Brumidi

"I no longer desire fame or fortune. My one ambition and daily prayer is to beautify the Capitol of the one country on earth where there is liberty."

~~Constantino Brumidi

From "The Apotheosis of Brumidi"

Their eyes bore into the base of his skull, even through the scaffolding from 180 feet below, but Costa is too intent on his work to care. Besides, his stiff neck and locked shoulders—the cumulative agony of ten straight hours of painting—prevent him from turning his head, much less glaring down at his tormentors. For months, years, they have hounded him: the cigar-chomping Congressmen, who nearly scuttled his commission and spitefully limit his pay to ten dollars a day; the uniformed guards, who bet on whether the old Dago in the black beret and red-lined cape will fall and break his neck; the society columnists from the Washington Post, who gossip about his American wife; that bumptious drawler, Sam Clemens, who conducts mock tours of the Capitol and heckles the maestro from the ground ("Don't get a nosebleed, Connie!"); the former Know-Nothings, who still send him death threats and call him white nigger to his face; this upstart foreigner who dares to sign his murals: "C. Brumidi, Citizen of the United States."

But Costa ignores them. The plaster is drying, and he must finish the Romanized face of his beloved George Washington . . .

*** 

I stare up at Washington's face from the Rotunda floor. His expression is grim, despite the mural's brightly swirling colors and allegorical babes, as if the Father of Our Country suffers from constipation. This summer I have begun reading Roman history, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, and I recall the last words of the Emperor Vespasian when death overtook him on the privy: "Dear me! I must be turning into a god."

"The Apotheosis of Washington by Constantino Brumidi," the guide begins, "often called the Michelangelo of the Capitol."  She glances in our direction, bobs her head, and beams.  Having noticed us guineas in the tour group, she has tailored her pitch.  Mighty impressive. They have trained her well, this relentlessly cheerful young woman in the pastel pink suit and beehive hairdo. She acts like she is selling detergent—or antacid, as the case may be, since she pronounces Brumidi "Bromide-ee."

"This fresco, measuring some 4,600 square feet, fills the entire canopy of the Capitol Dome . . ."  Ooh's and ah's from some blue-haired old ladies. " . . . Begun in 1865, the painting was completed in just over a year. It glorifies George Washington as our first President. Brumidi was an immigrant, a political refugee.  ust like some of you here," she stresses, flashing that neon smile.  "A master artist from Rome, who had studied at the Ac-ca-de-mi-a di San Lu-ca—Did I say that right?—Brumidi was the first painter to introduce fresco technique to the United States. Notice the mural's life-sized figures? Actually, they're fifteen feet high. Imagine! The figure of Liberty supposedly is modelled after Brumidi's wife."

She turns and directly addresses my family and me: "Two years ago, you folks'll be pleased to know, Congress honored Brumidi with a memorial bust. The ceremony was held right here in the Rotunda.  Vice President Humphrey presided. And of course the Italian ambassador attended, too."

That neon smile annoys me, so I deliberately exaggerate my accent.  "He told-a us he had a wunnnnerful time, signorina, and he sends-a his regards."

The smile flickers on, then fades from the guide's lips, while the other tourists gape.

"Actually," my father says, "we're from New Jersey."

"Oh!" chirps the guide, brightening. "Congressman Rodino was at the ceremony. He emceed, in fact."

"We didn't vote for him," I say. "We're Republicans."

The group laughs uneasily, and the tour guide regards me as if I were a rabid Pom. But she quickly regains her laminated poise and describes the kaleidoscope of deities circling above us. Bountiful Ceres holds a cornucopia and rides a reaper, not amid Roman wheat but New England barley. Bandy-legged Vulcan works the forge, making cannons for the Union, not lightning bolts for Jove. Wing-capped Mercury offers a bag of gold to Revolutionary financier Robert Morris. Bearded Neptune and foam-dappled Venus rise from the sea, holding the fabled Atlantic Cable. Helmeted Minerva accepts offerings from Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Morse, and Robert Fulton: bifocals, a telegraph, and a steamboat.

The spiraling figures feed my giddiness. I have been slightly dizzy since entering the city limits. When French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant in 1791 laid out the streets of Washington, he combined the sweep and grandeur of the gardens of Versailles with the constricting paranoia of the labyrinth of Crete: the former, to celebrate the new capital of the United States; the latter, to prevent foreign armies from sacking it. Practically speaking, this plan failed, since British Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn burned the city during the War of 1812. But ever since then, L'Enfant's design has succeeded in disorienting generations of visitors to Washington, especially first-timers like my family and me in this stifling July of 1970. Our broiling car had circled D.C. like an ember in a chambered nautilus.

Besides the heat and mild vertigo, I also must cope with dèjá vu. Having recently returned from Rome, I experience a psychic double exposure: Washington's marble and statuary, porticoes and colonnades remind me so much of the Eternal City that I'm not entirely sure where I am. Is this Italy, America, or some fantasy set in between? When I first caught sight of the Capitol Dome, I had exclaimed, only half kidding: "Look! They've whitewashed St. Peter's!"