THE PAVILION OF THE DISCOVERERS.
The Southwest Pavilion—or the Pavilion of the Discoverers, as it may better be called, from the subject of the paintings with which it is ornamented—opens immediately from the Southwest Gallery. The domed ceiling is richly coffered and profusely ornamented with gilding, except for a large central space in the form of a disc, which contains a painted decoration. Below the dome are four tympanums, also occupied by paintings. The walls are ornamented with paired pilasters, bearing a narrow frieze decorated with lions’ heads and festoons of garlands.
Mr. Pratt’s Bas-Reliefs.—In the pendentives is a series of four large circular plaques in relief, representing The Seasons. The series, which is repeated in each of the other three pavilions, is the work of Mr. Bela L. Pratt. Spring is the figure of a girl sowing the seed, her garment blown into graceful swirls by the early winds of March. Summer is a maturer figure, sitting, quiet and thoughtful, in a field of poppies. Autumn is a mother nursing a baby. An older child—a little boy—stands beside her, and the abundance and fruitfulness of the season are still further typified in the ripe bunches of grapes which hang from the vine. Winter is an old woman gathering faggots for the hearth. Behind her is a leafless tree, on which is perched an owl. A garland appropriate to the season hangs over each of the four plaques—fruits for Spring and Summer, grains for Autumn, and oak leaves and acorns for Winter.
CENTRAL GROUP OF DISCOVERY.—GEORGE W. MAYNARD.
Mr. Maynard’s Paintings.—The paintings in the tympanums and the disc are the work of Mr. George W. Maynard, whose panels in the Main Entrance Hall have already been described. In the tympanums the sequence of Mr. Maynard’s subjects begins on the east side and continues to the right, as follows: Adventure, Discovery, Conquest, Civilization—the bold roving spirit of Adventure leading to Discovery, which in turn results in Conquest, bringing at last a settled occupation of the land and final Civilization. In the disc of the ceiling, Mr. Maynard has depicted the four qualities most appropriate to these four stages of a country’s development—Courage, Valor, Fortitude, and Achievement.
Since the tympanums are the same in shape and of the same size, measuring each thirty-one feet by six, and since all stand in the same relation toward the whole room, Mr. Maynard has followed throughout a single method of arrangement. Each tympanum is over three doors or three windows, as the case may be. In accordance, therefore, with this exactly balanced architectural scheme, a pyramidal group of three female figures—pyramidal because any other form would have looked top-heavy—is placed above the central opening. Balancing or, so to say, subsidiary figures, which, if only from their position at the diminishing ends of the tympanum, are necessarily of less importance, are placed over the doors or windows to the side. Thus the decoration is poised in complete accordance with the disposition of the wall which it crowns. The figures at the ends, it will be noticed, are of two sorts, mermaids and emblazoned shields; but since they alternate in pairs from tympanum to tympanum, the shields occurring in the east and west and the mermaids in the north and south, this variety serves very well to accentuate the unity of the composition of the four paintings. The ornament, also, is the same in its more important features: the throne in the centre, flanked by cornucopias; the arabesque border with its dolphins, suggestive of seafaring; and the lists of names of discoverers and colonizers which occupy the spaces to the right and left of the central group, and serve to draw together the whole composition.
It would be well if the visitor were to hold in mind these points, for in the two following pavilions on this floor, where the conditions governing the painter are exactly the same as in the present room, it will be seen that the artists employed have followed in their work the same orderly and logical plan of arrangement which Mr. Maynard has here adopted.
In the first tympanum, Adventure, seated on her throne, holds in her right hand a drawn sword, in instant readiness for the combat; her left hand rests upon an upright caduceus, the emblem of Mercury, the god of the traveller, merchant, and thief, and fit, therefore, to be the patron of the restless adventurers who sailed westward in the sixteenth century, impelled as well by a desire for booty as for legitimate trade. To the right and left are seated female figures, representing respectively Spanish and English adventure—the two countries which furnished America with the largest part of its early buccaneers and adventurers. Like the central figure, the two are clad in rich and elaborate armor, accurately copied, as is that in the other tympanums, from authentic sixteenth-century models. The figure to the left, typifying England, holds a cutlass in her right hand, while her left hand buries itself in a heap of pieces-of-eight, the pirate and buccaneering coin par excellence. The companion figure to the right holds a battle-axe in her right hand, and in her left one of the little figurines, or miniature idols of gold, which the Spaniards in Peru sought so eagerly, and with so much cruelty, to secure from the natives. At either side of the throne is a shield, on which an old Norse Viking ship, propelled by oars and sail, is depicted. At either end of the tympanum is a shield, that to the right bearing the arms of Spain, and that to the left those of England. On the Spanish side of the decoration is the following list of names of Spanish adventurers: Diaz, Narvaez, Coello, Cabeza, Verrazano, Bastidas. On the other side is the English list: Drake, Cavendish, Raleigh, Smith, Frobisher, Gilbert. Each group of names is surmounted by the heraldic form of the naval crown, ornamented with alternate sterns and squaresails of ships, which was given by the Romans to a successful naval commander, or to the sailor who first boarded an enemy’s ship. In either corner of the tympanum still another emblem of sea-power, the trident, is introduced.
CEILING DISC.—GEORGE W. MAYNARD.
In the second tympanum, Discovery, crowned with a laurel wreath of gold and wearing a leather jerkin, sits on her throne, holding a ship’s rudder in her right hand, and with her left upon a globe of the earth, which is supported on her knee. The rude map of America, which appears on it, is copied from a portion of a mappemonde, or chart of the world, which was discovered a few years ago in England, and which has been ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci. It dates from the second decade of the sixteenth century.[12] The two seated figures to the right and left are clad in armor; the first holds a sword and “Jacob’s staff,” or cross staff, a device used by the early navigators instead of a quadrant or sextant to determine the altitude of the sun and stars. The figure to the left, with paddle and chart, points towards the distance with outstretched arm, and turns to her companions to beckon them onwards. The two shields at the foot of the throne bear an astrolabe, an obsolete instrument used for the same purpose as the cross staff. At either end of the tympanum, a mermaid, with a seashell for cap, and with seaweed twined about her body, invites the voyagers with strings of pearls and coral. Lists of names occur at the left and right, surmounted, as before, with the naval crown. The first list is: Solis, Orellana, Van Horn, Oieda, Columbus, Pinzon; the second, Cabot, Magellan, Hudson, Behring, Vespucius, Balboa.
In the third tympanum, that of Conquest, the idea expressed in the central group is that of the proud tranquillity which follows triumph in battle. The figures carry the insignia of victory. The one seated upon the throne has pushed back her casque and lets her left hand hang idly over the crosspiece of the sword. But there is still danger of a renewal of the struggle; the right hand rests clenched upon an arm of the throne, the armor has not yet been laid aside, and the sword not yet sheathed. The figures to the left and right are in a like attitude of readiness, though they carry in addition to their swords the emblems of peace—the first, representing Southern Conquests, a sheaf of palms; and the second, representing Northern Conquests, chaplets of oak-leaves, which wreathe her casque and sword. The two shields bear a heraldic representation of the Pillars of Hercules, with the motto Ne plus ultra twined about them, and between them, in the distance, the setting sun—perhaps an ironical allusion to the ancient idea which set the limits of the earth at the Straits of Gibraltar, or perhaps simply an adaptation and extension of it to the new conditions of knowledge. At the ends of the tympanum the arms of England and Spain are again introduced, as significant of the general division of North and South America into English and Spanish territory. The names to the left are: Pizarro, Alvarado, Almagro, Hutten, Frontenac, De Soto; to the right, Cortes, Standish, Winslow, Phipps, Velasquez, De Leon. Over each group is the battlemented mural crown given by the Romans to the soldier who first succeeded in planting a standard upon the wall of a besieged city.
The fourth tympanum, Civilization, is the flowering of the other three. The armor has been laid aside, and the three figures in the centre are clad simply in classic garments. Civilization, crowned with laurel and seated on her throne, holds up the torch of learning, or enlightenment, and displays the opened page of a book—an idea which is repeated in the lamp and book which compose the device on the two shields below. To the left is Agriculture, crowned with wheat, and holding a scythe and a sheaf of wheat. To the right is Manufactures with distaff and spindle, twisting the thread. The mermaids at the ends of the decoration hold up, one an ear of corn, and the other a branch of the cotton-plant bearing both the flower and the boll—the two chief products respectively of the northern and the southern portions of our country. The names are: to the left, Eliot, Calvert, Marquette, Joliet, Ogelthorpe, Las Casas; and to the right, Penn, Winthrop, Motolinia, Yeardley, La Salle. Over each list is a wreath of laurel.
Mr. Maynard has represented in the ceiling the four qualities most pertinent to the character of his four tympanums. All four are shown as female figures, displayed against a background of arabesque. The first, Courage—a brute, animal courage—is clad in a coat of coarse scale-armor, over which a lion’s skin is drawn, the head of the beast serving her for a cap. She is armed with a war-club and a shield. The next, Valor, is a nobler figure, more beautiful and wearing more beautiful armor. Her right hand holds a sword, and her left is pressed to her breast. The third, Fortitude, is unarmed. In her left arm she carries an architectural column, the emblem of stability. Achievement, the last, is clad in armor, but is without offensive weapon. She wears a laurel crown, and in her left hand she carries the Roman standard, surmounted by its eagle and laurel wreath, the symbol of a strong and just government. In the order named, therefore, it will readily be seen how these figures may be said to typify the successive tympanums of Adventure, Discovery, Conquest, and Civilization.