The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Print of the head of Marie Laveau, a Creole woman with Black skin tone and an Afro, face turned left, eyes looking past our left shoulder. Her detailed eyes, mouth, and earring stand out against her loosely rendered nose and absence of other details. A sepia haze surrounds her hair and a floral fan hovers just below her lip. A snake head emerges from her hair with shiny scales and tongue sticking out.

Marie Laveau

2009

Renée Stout

(American, b. 1958)
published by

Zanatta Editions and Derriere L’Etoile Studios

America
color lithograph
Image: 53.6 x 53.6 cm (21 1/8 x 21 1/8 in.); Sheet: 58 x 57 cm (22 13/16 x 22 7/16 in.)
Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust 2009.353
© Renée Stout
Location: Not on view

Description

Renée Stout often explores African-derived spiritual belief systems to highlight the ancestry of African American culture. Here, she portrays the New Orleans Creole Marie Laveau (1801–1881), an herbalist and priestess of Louisiana vodou (a set of spiritual practices created by enslaved African people from various African and European spiritualities). She looks piercingly at the viewer as a ghostlike snake emerges from her hair, referring to reports that Laveau wore an enchanted python around her neck. Though historical portraits portray Laveau as a light-skinned woman with a carefully pinned hairstyle, Stout reimagines her with dark skin and an Afro, emphasizing the African roots of Laveau’s spiritual practice.
  • Musée de Pont-Aven. SorcièRes. Edited by Antoine Ullmann. Paris: Éditions Arola, 2025. Reproduced: p. 31
  • New Narratives: Contemporary Works on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 19, 2023-April 14, 2024).
  • {{cite web|title=Marie Laveau|url=false|author=Renée Stout, Zanatta Editions and Derriere L’Etoile Studios|year=2009|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2009.353