Resumen de Veronese, Callet and the black boy at the feast
The writer suggests an alternative source for a drawing of a black boy eating at a table, which has been located uncertainly on the margin of Veronese's oeuvre. Despite the association with Veronese, the drawing is in fact for a picture by the French Academician Antoine-Fraņcois Callet that depicts the celebration of the Roman Saturnalia, an occasion when slaves briefly and symbolically changed places with their masters. In the painting, Les Saturnales ou l'Hiver, the black slave youth remains attached to his mistress in a fixed habit of service and devotion, betokening and bearing witness to the continuing realities of despotic power in the midst of the temporary feast.
