Constantino Brumidi, Michelangelo of the United States Capitol

by Myrtle Cheney Murdock

THE PRESIDENT’S ROOM

With its richness of design, its beauty and delicacy of color, the President’s Room represents Brumidi’s supreme effort “to make beautiful the Capitol” of the United States. Facing the portrait of Hamilton we see reflected in the giant golden mirror the portrait of Samuel Osgood. Reflected also are the ceiling frescoes of Vespucius and Religion and the treasured mahogany table at which Abraham Lincoln and many other Presidents have signed legislative bills. The mahogany clock at one time had hands of gold until a souvenir hunter carried them home. Today all sightseers get no further than a railing at the doorway.

Room? And in this Hall, where do you find room to criticize the combination of colors which you see around you? It is easy to invent a popular criticism and find fault; but I would like to see some of these gentlemen who are so conversant with matters of taste and art as to speak with the assurance of masters, bring forward some design, some specimen from their superior genius that they would themselves insert in place of that which they see around them.”

PRESIDENT’S ROOM

The decoration of the President’s Room in the Senate Annex is thought by many to be Brumidi’s best work in the Capitol Building. Since the President’s Room in the Capitol was to be set aside for the use of the President of the United States at any time duty called the President to the Capitol Building, it may well be supposed that Brumidi wanted that room to be as beautiful as an artist could make it. He is said to have spent more than five years on this room alone, but five years seem not half long enough to create such beauty as is here displayed.

Five colorful ceiling-to-floor panels adorn the walls and in the center of each hangs a portrait elegantly framed. The five members of Washington’s first Cabinet are thus honored—Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Secretary of State; Edmund Randolph of Virginia, Attorney General; Henry Knox of Massachusetts, Secretary of War; Alexander Hamilton of New York, Secretary of the Treasury; and Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts, Postmaster General. I say these portraits hang in the panels. If you stood at the door looking hurriedly about the walls, as most visitors must do at the President’s Room, you would think the frames as real as the portraits. In truth, though, the beautifully carved frames are painted on the walls as are the portraits. Mr. Fairman calls these paintings, “Portraits of Distinction,” and so they are.

But it is the frescoed ceiling in the President’s Room that showers new light and color and added beauty about the portraits on the walls. Four symbolic groups on this ceiling look down from their large medallion gold leaf frames—four life-size Madonnas, symbolizing Religion, Legislation, Liberty, and Executive Authority—Madonnas of great beauty and rare coloring. Then at each corner of this frescoed ceiling among the symbolism and the cherubs are four life-size portraits, full length, each chosen as representative of a force in civilization. Columbus memorializes discovery; Vespucius, exploration; Brewster, religion; and Franklin, history.

The portrait of George Washington, evidently done with Rembrandt Peale’s Washington in mind, has a position all its own high above the portrait of Thomas Jefferson. A portion of the Annual Report of Captain Meigs, dated October 27, 1859, fixed the completion of the Brumidi frescoes in the President’s Room. Said that report, “The painting of the President’s Room in the North wing will be completed by the next meeting of Congress.”