96 FIG. 7 (right): King of Loango (Maloango). From Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge, p. 539. Library Gigi Pezzoli, Milan. FIG. 8 (below): Mbanza Kongo (São Salvador). Engraving. From Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge, pp. 562 – 63. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York. FIG. 6 (above): A Map of the Kingdom of Congo, after a drawing by Filippo Pigafetta (Italian, c. 1533– 1604) and Duarte Lopes (Portuguese, active late 16th century). Engraving by William Rogers (English, born c. 1545, active c. 1589–1604). Scheide Library, Princeton University Library (32.5.7). dertaken in Europe, the illustrations say more about the imagination of Western artists than the events described on the pages (fi gs. 7, 8).8 Out of Kongo and Into the Kunstkammer Admired for the excellence of their artistry, the preciousness of their materials, and their exoticism, from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries Kongo woven textiles and carved ivories were acquired by princes, men of science, and highly successful merchants across Europe. Exemplars of these Central African creations gathered for the exhibition represent most of the material culture that survives from this region dating from before the eighteenth century (fi gs. 9–15).9 Comprising fewer than a dozen ivory oliphants and some sixty prestige cloths woven from raffi a palm fi ber into a variety of formats, the works belonging to this Kongo corpus were never intended to be functional, but rather were secular display items. The distinctive decorative program with which they are embellished is entirely abstract. The primary visual conceit that Kongo masters endlessly transformed and deconstructed is that of a knot in which the ends of interlaced strands encircle and enjoin to create a contained form (fi g. 11). This was articulated through processes that layered negative and positive pas- Christian network. The letters of these literate Christian monarchs afford a fi rsthand Kongo perspective on global events. The privileged communications of individuals such as Afonso I of Kongo (r. 1509–42) make evident the strategic nature of this outreach and provide a detailed account of their political, spiritual, fi scal, and martial preoccupations in their own words. In such epistolary documents Afonso requests that the king of Portugal send him religious paraphernalia for his personal church and petitions the Vatican to designate a Kongo bishop.7 Popular perceptions of this region developed before the nineteenth century were, however, shaped by the more widely disseminated publications devoted to the experiences of emissaries of European governments, traders, and missionaries. The most infl uential among these was the Italian scholar Filippo Pigafetta’s Relatione del reame di Congo et delle circonvicine contrade. It was based on the experience of Duarte Lopes, a Portuguese whose extensive travel to Africa brought him to Luanda in 1578, where he paid a visit to the court of King Alvaro I Nimi a Lukeni lua Mvemba of Kongo (r. 1568–1587). The book’s fi rst Italian edition of 1591 was translated into many languages, including Dutch, and included one of the fi rst maps of the Kingdom of the Kongo (fi g. 6). The other widely available source was the scholargeographer Olfert Dapper’s Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten, published in Amsterdam in 1676. Dapper’s text is a compilation of a range of previously published sources as well as unpublished reports by traders along the Loango, Kongo, and Angola coast submitted to the West Indische Companie (VOC). In addition to a detailed map of the rivers, toll stations, and villages along the Atlantic coast, it was accompanied by engraved images of the kings of Loango and Kongo in state and of their capital cities. The illustrations reinforced the sense of the narratives as eyewitness accounts. However, as secondhand interpretations of the text un-
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