While the above facts concerning Brumidi were much the same in the few available references in the Library of Congress, stories of Brumidi’s life in America and of his services to the United States seemed to vary with the enthusiasm or bias of the narrator. Certain conflicting statements centered about the merit and authenticity of his paintings; the genuineness of his American patriotism; the amount of money paid him for the paintings in the Capitol Building; the loyalty of the artist’s family; the appreciation of the American people; and the poverty of the artist at the time of his death. For the most part, however, little has been written and less has been publicly known about the artist who spent his last twenty-five years in devoted effort toward beautifying the Capitol Building of the United States.
The most sympathetic appraisals of Brumidi’s art and his years in America have been done by Charles E. Fairman, Smith D. Fry, George C. Hazelton, Randolph Keim, and S. D. Wyeth. Mr. Wyeth wrote a small pamphlet of six pages in 1866 on “Brumidi’s Allegorical Painting within the Canopy of the Rotunda.” That was the year after Brumidi had finished the huge canopy fresco in the Dome of the Capitol Building. The author was so intent upon the allegorical interpretation of the figures in the Dome canopy that he almost forgot the artist and his art. He did, however, refer to Brumidi in this manner, “Brumidi has been mainly engaged for years in ornamenting various portions of the walls of the Capitol, and his name will ever be associated with the history and beauty of our world renowned National building.”
THE EYE OF THE DOME
The focal point of this Rotunda panorama is the huge Brumidi fresco covering The Eye of the Dome. At this perspective the six allegorical groupings about the circumference of the fresco are partly hidden from view. A portion of Brumidi’s unfinished frieze, painted in imitation sculpture, shows below the windows. Two white balconies encircle the dome, one between the windows and the frieze, and the other at the very top. A hidden stairway winds its way between the two iron shells of the Dome, a vertical distance of 180 feet from the rotunda floor.
Since the Rotunda scaffolding, from which Brumidi worked on the Dome canopy, was removed in January 1866 and the magnificent fresco was then lighted and displayed for the first time to the public, we have every reason to believe that Wyeth’s six pages of allegorical explanations of that huge fresco, printed the same year, were direct from Brumidi’s own carefully planned allegories.
The tiny book entitled, “Keim’s Capitol Interior and Diagrams” was published in 1874. Since its stated purpose was “to furnish the visitor to the Capitol with complete and reliable plans and diagrams, with reference to and accurate descriptions of all objects of interest within the building,” it made no effort to evaluate the Brumidi paintings but it did give a comprehensive record throughout as to the location of Brumidi’s work. Most of the Brumidi frescoes, oils, and decorative portions can still be identified by the Keim references but some are evidently gone forever, while others undoubtedly are merely covered by the wall board or artificial ceiling panels of later renovations.
In George C. Hazelton’s book, “The National Capitol,” printed in 1897, and dealing with “The Architecture, Art and History of the National Capitol,” we find Brumidi a bit more appreciatively treated. Said Hazelton, “No higher compliment could be paid to his genius than the expression of a group of artists who were decorating the new building for the Congressional Library. When they visited the Capitol to study the frescoes of the Italian, they said, ‘We have nothing equal to this in the Library. There is no one who can do such work today.’” Then Hazelton continued, “Brumidi’s work so identifies him with the Capitol Building that he may almost now be called the Michelangelo of the Capitol.”