The ANNOTICO Report

RESTORING REPUTATION OF 'ARTIST- CITIZEN OF THE US'

New York Times
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
July 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 25 - In a forlorn cemetery a few miles north of the
Capitol, a small band of art lovers, history buffs and descendants of
Italian immigrants gathered Sunday afternoon around a simple grave. Under
the shade of a giant oak tree, they made speeches and laid floral wreaths,
paying homage to a man whose paintings have been seen by millions but whose
name is known to only a few.

"Let's face the facts," the ceremony's organizer, Joseph Grano, told the
celebrants. "Brumidi is not widely known for his achievements. I don't
expect one person in 1,000 recognizes his name."

Brumidi, for the other 999, is Constantino Brumidi, the Italian-born fresco
artist whose ornate Renaissance- and Pompeian-style murals decorate much of
the United States Capitol. Brumidi spent 25 years, from 1854 to 1879,
laboring inside America's great symbol of democracy. His pink-cheeked
cherubs and classical Greek and Roman figures, woven around distinctly
American themes, were intended to uplift and inspire all who walked through
the building or worked there.

Yet today, even some members of Congress don't know who Brumidi is.

Enter the irrepressible and relentless Mr. Grano, a fast-talking lawyer and
civic gadfly whose causes include historic preservation, and who is now
dedicated, he said, to making Brumidi "a folk hero for Americans." As
chairman of the Constantino Brumidi Society, a loose-knit group he runs out
of his apartment here, Mr. Grano has spent five years poking and prodding
Washington's power elite to honor Brumidi: on coins and stamps, with
Congressional resolutions, even the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the
nation's highest civilian honor.

"I like how he brings mythology and history into his art," Mr. Grano said.
"I like the delicacy of his flowers. He makes the building come alive. And
I like the story that he's an immigrant, that he was allowed to paint in
the most important building in the United States."

There are no coins or stamps yet and no presidential medal, but the work
has paid off. On Tuesday, the 200th anniversary of Brumidi's birth,
Congress will stage a Brumidi celebration in the Capitol Rotunda,
underneath "The Apotheosis of Washington," the grand mural, considered
Brumidi's masterpiece, that covers the canopy of the dome. For
Italian-Americans like Mr. Grano, it is a particular point of pride.

"I grew up as a very strong cultural-minded Italian, and when I came to the
Capitol, I had never even heard of Brumidi," said Representative Bill
Pascrell Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, who along with Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Democrat of New York, is the chief sponsor of the ceremony. "After
all that we've heard, from 'Shark Tales' to 'Sopranos,' this is an
elevating point. This is what Italian-Americans should be talking about."

Born in 1805 in Rome to a Greek father and an Italian mother, Brumidi
painted murals for Italian noblemen and for the Catholic Church, until he
ran afoul of Pope Pius IX during the turmoil of the 1849 revolution. He was
imprisoned for stealing church artwork and furniture - he insisted he
simply moved them for safekeeping - but later pardoned on the condition he
leave Rome for good. He arrived in New York in 1852 and within three years,
he had been put on the payroll at the Capitol. His work there would consume
him for the rest of his life. He took only infrequent breaks, including
some to paint murals at St. Stephen's Church in Manhattan.

"He was the first major trained full-scale muralist to work in this
country," said Francis V. O'Connor, an independent art historian who is
writing a book on American mural painting.

Yet Brumidi was ignored, the victim of ethnocentrism and snobbery. Though
he became a citizen in 1857 (he signed a fresco "C. Brumidi Artist-Citizen
of the U.S."), American-born artists cast him as a foreigner and resented
his painting Capitol murals. In a few decades, with the rise of modernism,
critics would look down their noses at Brumidi's brand of representational
art.

When he died, penniless and alone, in 1880, there wasn't even enough money
to bury him; his ex-wife agreed to have him interred in her family plot,
and the grave went without a marker until 1951.

"He was reviled in what passed as art literature, in the history books,"
Dr. O'Connor said, "with the result that everyone thought the Capitol was
filled with bad art."

Ill-conceived attempts at restoration only worsened Brumidi's reputation,
said Barbara A. Wolanin, the curator of the Capitol and the author of
"Constantino Brumidi: Artist of the Capitol." As the walls and ceilings of
the Capitol grew dark and dingy with age, Brumidi's work was painted over
in colors that matched the grunge. When Dr. Wolanin began her job as
curator in 1985, she said, "I wasn't really convinced Brumidi was that
good."

Two prominent Italian art conservators, experts in Raphael and
Michelangelo, helped change her mind. The pair were hired shortly after Dr.
Wolanin's arrival to consult on a project to clean and conserve the
frescoes in the canopy of the Rotunda. "They could kind of see through the
overpaint and the dirt," Dr. Wolanin said. "Seeing major conservators of
Michelangelo get excited about Brumidi made me think that maybe we
Americans ought to get excited too."

Dr. Wolanin has promoted Brumidi conservation projects ever since. Much of
the work has been done by Christiana Cunningham-Adams, who together with
her husband, George Adams, an engineer, has spent the past 13 years
cleaning the Brumidi Corridors, a network of trompe l'oeil hallways in the
Capitol's Senate wing.

It has been painstaking work. Before the cleaning could began, Mr. Adams
developed a technique for stabilizing the shaky walls. Then Ms.
Cunningham-Adams took her scalpel to them, carefully chipping away layer
after layer of dried and hardened paint to reveal work whose light, airy
feel had been long lost to time.

"Every single inch is a discovery," she said. "A new color, a new detail.
We uncovered feathers on birds that you could see, or little tiny insects
on leaves that had been painted over. I think the importance of the
recovery is bringing back people's understanding of the very high quality
of this incredible artistic treasure."

That is surely Mr. Grano's aim. On Sunday, dressed in a summer suit and
straw hat, he stood beside the Brumidi grave marker, the flags of the
United States and Italy flapping against him in a gentle breeze. He
announced with some satisfaction that Washington's mayor, Anthony A.
Williams, had designated Tuesday Constantino Brumidi Day in the District of
Columbia, and that the speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, had agreed
to the celebration. Then he read a three-paragraph message from President
Bush, who sent his good wishes "on this special occasion."

Still, it was not enough. With the wreaths laid and the speeches over, Mr.
Grano could be seen scribbling out the White House switchboard number for
his fellow Brumidi lovers, urging them to call Mr. Bush to "ask the
president graciously to give Brumidi the Medal of Freedom."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/
arts/design/26brum.html?oref=login
 

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