Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/311502
6 THE CAPITOL DOME SPRING 2014 Fig. 6A. Vincenzo Camuccini, Hecuba Entrusts the Boy Paris to Archelaus, c. 1796. ACCADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROME Fig. 6B. Constan no Brumidi, Columbia Welcoming the South Back into the Union, 1876, S-212, U.S. Capitol. ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL Figs. 6A-6B. Brumidi's teacher Camuccini taught him how to convincingly paint groups of classical figures in a landscape. Brumidi created original American mythology in his late fresco for the Capitol. Renaissance art in Rome, called "Purismo," a reaction against the excesses of the late Baroque and Rococo style and a return to the "purer" art of early Raphael, where balanced figures were placed parallel to the picture plane. e "Manifesto of Purism" published in 1842 would have been familiar to Brumidi, since its main author, Antonio Bianchini, was a cousin. 12 In 1842 Brumidi named his son Giuseppe Antonio Raffaello Brumidi. Raphael's influence on Brumidi's designs for the Capitol is clear. For example, the overall design of the ceiling mural (fig. 7B) of the President's Room (S-216) is clearly inspired by that of the ceiling of Raphael's Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican (fig. 7A). Brumidi's Venus in the scene of "Marine" in e Apotheosis of George Washington is a sister to Raphael's Galatea in the Villa Farnesina in Rome. Brumidi's Madonnas and allegorical figures are descendants of Raphael's. e first-floor Senate corridor designs were inspired by those in Raphael's Loggia in the Vatican, them- selves inspired by first-century Roman murals. Brumidi's cherubs, found in many of his Capitol murals, are in the lineage of Raphael's, and even farther back in time of those painted in first-century Pompeii. Brumidi would have known Raphael's work in person, as he may have the frescoes in Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were well published by the nineteenth century. Compounding his love of Raphael's vision, Brumidi also emulated the seventeenth-century artists who were themselves inspired by Raphael and by classical art. Guido Reni was one of the greatest neoclassicists among the Baroque artists; Brumidi more than once made oil-painted copies of Reni's ceiling fresco Aurora. 13 Foremost among the seventeenth-century neoclassicists was Annibale Carraci, who painted illusionistic sculptures framing paintings, as Brumidi would later do in the lunettes of the Senate Reception Room (S-213) in the Capitol. In addition to his talent for composition and ability to copy and adapt inspirational works, Brumidi's train- ing and early experience allowed him to gain great compe- tence in the materials and techniques of painting and the skills needed to manage a project. An important aspect of Purismo was the revival of the fresco technique used by the Renaissance and classical Baroque masters. When Brumidi appeared before Captain Meigs in Washington, he claimed to be an expert in fresco, the very medium Meigs envisioned for the walls of the Capitol Extension. e technique of painting on fresh plaster demands special knowledge and skill, which Meigs had not been able to find any American artist willing to learn. As far as is known, Brumidi was the only artist in the country capable of painting scenes in true fresco at the time he painted his trial fresco, e Calling of Cincinnatus from the Plow, completed in 1855 in today's Room H-144. In addition to fresco, Brumidi mastered the whole range of painting mediums, including oil and oil/casein emulsions and tempera (or distemper), consisting of loose- ly-bound water-based pigments, which at the Capitol were mixed with white glue. He often applied tempera on ceilings or in between frescoed scenes, and because the matte surfaces look similar from a distance, the different