Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/311502
to work at the Villa Torlonia outside of Porta Pia for 800 scudi. 18 is amount, enough for someone to live on for three years, is believed to have been his payment for deco- rating the new theater that Alessandro Torlonia had be- gun constructing in 1841 to celebrate his marriage to Vittoria Colonna of the venerable Roman family. e sculptor orvaldsen designed the reliefs. e walls and ceilings of the many rooms were covered with murals, mostly with classical motifs around the theme of the loves of the gods in celebration of the marriage. During the con- servation of murals in the theater of the Villa Torlonia, opened to the public in December 2013, Brumidi's signa- ture and dates of 1844 and 1845 were discovered on three lunettes. 19 A decade later, Brumidi would import many of the motifs he designed for the theater to the Capitol (figs. 10B and 11B). e lunettes with murals framed by Pompeiian architectural structure and leafy coloettes can also be seen in the room that he designed for the Senate Naval Affairs Committee (S-127), painted in 1856–1858. e elaborate use of illusionistic stone coffers and moldings is a principal element of both spaces, and illusionistic columns like those in the theater reappear on the lower walls (figs. 13A and 13B). Figures whose lower body grow into leafy rinceaux representing spirits, which he called "genii," are found in the theater (fig. 12A), in a drawing in a sketchbook he brought from Rome, and in the Brumidi Corridors in the Capitol (fig. 12B). Not only was Brumidi working for the wealthiest family in Rome, he also painted for popes and in the Vatican. Between 1840 and 1842 Brumidi participated in the restoration of the ird Loggia of the Vatican Palace (the Loggia della Cosmografia), which had been painted by in the second half of the sixteenth century. Here he had further expanded his fresco skills, working under his former teacher Camuccini and Filippo Agricola, who would become president of the Accademia, and with his contemporary Domenico Tojetti. Brumidi and Tojetti restored the three frescoes in the vault of the eleventh bay and end wall dedicated to Pope Gregory XVI, who spon- sored the restoration. 20 In addition to providing him both experience and good income, this work in the Vatican undoubtedly brought him to the attention of the Vatican officials and to American priests studying in Rome, who would later pave his way in the United States. Most important for his later work in the Capitol, his work in the ird Loggia would likely have given him close acquaintance with Raphael's Loggia on the floor below (fig. 14A). at loggia was the model that Meigs 11 envisioned for the walls and ceilings of the first-floor vaulted corridors of the new Senate wing of the Capitol, now called the Brumidi Corridors (fig. 14B), after seeing color illus- trations of it in the Astor Library in New York. 21 Raphael's designs were themselves directly inspired by the recently discovered murals in the Golden House of Nero (Domus Aurea). Brumidi's designs for the Senate corridors, painted mainly between 1857 and 1859, have panels with designs and subjects directly inspired by the work of Raphael and his workshop. In addition to the overall designs, the vertical panels with squirrels and rodents or birds on leafy rinceaux, hanging fruits, flowers on black backgrounds, and the classical gods and goddesses he designed for the Capitol all find correlations in Raphael's Loggia (figs. 15A, 15B, 16B, and 17B). Brumidi's talents were so esteemed in Rome that he was chosen to paint the official portrait of Pope Pius IX, just elected in 1846; Brumidi's dynamic and richly col- ored portrait (fig. 18A) is today one of the largest and most impressive in the collection, and he was commissioned to make more than one copy of it. ey were most likely painted in his studio in the parish of S. Maria de' Monti. e next year, he unsuccessfully sought a government position as assistant to the inspector of public painting of Rome, his mentor Filippo Agricola. 22 Brumidi's former teacher Camuccini was in charge of creating mosaics with portraits of historical popes for an exterior frieze on St. Paul's Outside the Walls, and in 1848 and 1849 Brumidi painted fifteen oil paintings as models for the mosaics. 23 His talent for creating lifelike portraits of historical figures as well as from life would continue to be valuable for his work at the Capitol (fig. 18B). Unfortunately, Brumidi's artistic talents and good connections could not avert a dramatic change of fortune in 1849, when he was caught up in the revolutionary uprising that drove Pius IX out of the city and declared a republic. After five months, French troops attacked Rome and the city was in a state of war. Brumidi was not one of the radical artists who participated in the revolution, and he even forbade political discussions or the reading of newspapers in his coffee shop. 24 However, as captain of the Civic Guard he removed for safekeeping objects and paint- ings from convents that were to house troops or might be bombed, and although he returned them after Pius IX was restored in 1850, he would later be arrested for these actions and other charges. 25 After the revolution was quelled, he was invited by Archbishop John Hughes of New York, who was in Rome THE CAPITOL DOME SPRING 2014