Illuminating History

Above: Dora Melina is the little girl wearing a bonnet; sitting above her is her father, Giuseppe Mungo; on the far left, seated on the floor, is her mother, Gemma Mungo; above Gemma to the right is Melina’s uncle, Antonio Mungo.

Below: Melina in her Brooklyn home, where a replica of Old Glory hangs in her den.

Noted artists from Italy who had recently immigrated to New York City, Antonio and Giuseppe Mungo—Melina’s uncle and father—created the work on several sheets of parchment. The music and lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner” are elaborately embossed in 24-carat gold in the center panels, which feature early and current (at the time) American flags. Framing the national anthem is a wide gold border, into which the brothers set several painted, miniature scenes of America’s founding, including one of Betsy Ross stitching a flag with a bonneted little girl at her side. At 43 by 63 inches, it is thought to be the largest illuminated manuscript in the world.

Completed in 1926 after 10 years of work, the Mungo brothers’ masterpiece was displayed at Philadelphia’s sesquicentennial celebration but it was never sold. The pair had created similar illuminated manuscripts—a dying craft in which text and miniature illustrations or paintings are decorated with gold or silver—for Tiffany Studios. They also did work for Ames & Rollinson, a Manhattan engrossing studio, where Melina apprenticed with her uncle after her father’s eyesight started to fail.

A Family Committed to Arts Education

An artist herself, Melina had been taking art classes at Pratt Institute, but found it “difficult to be at a drawing board all day and night.” Her husband, Fortuny Robert Melina, FCRH ’41, GSAS ’49, suggested she attend Fordham.

“I was so in love with some of the things he was learning [there],” she said. She began taking night classes at the former Undergraduate School of Education’s home on lower Broadway, near City Hall, during the 1940s and completed her degree at Rose Hill when the school moved there. She taught elementary school in Bedford-Stuyvesant and later became a guidance counselor.

“What I loved about Fordham was the scholastic philosophy,” Melina said. She enjoyed studying literature and the philosophers, especially St. Thomas Aquinas.

But she took care to note that she is not religious and did not go to church, even as a child. Her family was “anticlerical,” she said, “like most of the artists of that era.”

They were however, very devoted to the study of art. Together with other artists from Italy, the Mungo brothers founded and taught at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, known simply as “the Leonardo.” The low-cost school opened in 1923 in the East Village, and counts among its students famed sculptor Isamu Noguchi. It later moved to 34th Street, and closed in 1942.

In 1995, Melina honored her late husband, who died in 1992, by establishing the Fortuny Robert Melina Memorial Endowed Scholarship Fund for students of high financial need majoring in the arts.