The Capitol's pediment includes two figures dressed like the muses in the rotunda. Lewis Ives designed the pediment. For many years people thought that he also painted the murals in the dome. Kerry Chartkoff, Director of the Capitol Tour and Information Service and Capitol historian, suspected that Ives was not the artist. She tried to learn the real identity of the painter, but no one knew.

Then, one day in 1992, Geoffrey Drutchas of Taylor, Michigan, visted the Capitol. He had read that Italian artist Tommaso Juglaris had done some work for the Michigan Capitol. He asked a Capitol tour guide about paintings by Juglaris. Not recornizing the artist's name, the guide took Drutchas to talk to Ms. Chartkoff. They wondered if the murals in the dome might be the Juglaris paintings. Both becan learning more about Juglaris and his art. The drawing used to sign the Capitol's painting looked like a stick figure of a person, so they looked for this image on other Juglaris' paintings.

Drutchas visited Italy in 2000 and found the same drawing on a known Juglaris painting. He learned that it was a monogram of the artist's initials: TJ. When a sketch of four of the Capitol's muses was found among Juglaris's papers in Italy in 2003, it confirmed Juglaris as the painter. The case was closed, the artist was discovered. But why had his name been such a mystery for so many years?

Tommaso Juglaris immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1880. He lived and worked in Boston. the Capitol's paintings were probably painted on canvas there, then shipped to Lansing and glued onto the rotunda walls in 1886.

When Juglaris came to Boston there were great numbers of immigrants coming to this nation. Some people feared that they would take jobs away from American citizens. Noncitizens could not work on public buildings or projects. Juglaris had been hired by William Wright's company as a subcontractor. Wright or Michigan officials might have decided that it was politically best not to identify him.