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While visiting the Musée d’Orsay, the sculpture “Les Quatre Parties du monde soutenant la sphère céleste” by the 19th century artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux transfixes me.

For the rest of that day, I pondered the fate of the nameless model, and how she became a subject for Carpeaux.

Kehinde Wiley’s “After La Négresse, 1872” is made of cast marble dust and resin, showing a young Black man wearing a Lakers jersey, with his head turned in the same, awkward way as the Carpeaux figure it references.

Far more substantial and moving is Kara Walker’s 2017 “Negress,” a plaster cast made from Carpeaux’s bust, but displayed on the floor, illuminated by a single light.

They also raise doubts about the depth and sincerity of Carpeaux’s anti-slavery views, and by extension, the sincerity of France’s belief in the genuine equality of the people in its far-flung empire.