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|pages=7, 42{{ndash}}43
|access-date=March 28, 2024}}</ref>
[[File:Sable Venus Grainger.jpg |thumb |upright |Engraving by William Grainger of [[Thomas Stothard]], ''Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies'', 1801, one of many contemporary illustrations included in ''Black Cargoes''.]]
''Black Cargoes'' includes many contemporaneous illustrations. One of the most beautiful and disturbing of these is the reproduction of a heroic sized painting, ''The Voyage of the Sable Venus from Angola to the West Indies'', by [[Thomas Stothard]] of the British [[Royal Academy of Arts]]. The painting was reproduced as an etching to illustrate a book by [[Bryan Edwards (politician)|Bryan Edwards]] extoling the slave economy of British colonies in the West Indies. Mannix and Cowley quote four lines from the 15th stanza of the associated poem, ''The Sable Venus. An Ode'', as follows:
:In ''Florence'', where she’s seen;
:Both just alike, except the white,
:No difference, no{{mdash}}none at night
:The beauteous dames between.
: {{ndash}} anonymous but likely Isaac Teale (Edwards's tutor)
In addition to depicting the Sable Venus on a scallop shell in the fashion of "[[The Birth of Venus|Botticelli’s White Venus]]", it includes "a wealth of classical details, to show the painter’s learning". According to Mannix and Cowley, the messages of the painting and poem were obvious: "that slave women are preferable to English girls at night, being passionate and accessible". The idealize figure belies the horrors faced by women slaves, which they describe in graphic detail.<ref>{{cite book
|title=Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1518–1865
|first1=Daniel P.|last1=Mannix
|first2=Malcolm|last2=Cowley
|chapter=Chapter 5 The Middle Passage
|pages=112{{ndash}}113 and illustrations
|date=1962
|url=https://archive.org/details/blackcargoeshist0000mann_c9n9/page/112/mode/2up
|access-date=23 May 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal
|first1=Regulus |last1=Allen
|date=Summer 2011
|title="The Sable Venus" and Desire for the Undesirable
|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23028070
|journal=Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
|volume=51
|issue=3
|pages=668{{ndash}}669 & 672
|jstor=23028070}}</ref><ref>{{cite book
|title=The Sable Venus. An Ode. Inscribed to Bryan Edwards
|author=Anonymous [most likely Rev. Isaac Teale]
|date=1765
|url=https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-sable-venus-an-ode_teale-reverend_1765/mode/2up
|access-date=23 May 2024}}</ref>
However, Mannix and Cowley's interpretation of the poem based on the quoted lines is at odds with the more detailed analysis of the full poem by Dr. Regulus Allen. She concluded that neither Edwards or Teale condoned intimate relations between white men and their black slaves. The poem indicates the blame for such relationships lay with the Black Venus herself. "What would seem an acknowledgment of the capture of African people and the violation of black women is inverted into the Sable Venus’s conquest of European men . . . Through the representation of black women as sexual predators, the poem is able to deny the realities of slavery as well as white men’s desire for African women". Also, the classical details of the painting were more than just a way to show the painter's learning. They were intentionally included to convey meaning that would be interpretable to learned gentlemen. They act together with Stothard's depiction of the Sable Venus as "thick and muscular" (very different from classical white beauty) to convey the temptation of white man's "desire for the undesirable" and its unmentionable consequences.<ref>{{cite journal
|first1=Regulus |last1=Allen
|date=2011
|title="The Sable Venus" and Desire for the Undesirable
|journal=Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23028070
|page=676 and 680{{ndash}}684}}</ref>
The dust cover on ''Black Cargoes'' included a reduced color reproduction of a print by [[Johann Moritz Rugendas]], ''Nègres a fond de Calle'', 1835, which depicts the degrading conditions in the hull of a slave ship. The same illustration was used in the Time magazine article.
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