OPEN: 108th ACSA Annual Meetng 1

The Collaboraton of B. Henry Latrobe and Giuseppe Franzoni to Create the Naton’s First Statue of Liberty (1807-1814)

RICHARD CHENOWETH AIA Mississippi State University

Keywords: Latrobe, Statue of Liberty, U.S. Capitol, known as the House chamber in the South Wing of the Capitol; Washington DC. today, the site of the Natonal Statuary Hall). Architect of the Capitol B. Henry Latrobe designed the Liberty in large part ABSTRACT by giving instructons to the sculptor Giuseppe Franzoni, who When the U. S. Capitol burned on 24 August 1814, its principal carved her in plaster. Latrobe’s goal was to copy the plaster chambers were guted and an early masterpiece of American model into Vermont Marble but the opportunity never arrived. Neoclassical sculpture, a colossal personifcaton of Liberty Liberty presided over the Hall only untl that summer night in in the style of the tmes, was completely destroyed. The 1814 when the Capitol was burned by a fre so intense that Liberty is not well known because in her brief lifetme, no even Vermont Marble would have been reduced to lime. artst stopped to record her - not even Latrobe himself, a prolifc sketcher. Liberty presided over Latrobe’s majestc Latrobe was in charge of the Capitol’s design and constructon Hall of Representatves, a chamber that was, itself, a difcult from 1803-1811, a period charged with idealism and allegory collaboraton of confictng ideas between its client Thomas as well as with scandal and misfortune.2 The Liberty was Jeferson and its architect Latrobe. Liberty was an integral organic to the architectural experience of the complete House part of the architecture and of the architectural sequence; chamber—it was not an aferthought and not mere sculptural upon entry into the chamber, the ten foot tall sitng Liberty decoraton. Latrobe wrote: “The Statue is indeed essental to established the chamber’s cross axis within the streaming the efect of my Architecture.”3 Latrobe’s and Franzoni’s Statue difusion of one hundred skylights, profered entrants a of Liberty represents the successful culminaton of a long carved copy of the Consttuton, cradled a cap of liberty, efort by early American designers to create a monumental and was heralded by a bald eagle. personifcaton of Liberty within a major public space.

Latrobe’s drive to create the Liberty was essental to his THE ENIGMA concept for the Hall of Representatves. His collaboraton In researching Latrobe’s lost and unbuilt works at the U.S. with the artst Franzoni also is essental as it demonstrates Capitol (this paper on the Liberty being the second in a series), the delicate dialectc between architectural concept and the author was transfxed by the enigma of contemporary executed form in a public project. I will show for the frst writen and archival records that suggest a superlatve body tme a model of the colossal Liberty, carefully reconstructed of Latrobe’s work unsupported by visual or pictorial evidence. based on all known facts, a single drawing, and the aesthetc How could Latrobe’s American masterpieces be seen again? proclivites of the principal designers. I have diligently recon- The author resolved to forensically piece together this period structed the entre Hall, with the Liberty, necessarily, being of the Capitol as a comprehensive digital model based on origi- the most formidable aspect of the design. The making of the nal sources. Many disparate details emerged in the research Liberty represents about twenty years of efort by various process - conficts between leters, documents, drawings, architects and artsts to bring to fruiton the confuence of a change orders, and extant material - which then required anal- major public work of American architecture and an integral ysis, sequencing, rectfcaton, and recreaton as a composite work of monumental American sculpture. and conclusive digital form. The author recreated the Liberty itself directly in clay based on informaton from a dozen leters INTRODUCTION and one drawing. The images included in this paper are digital When the U.S. Capitol burned on 24 August 1814, its principal images of the entre recreated chamber interior of which the chambers were guted and a colossal masterpiece of American Liberty is the central element. William C. Allen’s seminal book neoclassical sculpture, the naton’s frst Statue of Liberty, was on the history of the design and constructon of the Capitol completely destroyed.1 The Liberty is not well known because, mentons the existence of the Liberty sculpture but does not in its brief lifetme, no artst ever stopped to record it. All that detail its story.4 remains are descriptons in leters of its design development and its placement in the famous Hall of Representatves (also 2 Paper ttle to be inserted on master page

Figure 1. (clockwise from lef): B. Henry Latrobe, detail of the Liberty inside the Hall (1804); Thomas Cooley, politcal cartoon of Only two sessions of Congress met in Federal Hall but the Liberty and (1783); Giuseppe Ceracchi, Minerva (1792); important Residence Act of 1790 was passed here, creat- Samuel Jennings, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792). ing the District of Columbia. The third session of Congress met at Congress Hall, Philadelphia, in December 1790, and ICONOGRAPHY AND EARLY ATTEMPTS AT MAKING A would remain there untl the removal of the government to LIBERTY Washington, D.C. in 1800. The idea of an American symbol of freedom was not new in 1805 (the year Latrobe frst mentoned in his leters the idea The Residence Act gave the president unprecedented over- of a Liberty sculpture for the Hall). Since colonial tmes, alle- sight over every aspect of the relocaton of the capital, and gorical fgures of American freedom were common. Usually in early 1791 asked L’Enfant to design personifed as a female Natve American in headdress, she the new federal city. L’Enfant developed a plan of radiatng was known as Liberty, Freedom, or Columbia. Liberty evolved avenues connectng salient higher elevatons interwoven with toward a Greco-Roman personifcaton in the later eighteenth a grid of smaller streets - a symbolic expression of the new century, as interest in and archaeology increas- government. L’Enfant described Jenkins Hill, an elevaton of ingly infuenced the arts. about ninety feet above sea level overlooking vast wetlands to the west and his choice for the site of the Capitol, as a “ped- Late in 1788, French architect Peter Charles L’Enfant was estal waitng for a monument.”6 He suggested placing below asked by the government to renovate its City the crest of the hill a “grand Equestrian fgure,” a reference to Hall for the frst session of the First Federal Congress in April the bronze statue of George Washington that Congress had 1789. L’Enfant’s elegant additons and renovatons of the inte- approved on 7 August 1783. The concept of Washington’s rior were well received and described in print but were not equestrian statue became the core of the next serious atempt recorded as pictures or engravings. He established an early to personify an American Liberty. standard for the hierarchy and decoraton of an important fed- eral building which included no small degree of iconographic Also in 1791, the Roman sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi arrived representaton. L’Enfant planned for a sunburst pediment on in America, “flled with a volcanic enthusiasm for Liberty and the facade and a Statue of Liberty behind the Speaker’s chair. the Rights of Man.”7 Ceracchi was fresh from Europe, where But there is no record that a Liberty was installed.5 he had struggled mightly to establish himself as a preeminent OPEN: 108th ACSA Annual Meetng 3

Figure 2. Latrobe’s east-west secton drawing of the South Wing showing the placement of the Liberty (1804). bronze equestrian statue of Washington. His six foot draw- ing of the monument was exhibited in a Philadelphia tavern in sculptor of politcal leaders and politcal monuments. His busts 1791 but is now lost.8 and portraits were ofen excellent; his larger compositons, with their metaphors and allegories, were ofen complicated. Ceracchi never had the opportunity to carve his grandi- In a fuid, synthetc atempt to bring glory to the revolutonary ose monument to American Liberty. Afer a vain atempt spirit in America as well as invigorate his own career, Ceracchi to win the favor of leading members of the Washington proposed to Congress a “Monument designed to perpetuate Administraton and of Congress by carving their portraits,9 the Memory of American Liberty.” Based on Ceracchi’s ver- followed by a return to Europe, an exile from Rome, and bose descripton, his American natonal monument proposal another trip to America, his subscripton plan to fnance the was topped by a fantastc personifcaton of Liberty. ambitous monument failed. Ceracchi’s technical approach to carving the sixty-foot high monument is not known, but it Ceracchi proposed his concept to Congress in 1791 and then is difcult to imagine the complexity of carving the baroque again in 1795. Most likely, the statue was to be erected below Liberty descending through volumes of marble clouds and Capitol Hill, the same area L’Enfant had identfed. In his open- a rainbow in a horse-drawn chariot - all at a tme when the ing paragraph, Ceracchi wrote: “The Goddess [of Liberty] is constructon of the Capitol had not yet begun. His hyperbolic represented descending in a car drawn by four horses, dartng vision of American Liberty died in 1795 and a handful of years through a volume of clouds, which conceals the summit of a later so did he. Marked by as great a passion and hubris as rainbow. Her form is at once expressive of dignity and grace. exemplifed by his tme in America, he lived his remaining years In her right hand she brandishes a faming dart, which, by dis- in Paris increasingly disenchanted with ’s despotc pelling the mists of Error, illuminates the universe; her lef is usurpatons - untl he was implicated in an alleged assassina- extended in the attude of calling upon the people of America ton atempt against the “First Consul” in 1800. Perhaps some to listen to her voice. A simple pileus covers her head; her hair version of his chariot for the Capitol survived afer all, in the plays unconfned over her shoulders; her bent brow expresses triumphal chariot—said to be of his own design—that carried the energy of her character; her lips appear partly open, whilst him to the guillotne early the next year. her awful voice echoes through the vault of heaven, in favor of the rights of man.” Ceracchi’s animated Statue of Liberty was While on his frst American venture, Ceracchi did sculpt in ter- the crowning piece of a monument that was to be, overall, racota a colossal bust, Minerva as the Patroness of American sixty feet high, about ffy feet in diameter, and comprised of Liberty, nearly six feet tall, which was placed behind the four more giant allegorical groups surrounding the original Speaker’s dais in Congress Hall in 1792. Whether the Minerva 4 Paper ttle to be inserted on master page

was meant to be the Liberty is not clear, as in his own words, THE LATROBE-FRANZONI SITTING LIBERTY his Minerva fgure occupied a lower place in his earlier gigan- Latrobe frst mentoned the idea of a Statue of Liberty in a 6 tc monument. Nor is Minerva integral to the design of this March 1805 leter to Philip Mazzei and requested assistance in chamber. Because of its colossal scale, the bust was most likely hiring sculptors in Italy to work on the Capitol. Latrobe wrote to intended to demonstrate the artst’s ability to execute his Mazzei at President Jeferson’s behest. Mazzei and Jeferson giant monument. Minerva was given to the Library Company had maintained a varied and robust correspondence over the of Philadelphia when Congress moved to Washington in 1800, decades since Mazzei lef America. He cheerfully referred and it remains there today. to America as his adoptve country and was glad to assist his American friends in the efort to build the Capitol. ART IN EARLY AMERICA In his 6 March 1805 leter to Philip Mazzei, Jeferson’s conf- In the leter, Latrobe asked Mazzei to recruit “a good Sculptor dante in Italy, Latrobe stated that “the Capitol was begun at a of Architectural decoratons” for the South Wing. He also asked tme when the country was entrely desttute of artsts.” From Mazzei to obtain a bid price from ,11 one of Latrobe’s perspectve as a classically educated European, this the most celebrated sculptors working in Rome, to carve was true; paintng, sculpture and architecture were fedgling the “sitng fgure of Liberty” for the House chamber. On 12 arts in 1792. In 1811, in a formal address in Philadelphia to the September 1805, Mazzei responded that hiring Canova was Society of Artsts of the United States, however, he expressed impossible due to the artst being overbooked. Mazzei also his optmism that in a free republic, it is inevitable that the had requested a price from the esteemed Danish sculptor arts will fourish. “The days of Greece may be revived in the Bertel Thorvaldsen, also working in Rome, but the price was woods of America,” he predicted, “and Philadelphia become exorbitant. Then Mazzei told of the young sculptors whom he the Athens of the Western world.”10 did hire: Giuseppe Franzoni and his brother-in-law, Giovanni Andrei. Mazzei backed up his selecton with the claim that Latrobe stated in this address that architecture was the Franzoni “will soon be a second Canova.” The two new hires most advanced of American arts in 1800. He lauded his cli- departed Italy by ship with their families in November 1805 ent Samuel Fox for having the vision and courage to build bound for the United States.12 the Bank of , yet shyly neglected to menton that this later masterpiece was his own design. The Bank of On 28 March 1806, Franzoni and Andrei arrived from Rome. Pennsylvania, the frst Greek revival building in America, built In Mazzei’s estmaton, Franzoni’s “masterful strocks [strokes]” of white marble, would have been innovatve for any modern would make him a frst-rate sculptor of the fgures, and Andrei city in 1800. Masonry-vaulted, naturally lit, unencumbered of would be a frst-rate sculptor of the fora and decoratve ornament, and sleekly elevated by Greek angles, it must have pieces. On 29 May, in a leter to Mazzei, Latrobe lamented that been shocking to see the elegant white edifce nestled into Franzoni must carve the large eagle in the frieze before he can Philadelphia’s brick waterfront. Also in Latrobe’s discourse, even “think much of our Statue of Liberty.” For the tme being, he claimed that American painters were on the cusp of great- “I have distributed the department of animals to Franzoni, and ness (but that Europe valued them more) and that America’s of vegetables to Andrei.” Based on this leter, no model existed sculpture languished. of the Statue of Liberty as of 29 May 1806.13

America’s best fgural sculptor of the period was William Rush But, on 2 June 1806, a model was underway - or so it seemed. of Philadelphia, who, with Charles Willson Peale, founded the Latrobe wrote to his brother Christan: “Flaxman is I think one Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Rush (1756-1833), a wood of the frst Sculptors in the world. Franzoni was his pupil. He carver, made fgureheads for ships, which Latrobe regarded is engaged in modeling for me a fgure of Liberty, sitng, of very highly as an art form. Rush carved the allegorical Water colossal size.14 It promises to be a classical Work. This is one of Nymph and Bitern that stood as the center landscape feature many eforts I am making to introduce into this country some- in Centre Square, Philadelphia, directly in front of Latrobe’s thing superior to the mean st[le] brought hither and spread by Greek-style pump house of the Water Works. Today, this site English joiners and measurers, and to the absurd impractcali- is occupied by Philadelphia’s City Hall. His carved wood fg- tes of American book architects.”15 ure of George Washington (1814), which today resides at the Second Natonal Bank, demonstrates great sophistcaton and Latrobe’s leters provide key dimensions and parameters of lively contrapposto. the fgure itself and its accoutrements. Subjectvely, in his let- ters Latrobe muses about his favorite sculptors, his proclivites Latrobe did not call Rush to duty, however, when hiring sculp- in art, and his emotonal response to stylistc ideas and ele- tors for the Capitol, though Rush was conveniently situated in ments. Both the literal parameters of the design and Latrobe’s Philadelphia. Latrobe stated quite simply that Rush’s medium aesthetc vision were important to the author in recreatng was wood and though extremely talented, he was never con- an image of the Liberty. When Latrobe puts pencil to paper, sidered for work on the Capitol. his ideas are clear and detailed. Therefore, the only design OPEN: 108th ACSA Annual Meetng 5

drawing of the Liberty that exists, although of small scale, is very informatve. His drawing of Liberty occurs in the very center of his famous east-west secton drawing of the Hall of Representatves in the South Wing from the spring of 1804,16 which also includes the projected minimums and maximums of direct light entering the chamber. The Liberty is shown at the exact center of this drawing and certainly suggests it is the symbolic and graphic centerpiece of the room and absolutely essental to the architecture.

In his frst (March 1805) leter to Mazzei, Latrobe described the Liberty as 9’-0” tall while seated. At the scale of 1/8” = 1’-0”, the scale of the east-west secton, the Sitng Liberty is shown exactly one-and- a-half inches high, therefore 12’-0” tall, including her plinth. The drawing demonstrates the powerful image Latrobe developed in his mind of entering the cham- ber from the north, and seeing the colossal Liberty opposite, framed by 26’-8” columns and billows of crimson drapery . Even at small scale, stylistc details about Latrobe’s intentons for the Sitng Liberty are obvious. She wears a Greek style gown with décolletage, a high waist, and a large ornament at her breast. Her hair is piled up with a tara—a very fashionable look for Figure 3. Recreaton model of the Liberty by the author. Clay for plaster. 1804. Her lef arm holds a liberty pole with the Phrygian liberty cap. Her right foot is raised. An eagle in repose, to his Clerk of the Works John Lenthall, Latrobe expressed with an outward look (as though in a defensive stance), is on misgivings about the model: “Lady Liberty... seldom behaves her right. Two books are restng on her lef, possibly a refer- much like a Lady.” Franzoni had sculpted allegorical ele- ence to the two books in Gilbert Stuart’s famous Landsdowne ments that Latrobe thought inappropriate or heavy-handed: portrait of Washington (these books are thought to be the a club and doves nestng in a helmet. “It may be correct Federalist Papers and the Congressional Record), a paintng Symbolology… to give Dame Liberty a Club or Shelelah, well known to Latrobe. but we have no business to exhibit it so very publicly.” Writng to Mazzei on 19 December 1806, Latrobe expressed Latrobe instead demanded one arm close in to her body, rest- some confusion whether Thorvaldsen had actually been com- ing in her lap, and one arm raised, restng “on a Wig block, or missioned to carve the statue. If Mazzei had commissioned capped stck (which is as much more honorable than a Wig him, it was without Jeferson’s approval of the high price. block as the cap is more honorable than the Wig.) for ought Latrobe also told Mazzei he had already given the work to I care.” (This is essentally the torso arrangement shown in Franzoni. Latrobe wrote that Franzoni “will not disgrace us Latrobe’s own sketch.) In this leter Latrobe pondered reduc- by his Sculpture, but that Canova, probably Thorvaldsen, and ing Liberty to 7’-0” in height. Throughout much of his career, Flaxman are his superiors to a great degree.”17 Latrobe’s psychic state seems to have been something like Latrobe apparently did not approve of the directon of devel- a sine curve: wavering between troughs of deep depression opment of Franzoni’s model. In a leter of 31 December 1806, and waves of brilliant optmism. So, though ofen beset by his 6 Paper ttle to be inserted on master page

frst nine months of 1807, Liberty’s eagle shifed from her right side to her lef (from east to west), and her pole and liberty cap were replaced with a more relaxed arrangement with a cap and Consttuton.

Almost two months later, in a report on the south wing of the Capitol solicited by the editor of Washington’s premier newspaper of record, the National Intelligencer, Latrobe described the complete tableau of the House cham- ber: “Between the two columns opposite to the entrance, behind the Speaker’s Chair, sits on a pedestal a colossal fg- ure of liberty. The present fgure is only a plaister (sic) model hastly executed in three weeks by Mr. Franzoni, but has great merit. It is proposed to place a marble fgure of the same size in its room. . . . The fgure, sitng, is 8’-6” in height. By her side stands the American eagle, supportng her lef hand, in which is the cap of liberty, her right presents a scroll, the Consttuton of the United States. Her foot treads upon a reversed crown as a footstool and other emblems of monar- chy and bondage.” 20 CONCLUSIONS

Figure 4. Recreaton image by the author showing the revelaton of Latrobe had taken over the project for the South Wing in 1803 the Liberty upon entry into the chamber. and his frst task was to inspect the progress and quality of the works. By 1804, the result of this critcal assessment, Latrobe own scathing and sardonic wit, Latrobe maintained exactly the essentally redesigned the concept and sequence for the South right balance of allegorical propriety he thought proper for the Wing. He elevated Thornton’s ground foor House chamber to Hall chamber and contnued to steer Franzoni in the design a piano nobile, and placed at the ground level a robust program of the Liberty.18 of ofces, chambers, lobbies, privies, ofces, a courtyard, and, On 1 September 1807, Lenthall’s men took down the scafold- importantly, an entry sequence of skylit vestbules. Latrobe ing around the Speaker’s Chair, revealing two fnished columns wrote that the sequence was, “… the greatest variety of scenery and the sitng Statue of Liberty. Latrobe wrote Jeferson later in the building, every part of which, however, is indispensably that day: “the fgure of Liberty, which, tho’ only a Model, is an necessary to the communicaton of the diferent apartments excellent work and does Franzoni infnite credit.” She was in of each other.” Latrobe’s intenton was that visitors to the Hall service from that day.19 In the course of her design in the frst chamber would enter into a fnely-detailed vestbule flled with OPEN: 108th ACSA Annual Meetng 7

light, and climb a stair that rose westward through a dark pas ument, within its comprehensively designed architectural set- sage. At the top of the stair, visitors would turn south and tng, as intended by its original creators. This is a valuable enter the chamber, which again, would be flled with light. His aspect of digital recreaton. The Liberty’s symbolic importance manipulaton of the entry sequence would heighten the efect and allegorical reading is echoed by Enrico Causici’s (1828) and of entering the vast chamber with its one hundred skylights Thomas Crawford’s (1863) later statues that personifed similar and seeing the framed Liberty in repose. concepts of Liberty within an architectural setng (see foot- note 1). Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi’s standing Liberty in New Latrobe described the scene at entrance to the House cham- York Harbor (1886), however, is diferent in scale and meaning. ber and the viewer understands at once that the architecture and the sculpture are integral and essental to the sequence. Its ttle, Liberty Enlightening the World, implies a world scale “One large ample curtain is suspended in the space between to its signifcance; a city’s harbor is its setng and a lamp held the columns opposite the entrance, and being drawn in easy high its principal metaphor. Bartholdi’s Liberty suggests the folds to each pilastre (sic), discloses the statue of Liberty. The status of the U.S. as an emerging world leader in the pursuit of efect of this curtain of the statue and of the Speaker’s chair liberty and human rights, lately having survived a brutal civil war followed by civil rights amendments to the Consttuton, and canopy... is perhaps the most pleasing assemblage of objects that catch the eye in the whole room.” Latrobe adds increased immigraton, and vast changes to the civil society that, “To give an adequate idea of a building by a descripton due to urbanizaton. The Latrobe-Franzoni Liberty, the inital unaccompanied by drawings, is always a vain atempt, and no forging of the architectural expression of the Rights of Man, is one who has not seen the Hall of Congress can, from what fundamentally about the American experiment and how that I have said, understand exactly the efect and appearance symbolic arrangement anchors a great chamber. In the spirit of the later, Walt Whitman’s distlled lines from 1855 accu- of the room.”21 rately describe the long sought-afer vision as, “… Perennial Visualizing the Statue of Liberty (as recreated by the author) with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love; A grand, sane, allows the reader to fully understand the meaning of the mon- towering, seated Mother; Chair’d in the adamant of Time.”22

Figure 5. Recreaton image by the author from the northeast. ENDNOTES 1. The term “Statue of Liberty” connotes for many people the actual size and stance of Secretary of State Edmund Randolph, Atorney General William Bradford, Secretary the later statue by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, Liberty Enlightening the World, con- of the Treasury Oliver Wolcot, Jr., and Secretary of War Timothy Pickering (“An ceived in the early 1870s and fnally installed in New York Harbor in 1886. The term Appeal for Funds for a Monument...14 February 1795,” in Syret, Papers of Alexander is also sometmes applied, mistakenly, to Thomas Crawford’s “Statue of Freedom” Hamilton 18:271). installed on top of the Capitol dome in 1863. (Crawford never saw it raised. He died in 1857 before the plaster version was shipped from his studio in Rome.) Within the 9. Ceracchi’s busts of notable Americans include Benjamin Franklin (now at the Capitol itself, another “Statue of Liberty,” called The Genius of the Consttuton by its Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts), Secretary of State Thomas Jeferson (at sculptor Enrico Causici (ca. 1790-1833), was installed in a niche high over the entab- “Montcello,” Virginia), President George Washington (at the Metropolitan Museum lature of Statuary Hall in the late 1820s. As of 2020, it is stll in its plaster state, in that of Art, New York), and Chief Justce John Jay (at the U.S. Supreme Court). same room, although it has come to be known as Liberty and the Eagle. This artcle 10. Latrobe Correspondence 2:21-24, 3:76. Mazzei (1730-1816) had frst come to discusses the development of the idea of a personifcaton of a monumental Liberty America in 1773, where his neighbor Thomas Jeferson encouraged his experimen- sculpture leading up to 1807; Causici’s, Crawford’s, and Bartholdi’s statues embody tal hortculture. For much of the Revolutonary War he served as arms agent for the same ideals, but they are diferent examples of artstc expression from diferent Virginia, but in 1785 he setled permanently in Pisa, Italy. periods. The term “Statue of Liberty” is used throughout this artcle on the premise that the statue itself is part of the “concept.” Latrobe himself ofen referred to it in 11. Latrobe Correspondence 2:21-24, 141-45. Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was the most his leters as the (lower case) “statue of Liberty,” making it a less formal concept. famous Italian neoclassical sculptor of his day. 2. This period is known as Latrobe’s “frst constructon campaign,” when he served as 12. Latrobe Correspondence 2:225-31. Latrobe summarized their modifed contract “Surveyor of the Public Buildings of the United States at Washington” from March on 6 April 1806 (Ibid., 2:219-22). Both Giovanni Andrei (1770-1824) and Giuseppe 1803 untl July 1811. He returned, this tme as “Architect or Surveyor of the Capitol,” Franzoni (ca. 1777-1815) would also work under Latrobe in a private capacity, when from April 1815 untl his resignaton in November 1817. work at the Capitol slowed; several works in Baltmore can be atributed to them. Franzoni is sometmes confused with his younger and reputedly more talented 3. Latrobe to Philip Mazzei, 12 April 1806, in John C. Van Horne et al., eds., The brother Carlo (1789- 1819), who was recruited to work on Latrobe’s second building Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (3 vols.; New campaign in 1815 and completed Statuary Hall’s famous Car of History just before Haven, Conn., 1984-88) 2:229. his death (Ibid., 3:802). Unlike Giuseppe, Carlo is memorialized in a portrait, cur- 4. William C. Allen, History of the U.S. Capitol; A Chronicle of Design, Constructon, and rently located in the Ofce of the Curator of the Architect of the Capitol. Politcs (Washington DC: Government Printng Ofce, 2001). 13. Latrobe Correspondence 2:225-31. 5. For the only two contemporary newspaper descriptons of both the interior and 14. Latrobe Correspondence 2:233-35. The formal defniton of “colossal” as a term in exterior of Federal Hall, which were reprinted dozens of tmes from New Hampshire sculpture is defned as a fgure twice life-size. to North Carolina, see Charlene Bangs Bickford, Kenneth R. Bowling, Helen E. Veit, and William Charles diGiacomantonio, eds., The Documentary History of the First 15. Latrobe Correspondence 2:233-35. Federal Congress, 1789-1791 (19 vols. to date; Baltmore, 1972-) 15:32-35. 16. ADE UNIT 2462, no. 18 (C Size), Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. 6. Pierre L’Enfant to George Washington, 22 June 1791, in Dorothy Twohig et al., eds., Papers of George Washington: Presidental Series (17 vols. to date; Charlotesville, 17. Latrobe Correspondence 2:328-29. Va., 1987-) 8:290. 18. Latrobe Correspondence 2:346-48. 7. Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, “Fragment of a Lost Monument,” Metropolitan Museum 19. Latrobe Correspondence 2:475-76. of Art Bulletn, v. 6, 7(March 1948):189. Ceracchi (1751-1801) studied in Rome but spent his frst formatve years as a professional artst in England. 20. To Samuel Harrison Smith, 22 Nov. 1807, Latrobe Correspondence 2:499-506. 8. “A Descripton of a Monument...” [14 Feb. 1795], Printed Ephemera Collecton, 21. Ibid. Portolio 222, folder 3, Library of Congress; Ceracchi to , 16 July 1792, in Harold C. Syret, ed., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (26 vols., New York, 22. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, (Dover Editon; Original 1855 Editon) Quoted are 1961-79) 12:36-37. The “Descripton,” which circulated as a broadside, included “a The last three lines of the poem America. plan by which the means for the undertaking are to be provided,” and in some cases, at least, was accompanied by a printed leter signed by sixty prominent men (pre- sumably commited subscribers to the plan), who included President Washington,