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21 THE CAPITOL DOME Hall around 1896 was the highly sought-aer sculptor Philip Martiny (1858–1927). Born in Strasbourg, France, Martiny worked as an atelier foreman in Paris before emigrating to New York in 1878 to avoid conscription in the French army. For five years during the 1880s, he assisted Augustus Saint- Gaudens, who appears later in this article, with his sculp- tural designs before opening his own studio in New York. Martiny's executed commissions can be found throughout Washington, D.C., including allegorical figures for the Hall of Records (1901–1907). For the Great Hall, Martiny designed two bronze lamp bearers (fig. 1) as female allegorical figures for the newel posts that support the handrails of the stair banisters. Dressed in Greco-Roman attire, each statue holds an elec- tric torch alo in her raised hand. e artist's sculptures are part of a popular nineteenth-century American trend, in which female figures support gas or electric light fixtures on newel posts in public and private buildings. ese allegories appear in a variety of costumes and poses. One of count- less examples can be seen on the staircase that Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895), the dean of American architecture, created at Chateau-sur-Mer (fig. 2) in Newport, R hode Island, during the 1870s. Clad in Asian apparel, these bronze statues, like the majority of staircase lamp bearers, serve a purely decorative function. Martiny's lamp bearers, on the other hand, serve a more noble purpose of illumi- nating a researcher's path to enlightenment—an idea that is further emphasized by the addition of laurel wreaths of victory, the traditional rewards for successful endeavors, crowning the figures' heads. Even the torches in the hands of Martiny's staircase statues are linked to wisdom and technology. Light is tradi- tionally equated with knowledge, a connection that is promoted in the multiple images of torches, oil lamps, and tripods throughout the Jefferson Building, including the gilded, torch-shaped finial at the top of the copper dome (fig. 3). Fig. 2. Richard Morris Hunt. Main staircase, 1870s, Chateau-sur-Mer, Newport, Rhode Island.