Digital Extra: The Station Fire

One painting portrays the bedside of a patient in 1868; the other is a Station fire burn victim.

08:49 AM EST on Friday, December 3, 2004

BY CATHLEEN F. CROWLEY
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Gretchen Ertl

Artist Warren Prosperi, of Southboro, Mass., discusses yesterday the two murals that he and his wife, Lucia, created for Rhode Island Hospital. The art was displayed during the hospital's annual meeting of governors.

PROVIDENCE -- Two life-size murals unveiled at Rhode Island Hospital celebrate the hospital's long history of caring for the sick.

The murals will be hung today in the lobby to welcome patients and visitors, and to serve as a tribute to the staff.

"Fabulous, incredible. They look like real people," said Dr. Joseph A. Amaral, president of Rhode Island Hospital, when he saw the paintings together for the first time yesterday. They were unveiled during the hospital's annual meeting of governors.

"It captured the essence that health care is not only about the technology or the medicine," Amaral said. "It is about the people, their knowledge, their skill and their compassion."

The two portraits depict the same routine hospital scene: a team of doctors looking over a patient. One picture portrays the bedside of a patient in 1868; the other is a Station fire burn victim. The models for the contemporary painting were all members of the staff who treated the victims of the Feb. 20, 2003 fire.

Warren Prosperi, a Massachusetts artist, painted the portraits in the style of optical naturalism, a school of painting that strives for photo journalistic representation of real events. Prosperi and his wife, Lucia, also created the murals that hang in the "Ether Dome" at Massachusetts General Hospital, which portrays the first time ether was used in general surgery.

Indeed, the Rhode Island Hospital paintings look like snapshots of everyday life at the hospital during the two different time frames.

Each image was carefully researched and planned. Prosperi reviewed daguerreotypes of the hospital's wards in the 1800s and hired professional reenactors to model for the painting.

The Board of Trustees commissioned the paintings three years ago, and the Rhode Island Hospital Foundation paid for them.

Prosperi painted the historically accurate scene first, and was scheduled to meet with the hospital's medical staff to photograph images for the second painting the month before the Station fire. Scheduling problems delayed Prosperi, and then the fire occurred.

"It was a defining moment for Rhode Island Hospital," said Dr. David Harrington, chief of the surgical intensive-care unit.

The hospital treated 63 victims in six hours. It was obvious to Prosperi and hospital officials that the second painting should commemorate the experience.

All the subjects in the contemporary painting are staff members who helped treat the fire victims.

Harrington, who is the central doctor in the painting, said the portraits show the evolution of medicine over 136 years. In the earlier portrait, the lead doctor huddles with the nurse while the other doctors talk among themselves or look at the patient's injured leg. Nobody is paying attention to the patient. In the contemporary painting, the patient is talking and everyone is focused on her.

"The same scene is being played out in our clinic all the time," Harrington said.

Many other things have changed at the hospital since its opening in 1868, explained Amaral in a presentation to the governors.

Back then, nearly all surgical patients died. The average length of stay was 47 days; the medical staff was composed of four visiting physicians, four visiting doctors and one house surgeon; the nurses were volunteers; there were 70 beds; 246 patients were treated during the year; and the annual budget was $17,000.

In 2004, the average length of stay was 5.68 days; the staff was made up of 1,299 doctors with privileges at the hospital, 520 residents and 1,300 nurses; there are 719 beds; 43,922 patients were treated; and the annual budget was $640 million.

The changes in the hospital environment can be seen in the paintings, and the artist hopes people search for them.

"I've had fun building into the pieces all sorts of parallels," Prosperi said. "Looking for them should be fun."