マドレーヌの肖像

Marie-Guillemine Benoist, a pupil of David, showed this portrait at the Paris Salon of 1800, in the short window between two events. France had abolished slavery in its colonies in 1794, and Napoleon would bring it back in 1802. A dignified portrait of a Black woman, presented as a sitter in her own right rather than a servant in someone else's picture, was a rare thing to hang on those walls. For two centuries she had no name, and the work was simply called Portrait of a Black Woman. Research in 2019 identified her as Madeleine, a woman from Guadeloupe who had come to France after abolition and worked in the household of the painter's relatives, and the Louvre now shows the picture under her name.