Of the five frescoed lunettes in the larger Appropriations Committee Room of the Senate painted by Brumidi, the “Storming of Stony Point” is probably the most colorful. A voucher signed by Brumidi and dated October 19, 1871, reads, “For painting in fresco three panels in Committee Room on Military Affairs, Senate Wing, U. S. Capitol, viz: Washington at Valley Forge, Storming of Stony Point, Boston Massacre, @ $1000 each.” Said Senator Voorhees in 1880, “Who ever passed through the room of the Committee on Military Affairs without feeling that the very genius of heroism had left there its immortal inspirations.”] [Illustration: TELEGRAPH The laying of the Atlantic cable, with its great significance, has been painted by Brumidi into two Capitol frescoes. “Telegraph” is Brumidi’s own title for this lunette painted as a part of the ceiling fresco in the District of Columbia Committee Room of the Senate. The beauty, freedom, and plenty of America extending a welcome across the seas, as here portrayed, was always in the heart of the artist. The working sketch for this lunette was among the Brumidi paintings stored in a Washington bank vault for forty years.] [Illustration: LEGISLATION One of four Madonnas from the frescoed ceiling of the President’s Room, Senate Annex.] The Artist’s Compensation Preserved today in the Capitol’s Brumidi file is a statement signed by Brumidi in 1874, but written in the third person “Relative to his Employment at the Capitol.” A portion of that statement follows: “At one time Brumidi was employed in decorating the Capitol at the same compensation allowed Congressmen, and when that compensation was increased that benefit was also extended to him. At the breaking out of the Civil War Captain Meigs was promoted, and all the work at the Capitol was suspended but Senator Foot, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, as an exception retained Brumidi at work, and placed his name on the roll of the Senate official employees. “After the war some paintings were completed under the orders of the Secretary of the Interior, and the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, executed by contract under the control of the Architect of the Capitol, but many long interruptions occurred, and much valuable time was lost for want of available appropriations. “Now many panels remain empty, disfiguring the elaborate ornaments and gilded mouldings around them, which sooner or later must be completed; also that large frieze in the Rotunda sketched by order of Captain Meigs before the war, and intended to represent the history of the country. “The artist Brumidi humbly proposes to proceed with the work on the economical system of daily wages as the only manner to avoid the inconvenience of interruptions for want of available appropriations.”