|
Title:
|
Anthony Panizzi
|
Artist: |
Baron Carlo Marochetti
|
Marochetti's friendship with Anthony Panizzi developed soon after he arrived in London. As supporters of the cause of Italian unity they had much in common. In a letter to Panizzi of 7 Feb. 1852 (BM ADD 36716,f.397), the sculptor wrote: "Je ne suis pas plus cruel qu'un autre et mes bustes en marbre me sont payés cent ou cent vingt guinées suivant leurs proportions comme aux plus modestes artistes de ce pays ci, s'il y en a, en aucun pays aux quels on puisse appliquer cet adjectif............Bien entendu la première somme est pour un buste ordinaire, grand comme nature et sans ornements insolites." Why Panizzi should have wanted this information at that juncture is not clear. The commission for the present bust seems to have come three years later.
The bust was commissioned after 8 Aug. 1855, when the trustees were informed by Winter Jones that the staff of the Department of Printed Books wished to place a bust of Panizzi over the door at the north end of the readers' entrance into the new library, as a mark of their respect and attachment (BM Central Archive Officers' Reports); installation of the bust was approved by the Trustees on 5 April 1856, after Panizzi had expressed doubts about the plan (BM Central Archive, CE 3/27,8962). The bust was in place in time for the opening of the Reading Room on 2 May 1857. In The National Archive there is a drawing from the office of the architect Sydney Smirke, of the"Niche over the Doorway of Entrance to Reading Room" (TNA, British Museum 33/975).
The diary of Sir Frederic Madden , Head of the Department of Manuscripts at the museum (Oxford, Bodleian Library), gives his feelings about this homage to Panizzi. "I went to the Reading Room to see the progress of the arrangements and was quite astonished to see placed over the entrance door a bust - of whom - why of Mr P. the great colossus before whom our Trustees are like pigmies, executed by no less a person than Baron Marochetti. I think such a bust in such a place a disgrace, and not an honour to the Museum. It is wholly uncalled for, and quite against the usage in all public buildings. Mr Barry's bust is not put up in the Houses of Parliament nor Sir R. Smirke's in front of the Museum. Why then should the head of this ......Italian be placed immediately in view of all who come to consult the National Library? It is disgraceful to see such fulsome homage to a foreigner."
The bust was taken to the new British Library at St Pancras in September 1997. There it is displayed in a niche close to the entrance to Humanities Reading Room I, once again in a round niche but in conditions so gloomy that it is difficult to appreciate its quality.
The plaster model for the bust was lent, as part of a group of works by Marochetti, to the South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum in 1868, shortly after the sculptor's death. In 2001, this model, along with Marochetti's model for his bust of Thackeray for Westminster Abbey, was returned to his descendants.
|
|
|
Material(s): |
Marble
|
Medium: |
Unassigned |
Finish: |
- |
Technique: |
Carved |
Genre: |
Portrait Bust
|
Location: |
British Library, London, London, London, Great Britain
|
Colours: |
|
Year: |
1856 |
Height: |
0.71 metres |
Width: |
0.5 metres |
Depth: |
0 metres |
|
Key: |
2482 |
Acc. No.: |
2482 |
Col. No.: |
2482 |
Number of views: |
3307 |
|
|