Elihu Vedder
(New York City, New York, 1836 - 1923, Rome, Italy)
Title
Rome (The Art Idea)
Creation Date
1894
Century
late 19th century
Dimensions
144 in. x 288 in. (365.76 cm x 731.5 cm)
Object Type
painting
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
oil on canvas
Credit Line
Gift of the Misses Harriet Sarah and Mary Sophia Walker
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1893.37
The Museum’s central rotunda is a magisterial space decorated below the dome by four large semicircular murals by the four leading painters of the American Renaissance: Elihu Vedder, Kenyon Cox, Abbott Thayer and John LaFarge. They were commissioned by McKim who believed in the unity of the arts and constituted an extremely important ensemble of architectural decoration. The original mural scheme called for each artist to paint an allegorical representation of one of the four cities perceived at the time as most central to the development of western art. Elihu Vedder’s mural depicts Rome under whose gaze appear the different elements of art: Wisdom, Knowledge, Soul, Life, Harmony, Love, Color and Form.
Recommend keywords
Help us make our collections more accessible by providing keywords to describe this artwork. The BCMA uses the
Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus to
provide consistent keywords. Enter a keyword in the field below and you will be prompted with a list of possible matching AAT preferred terms.
