![]() The murals have also been understudied because the popularity of Benjamin-Constant declined substantially in the twentieth century, owing to his intransigence toward modernism, and the rise of competing styles. Ames and his family from 1882 to 1923, and by the Edwin S. Their obscurity is due in part to the fact that the house was for many years a private residence, owned by Frederick L. With the exception of an unpublished manuscript by the late Margaret Henderson Floyd in 1975, and two brief articles published in 2015, the murals have received no scholarly attention, and they have never been studied systematically. The murals suffer from decades of grime and dust, and some minor stains or scuffs are evident nevertheless, the images remain bright and easily visible from the stairway and the loggias. Surmounted by a stained-glass skylight by American John LaFarge (1835–1910), the murals-like the house itself-remain in situ and largely unchanged (fig. Immediately above this Venetian cycle are four large “portraits” of historical figures from sixth-century Constantinople who gaze down toward the viewer. Ames (1835–93), two horizontal murals high on the wall of the central hall show a procession of Venetian noblemen and noblewomen, attired in Renaissance dress and arrayed in front of Renaissance buildings. ![]() Completed in 1889–90 by the French artist Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant (1845–1902) for owner Frederick L. Ames-Webster House, 306 Dartmouth Street, Boston, Massachusetts.Īmong the dozens of elegant brownstones in Boston’s Back Bay, the Ames-Webster house at 306 Dartmouth Street stands out both for its stately exterior and rich interior, notable for a cycle of nineteenth-century mural paintings that depict historical figures from Renaissance Venice and Late Antique Byzantium (fig. Oil on canvas John LaFarge, Guercino Aurora, 1882, stained glass skylight. 2, Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, The Justinian Cycle and The Venetian Cycle, 1889–90. ![]()
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