Five colorful ceiling-to-floor panels adorn the walls and in the center of each hangs a portrait elegantly framed. The five members of Washington’s first Cabinet are thus honored--Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Secretary of State; Edmund Randolph of Virginia, Attorney General; Henry Knox of Massachusetts, Secretary of War; Alexander Hamilton of New York, Secretary of the Treasury; and Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts, Postmaster General. I say these portraits hang in the panels. If you stood at the door looking hurriedly about the walls, as most visitors must do at the President’s Room, you would think the frames as real as the portraits. In truth, though, the beautifully carved frames are painted on the walls as are the portraits. Mr. Fairman calls these paintings, “Portraits of Distinction,” and so they are. But it is the frescoed ceiling in the President’s Room that showers new light and color and added beauty about the portraits on the walls. Four symbolic groups on this ceiling look down from their large medallion gold leaf frames--four life-size Madonnas, symbolizing Religion, Legislation, Liberty, and Executive Authority--Madonnas of great beauty and rare coloring. Then at each corner of this frescoed ceiling among the symbolism and the cherubs are four life-size portraits, full length, each chosen as representative of a force in civilization. Columbus memorializes discovery; Vespucius, exploration; Brewster, religion; and Franklin, history. The portrait of George Washington, evidently done with Rembrandt Peale’s Washington in mind, has a position all its own high above the portrait of Thomas Jefferson. A portion of the Annual Report of Captain Meigs, dated October 27, 1859, fixed the completion of the Brumidi frescoes in the President’s Room. Said that report, “The painting of the President’s Room in the North wing will be completed by the next meeting of Congress.” Even during the years that Brumidi created the beauty of the President’s Room cruel words were hurled against his art. In 1858 a convention of self-styled American artists assembled and drew up an estimate of their own worth which they titled: “Memorial of the Artists of the United States.” This petition of grievance presented to the Congress of the United States carried the names of 127 individuals, chiefly from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore with only eight from the Capital City. Among the signatures were found the names of Rembrandt Peale, W. D. Washington and Johannes A. Oertel, the latter being the draughtsman who [Illustration: SINGING CHERUBS