The petition, which calls the painting вЂњa humiliating and dehumanizing insult to the millions of victims of slavery and to all their descendants,вЂќ has so far garnered about twenty-five hundred signatures on. The piece tells me that this is how my country sees me.вЂќ

It features вЂњtwo huge black faces, with bulging eyes, oversized bright red lips, carnivorous teeth, in an imagery borrowing to Sambo, the Banania commercials and Tintin in the Congo,вЂќ Niang and Julien Suaudeau, a white French novelist, wrote last week, when they launched a petition to have the work removed. One panel is meant to commemorate the abolition of slavery in France, in 1794, but it perpetuates grotesque racist stereotypes. Each year, thousands of tourists and schoolchildren pass by the work, as do their elected representatives. Since 1991, it has hung in a hallway outside of the AssemblyвЂ™s auditorium. The painting, by the French artist HervГ© Di Rosa, comprises nine panels, each depicting a key moment in the annals of French lawmaking: the institution of paid holidays, the recuperation of Alsace-Lorraine. She had been invited there to screen вЂњMariannes Noires,вЂќ her documentary about Afro-French women-вЂњwomen who are perceived as having come from elsewhere, but whose hearts beat first for France,вЂќ as one reviewer wrote. It was March of last year, and she was in the midst of what was supposed to have been a big day for her at the Palais Bourbon, which houses the lower chamber of the French legislature. TheВ first time the French filmmaker and scholar Mame-Fatou Niang encountered вЂњLвЂ™histoire en Peinture de lвЂ™AssemblГ©e Nationale,вЂќ a large painting hanging in the National Assembly in Paris, she was вЂњ prise aux tripesвЂќ-grabbed by the guts. Our thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.

A report by Lauren Collins for The New Yorker.