Aimé-Jules Dalou’s graceful female caryatids evoke the concept of women as columns, or pillars of strength, in his personification of continents (from left to right): the Americas, Africa, Europe, and Asia. The artist’s rendering illustrates French art’s roots in classical models, while reiterating the influence of French colonial expansion. Here, the artist reinforces cultural stereotypes begun in the seventeenth century and exemplifies nineteenth-century representations of the exotic, natural female constructed for the European male gaze.