Vassar College Alumnae House

The building of the Vassar College Alumnae House in 1921 presented Violet Oakley with an opportunity to create a memorial to her sister Hester Caldwell Oakley (1871–1905), who had graduated from the college in 1891. A novelist, wife, and mother, Hester lost her two-year-old daughter to illness and died three years later at age thirty-four in an epidemic in New York. To commemorate her sister’s life, Oakley chose a religious subject historically associated with powerful women. The Great Wonder: A Vision of the Apocalypse is a large triptych in the style of the early Renaissance, narrating the Book of Revelation. Depicted on the left are The Seven Golden Candlesticks (Rev. 1:12), The Book Sealed with Seven Seals (Rev. 5:1), and The Seven Angels (Rev. 8:6). On the right are The Angel with the Little Book (Rev. 10:8), The Rider upon the White Horse (Rev. 19:11), and The Serpent Cast Out (Rev. 12:9). In the large central panel is The Woman Clothed with the Sun, a mother lifting her child out of the reach of a dragon as she ascends into the heavens, an image that evokes paintings of the Immaculate Conception. Oakley made an illuminated manuscript explicating the imagery of The Great Wonder that was placed on a lectern in front of the triptych.

To provide a historically appropriate setting for the triptych, Oakley offered to design the Alumnae House living room in a style derived from the Great Hall of Palazzo Davanzati, a mansion in Florence that opened as a museum in 1911. She had a wood-beamed ceiling similar to the one in the palazzo fabricated and stenciled with heraldic motifs by her assistants, Edith Emerson and Carolyn Haywood. An Italian refectory table, Savonarola chairs, English choir stalls, standing candelabras, and other antiques purchased abroad furnished the austere room. The project was funded by Louise Lawrence Meigs, Hester’s Vassar roommate, and presented to the Alumnae House as a gift of the Class of 1891. Oakley received an additional commission from Vassar alumna Elizabeth Maloney Parkinson of the Class of 1887. For a memorial to her sister, Katharine Maloney Cook, who studied music at Vassar, Oakley made a folding screen painted with female musicians, Memorial to a Music Student, which was installed in the piano alcove in the living room. A pageant with a ceremony and costumes designed by Oakley was held at the dedication of The Great Wonder triptych on June 4, 1924.