In February 1832 Congress offered sculptor Horatio Greenough a commission to sculpt a full-length- marble statue of George Washington to be placed in the Capitol rotunda. In 1841 the. enormous statue was completed and set up in the Capitol. Audience responses to the statue were mixed, at best. Greenough had based the statue on his vision of the legendary ivory and gold image of Zeus, created in the fifth century B.C. by Phidias and one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. In spite of the efforts of Greenough's friends and supporters to explain and defend the sculptor's vision, Americans had other ideas about the statue. One newspaper critic compared it to a Hindu god, and another called it "Georgy-porgy." In April 1844 a former mayor of New York wrote in his diary that "it looks like a great Herculean, warrior-like Venus of the Bath...