Secrets of The Lost Symbol

by Daniel Burstein

  The Apotheosis of Washington by Constantino Brumidi (1865). (Photograph by Julie O’Connor)

  Brumidi and Greenough: Symbolic Gestures

  Constantino Brumidi’s The Apotheosis of Washington, the dome fresco in the Capitol, is the one artistic work upon which The Lost Symbol might be said to revolve, since it is literally the alpha and omega of aesthetic and inspirational value (chapter 21 and the epilogue). Like Horatio Greenough’s sculpture Washington Enthroned, also featured in the novel, Brumidi’s frescoes were heavily influenced by the neoclassical style, a mixture of Greek, Roman, and Renaissance themes adapted to the American Enlightenment ideals of justice and democracy; the updated anthropocentric universe of Athens, Rome, and Renaissance Florence; the uniting of religion and science; and the heroic stature of leaders—in this case, George Washington, honored as both first president and national “father.”

  Constantino Brumidi, once identified as “the Michelangelo of the Capitol,” was trained in fresco, tempera, and oil. Before emigrating to America, he had gained his reputation by restoring a segment of Raphael’s Loggia in the Vatican—a magnificent set of frescoes for the public diplomatic rooms of the papal apartments, including the famous School of Athens (symbolizing reason and the sciences) and Disputation of the Holy Sacrament (signifying faith and religion). Brumidi also created works for Roman palaces, giving him intimate knowledge of the great Renaissance masters.

  Returning from a working trip to Mexico in 1854, Brumidi stopped in Washington, where he learned that there was need for an artist to design and execute the frescoes for the Capitol extensions and dome. What followed is a story fraught with political intrigue, conspiracy, infighting, and government red tape, highlighted by the almost daily drama of working on a government commission during the Civil War.

  The Capitol’s superintendent of construction, Captain Montgomery C. Meigs, had announced his desire to re-create the splendor of Raphael’s Loggia for the interior of the building. Meigs had previously given Brumidi some small commissions, and knew the artist was well trained in the classical and Renaissance fresco techniques and imagery used by Raphael. So in 1862 Brumidi was formally commissioned to cover the 4,664-square-foot canopy over the eye of the Capitol Dome with a fresco glorifying George Washington.

  Brumidi’s first challenge was to design a scene that worked harmoniously with the earlier historical narratives on the surrounding walls. Second was the dual task of orchestrating a design whose imagery and motif were clear from all entrances and angles under the Rotunda and one that could be read from both the floor, one hundred eighty feet below, and the closer balcony.

  Brumidi was an admirer of Horatio Greenough, whose neoclassical sculpture of Washington Enthroned had occupied center stage on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda when finished in 1849. Whatever its value as a work of inspiration, Greenough’s sculpted presentation of America’s national hero in the classical nude—bare-chested with his lower torso and legs covered by classical drapery—had not been well received by the public, and it was exiled to the East Capitol Lawn in 1853, and then moved again to a yet more obscure site at the National Museum of American History, where it still remains.

  Brumidi went in a different artistic direction. He depicted Washington like Zeus, but dressed instead in his military uniform as leader of the Revolutionary Army, especially significant during the then-raging Civil War. He related the American national hero and first president to the heroes of classical Greece and Rome by using a lavender-hued lap rug resting across Washington’s lower torso and legs to signify classical drapery. Further, Brumidi incorporated a sheathed sword in Washington’s raised left hand as a gesture of authority rather than the suggestion of surrender found in Greenough’s statue.

  As in his earlier Langdon novels, Brown plays as much with the discrete symbolism of gestures as he does with the overt symbolism of numbers, colors, and objects. Greenough’s Washington Enthroned originally stood on the floor of the Rotunda directly below the Dome that would be frescoed by Brumidi. The sculptor had posed Washington’s right arm as upraised with an elevated right hand forming Brown’s so-called pointing gesture. Cognizant of this, Brumidi positioned his Washington in a downward pointing pose just above the same spot, thereby gesturing adulation and welcome to the earlier sculpture.

  The result is that the figure on the ceiling is carefully positioned by the painter to be in a form of communication with the sculpture that once occupied the floor directly below and, intriguingly, the floor below that—a space that had once been planned as the original location for Washington’s burial place.

  Brown adds further spice to this mix by placing Peter Solomon’s severed right hand, posed in that same “pointing gesture,” almost in the exact location on the Rotunda floor where Greenough’s statue had been (chapter 10). This then results in a rather bizarre confluence, as Solomon’s severed hand points upward to Brumidi’s Washington, who in turn points downward to Greenough’s Washington and further downward to Washington’s empty tomb.

  Whether it’s Greenough or Solomon’s finger pointing up, its focus is a dome fresco similar to the renowned Apotheosis of St. Genevieve on the dome of the Pantheon in Paris, a work that was simultaneously religious and historical in content. Brumidi was more than familiar with classical and Christian presentations of apotheosis, for which the most important visual key was to present the figures along the perimeter as if they were “anchored” in the ground, while the individual being glorified was elevated to the heavens.

  Brumidi’s design may seem iconographically confusing to our twenty-first-century eyes. Like Langdon’s students, or Inoue Sato, the CIA director, and Trent Anderson, chief of the Capitol police, we may be taken aback by the conjoining of historical personages with deities, especially with the label “apotheosis,” which Brown categorizes simplistically as a process of deification. The tradition of apotheosis, particularly well exemplified in the Capitol Dome, indicates that an individual is glorified as an ideal of patriotism, truth, and duty. In the common visual and cultural vocabulary of the mid-nineteenth century, the depiction of abstract ideas like moral courage as a recognizable person or mythological deity was commonplace, as was the custom of anchoring them solidly to the real world they had left behind—in this case, with a select group of American inventors, financiers, philosophers, and leaders, also chosen to represent the future.

  In Brumidi’s fresco, a central golden sky is enclosed by a slightly triangular-shaped ring of figures that includes Washington himself. The Dome’s perimeter displays an outer ring of six scenes or segments—War, Science, Marine, Commerce, Mechanics, and Agriculture—connecting classical/Renaissance ideals with America in a visual marriage of the creative sciences with pragmatism.

  In the center ring, Washington is surrounded by female figures. By his outstretched right hand is Liberty, wearing her red “liberty” cap and holding the fasces, a bundle of sticks from which an axe protrudes that was an emblem signifying Roman magistrates’ right to pronounce sentence. Next to Washington’s raised left hand is Victory/Fame, wearing a laurel wreath, holding a palm branch (the sign of peace paralleling Washington’s sheathed sword), and announcing his apotheosis through her trumpet. The biblical sign of God’s peace, a rainbow, curves under his feet. Positioned then between Liberty and Fame, Washington is recognized simultaneously as a military leader and a peacemaker. The rest of this inner circle consists of thirteen maidens, each with a star above her head, who represent the original thirteen colonies. Six of these ladies turn their backs to Washington, symbolizing the states that seceded from the union during the Civil War. In the very center of this inner circle is a large sun disk and a banner reading E pluribus unum—another indication of this fresco’s connection to Dan Brown’s theme.

  Of the six segments on the lower perimeter, War is located just below Washington’s feet. It depicts a figure holding an unsheathed sword in her upraised right han
d and a shield emblazoned with red and white stripes in her left. She wears a helmet covered with white stars. Often identified as Columbia, she prefigures Lady Liberty. Accompanied by the eagle, the mythological companion of Zeus and avian symbol for the new nation, she tramples the symbolic figures for Tyranny and Kingly Power. Here once again Brumidi follows the Renaissance convention of depicting contemporary recognizable figures, in this case Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, the just vanquished leaders of the Confederacy. Continuing to Science, we see the goddess of wisdom, war, and the arts of civilization, Minerva, with her battle helmet and spear. She is surrounded by American inventors, including Benjamin Franklin, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Robert Fulton, and by inventions such as the electric generator and printing press.

  Next is Marine, in which the central figure Neptune, the god of the sea, can be identified by his trident and seahorse-drawn shell chariot. He is accompanied by Venus, the goddess of love, who was born of the sea foam and is here seen laying the transatlantic cable (a historical reference contemporary to this fresco). Commerce features Mercury, the god of commerce, recognizable by his familiar winged sandals and cap. His right hand guides men loading a box onto a dolly and his left offers a bag of money to Robert Morris, a financier of the American Revolution.

  A sailor and an anchor lead us forward to Mechanics. Here stands Vulcan, the god of the forge, whose right hand rests on his anvil. A steam engine and war machinery surround him. The sixth and final segment, the one symbolically at “the end of the rainbow,” is Agriculture, personified as Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, who is seated on the newly invented McCormick reaper. “Young America” stands at the bottom of the rainbow, holding the reins of energetic horses.

  As the artists and philosophers of the Renaissance envisioned themselves as the leaders of a new world order that was Athens and Rome reborn, so the politicians and the philosophers of the American Enlightenment pressed forward once again as the “true heirs” of the classical and Renaissance traditions in their newest and finest expression: America and her central immortal, George Washington. Their motto became E pluribus unum, which is normally translated as “out of the many, one” or “one from the many,” signifying the unity of the United States.

  Given the disparate nature of the artworks Brown employs in The Lost Symbol, his growing interest in the Masons, and his quest to rebalance religion and science, he perhaps is pushing toward a revival of what philosophers, theologians, and historians identify as philosophia perennis. Loosely translated as “perennial philosophy,” this is a concept initiated in the sixteenth century and made popular in the early twentieth century. Perennial philosophy suggests that although there are many religions, all of them are undergirded by one constant sacred or holy truth that is identified as the one god. The idea is simple and relates both to the diversity of visual imagery in need of “decoding” in The Lost Symbol and to the final resolution of the novel, where Katherine reminds Langdon “God is plural because the minds of man are plural” (chapter 133). “Out of the many, one.”

  Dürer’s Melencolia I: This Time It Is a Woman

  In rapid succession, from chapters 66 through 70, Dan Brown incorporates into his story one of the more elusive engravings by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). In his Melencolia I, the artist examines the relationship between artistic creativity, scientific investigation, and manual skill. Unlike the more “spiritual” inspiration Langdon gets from the Brumidi, here he finds the clue that will keep him in physical motion, chasing after the Lost Word.

  It is curious, however, that despite his declared knowledge of art history, Brown chooses to emphasize only the “disguised” alchemical and mathematical symbols within Dürer’s engraving when, in fact, the meaning of the figure and surroundings are richly symbolic. More surprising yet is that Dan Brown, who found Mary Magdalene hidden at the right hand of Jesus in the Last Supper and who has been such a champion of the sacred feminine, miscues Melencolia as a male figure.

  Dürer’s Melencolia I incorporates a variety of classical and Renaissance traditions into the almost miniature space of this engraving (the plate impression measures only 93⁄8 by 73⁄8 inches). For example, he surrounds Melencolia with the then-known tools of geometry and architecture, including the four-by-four magic square interpreted by Langdon and Katherine Solomon; a truncated rhombohedrin with the faintest depiction of a human skull; an hourglass with time running out; an empty balance or scale; a purse and keys; a comet and rainbow in the sky; a despondent genius in the company of a putto; and a dog curled up in the lower-left foreground. These details have been interpreted in a variety of ways and by many people, including the great maestro of disguised symbolism, Erwin Panofsky. The engraving’s rich symbolism also led to the work being featured as the pivotal image of a 2006 international exhibition on the subject of melancholy that included works by masters from Breughel to Picasso to Edward Hopper.

  The presence of the rarely discussed bat in the engraving suggests a contrast between “dark” melancholy and “noble” melancholy (as represented by the dog or putto)—a contrast that reminds observers that deciphering symbolism is often treacherous work. After all, Melencolia holds the most meaningful tool in the engraving—a compass—at the very center of the composition. Although common to all architects and geometricians, this instrument signifies to all those familiar with medieval art and theology, as Dürer would have been, the ultimate creative act: God’s shaping of the universe.

  The multiple interpretations of this engraving have made it highly intriguing to and influential on other artists and thinkers. Another famed German Renaissance artist, Lucas Cranach the Elder, painted his own version of The Melancholy in 1553. It is a recognizable visual quotation from the Dürer, from her pose, her dress, her hair, and her wings to the compass she holds in both hands. Almost sixty-five years later, the Italian Baroque artist Domenico Fetti painted his own enigmatic variation of Dürer’s theme, Melancholy (ca. 1618), in which his kneeling female figure is oft misidentified as a penitent Mary Magdalene—a figure not unknown to Brown.

  In Dürer’s engraving, the figure of Melencolia takes on the classical pose of contemplation and the gesture of grief as she broods on the “disparate and bizarre collection of objects” spread before her. There is no question that this is a female figure, but Brown arguably misidentifies Melencolia as a male figure because, as in The Da Vinci Code, he apparently confuses gender with sex. Gender is culturally conditioned, so that what is masculine or feminine in the sixteenth century may not be recognized the same way in the twenty-first century. Sex, however, is simpler to identify, as it is physical and biological and doesn’t reflect changes in fashion, mannerisms, and hairstyles. Look at the slope of her shoulders and the softness of her face, and remember that the Graces, the Muses, and the soul were all feminine words in classical Greek and Latin. Consider further the reality that in the classical world, of which Dürer knew much, the night, with its dark potential for dreams, images, and danger, was identified as feminine and salvific.

  The legendary daughter of Saturn (Cronos), Melancholia was renowned for her introspective nature, the female embodiment of gloomy contemplation in classical mythology. Dürer’s Melencolia sits like an artist in the midst of that low point in the creative process when everything looks dark, bleak, and impossible, but action will burst forth at any moment like the infant from the womb and the roadblock will be removed. Dan Brown suggests Dürer’s figure is in despair over not being able to get further in the process of obtaining enlightenment and secret knowledge, like the alchemist who just can’t seem to find the philosopher’s stone. Others have seen Masonic, alchemical, and psychological symbolism in the objects gathered around her.

  Whether any of these hidden meanings are valid is open to speculation and interpretation, and this keeps scholars questioning and thinking. Even Melancholy herself is endlessly fascinating; as the Danish philosopher S�
�ren Kierkegaard mused, “My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known, what wonder, then, that I love her in return.”

  Venus, the Three Graces, and a Portal to a Divine World

  an interview with Michael Parkes

  Early in The Lost Symbol, Katherine Solomon encounters “a large canvas depicting the Three Graces, whose nude bodies were spectacularly rendered in vivid colors.” She is told by Mal’akh—who is, at that moment, posing as Peter Solomon’s psychiatrist, Dr. Abaddon—that this image is “the original Michael Parkes oil.” We don’t know it at the time, but we will later discover that the painting conceals the hidden doorway to Mal’akh’s mystical—and evil—laboratory. What we also don’t know at this point, and would never know without some sleuthing, is that Michael Parkes is a real living American artist. He has been called the best exponent of magical realism in painting today, and has been likened by the London Times art critic to a modern mix of Botticelli, Tiepolo, Dalí, and Magritte.