black venus

Manet, Portrait of Jeanne Duval, 1862

Baudelaire, on his creole muse:

Bizarre déité, brune comme les nuits,

Au parfum mélangé de musc et de havane,
Oeuvre de quelque obi, le Faust de la savane,
Sorcière au flanc d'ébène, enfant des noirs minuits...

Strange goddess, brown as evening to the sight,
Whose scent is half of musk, half of havanah,
Work of some obi, Faust of the Savanah,
Ebony witch, and daughter of the night...

--from Sed non satiata

Angela Carter described her thus:

I will tell you what Jeanne was like, she was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.