19. Still under the impression that it was Schenkman who invented Zwarte Piet, I tried to find out, in a 2008 article, what might have motivated him to revive, in 1850, this pictorial tradition, which was already in decline in the late 18th century, and to connect it to the Sinterklaas ritual. Adducing much ‘circumstancial evidence’, I failed to come to a definite conclusion. Schenkman’s own position on blacks and slavery, of which he left no written account, remains unclear, and must provisionally be characterised as ambiguous (Helsloot 2008).