ELEANOR JONES HARVEY: 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 thirteen allegorical figures, each of which represents one of the thirteen 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. And finally, he 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.
TIARNA DOHERTY: 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 allow 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 if you were in a dome looking upward, it would make more sense for all of 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 had needed to be removed. Dirt layers were removed, as were old discolored restorations. The final result in conversing 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.
EJH: 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, born as the Father of Our Country and as the inspiration for the country’s future.
