Why Born Enslaved!

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

While Carpeaux used terracotta for preparatory models, such as his clay sketch of the unidentified woman who posed for Why Born Enslaved!, the medium also had commercial applications. This bust was not sculpted by Carpeaux but was instead cast from a mold in his studio, which from 1869 onward produced copies of his major works as luxury consumer goods. The commercial viability of these reproductions reflected the popularity of antislavery imagery in post-emancipation France, where narratives of abolition evoked a sense of patriotism. This was particularly the case after the United States abolished slavery in 1865, seventeen years after the French abolition.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art