Art of the Amistad and The Portrait of Cinque

The Amistad incident, the story of one of the few successful slave ship revolts in history, has been discussed by historians for decades, even becoming the subject of a Steven Spielberg film in 1997, which brought the story to wide audiences. But, while political and legal historians have examined the Amistad case for its role in the long history of United States and slavery, there is an oil on canvas painting of one man, Cinque or Sengbe Pieh, at the center of this story, an image so crucial to the continual retelling and memorialization of the Amistad story, it has appeared in bronze, on printed money, in comic books, as a wooden relief on a ship, on numerous wall murals, sewn into quilts and finally and most recently as a stuffed two- sided doll (wearing white toga on one side,and 19th century American clothes on the other) and another collectible figure crafted of resin called "The Dude." Art of the Amistad and The Portrait of Cinque is an examination of the original work of art and the ways in which different succeeding groups have used the image of the African man who led the revolt aboard the slave ship Amistad in 1839. This is the only book that brings together a wide range of works of visual art and material culture, to demonstrate the profound effect this painting has on local and national imagination. Thus, this one work of art is the centerpiece of a larger story in which people in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries represent ideas about themselves, their past and their future.