European Attitudes toward Africans This lavish portrait of two seventeenth-century aristocratic ladies illustrates common European attitudes toward Africans. Both ladies appear completely at ease with the black servant boy. They gaze confidently at the viewer while the boy stares at the black lapdog, whose color and protruding eyes he shares, along with an ornamental collar. The portrait suggests that the ladies consider the African boy an inferior pet akin to the dog.

RMN–Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.