Architecture, Painting and Sculpture Protected by Athena from the Ravages of Time

When Sargent began working out the decoration of the museum's rotunda in 1916, he saw it as a job for sculpture more than painting. On the model he planned it on, the four large oval panels of the dome were to be modelled in relief as well as coloured. Then he studied how the light fell, in the model and in the building itself, and found that too little of it reached those panels. The upper parts of any relief would simply have been invisible. So the ovals were painted on canvas instead, and the plaster was kept for the parts of the dome that catch more light. This is the panel visitors see first as they come up the main staircase, and the museum's guide of 1922 called it the focus of the whole scheme. Architecture sits in the middle with an arm round Sculpture, a young man with mallet and chisel, and Painting, a girl with palette and brushes. Athena leans over them with her shield, her helmet crested with a sphinx and two winged horses. Behind her flies Time, his scythe at the very end of its backswing.