Meticulously researched, beautifully written, and lavishly illustrated, The Art of Conversion is one of the best books ever published about Central African religious history. Chief among Fromont’s methodological approaches are art history and archival historiography. She executes both with mastery, working comfortably across several languages. The author also expands the book’s horizons through a careful consideration of the relevant anthropological literature, which helps to inform her interpretative analyses of cultural artifacts from the Christian era of the Kingdom of the Kongo (1491–1891). Spanning the globe to study representations of such artifacts housed in an impressive array of archives, libraries, and museums, Fromont has left virtually no stone unturned to portray the era’s extraordinary visual culture. The end result is a top-rate piece of scholarship.
After the Portuguese introduced Christianity to West Central Africa toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Kingdom’s elites soon embraced the “new religion” enthusiastically. Fromont...