1630 - 1700

Sculptor and architect. Born in Flensborg, at that time part of Denmark, but now in Germany. He travelled to Italy in 1647, with a grant from the Danish king, Frederik III. He came to England around 1655, where he found employment as foreman to the sculptor, John Stone. Stone, at the Restoration, was appointed Master Mason at Windsor, and after his death, in 1667, Cibber was appointed sculptor to Charles II. The following year Cibber joined the Leathersellers’ Company. Cibber shares with John Bushnell the credit for having introduced a version of continental baroque style into England. Cibber’s contribution was the larger and more consistent, above all because it was reinforced by an understanding of the science of allegory. His first important public commission was the relief on the plinth of the Great Fire Monument, showing Charles II Succouring the City (1674). This was followed by the two reclining male figures, representing Raving and Melancholy Madness, for the gate of Bedlam Hospital (c.1680), and the Four Rivers Fountain in Soho Square (1680/81), from which only the much worn figure of Charles II survives in situ. Though he certainly produced many more, Cibber’s only documented church monument is that to Thomas Sackville (1677) at Withyham, East Sussex, with its reclining figure of the commemorated youth, flanked by kneeling figures of his mourning parents. Cibber produced allegorical figures for Trinity College Library in Cambridge (1681) and statuary for the chapel, staircase and garden at Chatsworth (1687--91). His last works, from the 1690s, were for Christopher Wren: garden urns and the pediment with Hercules Triumphing Over Superstition, Tyranny and Fury (1691--6) for Hampton Court, and work at St Paul’s including the relief of a Phoenix Arising from the Ashes in the pediment of the South Transept (1697--1700). Cibber was the architect of the Danish Church (1694--6) in Wellclose Square near the Tower of London, which he adorned with wood and lead statuary. The church has been demolished, but most of the sculpture survives.