Louis Schaettle, born Chicago, IL - Security (study for lunette, Old Senate Office Building) - ca. 1916 - T-Shirt

This is a semicircular allegorical study in watercolour and gouache, built around the word SECURITY set on a curved cartouche at the top of the design.

Visual Elements & Composition

The lunette shape frames the whole scene, with a border of garlands and patterned bands running around its edge. Cream dominates the field, while slate blue, gold, crimson and sage green appear in the figures and drapery. A draped woman in white with a teal headcloth stands at the left, one hand resting on a large gilded urn. At the centre, a seated figure in blue drapery, wrapped with red bands, leans back on a stepped base. At the right, a laurel-wreathed winged child holds a gilded shield while a kneeling man in red draws a second shield bearing a blue and gold device.

Meaning & Symbolism

The urn and shields signal stores held and defended, and the grouping of a guarded vessel, a restrained seated figure and two shields places protection in the hands of vigilance and established emblems. The wreathed child and kneeling guardian stand for watchfulness and the duty to safeguard what is held. The central figure, bound in red, reads as constraint, so the design balances control against protection. Louis Schaettle, born in Chicago, made this study around 1916 as a preparatory design for a lunette in the Old Senate Office Building in Washington. Lunettes of this kind, with allegorical figures beneath a curved cornice, were a favoured form of decoration for public interiors in the period, and the study fixes the composition and colour scheme before the finished work was painted.

Wearing the Design

A lunette is meant to be read as a whole, arched and framed, and a tee lets that arch sit across the chest where the eye can take in the cartouche, the urn and the two shields in one look. The composition works at close range and across a room, so the wearer carries the same balance of watchfulness and restraint that the original was painted to convey.