at the National Gallery of Jamaica in Kingston with a New York launch scheduled for November 19. Available from The Mill Press, visit featured publication at their site www.belisariojamaica.com.