Bust of a Woman

This fictionalized portrayal is a companion piece to the Bust of Saïd Abdullah. Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier initially titled this stylized and highly detailed sculpture Vénus africaine (African Venus), thus conflating the ancient Greek goddess of love and beauty with his rendering of a Black woman. Her parted lips and bare shoulders and chest evoke the erotic associations of her former namesake deity, while the draping of her costume suggests Classical refinement.

In 1851 the anthropological gallery of the National History Museum in Paris commissioned casts of this work and the likeness of Abdullah. Cordier’s ethnographic busts reflect mid-19th-century discourse on aesthetics and colonization as well as pseudoscientific theories of race.