University of Virginia Library

Carrara Marble

By Independence Day 1823 word reached Monticello that the Italian marble capitals
intended for the pavilions were en route to Richmond from New York, where they had
arrived on board the Draco on 10 June. Several of the capitals were "so enormously heavy"
that Bernard Peyton, the university's commission agent in Richmond, scarcely knew what to
do with them upon their arrival. "They are too heavy to be transported by Drags, from
Rocketts to the Basin," he informed the proctor, "& the Locks are not in order to admit the
passage of Boats from the Basin to Tide water, & again, I fear they are too heavy for Boats,
particularly those of the North river, & when the water is low."[580] Jefferson immediately
wrote to Thomas Appleton in Leghorn to apprize him of the impending arrival of the stones
at the Albemarle site ("expected to have been here a 12 month sooner") and to notify the
consul to expect another order of capitals, for the Rotunda, "for which we shall be ready in
3. months from this time."[581] If Jefferson, now a dozen weeks past his 80th birthday,
contemplated the possibility that he might not live to see the capitals for the Rotunda he did
not let on to Appleton, who was 20 years to the day his junior. "On observing the
coincidence of our birth days I congratulate you on your attainment of your 3. score years
on the same day which filled up my 4 score, when however the psalmist tells us that 'their
strength are but labour and sorrow.' yet my health is so sound that I count on seeing the
completion of my university when I shall be ready to 'go hence & be no more seen' singing
with old Simeon 'nunc demittas Domine.'"[582] Nearly two years passed, however, before
Appleton could write to say that the last of the marble stones had been shipped from
Leghorn for America,[583] and John Gorman set the capitals in place (for $100) only weeks
before Jefferson's death in July 1826.[584]

It was August before Peyton could engage boats to ship the 18 boxes of marble to Scott's
Landing, from which they were carted to the university to "make the final finish of all our
buildings of accomodation."[585] On 20 September Brockenbrough reported to Jefferson that
the capitals had been set in place without incident but complained that the carvers had
compromised the stones' elegance by omitting and failing to complete some of the more
delicate details of their designs.[586] "All the Corinthian Capitels want the listel and cavetto
which constitutes a part of the Astragal on the top of the shaft of the Column," the proctor
fretted. Those omissions complicated the subjoining of the capitals to the brick columns.
Additionally, the upper part of the leaves of the Corinthian capitals were not "finished off as
it should have been," and the "carving of the bead under the Ovolo" was omitted altogether
from the Ionic capitals, detracting from the beauty of both. Despite the departure from
Palladio's designs and the inferior workmanship, Jefferson told Thomas Appleton that the
capitals were "well approved on the whole."[587]