Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1180196
13 THE CAPITOL DOME dress and the appearance of heads of Native Americans in the central band that divides the two bays of the ceil- ing offer an important window into the complex and often conflicted depictions of non-European populations in the art of the Capitol. Further background on the role of the Library of Congress and Wilhelm Zahn's volume will expand the intellectual and artistic contexts of the motifs and narrative in the room. Contemporary reactions to the room also deserve more attention, particularly in assess- ing the role of S-127 in the history of American interior décor. In fact, the coherent Pompeian-style and Graeco- Roman subjects of Brumidi's paintings for S-127 are some of the earliest examples (albeit in the public realm) of a new decorative trend that develops in private homes in the U.S. around the 1850s and continues well into the early twentieth century—Pompeian domestic interiors. 22 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe enormous thanks to both Barbara Wolanin, cura- tor for the Architect of the Capitol emerita, and Michele Cohen, current curator, for inviting me to study and publish Brumidi's mural cycle in S-127, for sharing their deep knowledge of Brumidi and the art of the Capitol, for providing access to the murals and all of their related files, and for their warm and unfailing support. Victoria Singer, Jennifer Blancato, and Eric Paff in the Office of the Curator for the Architect of the Capitol also graciously provided all manner of assistance, and James Rosenthal and Thomas Hatzenbuhler took the gorgeous new images of the murals in S-127. I am extremely grateful to Wil- liam diGiacomantonio, chief historian for USCHS, and for the support of a USCHS Fellowship that provided release time from teaching to undertake this study in fall 2017. Numerous experts from the Library of Congress assisted me in locating the original folio consulted by Brumidi and in understanding that rare book's collection history. The results of this research would not be as rich without the help of Michael North, head of Reference and Reader Services, Rare Book and Special Collections Division; Jeffrey Flannery, head of Reference and Reader Services, Manuscripts Division; Barbara Natanson, head of Reference Section, Prints & Photographs Division; Mari Nakahara, curator of Architecture, Design and Engineering, Prints and Photographs Division; Cheryl Fox, archivist/historian of the Records of the Library of Congress; Michelle Krowl, Civil War and Reconstruction specialist, Manuscripts Division; John Cole, historian of the Library of Congress; and Janice McKelvey, Visitor Services coordinator. Dorothy Roberts, a transcriber of Pitman's Shorthand, graciously and enthusiastically assisted by reading an entry in Montgomery Meigs's journal. I have also benefited from conversations with colleagues in ancient art about my work, including Marden Nich- ols, Carol Mattusch, Elaine Gazda, Laetitia LaFollette, and Bettina Bergman. Barbara Wolanin, Michele Cohen, Carol Mattusch, and Marden Nichols all read drafts and offered invaluable input; any remaining mistakes, how- ever, are my own. Financial support for research in the summer of 2017 came from a generous grant from the George Washington University Facilitating Fund. ELISE A. FRIEDLAND is associate professor of Clas- sics and Art History at the George Washington Univer- sity in Washington, D.C. In addition to her new research on Greek and Roman adoptions and adaptation in nine- teenth-century art and architecture of D.C., she serves as a Roman sculpture specialist for several archaeological sites in Israel and Jordan. She is the creator and first edi- tor of the Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture (2015; 2018 paperback) as well as the author of a monograph on The Roman Marble Sculptures from the Sanctuary of Pan at Caesarea Philippi/Panias (Israel) (2012) and co-editor of The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East (2008). 1. The main publications on Brumidi and his work in the Capitol are Barbara A. Wola- nin, Constantino Brumidi: Artist of the Capitol ( Washington, DC, 1998) and Amy Elizabeth Burton, To Make Beautiful The Capitol: Rediscovering the Art of Constantino Brumidi (Washington, DC, 2014). For a preliminary discussion of the Pom- peian influence on S-127, see Wolanin, Constan- tino Brumidi, pp. 62–87. See also Carol C. Mat- tusch, Pompeii and the Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around the Bay of Naples (Washington, DC, 2008), p. 163. S-127 is also discussed in Francis O'Connor, "Constantino Brumidi as Decorator and History Painter: An Iconographic Analysis of Two Rooms in the United States Capitol," in American Pantheon: Sculptural and Artistic Decoration notes