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Four wreathed panels above the paintings frame portrait busts of the early explorers John Cabot, Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sieur de La Salle. In the relief panels above the four entrances are scenes from American colonial history: Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians and Landing of the Pilgrims by Enrico Causici, Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas by Antonio Capellano, and William Penn's Treaty with the Indians by Nicholas Gevelot.
The sandstone walls of the Rotunda rise 48 feet above the floor. Everything above this line was added between 1855 and 1866 by Thomas U. Walter, who designed the north and south extensions of the Capitol Building. Congress authorized the new high dome of fireproof cast iron to bring the center portion of the U.S. Capitol into harmony with the large new wings.
Walter's 1859 section of the new dome and enlarged Rotunda showed a fresco in the canopy over the eye of the inner dome and a sculpted frieze at the base of the dome. Constantino Brumidi painted The Apotheosis of Washington in true fresco on the canopy in 1865. The figures, up to 15 feet tall, were painted to be intelligible from close up as well as from 180 feet below.