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."