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

 

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1972)

Robert Mangold
Distorted Circle within a Polygon
1972
acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Peter Max
Satichananda Guru, Teacher of Light
1972
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alice Neel
Vera Beckerhoff
1972
oil on canvas
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Georgia O'Keeffe
Black Rock with Blue Sky and White Clouds
1972
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Claes Oldenburg
Proposal for a Feasible Monument in the Form of Melting Butter
1972
watercolor and crayon on paper
Seattle Art Museum

Nathan Oliveira
Smiling Head
1972
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas 

Stephen Posen
Untitled, from Documenta
1972
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jan Sæther
Portrait of actor Nils Ole Oftebro
1972
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Frank Stella
Nasielk IV
1972
varnished ash
Art Institute of Chicago

 Hans Krondahl for Katja of Sweden
Lagoon
1972
screen-printed cotton fabric panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Julian Trevelyan
Rowers
1972
etching and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprint and acrylic paint on linen
Art Institute of Chicago

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprint on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprints on paper
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California

Shedrich Williams
Untitled
1972
gelatin silver print
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Jack Youngerman
Untitled
1972
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

The Old Man's Road

Across the Great Schism, through our whole landscape,

Ignoring God's Vicar and God's Ape,

Under their noses, unsuspected,

The Old Man's Road runs as it did 

When a light subsoil, a simple ore

Were still in vogue: true to His wherefore,

By stiles, gates, hedge-gaps it goes
Over ploughland, woodland, cow meadows,

Past shrines to a cosmological myth

No heretic today would be caught dead with,

Near hill-top rings that were so safe then,

Now stormed easily by small children

(Shepherds use bits in the high mountains,

Hamlets take stretches for Lovers' Lanes),

Then through cities threads its odd way,

Now without gutters, a Thieves' Alley,

Now with green lamp-posts and white curb,

The smart Crescent of a high-toned suburb,

Giving wide berth to an old Cathedral,
Running smack through a new Town Hall,

Unlookable for, by logic, by guess:
Yet some strike it, and are struck fearless.

No life can know it, but no life
That sticks to this course can be made captive,

And who wander with it, are not stopped at
Borders by guards of some Theocrat,

Crossing the pass so almost where
His searchlight squints but no closer

(And no further where it might by chance):
So in summer sometimes, without hindrance,

Apotropaically scowling, a tinker
Shuffles past, in the waning year

Potters a coleopterist, poking
Through yellow leaves, and a youth in spring

Trots by after a new excitement,
His true self, hot on the scent.

The Old Man leaves his Road to those
Who love it no less since it lost purpose,

Who never ask what History is up to,
So cannot act as if they knew:

Assuming a freedom its Powers deny,
Denying its Powers, they pass freely.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Carven

Anonymous Christian-Roman Sculptor
Christ healing the Paralytic
AD 400-415
ivory relief (fragment of altarpiece)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Norwegian Sculptor
Chess Piece (King)
ca. 1200
walrus ivory
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Mourning Virgin from Crucifixion scene
ca. 1225-1250
ivory (originally painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1270-80
ivory (originally painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous German Sculptor
St Sebastian
ca. 1600-1650
ivory (Rothschild bequest)
Musée du Louvre

Jacobus Agnesius
St Sebastian
ca. 1610
ivory
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Francesco Terilli
Christ aux outrages
ca. 1615
ivory
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Jürgen Kriebel
St John the Evangelist from Crucifixion scene
ca. 1620
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Portrait of Cardinal de Retz 
borne by Allegorical Figures
ca. 1654
ivory relief
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Pierre Jaillot
St Sebastian
1662
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Gérard van Opstal
Triton and Nereid
before 1668
ivory relief
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Chinese Sculptor
Head of a Woman
17th century
ivory relief (partly painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous European Sculptor
The Unrepentant Thief
17th century
ivory (fragment of Crucifixion scene)
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
The Judgment of Paris
17th century
pierced ivory relief
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anonymous German Sculptor after Gianlorenzo Bernini
Bowl with Marine Deities
(imitation of Triton Fountain)
18th century
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Claude-Antoine Rosset
Portrait of Voltaire
after 1760
ivory bust
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Auguste Barre
Mademoiselle Rachel of the Comédie française
1848
ivory
Musée du Louvre

from Lines

(written at Geneva)

                        Although no flowers or grass

Grow from the corpse of a deceased sound,

Somewhat, methinks, should mark the air around

Its dying place and tomb,

A gentle music, or a pale perfume:

For hath it not a body and a spirit,

A noise and meaning? and, when one doth hear it

Twice born, twice dying, doubly found and lost,

That second self, that echo, is its ghost.

But even the dead are all asleep this time,

And not a grave shakes with the dreams of crime –

The earth is full of chambers for the dead,

And every soul is quiet in his bed;

Some who have seen their bodies moulder away,

Antediluvian minds, most happy they,

Who have no body but the beauteous air,

No body but their minds.

– Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1824)

Glazed

Christiaan Johannes Lanooy
Three Vessels
1920
glazed earthenware
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Anonymous German Potter
Tile with Crucifixion Scene
ca. 1560-1600
lead-glazed earthenware stove tile
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Florentine Imitator of Giovanni della Robbia
Judith and Holofernes
ca. 1800-1850
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Giovanni della Robbia
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Jerome
ca. 1525
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Staffordshire Potteries
Dessert Dish
ca. 1755-65
lead-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous Potter working in Delft
Birdcage
ca. 1700-1730
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Staffordshire Potteries
Medici Venus
ca. 1815-20
lead-glazed earthenware figurine
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger
Portrait of Louis XV
ca. 1745
lead-glazed earthenware (faience)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Brislington Pottery (near Bristol)
Posset Pot
1699
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Bow Porcelain Manufactory (London)
Youth as Personification of Autumn
ca. 1765-70
porcelain
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Patanazzi Family (Urbino)
Inkstand with River God
ca. 1575-1605
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Domenico da Venezia
Pharmacy Jar
ca. 1560-70
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Domenico da Venezia
Pharmacy Jar
ca. 1560-70
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Brislington Pottery (near Bristol)
Wash-Basin as Scallop-Shell
1683
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous British Potter
Game Board
1723
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous Japanese Potter
Hare
18th century
porcelain
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

When old Fuseli made the famous remark that Constable's landscapes made him call for his greatcoat and umbrella, he showed he understood the kind of truth the master was aiming at.  Not the dry but the humid, not the linear but the atmospheric, not the lasting but the transient.  As Constable himself said in the preface to his published landscapes, to give "one brief moment caught from fleeting time a lasting and sober existence."  Lasting and sober.  We do well to remember these beautiful honest words before we rashly fall in with the view that Constable's finished paintings are less interesting, less artistic than his sketches.

The source of this preference is clear.  We prefer suggestions to representations, we have adjusted our expectations to enjoy the very act of guessing, of projecting.  And we rationalize this preference by fancying that the sketch must be nearer to what the artist saw and to what he felt than the finished work.  I do not deny that artists are human and sometimes spoil their works.  But I consider it a heresy to think that any painting as such records a sense impression or a feeling.  All human communication is through symbols, through the medium of a language, and the more articulate that language the greater the chance for the message to get through.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)