[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 20305]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




   COMMMORATION OF THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF CONSTANTINO 
                                BRUMIDI

  Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, this is such a happy occasion and I am 
delighted that so many of you who know the importance of this 
extraordinary artist-citizen's work could join us. I want to thank 
Speaker Hastert and Senator Stevens, as well as our leaders in the 
Senate, Senator Frist and Senator Reid, my colleague Senator Enzi, 
Congressmen Pascrell and Bilirakis, and of course Ambassador Boggs. It 
is so wonderful that we are here in this historic building, where 
Americans can see the best of our democracy in action. I often just 
shake my head and wonder as I walk through the Capitol--its beauty, its 
iconic power really defy my attempts at articulation. More than any 
other building, it is the exterior of the Capitol that we associate 
with the freedoms, values, and privileges of American citizenship. But 
on the inside we tell so many stories about who we are as a people, 
what our aspirations and our dreams might be.
  Constantino Brumidi was 47 years old, a painter, when he came to our 
shores. As is often the case with the immigrant experience, he landed 
here with nothing but a dream, and within a relatively short period of 
years he was here at the Capitol, using his talent and the great 
tradition that he exalted, to turn the interior of our Capitol into 
something much more alive and real than just the walls and the columns 
that held it up. He had a Greek father, an Italian mother; some might 
very well say the best of both worlds. And the coincidence should not 
be lost on us, that classical wall painting, the medium of which he was 
a master, originated in Greece and reached a high degree of refinement 
during the Roman Republic. So he brought with him his classical 
training and influences and he became a master of that tradition. He 
believed that the Capitol required, as he put it, ``a superior style of 
decoration in real fresco, like the palaces of Augustus and Nero.'' In 
the Brumidi biography, by Capitol curator Barbara Wolanin, she so aptly 
writes, ``his originality lay in integrating American themes into his 
classical repertoire. He was inspired by the great Renaissance artist 
Raphael, and he emulated his design of scrolls and leaves with birds 
and animals, but the species of squirrels and mice he painted in the 
Senate Wing corridors were strictly American.''
  He spent 25 years painting in the Capitol Building, but that was not 
his only commission. One of his most notable other great works is found 
in New York, at the Church of Our Lady of the Scapular and Saint 
Stephen, which is in the Gramercy Park area of Manhattan. My 
predecessor, Senator Moynihan, recognized the importance of Brumidi's 
work at Saint Stephen's years ago. Commissioned in 1866, Brumidi 
painted a huge mural of Christ's crucifixion over the church's high 
altar, in addition to 43 murals and paintings around the walls. He was 
acclaimed for this work, and you can see why as you look through the 
Capitol, and I also hope you will also visit Saint Stephen's. The 
church is engaged in an important effort to preserve Brumidi's work, 
and I personally hope that this ceremony and the 200th anniversary of 
his birth will help draw attention to that effort.
  As we have learned from years of effort, preserving and restoring 
Brumidi's work is enormously important. For decades it was obscured by 
moisture and leaks, and gas torch light residue, but finally in the 
1980s and the 1990s his work had begun to be restored to its original 
splendor. I remember coming in late at night in the Capitol on numerous 
occasions in the past 10 or 15 years and seeing the restorers working 
so meticulously to preserve and enhance and once again reveal the full 
beauty of his work.
  Yes, he was an artist-citizen. He used his artistry on behalf of his 
citizenship, and he used his citizenship to elevate his art. He is 
reported to have said, ``My one ambition and my daily prayer is that I 
may live long enough to make beautiful the Capitol of the one country 
on Earth in which there is liberty.'' I believe his daily prayer was 
answered and I am delighted that so many of us could be here to 
recognize and celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth, but even 
more the work he did which has stood the test of time.

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