Louis François Roubiliac, the most compelling sculptor in eighteenth-century Britain, was responsible for many complex and dramatic monuments that can be seen in Westminster Abbey and churches throughout the country. This book is not only the first extended treatment of the artist since 1928 but is also an exploration of tomb sculpture in the context of the period.The first section, written by David Bindman, discusses the reasons for the commissioning of tomb sculpture, ideas of death and the afterlife, the setting of the tomb, the themes that govern its imagery, and the negotiations between sculptor and patron. The second section, written by Malcolm Baker, examines in detail the processes involved in the design and making of the monuments. Through an analysis of the monuments themselves, the surviving models, and a range of documentary evidence, Baker considers Roubiliac's technical procedures and compares them to those of other sculptors in Britain and on the continent. The volume ends with a full catalogue raisonné of Roubiliac's known monuments. Each commission is discussed in detail, with full accounts of contemporary documentation, inscriptions, physical construction, and related models.By examining the particular social and religious conditions of the time it becomes possible to account not only for the distinctive features of Roubiliac's work and practice but also for how such theatrical works came to be accepted and admired. The book is fully illustrated, all the major works having been newly photographed to make visible details that are impossible to see under normal viewing conditions.

Roubiliac and the Eighteenth-Century Monument: Sculpture as Theatre

Bindman, David

Baker, Malcolm

Biographies & Memoirs

Paul Mellon Centre

Providing the first thorough study of sculptural portraiture in 18th-century Britain, this important book challenges both the idea that portrait necessarily implies painting and the assumption that Enlightenment thought is manifest chiefly in French art. By considering the bust and the statue as genres, Malcolm Baker, a leading sculpture scholar, addresses the question of how these seemingly traditional images developed into ambitious forms of representation within a culture in which many core concepts of modernity were being formed. The leading sculptor at this time in Britain was Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702–1762), and his portraits of major figures of the day, including Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton, and George Frederic Handel, are examined here in detail. Remarkable for their technical virtuosity and visual power, these images show how sculpture was increasingly being made for close and attentive viewing. The Marble Index eloquently establishes that the heightened aesthetic ambition of the sculptural portrait was intimately linked with the way in which it could engage viewers familiar with Enlightenment notions of perception and selfhood.

The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)

Arts & Photography

Sculpture

Models: The Third Dimension of Science (Writing Science)

Now that ‘3-D models’ are so often digital displays on flat screens, it is timely to look back at the solid models that were once the third dimension of science. This book is about wooden ships and plastic molecules, wax bodies and a perspex economy, monuments in cork and mathematics in plaster, casts of diseases, habitat dioramas, and extinct monsters rebuilt in bricks and mortar. These remarkable artefacts were fixtures of laboratories and lecture halls, studios and workshops, dockyards and museums. Considering such objects together for the first time, this interdisciplinary volume demonstrates how, in research as well as in teaching, 3-D models played major roles in making knowledge. Accessible and original chapters by leading scholars highlight the special properties of models, explore the interplay between representation in two dimensions and three, and investigate the shift to modelling with computers. The book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in the sciences, medicine, and technology, and in collections and museums.

Science & Math

Evans, Christopher

Jordanova, Ludmilla

Hopwood, Nick

Boumans, Marcel

de Chadarevian, Soraya

Francoeur, Eric

Griesemer, James

Mazzolini, Renato G.

Mehrtens, Herbert

Research

Stanford University Press

With few exceptions, sculpture--statues, busts, or monuments--has not figured prominently in discussions of visual imagery and the public sphere in eighteenth-century Britain. This volume explores what is lost by this omission and how a more comprehensive examination of sculpture might extend analyses of British art. An in-depth look at the making and viewing of eighteenth-century marble sculpture, Figured in Marble effectively writes sculpture back into the narrative of British art. The opening chapter situates the study of English sculpture within a broader context of art history. Three essays explore the ways in which the histories of sculpture in England have been written and articulated through museum displays. Several case studies illustrate issues about making sculpture, categories of sculpture, the setting and viewing of sculpture, and collecting and displaying it. Together, these chapters consider sculpture that ranges from Claude David's lost fountain for Cheapside, Wilton's monument to General Wolfe, and Nollekens' Judgement of Paris group to the French bronzes owned by Rysbrack and to William Shenstone's figure of Pan.

Figured in Marble: The Making and Viewing of Eighteenth-Century Sculpture

History & Criticism

J.paul Getty Museum

Beautiful full-color photos of the collection from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Grand Design Art of Victoria and Albert

Abrams, N

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