Why Born Enslaved! modeled 1868, carved 1873 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Carpeaux portrays the agony of oppression in this bust of an enslaved woman straining against the twisting ropes that bind her. The figure's defiant, uplifted gaze and furrowed brow impart her bitter struggle and longing for self-expression. The sculpture's inscription, translated "Why Born Enslaved!," poses a question that neither absolves nor directly confronts the viewer as it calls attention to the moral debt of slavery. Carpeaux conceived of the bust while designing the bronze fountain of four continents (Fontaine de l'Ob
Why Born Enslaved! modeled 1868, carved 1873 Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Carpeaux portrays the agony of oppression in this bust of an enslaved woman straining against the twisting ropes that bind her. The figure's defiant, uplifted gaze and furrowed brow impart her bitter struggle and longing for self-expression. The sculpture's inscription, translated "Why Born Enslaved!," poses a question that neither absolves nor directly confronts the viewer as it calls attention to the moral debt of slavery. Carpeaux conceived of the bust while designing the bronze fountain of four continents (Fontaine de l'Observatoire, 1868-72), in which a formerly enslaved woman, bearing a broken shackle around her ankle, appears as an allegory of Africa. Carpeaux's apparent horror at witnessing the effects of slavery even twenty years after the 1848 abolition throughout the French empire may have encouraged him to develop the theme as an independent work. The identity of the woman who posed for Carpeaux is unknown, although an archival note indicates she may have been a Black model who was born into slavery in the French Antilles and migrated to France following her emancipation. The Met's 1873 bust is one of two known versions in marble. Upon viewing the first version at the 1869 Paris Salon, where it was exhibited under the racial epithet "Negresse," Theophile Gautier described the figure as a "grim protest" and "piece of rare vigor, where ethnographic exactitude is dramatized through a profound sense of suffering." But Carpeaux's portrayal undoubtedly also appealed to the period's taste for objectifying depictions of non-Europeans. In the historical context of late nineteenth-century French colonialism, wherein the bodies of Black women were objects of intense fascination, the sculpture's mixed messages accommodated the views of those who opposed slavery but participated in Why Born Enslaved!. Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (French, Valenciennes 1827–1875 Courbevoie). French. modeled 1868,
Size: 4000px × 2667px
Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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