
This inexplicable choice was made by Robert Winthrop Chanler, eccentric artist and scion of several families of the American aristocracy including the Astors, Winthrops and Stuyvesants. He trained as an artist in Paris and when he returned to New York, built a successful career as a muralist to the wealthy. Today only three of his surviving murals are available to the public.


The grotto is below sea level and afflicted by the high humidity, saline air and hurricanes endemic to Miami. Within a couple of years of its completion, the mural was already beginning to deteriorate. The decay accelerated in the humid climate, and went into overdrive when the grotto was completely submerged by storm surges in 1992, 2005 and 2017.
Saving the mural has been an uphill battle for the last 100 years, and there have been some past efforts to preserve it, Kuh Jakobi said. The two-year NPS grant will go toward getting the grotto and mural as beautiful and historically accurate as possible. But the process is not so simple. In accordance with the grant, Vizcaya pledged a match of $750,000 to deal with the first part of the project. Starting in January, the conservation team needs to deal with the corroding substructure underneath the living room floor that’s above the grotto. They’ll remove all of the objects from the room, remove the terrazzo floor panels, repair the corroding metal slab and put everything back in the room.
Then, in the grotto, they’ll re-attach the panel. And finally, there’s the tedious process of repairing and restoring the ceiling mural. While standing in the grotto, Kuh Jakobi pointed out a section of the ceiling conservators recently did a successful test run on. The difference is striking: the shades of blue are rich and vibrant and the marine life pop. Soon the rest of the mural will be just as lifelike.
It’ll take a team of four about seven months to finish the ceiling, Kuh Jakobi said. Vizcaya intends to finish the entire process by July 31, 2026, she said.
You can get a closer look at the extraordinary mural in this video by the Vizcaya Museum & Garden.
* This article was originally published here
























