Untitled Image (The Future Queen Nzinga Meets with the Portuguese Governor)
This engraving depicts the future Queen Nzinga (or Njinga) as the representative of her brother, then king of Ndongo, sitting on the back of one of her servants before the Portuguese governor in Luanda in 1622. She observed that the governor was seated on the only chair in the audience chamber and immediately summoned one of her female retainers, who fell upon her hands and knees and became her seat. Portuguese sources record the visit, but not this incident. Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi da Montecuccolo (1621–1678) was an Italian Capuchin missionary. He arrived in Luanda in 1654 and traveled widely as a chaplain with the Portuguese Army, including a stay at the court of the king of Pungo Andongo in 1659, a visit to the court of Queen Nzinga in Matamba and the Kingdom of Kongo in 1660. He returned in 1662 and presided at Nzinga’s funeral. He and left Matamba in 1665 and returned to Italy in 1667. An Italian engraver for the edited version of Cavazzi’s original account created this visual interpretation of the event. Cavazzi's drawings were among the earliest known eyewitness sketches of African life by a European. They can be contrasted to the fanciful depictions found in Dapper or by the De Bry brothers.
Image Title
Untitled Image (The Future Queen Nzinga Meets with the Portuguese Governor)
RegID
SI-OB-881
Date
1622
Title
Untitled Image (The Future Queen Nzinga Meets with the Portuguese Governor)
Source
Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi, Istorica Descrizione de' Tre Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola, 2nd ed. (Milan: Nelle Stampe dell'Agnelli, 1690), p. 437.
Language
Italian
Item sets
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Spatial Coverage
Africa--West Central North--Luanda
Researchers
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Joseph Miller; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
Last Updated
3-Jul-17; 28-Aug-19
Identifier
B020