Images of a Legend
THE BAPTISM OF
POCAHONTAS
1836-40,
John Gadsby Chapman
Pocahontas stars in an
even more significant piece of art in the U.S. Capitol rotunda: John Gadsby
Chapman's monumental, 12-by-17-foot mural. Chapman received the
prestigious commission in 1836 and researched his subject exhaustively. But the
scant historical record and, more critically, Chapman's cultural
prejudices led to a largely imaginary scene. A Virginian himself, Chapman may
have chosen the subject, in part, to respond to New Englanders of the day who
argued that their "Pilgrim" forefathers established the moral
foundations of the republic. In his painting, Virginia's founders are
given credit for their missionary effort: Pocahontas, sanctified in a white
dress and kneeling like the Virgin Mary, renounces her Powhatan ways. In a
pamphlet on his painting, Chapman noted that Jamestown's colonists did
not "exterminate the ancient proprietors of the soil, and usurp their
possessions." Rather, they spread "the blessings of Christianity
among the heathen savages."