High in the dome of the Michigan State Capitol are eight monumental works of art: eight “painted ladies” who look down upon hundreds of thousands of visitors who pass beneath them every year. Although in full public view, these eight figures remained one of America’s greatest art mysteries for over one hundred years.
Who are they? What do they represent? Who painted them and when? Why were they placed in the dome? Surprisingly, no one knew the answers to any of these questions. The real question: why were the capitol’s ladies so mysterious?
This was not just an art mystery. It was a history mystery, and both art and history were needed to solve it.
After decades of neglect, a landmark restoration of the Michigan State Capitol began in 1989. For the first time in many years, new attention was focused on the old building—and on the eight ladies who so mysteriously ringed its upper dome. Now, as scaffolding rose inside the rotunda, it was possible to get very close to the paintings—closer than anyone had been since they were installed!
What historians, Capitol staff, and conservators from the Detroit Institute of Art discovered when they climbed the scaffolding were several clues that helped to solve the mystery.
They Are Women. They Are Muses. But They Are Not The Governors’ Wives!
Many people thought that the ladies represented actual people. In fact, most visitors assumed they were some of the governors’ wives (probably because they are mounted in the dome above galleries lined with governors’ portraits). But looking carefully, you can see that the ladies are not real people at all. Each figure is surrounded by clues that tell us that the ladies are really muses.
One clue is the way the ladies are dressed. Robed and draped, they look more like Greek goddesses than governors’ wives. Indeed, in Greek mythology, the muses were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Each muse presided over her own art or science and provided divine inspiration to the gods. Muses have been used in art and literature ever since as guides and sources of inspiration.
Poets, musicians, dancers, historians—each had their own muse. Over time there would be muses for astronomy, agriculture, law, philosophy, and many more. Whenever people needed inspiration and guidance to help them, a muse was born. Have you ever wondered where the word “museum” comes from? From the muses, of course: it means “a place or source of inspiration.”
A muse is a kind of allegory. Allegories are used in art and literature to tell a story, to teach a lesson, and to inspire. They can do this because they have two levels of meaning: a surface level that tells the story, and a deeper level that teaches the lesson and inspires the viewer. The tale of the tortoise and the hare is an allegory. On one level, it is just a story about a race between two animals. But on another level it teaches a lesson: slow and steady wins the race. It inspires us to keep trying and never give up. Allegories are particularly successful when they are used in art because their “messages” can be understood at a glance. This was very useful at a time when many people didn’t know how to read. For this reason, allegories have been used in art down the ages and all over the world.
Because allegories are used to teach and inspire, their meanings must be clear. That is why allegories—at least in Europe and America—have long used familiar themes and images taken from the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome. This made it possible for people from very different times and places to understand them.
Another way artists help us understand what allegories mean is through the use of symbols, or visual clues. Each muse, for example, is associated with particular symbols that allow us to identify her and “read” her message. Scales and a sword tell us that we are looking at the muse of law and government, for example, while the muse of commerce and trade carries a winged staff with serpents, called a caduceus, a symbol of truce and safe passage.
Allegories also use personification to help make their messages clear. Personification is the practice of using the human form to represent ideas and qualities. In this way, a blindfolded human figure holding a set of scales has come to represent justice, while another (very famous) figure holding a torch and wearing a crown has come to represent liberty. The Capitol’s muses are good examples of personification because they use human female figures to represent such ideas and institutions as art, agriculture, industry and justice.
But why are the muses women? Why not male muses? Women are most often used in allegory because artists have long believed that the idealized female form represents the highest standard of beauty, and beauty has always been an important source of inspiration. In ancient Greece, the female form became the personification of the virtues: justice, bravery, purity, wisdom, and sacrifice, for example. We still follow this practice today: America’s most famous and inspirational allegory is female: the gowned goddess, “Lady Liberty,” better known as the Statue of Liberty.
What The Capitol Tells Us
Knowing who the muses are and what they represent leads to another question: why were they chosen to decorate Michigan’s most important public building instead of Michigan heroes or scenes? Learning more about the history and purpose of the Capitol can help answer this question.
Dedicated on January 1, 1879, the Michigan State Capitol was built in the years just after the end of the Civil War. It was a time of rapid growth and change, as America began to move from an agricultural to an industrial nation. Increasing prosperity fed a growing belief in progress and hope for the future. A great wave of construction swept the nation, as states built fine new capitols and other public buildings and the wealthy built lavish mansions.
Michigan’s Capitol, like many others, was built in the architectural style of classical Greece and Rome. Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged the use of classical architecture for America’s public buildings because he believed its high standards would help civilize and improve the new nation. Lofty domes and soaring rotundas were intended to awe and inspire—and so was the art these new buildings demanded.
Since big buildings like capitols need big art, a tradition of mural painting sprang up to meet the demand. Murals are works of art—often quite large--either painted directly on a building’s walls and ceilings or on canvases glued to them. In either case, such art demanded great skill, as the artist had to work on an enormous scale and imagine how the works would look when seen from far below. Most mural art is public art, created to educate, inspire and raise the public’s standards. For that reason, allegories drawn from the classical world—with their easily understood messages and lessons—were the subject of many murals.
In 1865, an Italian immigrant, Constantino Brumidi, was commissioned to decorate the canopy of the huge new dome raised over the nation’s capitol in Washington, D.C. Brumidi created his masterpiece: a monumental mural featuring an allegory called the Apotheosis of Washington. When architect Elijah Myers designed the Michigan State Capitol a few years later, he used the nation’s capitol as his model and inspiration. It was undoubtedly no accident that Myers specified “ornamental allegorical paintings” for the decoration of his masterpiece as well.
The eight classically-inspired allegorical muses who finally took their places high in the dome of the Michigan State Capitol are thus part of a long tradition. Together they represent the institutions Michigan thought necessary for the well being and progress of her people. They tell us a great deal about a young state’s shared values and ideals. Even today these murals are far more timeless and inspirational than any hero’s portrait or Michigan scene.
The Signature
One of the most puzzling things about the muses is that no one knew who painted them. They did not appear to be signed. Records and newspaper accounts were combed for clues, but nothing was found. For many years they were thought to be the work of a well-known Michigan artist, Lewis Ives, but there was no evidence to support this idea.
During the restoration of the Capitol,
conservators from the Detroit Institute of Arts were brought in to clean and
conserve the muses, which were showing signs of neglect and age. When the
experts were finally able to examine the muses closely, they found that the
artist had “signed” most of them—in a way. On six of the eight muses they
found a small painted design which looked like the picture to the right.
It was clearly the artist’s “signature.” But whose? No one recognized it. Nevertheless, it was still an important clue—and it eventually helped to solve the mystery.
A New Mystery
In 1992, at the end of the project to restore the Capitol, new evidence was found that strongly suggested that Tommaso Juglaris, a little-known Italian artist living in Boston, had painted Michigan’s muses. One mystery had been solved, only to find another. Tommaso Juglaris never lived in Michigan. In fact, he was not even an American citizen. Why, then, was he chosen to decorate Michigan’s proud new capitol? And why, after choosing him, had Michigan forgotten all about him? Most of all,