This bronze medallion is one of a pair inserted into
perforated grilles which enclose radiators in the entrance hall of Kingston
Lacy, at one time the country home of the Bankes family in Dorset. At its centre is the coat of arms
of the Bankes family, and this is flanked by nude boys, above whose shoulders
float decoratively deployed cloaks. One of these boys holds up a model of
Kingston Lacy, as designed in the 17th century by Roger Pratt for Sir Ralph
Bankes, while the other holds a drawing of the house's groundplan.
William John Bankes, who commissioned this and other works
for the house from Marochetti, had known the sculptor since 1838, when the
equestrian statue of Emanuele Filiberto was exhibited temporarily in the Cour
Carré of the Louvre, before being dispatched to its final destination, Turin.
The statue had made a strong impression on Bankes, who then became chief
promoter of Marochetti for the job of creating an equestrian statue of the Duke
of Wellington for Glasgow. However, in 1841, three years before the Wellington
was inaugurated, Bankes was forced to save his skin by leaving England, after
being apprehended in sexual activity with a guardsman in Green Park. There was
then a long hiatus in the relationship between the landowner, now residing in
Venice, and the sculptor, who moved to London in 1848. This was brought to an
end in 1853, when Bankes initiated a series of what can only be called 'remote
commissions' for sculpture for Kingston Lacy. It is known that Bankes occasionally
broke the monotony of his exile with travel, and it must have been on one of
his visits to Paris that he acquired a bronze copy of a relief roundel by the
16th century French sculptor Jean Goujon. The original, in stone, over the
entrance to what is today the Musée Carnavalet (originally the Hôtel de Ligneris),
shows the flanking boys holding one a laurel, the other a palm branch. This he
sent to Marochetti, requesting that a bronze copy be made, incorporating the
Bankes arms, and asking Marochetti to create a pendent to it, of the same
proportions, but incorporating the model and groundplan of Kingston Lacy, as
decorations for the entrance-hall radiator grilles of the house.
The earliest reference to this commission is in a letter of 19 May 1853, in which Marochetti
tells Bankes "your agent has brought me the bronze medallion". On the
3 June Marochetti wrote again:"I told you that I had received the bronze
after Jean Goujon. Do you want something of the same size and also in bronze? I
will get on with it once I know what you want, and I await the arms that you
have told me about for the shield". On 23 June he wrote again to say that
he was about to start work on "your little medallion". The job had
been done by 11 August 1853, when Marochetti wrote to say that he would soon be
sending a daguerreotype of the pendent for the Goujon relief. He boasted that
it was "everything you wish. It is well arranged in the composition, the
house the plan and the sketch". He went on to ask Bankes, when it came to
further commissions, not to expect him to do work in the manner of "some
artist or another", but to allow him "elbow room", since what he
did best was work in his own manner. The
patron was very happy with what had been done for him. On 28 October 1853 he
wrote to his sister Anne, Lady Falmouth, to say that Marochetti had sent him
"two most beautiful Daguerreotypes of the medallions for the Hall
openworked pedestals. The one from that which was sent to him, the other from
the companion as he has modelled it: nothing can be so perfect, or so
completely as I could have wished! He has adopted but greatly improved upon my
suggestion. I quite long to send you such pretty things, only you will soon see
the originals for I have ordered the casting".
(The quotations are from letters in the Kingston Lacy
Papers, belonging to the National Trust, but deposited at the Dorset County
Record Office in Dorchester. Marochetti's letters to Bankes are in French and
have been translated for this entry.
See also P.Ward-Jackson, "Expiatory Monuments by Carlo
marochetti in Dorset and the Isle of Wight", Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, vol.LIII, 1990, 266-280, and illustration pages
29-35)
|