Madeleine of the Americas: Resituating Benoist’s Portrait of a Young Black Woman in Colonial Art *

The Portrait of a Black Woman (1800) by Marie Guillemine Leroulx-Laville (Benoist by her married name) benefited from new visibility and interest following the opening of the Grand Louvre in 1993, when it was displayed in the galleries for the first time. Helen Weston’s path-breaking work on the painting (1999) was followed by a number of important studies. On the basis of this body of work, this essay offers a re-interpretation that proposes to situate the Portrait of a Black Woman in the geography of the Atlantic—both African and American—and can be understood as a methodological adventure, a history of art that takes into account the specifics of the colonial archive as well as the absences of traditional archives regarding the life of slaves.