Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/650208
Senate], you must recollect the stone gallery in the senate chamber; there were several male figures beneath, with their hands raised to support it. e figures were not colossal, nor Herculean, but even if they had no weight to bear up, the very attitude, with hands stretched out and permanently elevated as high as their head, was enough to give pain to the beholder. [e speaker then "exhibited the attitude of the arms, which was the most incapacitating possible for sustaining a weight—It was something like that of pulpit orators in the act of praying.] 16 Latrobe may have called such figures caryatids, which were better known than the more properly identified male atlantes and performed the same architectural function. What is certain is that Latrobe intended them to represent groups of Americans— personifications identified by traditional emblems to which specific American meanings were attached. e best evidence of their character is the estimate of their costs by Franzoni, who carved them while Congress was in recess during the summer of 1812. ey represented art ($400), commerce ($150), agricul- ture ($150), science ($175), Bellona or military force ($125), and Minerva or civil government ($200), the range of occupations in which Americans excelled as an independent nation. Neither images nor descriptions of them survive, so how these caryatids conveyed their peculiarly American characteristics is unknown. Latrobe described the room and figures as "a eatre for the Senate and a Gallery, or galleries supported by caryatides, for the people. [And] a work of art in which that character and Taste of Grecian Architecture is preserved … and a work of rational decoration in which that which is reasonable is made to supply the decoration." 17 For his second Senate chamber (1816-1817), Latrobe's atlan- tes were to stand atop the public gallery that overlooked the seated senators. One is shown in profile on Latrobe's 1817 section draw- ing of the north wing (fig. 9). Librarian of Congress George Watterston later recalled plaster "emblematic figures of the old thirteen States, decorated with their peculiar insignia." Latrobe's son remembered seeing some of the caryatids. Carlo Franzoni modelled "figures of North and South Carolina, represented as sisters, the arm of one around the neck of the other; also, Massa- chusetts and Maine—a mother leading her child—for Maine was as yet a district only. ese were figures of the heroic size, a part of a series intended by Mr. Latrobe to have places in the build- ing." Latrobe maintained continuity in expressing the Senate's function, but expressed it more meaningfully by adapting famous architectural sculptures for his emblematic figures representing the states. 18 Even highly educated Euro-Americans decried Latrobe's attaching idiosyncratic emblems associated with America to Greek architectural figures to personify the states. e promi- nent financier and Capitol Hill resident, omas Law (who had divorced Martha Custis's granddaughter six years earlier), reported a speech by Massachusetts Congressman Timothy Pickering delivered on March 1, 1817, during one of his last days as a member 26 Fig. 8. e corn capital vestibule contained Latrobe's first use of an American order of architecture based on native vegetation; corn probably represented American farmers. See also p. 6, fig. 7. Fig. 9. e only known visual evidence of Latrobe's caryatids to represent the states in the Senate Chamber appears on this 1817 section drawing of the north wing. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION