Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

In the tympanum of The Sciences the central figure is Astronomy. She holds a pair of compasses, and leans forward on her throne to make measurements upon the celestial globe which a genius holds up before her. Another genius to the right looks through a telescope. To the left of the panel are Physics and Mathematics. Physics holds an instrument designed to show the law of the balance of different weights at different distances from the point of support. Mathematics has an abacus, or counting-frame, with which she is instructing a little genius in the elements of figures. The beads of the abacus are so placed that they give the date, “1896”—the year the picture was painted. Beside her, in the extreme left-hand corner, are various figures illustrating plane and solid geometry. The former kind are so arranged, as the visitor will see by looking carefully, that they form all the letters of the artist’s name—KENYON COX. On the other side of the throne are Botany, bearing a young oak tree, and wearing a green and white figured gown; and Zoölogy, a nude figure holding out her hand to caress a magnificent peacock perched on the coping of the balustrade. In the corner are a shell and various kinds of minerals, for Conchology, Mineralogy, Geology, and so forth.

On tablets over the doors and windows are the names of men distinguished in Science and Art. Those representing Art are Wagner, Mozart, Homer, Milton, Raphael, Rubens, Vitruvius, Mansard, Phidias, and Michael Angelo. The Scientists are Leibnitz, Galileo, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Dalton, Hipparchus, Herschel, Kepler, La Marck, and Helmholtz.

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.