Take a Look: The Arundel Marbles at the Ashmolean Museum

Following on from last week’s piece on the origins of marble (featuring Oxford’s Natural History Museum), I soon found myself marvelling at some exquisite classical marble sculpture in the most famous of all the of Oxford Museum’s: The Ashmolean. The oldest of the museums in Oxford, and in fact, England’s first public museum (and first university museum), the Ashmolean was founded in 1683 as a museum of art and archaeology. Like many museums in the United Kingdom, you could spend days and days in the museum and still not have explored it all – the museum is simply massive!

The museum itself is named after Elias Ashmole, a collector of artefacts and plant/geological specimens, who donated his large collection to the University of Oxford. It was originally located on the University’s main street, Broad Street (the home of Balliol and Trinity Colleges and the famous Sheldonian Lecture Theatre), in the building that currently the History of Science Museum. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, the Museum received a number of large donations from collectors and outgrew its old home, and was moved to its current home Beaumont Street and combined with the University Art Gallery.

The exhibits in the Ashmolean are diverse: like the British Museum, the rooms of the museum are organised by theme and range from Ancient Greek and Roman Sculpture (the Arundel Marbles), to a collection of Pissarro works, to a collection of British Coins. Like many museums in the UK however, it is now widely accepted that much of the collection was obtained as a result of Britain’s colonial influence.

The ‘Arundel Marbles’ are located right at the entrance of the Museum – in the first room on the left, in a specially built room. The collection was the first large collection of classical sculptures of its kind, and is so named because it was collected by Thomas Howard, the 21st Earl of Arundel in the 17th century. The Earl was an avid collector of classical sculpture – supervising excavations himself in Rome, and deploying agents to barter for and purchase classical sculpture all throughout Europe. The Earl became so infamous for his penchant of the classical figure that it was rumoured that some of the pieces were ‘planted’ in order to ensure the success of his various expeditions (and therefore the pieces might be much newer than the Earl thought!).

The sculptures originally decorated the Earl’s London home (Arundel House – clearly very modestly decorated!) and were left to the University in two sets: one by the Earl’s grandson in 1667 (who was clearly not as fond of them as his father!), and another, which had made its way to the Earl of Pomfret’s stately home at Easton Neston, by the Countess Pomfret in 1755.

The collection itself is eclectic: it features full-body sculptures and busts of Roman statesmen (for example Cicero) and iconic Greek figures (such as the poet Sappho and hero Hercules) as well as Roman and Greek Gods (such as Eros) and mythical creatures such as the Sphinx. However, the collection also features many historically important inscriptions on the tombstones or sarcophagi of laypeople.

Most of the works (or their unrestored parts) date from between 200BC and 300AD, although the Earl of Arundel also commissioned some partner works in the 17th century.

Many of the sculptures were ‘restored’ in the 18th century by an Italian sculptor and restorer named Giovanni Battista Guelfi (1690 – 1736). The restorations were extensive, and universally despised: heads were replaced, arms were added, much to the ire of many commentators. Guelfi was said to have ‘ruined’ many of the sculptures. In the words of Dalloway (in 1800): “Guelfi misconceived the character and attitude of almost every statue he attempted to make perfect, and ruined the greater number of those he was permitted to touch”. In a similar refrain, Guelfi was labelled by critics in 1800 as a ‘shallow botcher’.

If you want to judge for yourself, you’ll have to come to Oxford! I’d highly recommend it.

Images

(1)  L: The Ashmolean’s old location on Broad Street, Oxford (next to the Sheldonian Lecture Theatre) – now the History of Science Museum (source: Wikimedia commons); R: The entrance to the Ashmolean on Beaumont Street (source: Wikimedia commons);

(2)  Room 21 at the Ashmolean Museum (which houses the Arundel Marbles) (source: the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: https://www.ashmolean.org/greek-and-roman-sculpture-gallery);

(3)  L: A marble sculpture of Cicero, excavated in Rome in 1613-14 by the Earl of Arundel (source: Wikimedia commons); R: A sphinx sculpted in Roman times, thought to be fculpted between 50-200AD (source: Wikimedia commons);

(4)  The partner to the Roman Sphinx above, commissioned by the Early of Arundel in the 17th century (source: Wikimedia commons).

Words by William Jackson