F0717

Les Curieux en extase ou les Cordons de souliers Long Caption: Hand-coloured engraving of "La Belle Hottnetote" on exhibition. A man and woman, together with two soldiers of a Highland regiment, wearing kilts of a pronounced and highly suggestive shortness, gaze upon the semi-naked form of the 'Hottentot Venus'. Saartjie (Sara) Baartman (c. 1788–1815/16) was a Quena, or Hottentot, woman brought to Europe from South Africa in 1810 by a ship’s surgeon. She was publicly displayed to paying crowds in Britain and later, most famously, in France. Audiences reacted with both curiosity and mocking incredulity at her distinctive physical appearance, which – with prominent genitalia and pronounced buttocks (steatopygia) – was in striking contrast to that of European women. Baartman embodied the ‘Other’, representing the perceived 'exoticism' and eroticism of ‘primitive’ Africa. She was exhibited naked in a cage in Piccadilly, and in Paris she posed as a model and became the focus of wanton sexual attention. She died of an infection on, or shortly before, 1 January 1816. The French anatomist George Cuvier (1769–1832) made a cast of her body, and her brain and genitals were pickled for public exhibition. They remained on display in Paris until 1985 and were finally returned to South Africa for a traditional burial in 2002. Part of the Michael Graham-Stewart slavery collection. Credit line: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London Object: ZBA2558 Artist: unknown Date: circa 1814 Medium: hand-coloured engraving Size: Sheet: 346 mm x 423 mm; Image: 211 mm x 288 mm Click here to buy a bespoke print of this image.