Let’s talk about apotheoses in domes in art, shall we? This term comes from Ancient Greek and means “to make into a God.” Some heroes of Classical myths ended up ascending into the heavens to be with the other Olympians, such as Hercules. In Ancient Rome, emperors beloved by the Senate could be given the divine status after their death, their deification also presuming a rise into the sky. In Western Christendom by the year 1000, the Virgin Mary was believed to have been Assumed into heaven, considered so holy that she in fact avoided death.
Depicting an apotheosis in art was a way for an artist to showcase their virtuosity — by placing the ascended into the center of a dome, the artist could create a _trompe l’oeil_ that mimicked the sky. The composition would be in concentric circles, with dramatic foreshortening suggesting depth and upwardness. The perspective would also radiate out, so that viewers might see various figures beneath the deified from various angles.
The apotheosis trend really got going with the Catholic Counter-Reformation. In the first painting you see the Assumption of the Virgin in Parma Cathedral (1524-30) by Antonio Allegri da Correggio. It became the model exemplar for Baroque painters after, and really is dizzying and spectacular. In Rome a little later (1625-27), the artist Giovanni Lanfranco mimicked the subject with his own interpretation in “the Glory of the Virgin” at Sant’Andrea della Valle in fresco formation.
Move along another 100 years and Europe had become more secular. François Lemoyne painted the “Apotheosis of Hercules” between 1731-36 at a room in Versailles for King Louis XIV. The room had been a chapel, but Lemoyne intended his subject of Hercules to be a metaphor for the French king. Although not on a dome like the others, the radiant perspective is similar, and it is the largest ceiling painted on canvas in Europe.
Last is the dome by Constantino Brumidi from 1865 located in the capital rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building. It’s called “the Apotheosis of Washington,” and that means exactly what you think.
Mary, Hercules, and George, all apotheosisized. Let’s take some field trips!
