Showing posts with label antiquity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antiquity. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Lord Arundel's Collections

Ancient Greek Culture
Head of a Female Figure
2nd century BC
limestone
(discovered at the former site of Arundel House)
British Museum

Roman Empire
Altar Fragment with Married Couple
 AD 100-130
marble
(discovered at the former site of Arundel House)
British Museum

The two battered fragments of Roman sculpture above (only deemed worthy of "reference photos" taken with a crude flash and out of focus) were discovered on separate occasions in the nineteenth century at or near the riverside site where Arundel House had long since been demolished.  Receiving the pieces, officials at the British Museum were not slow to recall the famous collection of antiquities on display in Lord Arundel's gardens two hundred years earlier.  Stories are legion of the indifference of the later Howards to the gloomy lumps of stone left untended at the time of the Civil War, so the level of neglect required to see them reburied in the earth or submerged under water was not inconceivable.  Still, there is no solid evidence that either or both of these pieces did not arrive in London by other means.   

Ancient Greek Culture
Head of Homerus
(later known as the Arundel Sophocles)
2nd century BC
bronze
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
British Museum

Ancient Greek Culture
Head of Homerus
(later known as the Arundel Sophocles)
19th century
plaster cast
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Johann Heinrich Lips
Head of Homerus
(later known as the Arundel Sophocles)
1775
etching
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Jean Baron after Thomas Wood
Head of Homerus
(later known as the Arundel Sophocles)
ca. 1790-1810
etching
British Museum

Jean Baron
Head of Homerus
(later known as the Arundel Sophocles)
ca. 1790-1810
etching
British Museum

Anonymous Sculptor
King Henry VIII
ca. 1630-40
limestone
(copy commissioned by Arundel)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Egidio Moretti
An Orator
1614
marble
(commissioned by Arundel in Rome)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Egidio Moretti
A Senator
1614
marble
(commissioned by Arundel in Rome)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Again, in the case of the two statues above, a sub-standard level of museum photography indicates a correspondingly low status among museum professionals regarding these generic imitation-antiquities commissioned by Lord Arundel in Rome.  Egidio Moretti, the artist, was a low-end restorer with no reputation for independent work.  Better artists were certainly active in Rome at this time, but a foreign heretic like Arundel, even though a nobleman of political significance, could not obtain access to sculptors already committed to princes, cardinals, the emperor and the pope.      

Egidio Moretti
Armed Man
1614
marble
(commissioned by Arundel in Rome)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Egidio Moretti
Armed Man
1614
marble
(commissioned by Arundel in Rome)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ancient Greek Culture
Torso of a Youth
5th century BC
marble
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ancient Greek Culture
Metrographical Relief
460-450 BC
marble
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

" . . . the foot in relief measures 29.42 centimeters, while the proportional foot of the four-cubit measurement represented by the outstretched arms is 34.33 centimeters, a 7 to 6 ratio with the shorter foot."  

Roman Empire
Sphinx
1st-3rd century AD
marble
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Daniel Mytens
Portrait of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1630
oil on panel
Temple Newsam House, Leeds
 

Monday, September 7, 2026

Lord Arundel's Collections

James Basire after Peter Paul Rubens
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1763
engraving
(frontispiece to Marmora Oxoniensia)
British Museum

Anonymous Copyist after Wenceslaus Hollar
Plan of Arundel House in the Strand ca. 1675 (demolished soon after)
printed 1808
etching
Yale Center for British Art

In the plan above, the complex of Arundel House is the central dark rectangle with a tail, its gardens maked out by paler rectangles marching down to the Thames.  In those gardens during the 1620s and 1630s – and in an adjoining indoor gallery – was displayed the first collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture to exist in England.  This group of works – both statues and carved inscriptions – came to be known as the Arundel Marbles, assembled by the Stuart courtier Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.  

Wenceslaus Hollar after Adam Alexius Bierling
Arundel House from within the Courtyard, facing North
1646
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar after Adam Alexius Bierling
Arundel House from within the Courtyard, facing South
1646
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar
London from the top of Arundel House
1643
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wenceslaus Hollar
London from Milford Stairs below Arundel House
ca. 1643-44
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Arundel had expressed the wish that his collection be kept together permanently, but this was not to be.  A series of family disputes ended with Henry Howard, Arundel's grandson, taking Arundel House and its contents.  . . .  The marbles seem to have survived the Civil War, but suffered from vandalism.  Of the two hundred and fifty inscriptions collected by Arundel one hundred and fourteen had already disappeared when in 1667 Henry was persuaded by John Evelyn to give the remainder to the University of Oxford.  The Vice-Chancellor's accounts for 1667-68 include entries for the 'Water carriage of the Arundell Marbles' and 'for cleansing the Marbles.'  The gift was commemorated with an inscription and the publication in 1676 of Humphrey Prideaux's Marmora Arundelliana [below]."  

– Michael Vickers, The Arundel and Pomfret Marbles in Oxford (2006)

Humphrey Prideaux
Marmora Oxoniensia
1676
title page to printed book
(marking the gift of the Arundel Marbles)
Staatsbibliothek Bamberg

Anonymous British Printmaker
Arrival of the Pomfret (Arundel) Marbles at Oxford in 1755
printed 1757
engraving
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

More Arundel Marbles were donated to the University in 1755.  These came from Arundel descendants with the family name Pomfret.  The new arrivals were commemorated in a fanciful engraved landscape in the Oxford Almanack

Roman Empire
Greek doctor Claudius Agathemerus and his wife Myrtale
AD 90-110
marble funerary relief
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Humphrey Prideaux
Marmora Oxoniensia
1676
printed book
(funerary relief from the Arundel Collection)
Staatsbibliothek Bamberg

Roman Empire
The Oxford Bust 
(identified as Sappho or Faustina the Younger)
1st-2nd century AD
marble
(non-matching head and torso assembled ca. 1600)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Wenceslaus Hollar
The Oxford Bust
1645
etching
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hollar etched the Oxford Bust during its time at Arundel House.  Two centuries later Frederick Sandys painted Gentle Spring after his encounter with the Oxford Bust in its museum setting.  

Frederick Sandys
Gentle Spring
1865
oil on canvas
(figure based on the Oxford Bust)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ancient Hellenistic Culture
Torso of a Man
(called the Arundel Homerus)
3rd-1st century BC
marble
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Peter Paul Rubens
Homerus
cs. 1603
drawing
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rubens studied and drew the Homerus fragment in Rome a decade before Arundel arrived in the city and acquired the piece.  Twenty years after making the drawing Rubens built the antique figure into one of his monumental Medici Cycle canvases.  In the sketch below, Homerus has assumed the shape of Chronos in the upper left background, arms distinctively folded over lighter robe.  

Peter Paul Rubens
Council of the Gods
1622
oil on canvas
(sketch for Medici Cycle painting in the Louvre)
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

William Westall
Sculpture Gallery in the Examination Schools, Oxford
1813
ink and watercolor on paper
(the Arundel Marbles on display, scale exaggerated)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Lord Arundel's Collections

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Diomedes and Odysseus (the Felix Gem)
1st century AD
sardonyx intaglio
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

In the 1460s Pope Paul II owned the Felix Gem.  His inventory rated it as the most valuable object he possessed.  In time it passed to the Gonzaga court where Andrea Mantegna is known to have studied and copied the figures.  Late in the 1630s a dealer named Daniel Nys came to London and offered King Charles a rich "cabinet of gems" said to derive from the Gonzaga collection and including the Felix Gem.  Charles balked at the price, but Lord Arundel did not.  He reportedly paid £10,000 for this group of 263 cameos and intaglios, both ancient and modern.  Difficult as it is to compare money-values across centuries, several sources estimate that in the early 17th century £1 had the buying power of at least $100 today.  By that measure Arundel's purchase-price for the gems in modern currency works out tidily to about $1,000,000.  

Ancient Greek Gemcutter
Satyr with Grapes
2nd century BC
garnet intaglio
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Augustus
AD 41-54
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Cupids erecting a Trophy
1st century BC
onyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Bust of Apollo
1st century BC - 1st century AD
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Head of Cicero
50 BC 
carnelian intaglio
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous Italian Gemcutter
Death of Meleager
late 16th century
shell cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Young Satyr supporting Silenus
1st century BC - 1st century AD
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Hermaphroditus
1st century BC
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Woman and Child
1st century BC
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Aurora driving Chariot
1st century BC - 1st century AD
sardonyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous European Gemcutter
One of the Horae
early 17th century
carnelian intaglio
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous Italian Gemcutter
Germanicus and Agrippina
early 17th century
onyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Gemcutter
Marcus Aurelius and Faustina
early 17th century
onyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Gemcutter
Two Satyrs and Cupid
16th century
carnelian intaglio
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Ancient Roman Gemcutter
Wedding of Cupid and Psyche
50-25 BC
onyx cameo
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Bernard Picart
Antique Gem with The Marriage of Cupid and Psyche
(formerly in the Arundel Collection, as noted on the engraving)
1719
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art