Link because the picture is huge ... picture is huge to see the details.
I find it ... disturbing.
We live in an age of antiheros and victims. Christianty is a heroic ethos in which we are all called to be great saints and heaveen rejoices in the triumph of every soul. I find the celebration of the sinful and banal by media a lot more troubling than the painting.
Not to worry. That was just the "art style" of that era. Leaders were often depicted as "in the company" of various divinities and personified virtues.
You should. The intent is plainly a divinisation of Washington. That's what "apotheosis" means. Borrowing on the artistic/literary conventions of the ancients (much in vogue in the Greek Revival period that coincided with the Capitol's construction) Old George is being proposed to us as the Hero who's been promoted to more-than-mortal status.
Also disturbing to the artistically sensitive is the Capitol dome itself. To the pagan Romans, the dome represents the sky, the universe. This architectural convention was later adopted by Christians, for buildings devoted to divine worship. Is it possible that Latrobe didn't know that domed buildings speak of things both divine and universal? The subliminal message is that the American government is something divinely ordained with a universal mandate -- if not a holy thing in itself. This is not at all a republican idea -- and it didn't use to be Republican either.
President Reagan engaged in the same misappropriation of religious imagery when he spoke of the USA as a "shining city on a hill", a figure that has its origins in Holy Scripture and rightly refers to the Church.
