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KE😱 Did you know that the painter of the Capitol rotunda almost plummeted to his death while painting its murals?
🦅 On this Monday after the Super Bowl I'm featuring another American classic, the United States Capitol.
🛠️ Construction on the Capitol began in 1793 to the designs of William Thornton, an amateur architect who had won the design competition for the new Capitol. Thornton would go on to become the first Architect of the Capitol.
🏛️ The Capitol continued to be constructed, remodeled, and expanded over the centuries (including after being burned down by the British during the War of 1812) with other famous architects, such as James Hoban, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Charles Bullfinch, and Carrère & Hastings all contributing to the structure.
🌐 The iconic cast iron dome, which replaced an earlier dome that was deemed too small after an 1850s expansion of the Capitol adding the current House and Senate chambers more than doubled the length of the Capitol, was designed by Philadelphia architect Thomas Ustick Walter and constructed through the American Civil War between 1855-1866.
👀 The mural above the rotunda on the interior of the dome, The Apotheosis of Washington, was painted by Greek-Italian painter Constatino Brumidi in 1865 and depicts the deification of George Washington, which is ironic since this is exactly the type of thing that the actual George Washington probably would have hated, given his famous aversion to self-aggrandizement.
😱 Later in 1879, while painting the freize in the rotunda, the 74 year old Brumidi fell from the scaffolding and narrowly escaped plummeting 58 feet to his death by grabbing onto the scaffolding, hanging on for 15 minutes before being rescued by a member of the Capitol Police. The experience shook him so much that afterwards he refused to return to the scaffolding and continued to direct the completion of the frieze from his studio.
Would you return to work after an experience like that?
#uscapitol #capitol #washingtondc #dome #congress #brumidi
@kevinmu
