Young Black Man with a Sword

In April 1848 France abolished slavery in its colonies for good. Two years later Puvis de Chavannes, then 25, signed and dated this canvas. A Black youth sits naked on a blue cloth against a sunset sky, a red cap on his head and a heavy sword with a swept hilt resting on his shoulder. On a hill in the distance a house appears to be burning. Scholars have read the picture against the Code noir, the 17th-century law for France's colonies that forbade enslaved people to carry weapons, and have linked the cap to the Phrygian cap, the old emblem of liberty. It stayed with the artist's family until 2009, when the Musée d'Orsay bought it, and ten years later it was shown in the museum's exhibition on the Black model in French art, from Géricault to Matisse.