The west tympanum is devoted to the Department of the Treasury and the Department of State; the north tympanum to the Department of Justice and the Post-Office Department; the east tympanum to the Departments of Agriculture and the Interior; and the south tympanum to the War and Navy Departments.
Half a tympanum is devoted to each. The Department of the Treasury—to begin with the one first named in the above list—is sufficiently indicated by the introduction of the Treasury Building in the background. Two children are playing on the parapet, one of them with his foot on a strong-box. The background of the other portion of the tympanum—illustrating the Department of State—exhibits the dome and west front of the Capitol and, to the right, the Washington Monument. The vital thing about a nation—that which it is the first business of a Department of State to help preserve—is its independence. The Monument may be taken, therefore, as standing for the establishment of that independence, and the Capitol for its maintenance. A dog, typical of fidelity, lies in the foreground. The cypress trees, it may be noted before passing to the next tympanum, are introduced purely for their decorative effect, and are without any symbolical meaning. In all the decorations they are set in jars copied from Zuñi originals in the National Museum.
In the north tympanum, the figure of Justice is clad in ermine. On the terrace is a high bronze standard, carrying a pair of evenly balanced scales. The genius at the left holds a measuring rod, for exact justice. In the other half of the painting, devoted to the Post-Office Department, the genius is represented with a pair of compasses marking out mail routes on a globe. Mercury was the Messenger of the Gods, according to classic mythology, and a bronze statue of him with his winged sandals, staff, and cap, is appropriately set upon the stone terrace to typify the dispatch and celerity of the Department.
CEILING DISC.—BY ELMER E. GARNSEY.
Agriculture, in the next tympanum, is symbolized solely in the fertile and well cultivated landscape which forms the background of her portion of the decoration. The chief duty of the Department of the Interior—to protect and control the Indians—is indicated in the background of the other half of the picture by a representation of the curious method of burial, if one may use the word, which prevails among certain of the western tribes—the body, lashed to a few poles for a bier, being laid away in the branches of a tree.
In the last tympanum, that of War and the Navy, the terrace is nicked and shattered by the bullets of the enemy. The figure to the left, representing the Department of War, holds a regulation army sword, and the figure to the right a naval sword. To the left the two children are engaged in combat; one is falling, stained with blood, while the other presses upon him with a falchion, or Roman sword. The corresponding composition to the right is much the same; the chief difference being the trident which the victor aims at his opponent’s breast. War is accompanied by a Roman standard adapted to an American use by altering the old initials “S.P.Q.R.”—“The Senate and People of Rome”—to “U.S.A.” In the background is Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. On the other side are the masts of the recently constructed battleship Indiana, and a rostral column of the same sort as those used in the tympanum representing Water in the Pavilion of the Elements, but in this case copied exactly from the one erected in honor of Commodore Decatur and afterwards removed to Annapolis, where it is now. The inscriptions on the tablets in the four tympanums may most conveniently be inserted here. In the west tympanum, that of the State and Treasury Departments, the quotations are as follows:—
’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.—Washington.
Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.—Webster.
Thank God I also am an American.—Webster.