Author(s): Richard Chenoweth
When the U. S. Capitol burned on 24 August 1814, its principal chambers were gutted and an early masterpiece of American Neoclassical sculpture, a colossal personification of Liberty in the style of the times, was completely destroyed. The Liberty is not well known because in her brief lifetime, no artist stopped to record her – not even Latrobe himself, a prolific sketcher. Liberty presided over Latrobe’s majestic Hall of Representatives, a chamber that was, itself, a difficult collaboration of conflicting ideas between its client Thomas Jefferson and its architect Latrobe. Liberty was an integral part of the architecture and of the architectural sequence; upon entry into the chamber, the ten foot tall sitting Liberty established the chamber’s cross axis within the streaming diffusion of one hundred skylights, proffered entrants a carved copy of the Constitution, cradled a cap of liberty, and was heralded by a bald eagle. Latrobe’s drive to create the Liberty was essential to his concept for the Hall of Representatives. His collaboration with the artist Franzoni also is essential as it demonstrates the delicate dialectic between architectural concept and executed form in a public project. I will show for the first time a model of the colossal Liberty, carefully reconstructed based on all known facts, a single drawing, and the aesthetic proclivities of the principal designers. I have diligently reconstructed the entire Hall, with the Liberty, necessarily, being the most formidable aspect of the design. The making of the Liberty represents about twenty years of effort by various architects and artists to bring to fruition the confluence of a major public work of American architecture and an integral work of monumental American sculpture.
Volume Editors
ISBN
978-1-944214-26-5