Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

The Stucco Ornamentation.—The dome is so simply planned that a description of its main features may be given in a very brief space. The surface is filled with a system of square coffers. The ornamentation of the body of the dome is in arabesque. The eight ribs which mark off the dome into compartments are each divided into two by a band of gilded ornament resembling a guilloche. The coffers diminish in size from four and a half feet square at the bottom to two and a half feet at the top. The total number of coffers is three hundred and twenty—or forty in each compartment, and also in each horizontal row, and eight in each vertical row. The ground of the coffers is blue, the sky-color, as if one were really looking out into the open air—and therefore the color traditionally used in coffering. To give sparkle and brilliancy, many shades and kinds of blue are used, the darker and heavier at the bottom, and the lighter and airier toward the top. The transition is so gradual and natural that the eye does not perceive any definite change, but only a generally increased vividness. The border mouldings of the coffers are cream-colored—old ivory is the usual term—strongly touched with gold, and in the centre of each is a great gold rosette.

Although the purpose of the dome arabesque is primarily to give an agreeable impression of light and shade, the individual figures of which it is composed are nearly as interesting a study as the general effect of the whole. The variety of the figures is almost bewildering—lions’ heads, sea-horses, dolphins, urns, cartouches, griffins, shells, storks, caryatides, tridents, eagles, cherubs, half-figures, geniuses—altogether something like forty-five principal type-designs, interwoven with very many smaller but no less beautiful pieces of ornament. All are adapted from Renaissance models of the best and purest period, and are combined with the utmost spirit and harmony in an arabesque whose every portion has equal artistic value. No single figure catches the eye; broad horizontal and vertical bands of decoration, gradually diminishing as they approach the top, encircle and ascend the dome, each with its particular “note” of arrangement and design, but all cunningly united to form an indisputable whole, everywhere balanced and restrained.

DETAIL OF THE DOME.

It may be of interest to the visitor to learn that one of the most novel and ingenious pieces of engineering connected with the construction of the Library was a so-called “travelling” or rotary scaffold, devised by Mr. Green for the use of the workmen employed on the stucco decorations of the dome. It may be likened to a huge pair of steps, ascending from the upper entablature to the lantern. Its upper end thrust against an iron pintle secured to beams laid across the eye of the lantern, and was steadied at the bottom by a pair of flanged wheels, which travelled on a track in the entablature, so that the whole apparatus could be traversed entirely round the room. The various stages or landings were adjusted to fit the concave of the dome, with the result that the accuracy of the curve could be tested with almost mathematical exactness. At one time two of these scaffolds were swung to the same pintle.

Mr. Blashfield’s Paintings.—The position of Mr. Blashfield’s decorations in the Collar and Lantern of the dome is the noblest and most inspiring in the Library. They are literally and obviously the crowning glory of the building, and put the final touch of completion on the whole decorative scheme of the interior. The visitor will see how, without them, not a painting in the building would seem to remain solidly and easily in its place, for they occupy not only the highest, but the exact central point of the Library, to which, in a sense, every other is merely relative.

As was hinted in the description of Mr. Vedder’s paintings, Mr. Blashfield was almost necessarily drawn to select some such subject as he has here chosen—the Evolution of Civilization, the records of which it is the function of a great library to gather and preserve.

The ceiling of the Lantern is sky and air, against which, as a background, floats the beautiful female figure representing the Human Understanding, lifting her veil and looking upward from Finite Intellectual Achievement (typified in the circle of figures in the collar) to that which is beyond; in a word, Intellectual Progress looking upward and forward. She is attended by two cherubs, or geniuses; one holds the book of wisdom and knowledge, the other seems, by his gesture, to be encouraging those beneath to persist in their struggle towards perfection.

The decoration of the collar consists of a ring of twelve seated figures, male and female, ranged against a wall of mosaic patterning. They are of colossal size, measuring, as they sit, about ten feet in height. They represent the twelve countries, or epochs, which have contributed most to the development of present-day civilization in this country. Beside each is a tablet, decorated with palms, on which is inscribed the name of the country typified, and below this, on a continuous banderole or streamer, is the name of some chief or typical contribution of that country to the sum of human excellence. The figures follow each other in chronological order, beginning, appropriately enough, at the East, the East being the cradle of civilization. The list is as follows: Egypt, typifying Written Records; Judea, Religion; Greece, Philosophy; Rome, Administration; Islam, Physics; The Middle Ages, Modern Languages; Italy, the Fine Arts; Germany, the Art of Printing; Spain, Discovery; England, Literature; France, Emancipation; and America, Science.