The Essay: The Boy with the Monkey on His Back

Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum's social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #RediscoveringBlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter's remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement. As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait. In this second episode, we meet the anonymous boy who appears in the extravagant 17th-century painting The Paston Treasure, a still life that documents a wealthy family's lavish collection of objects - including a human being