The Capitol Dome

6 THE CAPITOL DOME with Europeans. Following early modern European tradition, feathered costumes and headdresses identified "Indians," while Europeans were shown in relatively heavy clothing and with the technologies that sym- bolized their superiority (such as ships, swords, and guns). Only two of these scenes depicted violence. In the other four, indigenous people were shown in various poses of welcome, acceptance, and surrender—includ- ing the Cortés-Montezuma scene. That scene's inclusion (third in the series) might thus be seen as a link between Columbus's peaceful recep- tion in 1492 (scene #2) and comparable receptions of Penn and Oglethorpe by "Indians" in North America in 1682 (scene #8) and 1732 (scene #10). The general impression given of the great encounter as a consensual one between confident, entitled Europeans and acquiescent "Indians" reflected the tenor of the great murals already installed in the rotunda—Vanderlyn's Landing of Columbus and, beside it, William Powell's Discovery of the Mississippi by De Soto—the interpretive significance of which "Brumidi would certainly have been conscious." 5 Likewise, the larger Fig. 10. One of a series of 24 oil-on-copper paintings illustrating a 1783 Madrid edition of Solís's History of the Conquest of Mexico. The caption reads "Moct- ezuma names the King of Spain as the successor of his Empire: he gives him allegiance and tribute." MUSEO DE AMÉRICA, MADRID Thus whatever the attempt at resolving the contradiction, it was typically buried under an emphasis on Montezuma's response to the arrival of Europeans: submission. In the era of Romanticism, the story's core concepts of "conquest," "surren- der," and "submission" developed gendered, erotic metaphors (figs. 11-12). An imaginary love-affair began as a sub-plot in the seventeenth century, but by the nineteenth it was the heart of numerous renderings of the "Conquest of Mexico" in media ranging from operas to histories to paintings. The metaphorical romance was between Cortés (or a fictional brother or another Spanish captain) and an indigenous woman (typically a fictional Aztec princess, but eventually his indigenous interpreter, Malinztin or Malinche). an "aMeriCan" ViSion By the time the Frieze of American History was conceived, therefore, a tradition had been estab- lished regarding the significance and veracity of Montezuma's welcome to Cortés as a sur- render. Some visual conventions regarding the depiction of the moment had also developed. For example, Cortés was usually dressed as an early modern gentleman and the conquistadors as soldiers, while the Aztecs were adorned in feathers. Aztec princesses in submissive pose often completed the picture. And whether the moment depicted was the first encounter or the alleged arrest, the consequential meaning of the scene was always that of capitulation. That tradition and its conventions were cer- tainly available to Constantino Brumidi (1805– 1880), the Italian artist commissioned to cre- ate the Rotunda's frieze. He drew the original designs in 1859, imagining "American" his- tory as primarily specific to the United States, but hemispheric where past events were seen as influencing the march of progress that was "American History." Each scene was a link in a chain of great events, beginning with Colum- bus's first landing in the hemisphere through to the discovery of gold in California. Although the appropriation of Columbus as a U.S. hero had begun by this time (indeed, John Vander- lyn's massive canvas of "Landing of Colum- bus" had been installed in the Rotunda in 1847), it wouldnot reach its high point until the quad- ricentennial in 1892, so Brumidi's choice of an Italian as the germinator of the "American" genesis surely had some personal resonance. Six of Brumidi's original sixteen scenes fea- tured indigenous Americans and their encounters

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