American pantheon : sculptural and artistic decoration of the United States Capitol / edited by Donald R. Kennon and Thomas P. Somma.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kennon, Donald R., 1948-

Somma, Thomas P.

Series:

Perspectives on the art and architectural history of the United States Capitol

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.).

Pantheon (Rome, Italy).

Public art--Washington (D.C.).

Public art.

Washington (D.C.).

United States--In art.

United States.

Pantheon (Rome, Italy)--Influence.

Washington (D.C.)--Buildings, structures, etc.

Genre:

Art.

Catalogs.

Physical Description:

viii, 291 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 27 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Published for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society by Ohio University Press, [2004]

Summary:

Like the ancient Roman Pantheon, the U.S. Capitol was designed by its political and aesthetic arbiters to memorialize the virtues, events, and persons most representative of the nation's ideals -- an attempt to raise a particular version of the nation's founding to the level of myth. American Pantheon examines the influences on not only those virtues and persons selected for inclusion in the American pantheon, but also those excluded. Two chapters address the exclusion of slavery and African Americans from the art in the Capitol, a silence made all the more deafening by the major contributions of slaves and free black workers to the construction of the building. Two other authors consider the subject of women emerging as artists, subjects, patrons, and proponents of art in the Capitol, a development that began only in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Rotunda, the Capitol's principal ceremonial space, was designed in part as an art museum of American history -- at least the authorized version of it. It is explored in several of the essays, including discussions of the influence of the early-nineteenth-century Italian sculptors who provided the first sculptural reliefs for the room, the contributions of the mid-nineteenth-century Italian American artist Constantino Brumidi, and the mix of allegory, mythology, and history that permeates the space and indeed the Capitol itself.

Contents:

Pantheon on the Potomac : the architectural evolution of the Capitol rotunda / William C. Allen

The Italian influence on American political iconography : the United States Capitol as lure and disseminator / Pamela Potter-Hennessey

A new world pantheon : Italian sculptural contributions in the Capitol rotunda / Pamela Potter-Hennessey

Virtue and virtual reality in John Trumbull's "pantheon" / Irma B. Jaffe

"Lost in America" : David D'Angers's bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, 1832-1833 / Thomas P. Somma

The problem with public art : Henry Kirke Brown's Thinking Negro (1855) from his pedimental design for the United States Capitol / Thomas P. Somma

Photographing the interior sky: a photographer's view of state capitols / Eric Oxendorf

Masking slavery in and on the United States Capitol rotunda / Vivien Green Fryd

Vinnie Ream's Lincoln (1871) : the sexual politics of a sculptor's studio / Kirk Savage

Mythology, allegory, and history: Brumidi's frescoes for the new dome / Barbara A. Wolanin

Constantino Brumidi as decorator and history painter : an iconographic analysis of two rooms in the United States Capitol / Francis V. O'Connor

Gender and public space : women and art in the United States Capitol, 1860-2001 / Teresa B. Lachin

The United States Capitol rotunda and the decoration of the state capitols, 1870-1930 / Francis V. O'Connor.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0821414429

0821414437

OCLC:

53253954