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22. Selected image: painting. Source: Chapman, John Gadsby. "The Baptism of Pocahontas." 1840. (William M. S. Rasmussen and Robert S. Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend. Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1994. 24.) (See preliminary oil sketch in Abrams 1999. 123.) One of the eight large paintings hanging in the rotunda of the United States Capitol building in Washington. There are no details in the historical record about Pocahontas's baptism (no one up to this time in the Archive entries here has even elaborated on it), so Chapman was introducing a new visual element into her representation in American consciousness. Rather than the familar rescue scene, for instance, Chapman chooses as his subject for this august location the moment "Pocahontas" becomes "Rebecca," the moment Indian becomes (literally) white, the moment of absorption. Tilton 1994 devotes a chapter to analysis of the painting.
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