1855 $ 1,672.00
1856 1,364.00
1857 3,024.00
1858 2,080.00
1859 2,870.00
1860 7,140.00
1861 1,560.00
1863 6,439.20
1864 1,249.51
1865 8,500.00
1866 20,000.00
1867 4,989.00
1870 1,000.00
1871 8,050.00
1872 500.00
1873 1,000.00
1874 850.00
1877 1,955.00
1878 3,120.00
1879 3,080.00
1880 270.00
----------
Grand Total $80,712.71
[Illustration: WORKING SKETCHES FOR THE ROTUNDA FRIEZE RECENTLY FOUND]
The availability of the priceless scroll of working sketches for the
Rotunda Frieze has been too late for detailed study at this time and
almost too late for a place in this Brumidi book. However, the sketch of
the Landing of the Pilgrims reproduced above gives the reader an
opportunity to make his own comparisons between one working sketch and
its actual rendition in fresco on the belt encircling the Rotunda of the
Capitol, as appears on page forty-four.
James H. Rowe, grandnephew of Lola Germon, owns these working sketches
for the Rotunda Frieze. The groupings, as planned by Brumidi and
sketched on a long and narrow piece of brown wrapping paper, frequently
spliced, bears the Brumidi signature and is dated 1859. This prize
scroll, thirteen inches wide and some thirty feet long, was given to Mr.
Rowe by his grand aunt, Lola Germon. It has been well protected.
The outline drawings themselves are executed in sepia water color with
shadows in black and high lights in white. The original titles given to
these scroll groupings and written by Brumidi in pencil beneath each
sketch vary somewhat from the list preserved in the Architect’s office
of the Capitol, yet the subject matter is essentially the same.
Brumidi’s title for this “vast conception,” so far as I know, appears in
no other record.
At the beginning of the scroll is the artist’s own penciled legend for
the Rotunda Frieze, “America and History.”
THIS STUDY OF “_Constantino Brumidi_, MICHELANGELO OF THE
UNITED STATES CAPITOL,” WAS PUBLISHED BY THE MONUMENTAL
PRESS, INC., WASHINGTON, D. C., DECEMBER 1950.