The Declaration of Independence

The drafting committee presents the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress, Jefferson and his colleagues standing before the seated delegates in a dignified, orderly chamber. John Trumbull, who knew many of the men and painted their likenesses from life, intended his series as a visual record of the new nation's founding. Now at Yale, with a larger version in the U.S. Capitol, the Declaration of Independence became one of the most reproduced images in American history - the familiar scene later engraved on the two-dollar bill, fixing the founders in national memory.