![]() Although there are no background details that indicate precisely where the sitter is placed, certain details of her physical surroundings-namely, the ancien régime chair and luxurious cloth that drapes both it and her-suggest that she is in a well-to-do domestic space. ![]() She stares out at the viewer with an enigmatic expression. She sports an intricately wrapped and crisply laundered headdress that appears similar in fabric to the garment she gathers closely against her body just below her breasts. ![]() She is shown seated, half-draped, with her right breast bared to the viewer. ![]() Hanging on one wall of the Musée du Louvre, in the company of the gargantuan machines by Jacques-Louis David, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, and others, is an exquisitely crafted and modestly sized painting of a black woman. 1 Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist, Portrait d'une négresse, 1800, oil on canvas, Paris, Musée du Louvre ![]() Slavery is a Woman: "Race," Gender, and Visuality in Marie Benoist's Portrait d'une négresse (1800)įig. ![]()
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