Houston-based artist and arts organizer Matt Manalo and the Menil’s Curator of Collections, Paul R. Davis, discuss histories surrounding the print depicting “The Painted Prince” or “Prince Giolo,” on view in the Menil’s Witnesses to a Surrealist Vision.
In the late 1680s, the British maritime explorer and merchant William Dampier abducted Giolo near Miangas, an island near the Philippines and Indonesia. Dampier returned to England with Giolo and sold the elaborately tattooed man to be publicly exhibited as an exotic curiosity. The print of “The Painted Prince,” originally by the 17th-century British engraver John Savage, was an advertisement for his display in London.