Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/311502
30 Captivated by the element of danger, visitors enter- ing the Rotunda scanned the scaffolding for a glimpse of the famous painter. ey were often disappointed. Weeks would pass when Brumidi was unable to work from the platform. Sickened by asthma or thwarted by the chill of winter, he retreated to his nearby home studio on G Street, N.W., described as "a pleasant room given up to casts, pic- tures and music, where all the preliminary work is done." 12 Brumidi spent his time in the studio preparing the full-size drawings, or "cartoons," which would be applied to the freshly plastered surface. When he was able to work in the Capitol, Brumidi transferred the images using a traditional transfer technique. One observer outlined the process: the drawings "are taken to the rotunda and placed over the space designed to be next attacked, and perforated with lines of dots along which charcoal is rubbed so as to leave impressions on the plaster beneath. e drawing is then removed, and the artist, having suitably prepared the mortar, proceeds to copy the design, section by section, till the whole is transferred to the wall." 13 Brumidi first prepared a small sketch of scenes for the frieze in 1859. However, delays in congressional authoriza- tion pushed the project back until 1877. Brumidi was then seventy-three years old, although some reporters described him as a man in his eighties. e artist's advanced age, the height of the scaffolding, and the frieze itself, which mim- icked a three-dimensional bas relief, 14 fascinated dozens of writers, who traveled to the Capitol to personally witness Brumidi and his working conditions: "He has nothing upon his scaffold but a wooden chair and a box for table, and two tall trestles to reach his design. His cups of colors are arranged outside the railings of his scaffold, along the sill of the architrave . . . e old man, the age of eighty [sic] is thrice lonely there—by age, by desertion and by the solitude of avocation." 15 Far from being a solitary figure, though, Brumidi enjoyed the company of several friends in the Capitol, including senators and representatives, Montgomery Meigs, and the guards stationed in the Dome's gallery or the f loor below. Often, he was accompanied by the mason who applied fresh plaster to the wall each day. And he spoke with those inquiring reporters, who generally treated him with deference. One particular Washington Post writer, however, adopted a rather jocular tone when he cornered Brumidi in April 1878: 'I have watched you, maestro, clinging to the ceiling like a fly, slapping around commissary paint, until I grew dizzy, and I have wondered when you would fall from the giddy height above upon the giddy throng below and break your Roman nose. Is it not dangerous, caro mio?' 'Yes, and I am old,' the artist replied. 'I want a better platform, but what can I do? I can't get it.' 16 Brumidi, obviously, was well aware of the dangers involved in working "from the giddy height above." While he continued to use the same two-stage platform, however, he soon grew too "feeble" to make the arduous journey up to the gallery and then down a ladder to the frieze. Instead, according to another writer, "A derrick has been rigged, by which he is carried, every day that he is able to work, up to a stationary swinging scaffold. Large crowds witness his ascension, and hundreds are at all times, during the ses- sions of Congress, engaged in viewing it." 17 As winter approached, there were fewer days that Fig. 3. The scaffold used to paint the frieze remained in the Rotunda for many years. This photograph was published in George Hazelton, The Na onal Capitol, 1897. ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL THE CAPITOL DOME SPRING 2014