ABSTRACT
Often imagined as a grouping of three or four, the allegorization of continents through the representation of female subjects became an ever more appealing and central mode of global representation as European nations increased their imperial possession through the violent acquisition of new territories. The four continents-Africa, Asia, Europe and America-went hand in hand with the idea of woman as nature, literalizing the symbolic representation of woman as territory and allowing for an aesthetic exploration of the female body as both beautiful and sublime. Within colonial ideals of racial classifi cation, the beautiful was most often reserved for Europe as a white woman and sometimes for a sisterly America, if rendered as a woman of European descent.1 Asia and Africa were displaced from the white paradigm of beauty and civilization, and America, when depicted as a Native woman, also joined this marginalized sisterhood.
