You are looking at the final oil study by Constantino
Brumidi for the monumental painted dome
in the United States Capitol here in
Washington, DC. Brumidi was awarded - what
was then - the most ambitious and
expensive commission of a federal work
of art. In it, he shows the Apotheosis of
George Washington placed with allegories
representing the future prospects for
the United States. Brumidi had the proper
training for this. Born and raised in
Europe, he was steeped in the European
tradition of large-scale allegorical
paintings in churches and state
buildings. Here he presents George
Washington as the father of Our Country
flanked by the allegorical figures of
Liberty and Freedom. He is surrounded by
vignettes extolling the virtues of
American invention and forward-looking
progress, but he also is surmounted by 13
allegorical figures each of which
represents one of the 13 original
colonies. Let's look closely at the
vignettes that make up this composition.
In the center we see George Washington.
Directly below him is the allegory of
War, and here War is chasing off the
forces of evil, including the first
reference to the American Civil War,
which was raging at the time Brumidi
painted this composition. He placed the
face of Jefferson Davis, president of the
Confederacy, as Discord and his vice
president Alexander Stephens as Anger.
Moving counterclockwise the next
vignette shows Ceres, goddess of the
harvest seated on a McCormick Reaper, one
of America's great agricultural
inventions. Beyond that is Vulcan at the
forge shown here forging the cannons
that would become the core of the
artillery for the Union Army. At the very
top of the composition is Mercury, the
god of commerce, presiding over America's
bounty and paying the financiers of
the American Revolution. Beyond him is
Neptune who is there with one of the
ironclads, the ships that changed the
face of naval warfare during the Civil
War, and Venus who is laying the
Transatlantic Cable. Finally, we have Minerva,
goddess of wisdom, shown with three of
America's most prominent inventors
Benjamin Franklin, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Robert Fulton.
Together it shows the history of the Roman
Republic as the precursor to American
democracy and presents George Washington
as presiding over the values that at
mid-century defined the hopes for this
nation. We also learn a great deal
about this work by looking at the
conservation aspect. When the Brumidi
painting of the Apotheosis of George
Washington arrived, I was very excited by
the fact that immediately I saw a shadow
of figures above and behind George
Washington. This was exciting because I
knew that Brumidi had already painted
some other studies for the Apotheosis.
This prompted us to use imaging techniques.
In conservation, we x-radiograph paintings and we also
carry out a technique called infrared
reflectography. Both techniques allows us to
see beneath the painted surface. The techniques take
advantage of the different densities of
pigments. What we discovered was that
George Washington was originally painted
higher as in previous studies. Brumidi
clearly decided in our final study that
he had to move the figure of George
Washington down. If he had left him in
that original position
his face would have been in the dead center
of the dome of the capitol. So he
consciously moved his head down so that
the composition would work in a
three-dimensional space. In addition one
very exciting find was that he
repositioned all of the angels in the sky.
Originally they were facing outward so
that as a viewer here in the museum, when
you look at the painting, you would see
them looking straight at you. But he
realized that if you were in a dome
looking upward it would make more sense
for all the angels to be looking down at
you as a viewer no matter where you
stood in the Rotunda of the Capitol. When
the Brumidi painting arrived in our
studio, we decided that the varnish was a
little too dull and had yellowed and
needed to be removed. Dirt layers were
removed, as were old discolored restorations.
The final result in conserving and
restoring this painting has included
applying a new varnish to saturate
colors evenly and minimal restoration to
reintegrate areas of damage, which are
very minor, so that the viewer can
appreciate Brumidi's original intent in
seeing this final study as what would
become the fresco in the dome of the
Capitol. As you can see there's a great
deal to be learned about the artistic
process from close examination of this
oil study. We see how Brumidi is making
the transition from a two-dimensional
thought to a three-dimensional rendering
of the vignettes that are here. In
choosing the Apotheosis of George
Washington and in selecting and
composing the allegorical vignettes
surrounding him, Brumidi at
mid-century calls to mind George
Washington's importance both as the
Father of Our Country and as the
inspiration for the country's future.