A while back I got in trouble for assuming that a naked but gender-ambiguous snake charmer in an Orientalist painting was female. Words like “obviously wrong” got thrown around, and much scholarly analysis of pigment-gender was cited. Not only was I wrong, but I was (to judge by some of the ruder comments I deleted) an idiot for ever imagining that there might be room in the Orientalist pantheon for a female nude snake charmer.

Well, this one doesn’t look like a dude to me:

female snake charmer

The artist is Paul Desire Trouillebert.