(Routledge Research in Art History) Christopher P. Dickenson - Public Statues Across Time and Cultures-Routledge (2021)

Public Statues Across Time and Cultures
This book explores the ways in which statues have been experienced in public in diferent
cultures and the role that has been played by statues in defning publicness itself.
The meaning of public statues is examined through discussion of their appearance
and their spatial context and of written discourses having to do with how they were
experienced. Bringing together experts working on statues in diferent cultures, the
book sheds light on similarities and diferences in the role that public statues had in
diferent times and places throughout history. The book also provides insight into the
diverse methods and approaches that scholars working on these diferent periods use
to investigate statues.
The book will appeal to historians, art historians and archaeologists of all periods
who have an interest in the display of sculpture, the reception of public art or the
signifcance of public monuments.
Christopher P. Dickenson is an independent researcher based in Denmark.
Front cover: Sean Henry, Man with Cup, 2008, permanently installed on the façade
of Salisbury Cathedral. Photograph courtesy of Sean Henry (www.seanhenry.com).
Routledge Research in Art History
Routledge Research in Art History is our home for the latest scholarship in the feld of
art history. The series publishes research monographs and edited collections, covering
areas including art history, theory, and visual culture. These high-level books focus on
art and artists from around the world and from a multitude of time periods. By mak-
ing these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims to
promote quality art history research.
Picturing Courtiers and Nobles from Castiglione to Van Dyck

Self Representation by Early Modern Elites
John Peacock
The Reception of the Printed Image in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Multiplied and Modifed
Edited by Grażyna Jurkowlaniec and Magdalena Herman
Iconology, Neoplatonism, and the Arts in the Renaissance

Edited by Berthold Hub and Sergius Kodera
History and Art History

Looking Past Disciplines
Edited by Nicholas Chare and Mitchell B. Frank
Mobility and Identity in US Genre Painting

Painting at the Threshold
Lacey Baradel
The Imperial Patronage of Labor Genre Paintings in Eighteenth-Century China

Roslyn Lee Hammers

Edited by Christopher P. Dickenson
Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts

Edited by Emily C. Burns and Alice M. Rudy Price
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-

in-Art-History/book-series/RRAH
Public Statues Across Time
and Cultures
Edited by
Christopher P. Dickenson
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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© 2021 Taylor & Francis
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editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dickenson, Christopher P., editor.
Title: Public statues across time and cultures / edited by Christopher P. Dickenson.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020048382 (print) | LCCN 2020048383 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367416386 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367815462 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Statues—Psychological aspects. | Public sculpture—Psychological
aspects. | Art and society—History. | Arts audiences—Psychology.
Classifcation: LCC NB1145 .P83 2021 (print) | LCC NB1145 (ebook) |
DDC 730.2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048382
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048383
ISBN: 978-0-367-41638-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-74934-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-81546-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures vii

List of Contributors xi
Preface and Acknowledgements xiii
1 Statues and Public Space: An Introduction 1

CHRISTOPHER P. DICKENSON
2 How Accessible Were Statues in Pharaonic Egypt? 32

CAMPBELL PRICE
3 Portrait Statues in the Athenian Agora in the Roman Period:

The Archaeological Evidence 56
SHEILA DILLON
4 Populating Public Palmyra: The Display of Statues and Their

Impact on the Perception of Public Space in Roman Palmyra 81
RUBINA RAJA
5 The Statue in Byzantium: Some Questions and Cases 102

PAROMA CHATTERJEE
6 Looking Up in Judgement: How to See the Early Modern

Statue Through the Late Medieval Crucifx in Italy 121
PETER DENT
7 When Venus Mocked the Pope: Ancient Sculptures in the

Possessi of Renaissance Rome 147
KATHLEEN W. CHRISTIAN
8 Monumentalising Burghers of the Low Countries: Living

Statues in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Joyous Entries 176
STIJN P.M. BUSSELS
vi Contents
9 Street Monuments and the Idea of National ‘Improvement’
Through Tolerant Coexistence in Post-Restoration Britain
(1660–1770) 194
MATTHEW CRASKE
10 From Empires Past to Nation State: Figurative Public Statues in

Istanbul 226
FAIK GÜR, MELIS TANER AND DENIZ TÜRKER
Index 257
Figures
1.1 Tony Matelli, Sleepwalker, 2016, The High Line, New York. 2
1.2 John Rysbrack, statue of Queen Anne, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. 4
1.3 Neil Simmon, statue of Margaret Thatcher at London’s Guildhall
in its current location. 7
1.4 Antony Dufort FRSS, sculpture of Margaret Thatcher. 8
1.5 The north side of Parliament Square. Statues, from left to right:
The Earl of Derby, Canning, Palmerston, Smuts, Lloyd George. 10
1.6 The statue of Robert E. Lee, Richmond after being daubed by
grafti by protesters, July 2020. 15
1.7 The statue of Cecil Rhodes on the façade of the Rhodes Building,
Oriel College, Oxford (centre top), during protests, 9 June 2020. 17
1.8 Waxwork of Margaret Thatcher fanked by Reagan and Gorbachev
at Madame Tussauds, London. 20
2.1 Peristyle courtyard at the rear of Luxor temple, with mosque of
Abu Haggag in the distance. 37
2.2a Collection of statues of the goddess Sekhmet relocated to Karnak
temple from the temple of Amenhotep III. 39
2.2b Repositioned statue of Sekhmet at the entrance to temple of
Ramesses III, Medinet Habu. 40
2.3 Scene from the Theban tomb chapel (no. 277) of Ameneminet,
showing statues of deifed King Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. 41
2.4 The ‘Colossi of Memnon’, representing Amenhotep III, Kom el-
Heitan, western Thebes. 43
2.5 Aperture in the serdab of the tomb chapel of Ti at Saqqara (c. 2400
BCE); the statue of the tomb owner within is a replica of the original. 45
2.6 Naophorous statue of an ofcial named Hor, c. 590 bce, now in
Manchester Museum. 47
3.1 John Travlos, plan of the Post-Herulian Wall, 1984. 58
3.2 R.C. Anderson, plan of the Athenian Agora (centre), second
century ce, 1992. 59
3.3 Inscribed drum from the monument to Xenokles. Agora
Excavations, inv.no. I 3299. 61
3.4 The monument to Xenokles on site, inside the remains of Tower W2. 62
3.5 Base for the statue of Publius Appuleius Varus, built into Tower W4.
Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 928. H. 0.21 m. W. 0.79 m. D. 0.70 m. 63
3.6 Base for the statue of Tiberius Claudius Jason Magnus of Cyrene,
built into Tower W4. Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 6737. H. 1.24 m.
W. 0.87 m. D. 0.56 m. 64
viii Figures
3.7 Top view, with footprints and attachment holes, of the base for the
bronze statue of Tiberius Claudius Jason Magnus of Cyrene, built
into Tower W 4. L. of left footprint 0.29 m. 64
3.8 Portrait of man wearing elaborate bust crown, perhaps an archon
or agonothetes of the Panhellenion. Agora Excavations, inv.no.
S 3500. P.H. 0.36 m. 65
3.9 Helen Besi, plan of proposed route of Pausanias through the
Agora, 1973. 67
3.10 Portrait head of Trajan worked for insertion into a statue, wearing
laurel crown. Agora Excavations, inv.no. S 347. H. 0.59 m. H. of
head (from chin to crown, not including laurel crown) c. 0.28 m. 69
3.11 William Bell Dinsmoor, Jr., plan of the Library of Pantainos and
vicinity, with the location of Agora I7483 indicated, 1975. 71
3.12 Base for a statue of Aurelius Appianus, set up in the frst half of the
third century ce by the Council of the Areopagus and the Senate.
Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 673. H. 1.05 m. W. 0.50 m. D. 0.50 m. 72
3.13 Portrait of a young man, early third century ce. Agora
Excavations, inv.no. S 954. H. 0.32 m. H. of head 0.25 m. 73
3.14 Portrait of a mature man, mid-third century ce. Agora
Excavations, inv.no. S 950. H. 0.27 m. H. of head 0.25 m. 73
4.1 Map of Palmyra, after Schnädelbach, 2010. 82
4.2 View of tower tombs outside the city centre of Palmyra. 82
4.3 Double loculus relief depicting a man and a woman, inv.no. 1028. 83
4.4 Male sculpture in the round on base wearing himation, 170–200
ce. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.no. AO 22252. 85
4.5 Male sculpture in the round on base wearing himation and
Parthian trousers and soft boots, second century ce. Palmyra Museum. 86
4.6 Female marble statue found near the city council building, 200–225 ce.
National Museum of Damascus, Damascus, inv.no. C4023. 87
4.7 Statue displayed on column console on street, Palmyra. 88
4.8 View of a stretch of street with the typical column consoles, Palmyra. 88
4.9 Fragmented limestone male head from sculpture in the round
imitating bronze sculpture, inv.no. 1028. 89
4.10 Side view of fragmented limestone male head from sculpture in the
round imitating bronze sculpture, inv.no. 1028. 90
4.11 Wall paintings superimposed upon niche model. 92
4.12 Charles Christensen, watercolour of female fgure from wall
painting in Ḥairan’s grave. 93
4.13 Charles Christensen, watercolour of female fgure from wall
painting in Ḥairan’s grave. 94
6.1 ?Giovanni Pisano, Crucifx, polychromed wood, c. 1300, San
Nicola, Pisa. 129
6.2 ?Marco Romano, Crucifx, polychromed wood, c. 1310, Museo
Civico e Diocesano, Colle di Val d’Elsa. 130
6.3 Crucifx, polychromed wood, early fourteenth century, San
Domenico, Chioggia. 132
6.4 Detail of Figure 6.3. 133
6.5 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus and Medusa, unveiled 1554, Loggia dei
Lanzi, Piazza della Signoria, Florence. 134
Figures ix
6.6 Detail of Figure 6.5. 138
7.1 Giambattista Nolli, Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748, marked with
the location of the Via Papalis and of antiquities collections formed
before the 1527 Sack of Rome: (1) Sassi; (2) Mellini; (3) Galli;
(4) Riario; (5) Pasquino; (6) Pichi; (7) Massimo; (8) Piccolomini;
(9) Della Valle; (10) Cafarelli; (11) Medici; (12) Alberini; (13)
Cesarini; (14) Altieri; (15) Astalli; (16) de’ Rossi. 149
7.2 Maarten van Heemskerck, Courtyard of the Palazzo Della Valle
di Cantone, c. 1532–1537, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.no.
79.D.2, fol. 20r. 150
7.3 Hermann Vischer the Younger, House of the Palazzo ‘di Mezzo’
Della Valle, c. 1515, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.no. 19,051. 151
7.4 Piazza di Pasquino, Rome; formerly known as Piazza di Parione. 152
7.5 Andrea Mantegna, ‘Carts of Spolia and Standard-Bearers’ from the
Triumphs of Caesar cycle, 1484–1492, Hampton Court Palace, London. 153
7.6 Anonymous (after Maarten Van Heemskerck?), House of the Sasso
d’Amateschi, c. 1530s, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.no. Kdz 2783. 157
7.7 Attributed to Giovanni Ferri (Giovanni Senese), Cavalcata of the
Roman Prefect Taddeo Barberini on the Via del Corso, detail, c.
1640, Banca di Roma, Rome. 160
7.8 Ancient statue of Pan formerly in the Della Valle collection, frst
century bce, Capitoline Museums, Rome. 163
7.9 Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1536/7,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 164
7.10 Giambattista Naldini, Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila, c. 1560,
Ufzi, Florence, inv.no. 230 A r. 165
8.1 Abraham de Bruyn, ‘Swearing of the Oaths at the Grand Place’.
Engraving in La joyeuse & magnifque entrée de Monseigneur
François, plate 21. Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1582. University
Library Ghent, Res. 1373. 178
8.2 Pieter van der Borcht, ‘Antverpia Welcomes Albert and Isabella’.
Engraving in Johannes Bochius, Historica narratio profectionis
et inaugurationis Serenissimorum Belgii Principum Alberti et
Isabellae . . ., 186–87. Antwerp: Ofcina Plantiniana, 1602.
University Library Ghent, Acc. 1858. 181
8.3 Remy Dupuys, ‘First tableau vivant of the joyous entry of prince
Charles in Brugge, 18 April 1515’. In La tryumphante entrée
de Charles prince des Espagnes en Bruges 1515, Facsimile.
Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973. 183
8.4 ‘Paris’ judgement in the joyous entry of Joanna of Castile
in Brussels, 9 December 1496’. Manuscript 78D5, fol. 57,
Kupferstichkabinetts SMB, Bildarchiv preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Berlin, inv.no. 00049763. 185
8.5 Jean Baptiste Houwaert, ‘Tableau vivant of the joyous entry of
archduke Matthias in Brussels, 18 January˛1578’. In Sommare
beschrijvinghe vande triumphelijcke Incomst. . . , plate XVII.
Antwerp, 1579, 51. University Library Ghent, MEUL. 000334. 187
9.1 William Hogarth, Times of the Day: Night, print, 1833. Private
collection of the author. 196
x Figures
9.2 Peter Scheemakers, statue of William III, 1734, Kingston upon Hull. 202
9.3 John or Catherine Nost, statue of William III, 1735, Glasgow. 203
9.4 Grinling Gibbons, statue of Charles II, 1685, Edinburgh. 205
9.5 John Cheere, statue of William III, 1739, Petersfeld. 210
10.1 The princes’ circumcision ceremony, in Hünername (The Book
a–b of Talents), Topkapı Palace Museum Library H. 1524, fols
119b–120a. 229
10.2 Bezm-i Alem Valide Sultan’s Yıldız fountain (later removed to
Topkapı) with the central globe on column motif, c. 1843. 231
10.3 B. Kargopoulo, Parc a Yeldez, c. 1880s, Istanbul University
Library, 90751–0044. 232
10.4 First full-size statue of Kemal Atatürk in Sarayburnu. 245
10.5 Taksim Republican Monument, Istanbul (author’s collection).
a–d Figure 10.5a represents the emergence of the Republic,
Figure 10.5b the War of Independence. 246
Contributors
Stijn P.M. Bussels is Professor of Art History, especially before 1800, at the Leiden
University Centre for the Arts in Society.
Paroma Chatterjee is an associate professor in the Department of the History of Art
at Michigan University.
Kathleen W. Christian is Professor of Early Modern Art and Director of the Census of
Antique Works of Art and Architecture known to the Renaissance at the Humboldt
University of Berlin.
Matthew Craske is Reader in History of Art in the School of History, Philosophy and
Culture at Oxford Brookes University.
Peter Dent is a senior lecturer in the Department of the History of Art at Bristol
University.
Christopher P. Dickenson is currently an independent researcher afliated to the Cen-
tre for Urbnet Network Evolutions (Urbnet), Aarhus University.
Sheila Dillon is Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University.
Faik Gür is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations at
Özyeğin University.
Campbell Price is the Curator of Egypt and Sudan at the Manchester Museum, Uni-
versity of Manchester.
Rubina Raja is Professor of Classical Archaeology, centre leader of the Danish
National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Urban Network Evolu-
tions and head of the Palmyra Portrait Project.
Melis Taner is an assistant professor in architecture at Özyeğin University.
Deniz Türker is CIS Research and Outreach Associate and an afliated lecturer at the
Department of History of Art and the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern
Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Preface and Acknowledgements
This book had its origins in a two-day conference that took place at Lincoln College,
Oxford, in September 2016, the idea for which developed out of my own research into
statues in the Greek world in the Roman period. The statues of antiquity are inescap-
ably familiar, and yet the way the inhabitants of the ancient polis experienced them
in daily life—in the marketplace, the temple, the theatre—somehow still eludes us.
I wanted to call the familiarity of ancient statues into question and to try to fnd new
perspectives for thinking about them. To do that I needed to learn more about what
statues had meant in other times and places, and the best way to do that seemed to
be to create the setting for a discussion between scholars working on statues of difer-
ent periods and cultures, and from diferent academic backgrounds, about how these
monuments and works of art had been used and experienced throughout history.
I was delighted that the experts I invited—the contributors to this volume—accepted
my invitation and that the event was every bit as thought provoking as I had hoped.
The conference was generously funded by the John Fell Fund, the Zilkha Fund and a
Craven Committee Research Grant.
As is so often the case, the book has taken longer to appear than I once anticipated,
and I am grateful to all of the contributors for sticking with the project. Thanks are
also due to all those who attended the event in Oxford and took part in the stimulat-
ing discussions, especially to Jaś Elsner, Geraldine Johnson, Lukas Nickel and Peter
Stewart, whose contributions played an important role in shaping some of the ideas
that found their way into my introductory chapter. I would also like to thank Bert
Smith for sharing his expertise on ancient sculpture and his generous guidance on my
research project during my three-year stay in Oxford. Dominic Dalglish provided very
useful feedback on a draft of my chapter and visited Parliament Square to obtain, at
very short notice, some much-needed photos of the statues there. Anne Marie Pace,
Kees van Tilburg, Gordon Baird, Micha Theiner, Karen Roe and ‘Rhodes Must Fall,
Oxford’ were all also kind enough to let me use photos they had taken. I am grateful
to Sean Henry, Tony Matelli and Antony Dufort for their permission to reproduce
photos of their work and Katie Armstrong and Isabella Torrence at Routledge for all
their assistance in seeing the book through to production. I would fnally like to thank
Mr Dufort for some fascinating email exchanges about the work of the sculptor and
his own public commissions. These discussions did much to lift my spirits when work-
ing on fnishing this book during lockdown in the spring of 2020.
For a brief moment shortly after that, with summer approaching, statues captured
the world’s attention and even briefy managed to steal the headlines from the dis-
aster of Covid19. This latest eruption of the ‘statue wars’ necessitated some frantic
xiv Preface and Acknowledgements
rewriting of parts of my chapter. As I say there, probably one of the most common
reactions we have to statues as we walk about our modern towns and cities is simply
to ignore them. Recent events suggest that statues are perhaps more important to us
than we might think. Yet the reasons for their importance now and the things they
mean to us are not necessarily the same as those in the past. The hope is that this book
will provoke refection and further discussion on the ways in which statues in other
times and places both were and were not quite like the sculpted likenesses of people
that we today set up. Or those we take down.
Aarhus—August 2020
P.S. I learned too late of the existence of Stuart Burch’s recent book on the monuments
of London to engage with it as fully as I would have liked in my chapter.
1 Statues and Public Space
An Introduction
Naked except for a pair of Y-fronts, the man lurches unsteadily forward, his weight
shifting from the right to the left foot. His arms reach out limply before him,
his hands loosely open. The slight paunch, the subtle variations in skin tone, the
stretched veins on the backs of the hands, the creased underwear, all work toward
a powerful illusion that this is a real man. Yet he does not follow through with his
step. His frail hands betray not the slightest hint of a tremor. He does not breath.
The tension between the fgure’s intense lifelikeness—its hyperreality in the parlance
of art history—and the abject absence of life creates a sense of unease, which can
somehow be sensed even on seeing it on a photograph. The brain perceives that
this is not a real man at all. But then what is it? A creature that has materialised
from a dream? The total lack of muscular tension, the loll of the head and closed
eyes tell us that the man is himself dreaming, unaware of his surroundings and
unaware of you or me as he staggers forward, sleepwalking. He is ‘Sleepwalker’,
the creation of American sculptor Tony Matelli (Figure 1.1). In 2014, this piece of
art achieved worldwide celebrity because of the controversy that arose after it was
installed outside the Davis Museum on the campus of the all-women Wellesley Col-
lege, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to coincide with an exhibition of works by the
artist inside the building.
On the day that the work appeared, an undergraduate student of the college started
a petition calling for its removal to inside the museum, explaining:
Within just a few hours of its outdoor installation, the highly lifelike sculpture by
Tony Matelli, entitled ‘Sleepwalker’, has become a source of apprehension, fear,
and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for some members of our campus
community. While it may appear humorous, or thought provoking to some, the
‘Sleepwalker’ has already become a source of undue stress for a number of Welles-
ley College students, the majority of whom live, study, and work on campus. As
the sculpture was placed in a highly trafcked location, it is difcult for students
wishing not to see the ‘Sleepwalker’ to travel to the campus center and the resi-
dential and academic quads.
(emphases added)1
The museum’s director issued an immediate response defending the decision to dis-
play the piece at that location on the grounds that art should provoke discussion,
that ‘Sleepwalker’, far from being an aggressive predator, was a ‘vulnerable’ and
2 Christopher P. Dickenson
Figure 1.1 Tony Matelli, Sleepwalker, 2016, The High Line, New York.
Source: Courtesy Tony Matelli Studio.
‘profoundly passive’ fgure and that many students clearly did not fnd him threat-
ening but were interacting with him in a playful way, posing for selfes beside him.2
The petition eventually gathered some 1,012 signatures, a not insignifcant number
considering that the college’s undergraduate body comprises around 2,700 students;
but arguably more striking is how the episode briefy captured the attention of the
world’s media.3 Interest in the controversy was in no small part due to its connec-
tion to larger questions about campus free speech, which have been fercely debated
in recent years.4 The widespread popularity of the story, however, surely also had to
do with to an inherent fascination for the power that this object, a crafted likeness of
a human being, had to provoke such strong emotions and to generate such disagree-
ment. The newspaper articles invariably included a photo of ‘Sleepwalker’ to spark
interest. While the petition referred to the work as a ‘sculpture’, the word used to
Statues and Public Space 3
describe it by many newspapers and by many of those who left reasons for signing the
petition—a word Matelli himself has also used of the work—was ‘statue’.5
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the following defnition of the word ‘statue’:
1. a. A representation in the round of a person, animal, etc., which is sculptured,

moulded, or cast in marble, metal, plaster, or a similar material; esp. such a
representation of a god, allegorical fgure, or eminent person, usually life-size
or larger.
b. Figurative and in similative use, esp. with reference to being motionless or
silent.
2. More generally: an efgy; an image, a portrait. Obsolete.
3. Usually in plural. Any of various children’s games in which players must stand still
in diferent postures. Also more fully game of statues, statue game, statues game.
Matelli’s ‘Sleepwalker’ certainly conforms to many aspects of these defnitions. Oth-

ers, however, are more problematic, and if we probe the expectations that we would
normally have of a statue a little deeper and test them against this piece of art, the ease
of categorizing it—and indeed the possibility of readily defning what exactly a statue
is—begins to break down.
‘Sleepwalker’ is most defnitely a sculpture in the round, a representation of
a man. It is life-size. It is—though the subtle paint works to convince us other-
wise—made of metal, bronze, in fact, a material used for creating statues since
antiquity.6 But is it a portrait, or even a representation of a real person? The viewer
has no way of knowing whether this sculpture was modelled on a real individual
or whether it is a fgment of the artist’s imagination conjured into reality. Perhaps
its dreamlike quality brings it closer to the realm of the gods and encourages us to
see it almost as an icon. Yet its costume, stance and the indignity of being caught
somnambulating in a state of undress suggest an ordinary everydayness. If it is
an image of a real, living person, it would certainly not seem to be an eminent
individual—the man’s dishevelled state and his unfattering circumstances hardly
seem celebratory. Perhaps more saliently, the sculpture lacks the tell-tale nametag
or inscription that is so often afxed to the bases of statues to tell us who they
represent. For this fgure has no base. Perched on a pedestal, a statue quite literally
elevates its subject above other mere mortals, the base a metaphor for the symbolic
elevation inherent in the commemoration.7 But ‘Sleepwalker’ has been brought
down to the ground, not only occupying the same space as us, his viewers, as all
sculpture in the round does, but sharing the foor with us, walking among us, invit-
ing us to interact with him.
Surely one of the most common expectations we have of statues encountered on street
corners or public squares is that they are not simply works of art but that they have
been erected to commemorate someone or something. If the word ‘sculpture’ is a label
that describes an artistic medium, the word ‘statue’ tells us something about the cultural
meanings bestowed upon particular pieces of sculpture. The word ‘statue’, at least in the
way that it has traditionally been used in Western history for the last few hundred years,
most often suggests a ‘monument’. ‘Sleepwalker’ defes so many of our expectations of
what a monument should be still. But is it perhaps still a statue after all?
Statues as Monuments, Statues and Publicness
The power of statues to serve as commemorative monuments surely depends above
all on their publicness. Statues have sometimes been set up to honour prominent indi-
viduals in private settings, but such works inevitably and quite deliberately refer to
statues set up in the public sphere; such statues are also exclusively to be found in the
houses of the rich and powerful, who enjoy both the wealth to aford them and the
space to display them. Encountering John Rysbrack’s over-life-size statue of Queen
Anne in the Library of Blenheim Palace (Figure 1.2) provokes surprise—as the frst
Duchess of Marlborough no doubt intended when she had it installed—because eve-
rything about it, from its pose to the material used to its ornately carved pedestal,
evokes the settings of the city square, the courthouse, or the cathedral, where we
would expect to see such a sculpture. Indeed, the statue had originally been intended
Figure 1.2 John Rysbrack, statue of Queen Anne, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.
Source: Photo by the author.
for a more public location at an alms-house in St Albans but had only stood there for
a short while before the dowager Duchess had it brought to its current location. But
placing the work in the library does more than simply call to mind the public realm. It
actively engages in the public sphere, since it was designed to convey a message to an
audience beyond the palace’s walls. Queen Anne’s statue was not placed in the library
for the private contemplation of the Marlborough family. It was a statement of the
close relationship of friendship and patronage that the family, and the dowager in
particular, had enjoyed with the deceased Queen and was intended as a veiled attack
on the new reigning House of Hanover.8 It was intended to be noticed by visitors and
discussed in polite society. If even such an ostensibly private statue can be thought of
as a public monument, it is worth interrogating more deeply the nature of the relation-
ship between statues and publicness for those that stand in settings to which a larger
community has access.
Cities throughout history and in all parts of the world have had places where people
have gathered together: to trade, to participate in religious festivals, to take part in
politics, to be entertained, to talk, to socialize, or to exercise. Spaces might be purpose-
built to accommodate such functions—we might think of plazas, market halls, thea-
tres, bathhouses or parks—but other spaces of interaction, such as streets and areas of
unused land between buildings, can develop more organically as areas of communal
use. It is convenient to refer to such spaces as ‘public’, but on closer consideration,
truly public space proves impossible to fnd. There are always conventions, rules and
regulations that govern the types of people who have access to particular areas and
the types of activities and behaviour that are tolerated there. The power to reshape or
transform the appearance or layout of ‘public spaces’ is also always unevenly distrib-
uted throughout society. Modern theorists of urbanism have argued that a fundamen-
tal characteristic of ‘public space’ is its contested nature.9 How it is used, who it is used
by and what it looks like are always determined by negotiations of power between
the diferent groups with a vested interest in it. The idea that the publicness of space is
relative rather than absolute is emphatically stressed by the geographer Don Mitchell,
who argues that the ‘idea [of public space] has never been guaranteed. It has only been
won through concerted struggle, and then, after the fact, guaranteed (to some extent)
in law’ (emphasis in original).10
For most of the time the contest for public space proceeds slowly, through subtle
acts of deviation or resistance to the society’s norms, through discussions about the use
of space or through changes to the built environment; occasionally, tensions increase
rapidly and reach a breaking point, erupting in protests against the ruling authorities
or in confrontation between diferent groups and sometimes in violence. Most of the
time there is an underlying, enduring quality to public space that serves to reproduce
a society’s values and existing power structures. Public space acts as an arena in which
familiar patterns of behaviour are played out repetitively day after day, sometimes,
especially in pre-industrial societies, over many generations. The architecture that
constitutes and frames public spaces has a permanence that grounds a community in a
shared history. This again is especially true for the pre-globalized world, when people
were typically much more rooted to their locales than they often are today. The power
of the built environment to shape or infuence relations of power has been exploited by
authoritarian governments since the dawn of civilisation, and most pronouncedly by
modern totalitarian regimes. The political signifcance of public architecture is more
subtle and less straightforward to read for societies with greater political freedom and
higher collective participation in government, yet here too the built environment is
of profound importance in reinforcing, and at times challenging, existing relations of
power. The categories ‘building’ and ‘monument’ fade easily into one another. It is cer-
tainly useful to think of buildings that become particularly charged with meaning and
thereby play an important role in reproducing cultural memory as monuments. How-
ever, there are also structures that have no practical function beyond commemoration;
they cannot be entered and are intended primarily to be seen. Such structures are
monuments in the truest sense and can take many—and in modern societies increas-
ingly inventive—forms, including cenotaphs, triumphal arches, plaques on walls or
street surfaces, or works of abstract art. Arguably the ultimate manifestation of the
public monument, however, is the statue.11
Statues can commemorate abstract virtues, such as justice or liberty, or can be ideal-
ized imaginings of fgures of religious signifcance such as Christ, the Christian saints
or Buddha or legendary or mythical fgures such as Theseus or Robin Hood. Most
often, however, statues represent more specifcally individual, more securely attested
subjects. Sometimes these individuals are still alive. More often they are dead, and
sometimes they died a very long time ago. Whatever the subject, the decision to set up
a statue is a profoundly political act. A statue is a statement in bronze, stone or some
other durable material that its subject is somebody or something that a society wishes
to commemorate. However, to twist Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum that ‘there is
no such thing as society’ to new purpose, we must recognise that there will rarely be a
homogenous mass of people united in support for a particular statue. If public space is
contested space, then the statues set up there are an important medium through which
that contest is played out. Statues can be imposed by a group with authority against
the wishes of others, or they can be set up as the result of discussions and compromise
between diferent groups and individuals. In either case, statues are as much a refec-
tion of the balance of power within a community as they are a commemoration of
whoever or whatever they represent. A range of factors that determine the message
that a statue conveys will invariably be debated and perhaps fought over: the statue’s
material, its size, its cost, the artist commissioned to make it, the fgure’s pose, its
costume, the shape of the pedestal, the text of any inscription and, by no means least
important, exactly where it is to stand. Statues—both proposed and carried out—of
Thatcher herself have proven highly contentious and provide a good illustration of the
ways that statues can become highly charged sites of contest.
In the late 1990s, a stone statue of the former British prime minister holding her
iconic handbag by Neil Simmons was set up in the museum of London’s Guildhall
(Figure 1.3). The location frst proposed was the Members’ Lobby of the House of
Commons, but a prohibition against setting up statues of still-living politicians there
meant that an alternative venue had to be sought. In 2002, the statue made the news
when it was decapitated by an opponent of Thatcher’s politics armed with a metal
rope support.12 The statue was soon repaired and reinstalled. In 2003, the rule about
statues in the House of Commons was changed, without doubt the result of intensive
lobbying by Thatcher’s devotees, and a bronze statue of her by Antony Dufort at a
scale of life and a quarter was set up there in 2007 alongside monuments to illustrious
predecessors like Churchill, Attlee and Disraeli (Figure 1.4).13 Some opposition MPs
have subsequently called for its removal. In July 2017, Westminster Council turned
down a proposal for a third statue of Thatcher—this time one-and-a-half times life-
size, again in bronze, and showing her in the state robes that she wore in her later life
Figure 1.3 Neil Simmon, statue of Margaret Thatcher at London’s Guildhall in its current
location.
Source: Courtesy of Micha Theiner.
as baroness—to be set up in a Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parliament.

Considerations that led to the rejection of the proposal included fears that the statue
would become a focus for protests and vandalism, that it would overcrowd the square
and leave no room for another planned statue (of the sufragist Millicent Fawcett, now
installed), that Thatcher’s family had not given their permission and that the intended
portrayal of Thatcher was not in keeping with the role of prime minister, for which
she was most remembered.14 The fact that the statue would, remarkably, have been
the frst one of a woman to stand in the square made the decision as to who should get
that honour a particularly sensitive one.
Margaret Thatcher remains a highly divisive fgure in the United Kingdom, loved
and despised if not in equal measure then at least with equal fervour, so it is no wonder
that plans to honour her in statuary form are so contentious; yet to a lesser degree,
such debates lie behind the erection of any public statue and have done throughout
history. The frst truly honorifc public statues set up in Classical Athens were those
for the so-called tyrannicides, the two men who had publicly assassinated the brother
of a late sixth-century tyrant, thereby ushering in the end of the regime and paving the
way for the ffth-century democracy.15 It did not take long, however, as we know from
the literary sources, for Athenian opinion to become divided as to whether the honour
was deserved. The contention centred on whether the motive for the killing had really
been political or had arisen instead from a private lovers’ feud.16 The modern habit of
setting up statues in public spaces can be traced, at least indirectly, back to the Greeks
Figure 1.4 Antony Dufort FRSS, sculpture of Margaret Thatcher.

Source: Photo © Antony Dufort.
and Romans, and there are clearly similarities in the issues that were at stake now and
in antiquity.
Statues and Spaces

It might seem that we have strayed far from Matelli’s ‘Sleepwalker’. The statues of
Margaret Thatcher in Guildhall, the Houses of Parliament and Parliament Square
were all set up to be permanent memorials, while ‘Sleepwalker’ is a piece of modern
art, its installation at Wellesley College temporary. Nevertheless, there are striking
connections in the ways in which all of these works of sculpture are bound up with
issues to do with power and space. All of these debates and controversies focused on
the appropriateness of setting up a sculpted likeness of a human being in a particular
location thought of as public. In the case of Thatcher’s statues, the emotional core of
the debate has to do with whether people feel that the project of Thatcherism was
ultimately benefcial or detrimental to the national well-being of the United Kingdom.
In the case of ‘Sleepwalker’, the heart of the matter is whether the sculpture was a
threat to the emotional safety of the female students frequenting the Wellesley campus.
In both of these cases, the issue is at heart a political one about the competing rights
of diferent groups to determine the meaning of spaces in which they feel they have
a stake. In both of these cases the statues were not the only source of contention but
also where they were—or were proposed to be—set up. The ‘highly trafcked’ loca-
tion of the ‘Sleepwalker’ was cited in the petition calling for its removal. The erection
of statues in public spaces weaves the fgures they represent into a narrative about
who the public is, how the public sees itself and what its shared values are. Statues are
thereby not merely placed within public space; they play a role in shaping how that
space is perceived and experienced. The relationship between statue and space thus
has the character of a conversation—rarely a conversation among equals, since power
and infuence are rarely distributed equally—through which the meanings of both are
produced. To think about how such conversations work, it is worth refecting on the
very diferent associations of the three locations proposed as settings for the statues
of Thatcher.
Guildhall, traditionally the seat of the Corporation of the City of London, certainly
ranks among London’s more venerable old buildings. Now, however, the building’s
purpose is primarily ceremonial, as a dining hall for ofcial functions. The banquets
hosted there by the Lord Mayor are attended by politicians, business leaders and for-
eign dignitaries and feature speeches by prime ministers and government ministers.
These dinners therefore fulfl an important political function. Yet the proceedings are
highly orchestrated, the participants carefully selected. This is not a space in which
diferent groups interact freely. It is also not a building to which the general public has
regular access; the building probably does not loom particularly large in the national
consciousness, and the general public probably does not feel they have much of a
stake in it. These factors combined to make the building a—relatively—unproblematic
choice for the location of Thatcher’s frst statue. Moreover, the sculpture’s location(s)
within the building worked to downplay its commemorative connotations: it was frst
set up in the building’s art gallery, thereby safely containing the statue’s power as an
honorifc monument and suggesting that it was, after all, just a work of sculpture.
More recently, it has been moved to a corridor. The museum’s directors denied that
this was a response to the controversy that the statue generated: although the corridor
is of-limits to most visitors, it can be seen on request or by those who have access to
that part of the building for ‘business or social reasons’; they also claim the lighting at
the spot is particular good.17 However, in terms of prominence, the of-limits corridor
clearly ranks below a spot in the museum itself and below an entranceway, hall or
lobby. The statue is now less public than it originally was. The Members’ Lobby of the
House of Commons and Parliament Square are decidedly more public. Both are also
spaces of deep national signifcance. The statuary assemblage of each, however, gives
the two settings a very diferent meaning.
In the Members’ Lobby, the statues—and some busts—are exclusively of past
prime ministers, making this a hall of fame of British leadership. Setting up a statue
of Margaret Thatcher here asserts that her tenure of the ofce was of similar status
and signifcance to the others around them. All four bronze statues in the space—of
Churchill, Attlee, Lloyd George and Thatcher—are on the same scale (life and a quar-
ter), placed on plinths of equal height and made of the same material, bronze. A rough
equivalence in importance between them is thus implied, their signifcance greater
than that of the 12 prime ministers depicted in bust form. Nonetheless, these four are
also diferentiated. Precedence of position is given to Churchill and Lloyd George, the
two wartime leaders, whose monuments fank the entrance to the Chamber itself. The
four bronze statues are also distinguished chronologically from the three stone stat-
ues in the same room for Prime Ministers Disraeli, Balfour and Asquith, all of whom
predate Lloyd George. All four bronze statues are shown in dynamic, lifelike poses as
though captured at the moment of delivering a speech. Churchill’s statue is particu-
larly charged with energy, as he leans forward defantly hands on hips. Thatcher’s with
its contraposto stance and oratorically raised right hand calls to mind the Prima Porta
Augustus, the famous statue of the frst Roman emperor now in the Vatican.18 The
main audience for all of these statues are the MPs who work in the building, though
the general public can visit the building as tourists.
The meaning of Parliament Square is more layered and, since it is more accessible,
also more contested. It is worth considering in slightly more detail how the signif-
cance of the space has evolved through time.19 In the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the square (Figure 1.5) was a space similar to the Members’ Lobby, home to
statues of illustrious prime ministers such as Canning (frst to receive a statue in 1832),
Peel and Disraeli. All are portrayed in contemporary dress, with the exception of
Canning who, incongruously to a modern viewer, is shown in a Roman toga (though
Figure 1.5 The north side of Parliament Square. Statues, from left to right: The Earl of Derby,
Canning, Palmerston, Smuts, Lloyd George.
Source: Courtesy Dominic Dalglish.
with modern trousers and laced shoes!), an allusion to the civic values of the ancient
Republic and an acknowledgement of the origin of the statuary form. Disraeli, in con-
trast to the civilian costume of his statue in the Members’ Lobby—appropriate inside
the House—is shown in his robes as Lord Beaconsfeld. Churchill’s statue (unveiled in
1973) shows him holding a cane and wearing a trench coat, appropriate to the out-
door setting and recalling his presence on the streets of London during the Blitz. Even
though all these statues are larger than those in the Lobby—most of them around
twice life size—the space is also on a grander scale—it is really a large green—so that
the statues are far more widely spaced and are therefore less able to dominate the
setting.
Following the addition of a statue of Abraham Lincoln in 1920, the square has
transcended national boundaries to become a space for commemorating fgures of
world signifcance. The addition of statues of Jan Smuts in 1956 and, in this century,
of Nelson Mandela (2007) and Mahatma Gandhi (2015) have continued this trajec-
tory. It is no coincidence that Lincoln, Gandhi and Mandela are all international icons
associated with moral courage, peace and advancing civil rights.20 They stand in sharp
contrast to the ‘gunboat diplomacy’ with which Palmerston, one of the frst recipi-
ents of a statue in the square, is probably most associated today. These more recent
monuments work to create expectations that the square is a place where positive and
universal human virtues are celebrated, although it is striking that both Gandhi’s and
Mandela’s statues are both smaller (life and a third size) and placed on lower pedestals
than those of the prime ministers. This continual editing of the statuary landscape of
the square is an attempt to weave diferent and in many ways conficting visions of
British history together in a seamless narrative.
Ways of reconciling the contradictions do suggest themselves: two of the most
prominent politicians, Churchill and Lloyd George, were war-time prime ministers
who, by leading the country to victory, could be argued to have made a contribution
to peace; and while the foreign leaders represented there might all be celebrated, more
than anything, as advocates for peaceful protest and emancipation, they, like the Brit-
ish leaders, were also statesmen. Juxtaposing statues creates a conversation between
them. Viewers of Churchill’s statue now seeing it alongside Gandhi and Fawcett might
now be prompted not only to remember his wartime leadership but also his vehement
opposition to Indian independence or to refect on his controversial relationship to the
women’s liberation movement. New statues can change the meanings of old ones. And
tensions remain, as is clear both in the occasional targeting of monuments, especially
Churchill’s, by vandals and in the calls for the addition of new statues to create a new
balance of meaning. Debates about which of Britain’s leaders deserve to be honoured
there continue, and the most recent addition of a statue of a prime minister was that
of Lloyd George in 2007. The scale is curiously the same as that of Gandhi and Man-
dela’s statues, although the pedestal is higher.
The statues also fnd themselves interwoven in dialogue with the way that the space
is used. In the twenty-frst century, the square has been the venue for several promi-
nent demonstrations, most notably the ‘Parliament Square Peace Campaign’ started
by Brian Haw in protest at the UK government’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Haw lived in the square from 2001 until his death in 2011, his fellow activist Barbara
Tucker from 2005 until her eviction in 2013. The protests brought into sharp focus
the contested nature of this ostensibly public space. Government forces turned to the
courts to evict the protestors, fences were set up to prevent people camping on the
grass, and debates in the press focussed on issues of access to the square. It was in this
very period that Mandela’s statue was erected, Gandhi’s shortly afterward. There is
an appreciable irony in real protestors being evicted by the ruling authorities from a
space where those same authorities were setting up statues of men who had success-
fully challenged power structures through not dissimilar methods. Following his death
there were calls, backed by high profle celebrities, for Haw himself to receive a com-
memorative statue in the square.
In recent years, calls for statues of women to challenge the exclusive maleness of
Parliament Square have also become increasingly prominent. This could have been—
and surely was—put forward as an argument for adding a statue of Thatcher, but once
again her divisive legacy raised questions about her appropriateness for the square.
Whether her contribution to British politics was of the same magnitude, or was as
positive for the country, as that of Peel, Churchill or Lloyd George are matters for
debate. Even more controversial, particularly in light of the Falklands War, would be
the implication that the inclusion of her statue ranked her alongside Gandhi or Man-
dela as an exemplar of moral courage. In 2018, to celebrate the centenary of voting
rights for women in the United Kingdom, the sufragist Millicent Fawcett became,
instead of Thatcher, the frst woman to be honoured with a statue on the square. We
will have reason to return to her statue below.
Displaying Matelli’s ‘Sleepwalker’ on the college campus, and even more so the
decision to keep the statue there in the face of protest, were no less connected to
questions of power, no less bound up with generating the meaning of the space in
which it stood, than issues tied to the erection of the more overtly political portraits
in London. Installing the statue asserted that the rights of those who believe that
the function of art should be to surprise and even to discomft should take prec-
edence over those of the students who were ofended by the statue. It is every bit as
much a monument, albeit a temporary one, to the relative power and infuence of
the various groups implicated in the controversy about its erection—the students,
casual visitors, the college authorities, the local, national and international press
and its readers. Debates about this work of art were, furthermore, just as much
interwoven with the struggles for gender equality as those to do with the statues of
Thatcher. Some advocates for Thatcher’s monuments are no doubt sincere in stress-
ing her position as the UK’s frst female prime minister as a reason for honouring
her; other admirers have probably seen her sex more cynically as leverage to per-
suade detractors that she deserves a statue. Although Matelli and the authorities at
Wellesley College may not have considered that ‘Sleepwalker’ could be interpreted
as a monument to male dominance, this is how it was experienced by the students
who found its presence intrusive, disturbing and threatening, a manifestation of
wider inequalities of gender relations just as much as was the assembly of great
men in bronze that until recently was allowed to dominate Parliament Square. The
scale of the two debates is admittedly diferent. Thatcher is a fgure of national
signifcance, and the public that feels it has a stake in spaces such as the Houses of
Parliament or Parliament Square extends far beyond those who actually frequent
these spaces or will ever see the statues in real life. The controversy surrounding
Matelli’s monument was much more parochial, and yet it was able to capture the
imagination of an international audience; clearly it resonated with wider attitudes
about portrait statues and attests to a general recognition of the power that they
can hold to generate such strong feelings.
The speed of the reaction to the installation of ‘Sleepwalker’ on Wellesley’s cam-
pus is a testimony to how immediate the transformative power of sculpture on its
surroundings can be. While the statue’s critics were instilled with feelings of unease
and distress, for others the efect was very diferent—it generated an atmosphere
of fun. The statue has since been displayed in several other outdoor settings where
it has apparently been accepted without controversy. Countless photos can now
be seen online in which people pose beside the statue with big smiles or make
play, pretending to hug or kiss it or to sleepwalk beside it. While these responses
for some will no doubt be stimulated by recognising the work from the media,
for others it is surely the delight of encountering this startling work of art in an
unexpected setting that provokes these reactions. Statues rarely provoke similar
responses in museums because we are conditioned to behave in a more respectful
and circumspect manner, observing art from a distance, never touching. However,
anybody who has ever seen the fairly common sight in the UK of a public statue
wearing an orange trafc cone for a hat knows that statues outside museums are
often treated with a good deal less reverence than their creators intended. When
he is not scaring people, ‘Sleepwalker’ has the power to shake people out of the
humdrum ordinariness of the day-to-day, to act spontaneously as they make their
way about the city. For a moment, ‘Sleepwalker’ can inspire us to transcend deeply
ingrained expectations about how we are supposed to behave in public space, to
interact and have fun with a statue. In the sense that this is a challenge to the way
that public behaviour is so often channelled to conform to the vested interests of
business and government, this restoration of the public realm to the public is very
much a political act.21 Of course ‘Sleepwalker’ does not stand alone in this respect.
It has become increasingly common in recent years for public statues to come down
from their pedestals, to be positioned standing on street level or sitting on park
benches, inviting us to interact with them.
Calls for New Statues and ‘Statue Wars’

As monuments, permanent statues are intended to perpetuate cultural memory into
the future. It is, however, hard to predict and even harder to control how successful
they will be in this. The meaning of statues often changes over time. Some statues
take on an iconic signifcance, becoming well known to a wide cross-section of the
population for a long time after they are set up. This does not necessarily mean that
they hold any deep signifcance for people. Most people in the United Kingdom can
probably visualise Horatio Nelson with his one arm perched atop his famous column
in Trafalgar Square, but fewer would be able to say why he is there, and I suspect very
few indeed would be able to point on a map to the place where the battle after which
the square was named took place or describe its precise signifcance to British history.
In a more extreme form of cultural amnesia, individuals represented by statues are
sometimes forgotten almost completely, as has happened with the equestrian statues
on the three plinths around the base of Nelson’s column.22 As a society’s attitudes or
values change, individuals once deemed of great importance can simply lose their rel-
evance or interest. In modern Western societies, possibly the most common response
to historic statues is simply not to see them. This indiference is arguably, at least in
part, explained by ways that movements of people in our globalized economy have
weakened our connection to place, but even in the ancient world, where migration
was far less prevalent, there is evidence for memory of why statues were erected fad-
ing over time.23
Statues have certainly, however, not lost their importance in modern Western soci-
ety, as frequent calls to erect statues to honour individuals of historic signifcance
who, it is felt, have been overlooked make clear. The statue of Millicent Fawcett,
mentioned above, is one of the most high-profle recent examples.24 The plan for the
statue originated in a petition started by the activist Caroline Criado Perez, which
gained over 80,000 signatures and the support of several leading public fgures. The
unveiling of this frst statue of a woman in a square dominated by monuments to men
(no fewer than 11 of them!) was celebrated nationally. Even this statue, however, was
not without its controversies. A rival campaign was pushing for a statue of Emmeline
Pankhurst instead.25 Pankhurst has, since 1930, had a statue a short walk away, at the
southern end of the Palace of Westminster, but, once again, location is everything, and
a location in Parliament Square is felt to carry greater prestige.26 Also in 2018, a plan
to move the Pankhurst monument to the grounds of Regent’s University London was
aborted in the face of opposition, again led by Criado Perez. The fact that the pro-
posed new location was private space to which the public had no access was one of the
most important objections to the scheme.27 Another statue of Pankhurst was unveiled
later in 2018 in her native Manchester, the frst statue of a woman to be set up in that
city after a monument to Queen Victoria.28 The new statue strikingly stands not on a
pedestal but on a bronze chair as though Pankhurst is addressing a meeting in a town
hall, thereby playing with the idea that the statue is sharing the space of the living, as
‘Sleep Walker’ does. A low semi-circular wall extends around the rear of the statue and
is continued in the pavement across the front—the so-called ‘Meeting Circle’—which
gently encourages people to keep their distance. The Invisible Women project extends
the scope of the campaign for ‘more women on plinths’ to cities throughout the United
Kingdom.29 There are similar campaigns in the United States, where women are also
dramatically underrepresented in public statuary.30
The continued power of statues is even more vividly apparent in the controversies
about existing monuments that have captured the world’s attention recently. In late
May and early June 2020, in response to the killing of George Floyd in the United
States, the Black Lives Matter movement inspired protests around the world. On
7 June, footage of protestors dragging a statue of the seventeenth-century slave trader
and benefactor Edward Colston through the streets of Bristol and throwing it into the
city’s harbour was broadcast globally and went viral on social media. In the days pre-
ceding that, several statues of historical fgures involved in the slave trade had already
been attacked in the United States, and over the next month, in many countries, doz-
ens of monuments to historical individuals associated with colonialism and racial
atrocities were either torn down by protesters or removed by government authori-
ties in response to protests. The largest number were in the United States—mainly
monuments of Confederate generals and of Christopher Columbus—but several other
monuments were taken down in the United Kingdom, Belgium, New Zealand, India
and South Africa. The Wikipedia article on the subject lists over 220 monuments that
had actually been removed by the middle of July as well as several that were under
consideration for removal.31 The large majority of these monuments were statues. One
equestrian statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, stands
on top of a colossal pedestal which protestors covered in grafti thereby transforming
it into a monument to the Black Lives Matter movement itself (Figure 1.6).
Figure 1.6 The statue of Robert E. Lee, Richmond after being daubed by grafti by protesters,
July 2020.
Source: Courtesy Anne Marie Pace.
For a few weeks, statues—so often ignored as we move about our cities—were at
the forefront of the public imagination, inspiring passionate feelings among detractors
and defenders alike. A visitor to Parliament Square on the weekend of the 11 June
would have seen many of the statues surrounded by large protective boxes, includ-
ing those of Churchill, Mandela and Gandhi.32 These statues were seen as targets of
violence by the left (Churchill after the words ‘was a racist’ had been sprayed on the
statue’s base the previous weekend), the far right (Mandela), and both the left and
right (Gandhi, since although he has generally being thought of as leading champion
of human rights, he has in recent years come under attack from some quarters for his
attitude toward black people during his years in South Africa). Political leaders and
commentators waded into the debate on social media. Those pursing a more popu-
list course on both sides of the Atlantic predictably tried to make capital from it by
painting the statue protestors as vandals waging an assault on symbols of national
pride. Their opponents accused them of using statues to distract attention from the
underlying issues, playing to their base by stoking division. Perhaps the most bizarre
scene in these weeks were photos of a group of men in the town centre of Nuneaton
in Warwickshire forming a protective circle around a statue of nineteenth-century
novelist George Elliot.33
What some commentators have referred to as the ‘Statue Wars’ may have reached
a crescendo in 2020, but they had been simmering for several years. Many of the
statues rapidly taken down or destroyed in 2020, including Colston’s, had been
the focus of longstanding campaigns to either remove them, or at least alter their
inscriptions to tell a more a complete story that would weigh the reason for their
commemoration against their less palatable actions. One of the most prominent
of these campaigns is the #RhodesMustFall campaign, which led to the removal
of a statue of the nineteenth-century colonialist Cecil Rhodes from the campus of
the University of Cape Town in 2015.34 The presence of the statue of a man whose
racism and economic exploitation had made him extremely wealthy at the expense
of immense sufering of the black African population had long been contentious.
Amid increasing frustration at a perceived persistence of racial inequality within the
university, the statue came to be seen as a symbol of oppression. #RhodesMustFall
soon reached Oxford in the United Kingdom, where campaigners began calling for
the removal of a stone likeness of Rhodes that stands in an alcove framed by col-
umns above the main entrance of the Rhodes Building of Oriel College on the High
Street.35 Rhodes had bequeathed money to the college after it had awarded him an
honorary doctorate. Through another bequest to the university he had also founded
the well-known Rhodes Scholarship for international postgraduates to study at
Oxford. In 2016 the campaign reached a peak, but press attention, demonstrations
(admittedly fairly low key) in Oxford and a narrowly won vote in the Oxford Union
for taking down the statue were insufcient to persuade the college to do so. The
debate reignited in 2020 (Figure 1.7), and in a new vote the college decided that it
would indeed remove the statue. The recent controversies about Confederate statues
across the United States have an even longer history going back decades but came to
a head, in horrifc tragedy, in 2017. In August of that year, the so-called ‘Unite the
Right Rally’ gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, with the ostensible aim of oppos-
ing the removal of another statue of Robert E. Lee. The event was marked by violent
clashes between fascists and their opponents and culminated in an act of terrorism
when one fascist drove a car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one and
injuring 19 others.36
These recent events have prompted considerable discussion in the press and media
about the importance of statues in modern society—about why we set them up, about
who deserves to be commemorated in stone or bronze, about statues’ role in preserv-
ing history. Those who deplore the dismantling of statues have accused their oppo-
nents of trying to erase history and of attacking symbols of national pride. Defenders
Figure 1.7 The statue of Cecil Rhodes on the façade of the Rhodes Building, Oriel College,
Oxford (centre top), during protests, 9 June 2020.
Source: Courtesy Rhodes Must Fall, Oxford.
of the movement have countered that history demands an active engagement with the
past and that statues are fundamentally instruments for encouraging passive accept-
ance of particular narratives. They point out that statues are often less old than we
might imagine and thereby reveal more about the time they were erected than the
period of those they supposedly commemorate. The greater number of statues of Con-
federate generals in the United States were erected not in the immediate aftermath of
the Civil War but at moments of advance of the civil rights movement in the twentieth
century by the movement’s defant opponents.37 Colston lived in the seventeenth cen-
tury, yet his statue is a late nineteenth-century monument intended, like so many other
statues set up at that time, to encourage and express Victorian ideals of paternalistic
philanthropy.38
Another issue of debate is what should be done with the statues that have been
removed? Probably the most frequent suggestion is to put them in a museum, a
solution not without its problems in terms of cost, space and resources for conser-
vation. Some have suggested gathering collections of them in one place, a museum
or park of commemoration like those for old Soviet era monuments in Budapest,
Moscow or Lithuania;39 these parks demonstrate how transplanting statues and
gathering them together can radically transform their meaning, in this case now
provoking refection on the horrors of the regime and the oppressive weight of its
propaganda rather than the intended glorifcation of the ruler. Colston’s statue was
soon fshed out of Bristol’s harbour and plans initiated to conserve it in the state in
which the protestors deposited it, still covered in grafti, for display in a museum in
the city, where it will help tell the story of the protests. Pedestals deprived of their
statues present a similar problem. Various solutions were proposed for Colston’s
base, including one by Banksy that would have restored the statue at an angle in the
process of being toppled by (statues of) the protestors. For a day in July 2020, the
pedestal was occupied by a statue in resin and steel of one of the protesters, a local
black woman, Jen Reid, representing the moment when she herself had climbed on
top of the base following the statue’s destruction raising her fst, the gesture of the
Black Lives Matter movement.40 The statue, by Marc Quinn, had been installed
quickly and without permission on the morning of 15 July and removed on 16 July
by the local council on the grounds that proper procedures needed to be followed
to decide what if anything should replace the original monument. The Mayor of
Bristol, Marvin Rees has said that the decision will be taken democratically in con-
sultation with the people of Bristol.41 Tellingly, in defending the statue’s removal,
Rees stressed that Quinn was a London—in other words not a local—artist and
had not requested ofcial approval. Once again, power relations between diferent
groups and actors—the protestors, the artist, local authorities, the media, diferent
segments of the population of Bristol—are implicated in the contest for a ftting
monument at the spot.
A suggestion that has been conspicuously absent in discussions about what to do
with toppled statues is to simply destroy them completely. The reason there are so few
surviving bronze statues from antiquity is that most were, at some later point in time,
melted down for reuse. Yet we are reluctant to do the same with our unwanted statues.
Of course that is partly because some people do still want them, which means authori-
ties need to act sensitively to avoid stoking tensions. There is also, however, a palpable
sense that, even though many of these statues are not particularly outstanding works
of art, and even if we could agree that their subjects represent values that we no longer
wish to commemorate, the very fact that they were at some point in the past set up in
our public spaces requires their preservation. It is as though they, more than our build-
ings, arguably more than other types of artifact, have the power to reach through the
decades or centuries and provide us a grasp, however fragile, however contested, on
that bygone age. It is not so much that we are reluctant to release that grasp and let go
of our statues as that they have some hold over us.
Statues as Icons
Again, we might seem to have strayed very far from the ‘Sleepwalker’. To suggest
there is any connection between, on the one hand, the horrifc violence at Charlottes-
ville and the systemic exploitation and oppression of a whole country at the heart of
the anger directed at Rhodes’s statues, and, on the other, Matelli’s work of art might
seem to be trivialising the frst two cases. Of course, the Black Lives Matter protests,
#RhodesMustFall and the confrontations at Charlottesville were, in a deeper sense,
not really about statues at all; the statues destroyed or more peacefully removed are
symbols of larger and immensely important struggles for power and equality, strug-
gles that have a long and complex history. Deeper issues were also at stake in the dis-
pute about Matelli’s ‘Sleepwalker’, but that dispute was about a statue in a way that
the other instances were not, and, of course, nobody died, was physically injured or
sufered physical harm as a result of the art installation. However, symbols are impor-
tant, and to dismiss statues of Rhodes, Lee, Columbus or Colston as just symbols,
serving as catalysts or focal points for the eruption of deeper, underlying conficts,
begs the question of why statues can fulfl that function so well. It seems that statues
are often infused with a potency that few other symbols can match. Why that should
be demands explanation. Part of the reason surely has to do with the ways that, as
discussed above, statues are able to exert an infuence on their surroundings, shaping
the meaning of the space around them. Another part of the explanation, however,
must be that our connection with statues is one that operates at a level beyond the
purely symbolic.
Calls for hitherto-overlooked individuals to be honoured with statues tend to empha-
sise a desire to commemorate their achievements, which would make their monuments
a refection of the stories we tell about ourselves—chapters, paragraphs or sentences
in a shared historical narrative. However, behind such arguments is also the implicit
idea that the statue is an honour to the individual. Debates about setting up and taking
down statues are often couched in terms of whether the person in question ‘deserves
a statue’. This implied link between statue and person is perhaps most emphatic when
statues are seen as ftting way to make amends to notable individuals who, it is felt,
have been treated undeservedly by a group or by society at large, often rebels whose
contribution to society pitted them against the authorities in their own day but who,
posthumously, have gained acceptance. The statues of Fawcett and Pankhurst might
be seen in this light. Other examples might include statues of Alan Turing, the World
War II code breaker and pioneer of computing who killed himself after prosecution
for homosexuality in the early 1950s in Manchester and Bletchley Park, or the late
Victorian Shelley Memorial at University College, Oxford, from which the Romantic
poet had been expelled.42 Posthumously honouring outcasts and troublemakers with
statues might be seen as a cynical strategy of co-opting their image by the establish-
ment. Objectifed as a statue, the rebel is frozen in time and rendered passive, their
power to challenge social norms safely contained.43 If we pause to think about it, there
is also something inherently odd about the idea that somebody who is dead, and who
possibly died a very long time ago, can be recompensed for unfair treatment by being
immortalised as a statue.
This perplexing aspect of our attitude toward statues derives from a sense in which,
as representations of real people, they serve as stand-ins for their subjects, literally
re-presenting them by making them present again among us. Statues are more than
symbols because, unlike all other symbols, they look like us. And that certainly does
bring us back, once again, to ‘Sleepwalker’. The reason ‘Sleepwalker’ is able to unset-
tle us is because, as an interloper in our space, he really does look just like one of us,
down to the creases on his forehead and about his eyes and the individual hairs of
the eyebrows. Its ‘hyperrealism’ is something we would more readily associate today
with the uncannily accurate wax doppelgangers of celebrities on show in the various
galleries of Madame Tussauds than with the metal and stone fgures that we usually
see on top of pedestals and think of as statues (Figure 1.8). It is worth remembering
the historic links between our modern waxworks and the lifelike efgies of rulers that
were used in historic times as stand-ins for deceased rulers at their funerals.44 Many of
Figure 1.8 Waxwork of Margaret Thatcher fanked by Reagan and Gorbachev at Madame
Tussauds, London.
Source: Courtesy Karen Roe.
these eerie objects are still to be seen on display in the crypt of Westminster Abbey.45
For at least the last 500 years, attitudes towards uncannily lifelike representations
of people in Western culture have been characterised by tension: verisimilitude has
inspired beliefs that likenesses were imbued with some kind of life force, has led to
such likenesses being the focus for acts of devotion and has resulted in their condem-
nation by those who felt this smacked of idol worship so emphatically forbidden in the
Old Testament.46 Lifelikeness usually required efgies to be coloured and was often
achieved with materials such as clay, wood or wax, sometimes incorporating cloth or
even real hair. The monochrome white marble or bronze statue with which much of
our discussion here has been concerned emerged as a reaction to these images, inspired
by incorrect ideas about the absence of colour on ancient Greek and Roman sculpture
and by a belief that monochrome statues were a higher form of art because paint was
not used to disguise the work of the sculptor.47 Yet the distinction has never been an
absolute one, and, as such, the tension remains. One of the main arguments of David
Freedberg’s important 1989 book The Power of Images was that the division between
high and low art has never been absolute and that many of the ways in which people
have responded to both—as erotically charged, as contact points with the divine and
as infused with life—can be placed on the same spectrum.48 Freedberg concentrates
primarily on paintings, yet his insights have bearing on sculpture. While the hyper-
realism of ‘Sleepwalker’ might set it apart from the more austere statues of Thatcher,
Fawcett and the rest, the intention in all of these sculptures is to capture the likeness of
a real (or in the case of ‘Sleepwalker’, imagined?) individual. In creating public statues,
attention—sometimes considerable attention—is often paid to physiognomy, pose and
costume to conjure up the presence of the subject. The statue of Margaret Thatcher
in the Members’ Lobby might seem further removed from an icon of a medieval saint
than it is from ‘Sleepwalker’, and yet it portrays Thatcher as though animatedly giving
a speech. There are also Conservative MPs who habitually touch the statue’s foot for
luck on entering the House of Commons.49
It is worth refecting, too, on the potential dialogue between the streets and squares
that we have focussed on here as public settings for portrait statues and the other main
setting in which sculpted likenesses of men and women are to be found in greatest
number, a setting where the realms of the secular and sacred become blurred—our old
churches, especially cathedrals, with their portrait grave monuments. Questions of
power and politics certainly lie behind the erection of such monuments, and as such
they share many of the qualities of the more public sculpture discussed up to now; at
the same time, however, the grief that motivated their erection speaks of a desire to
retain the deceased within the world of the living. At least in a Catholic church, por-
traying the deceased in sculpted form also creates an interplay of meaning between the
various saints and representations of Christ on display, hinting at a shared existence
on the spiritual plane. These are the aspects of funerary sculpture that, conversely,
carry over into venues for statuary display beyond the church and explain in part
some of our more peculiar responses to and interactions with statues. That public stat-
ues, too, are so often set up posthumously and that so many old statues survive in our
city spaces blurs the lines between the worlds of the living and the dead; immortalised
in cold and unmoving materials, the deceased, through their statues, are brought back
to stand among us. The Shelley Memorial blurs the line even further, since it was origi-
nally designed as a monument to mark his tomb in Rome and shows the poet lying
motionless, as though we have just found him washed up on the beach dead.
It is this sense of the statue as a proxy or stand-in for the individual that inspires
us to interact with them or to talk about awarding a statue to someone long dead as
something that he or she ‘deserves’. It is why a bronze likeness of Margaret Thatcher
has become the focus for a superstitious ritual; it is why people can become so angry
about a statue of Rhodes or Lee or so passionately enthusiastic about wanting to
set up a statue to someone felt to be a hero, such as Millicent Fawcett or Emmeline
Pankhurst. It explains the famous images of jubilant and angry Iraqis smashing up
statues of Saddam Hussein following his downfall, why somebody could fnd such
satisfaction in knocking the head of Thatcher’s statue in the museum in Guildhall
and why following its toppling one of the protestors placed his knee on the neck of
Colston’s statue, a powerful parody of the horrifc way that George Floyd had been
killed. It is also why people pose for humorous photos beside the ‘Sleepwalker’; they
do it not merely to have fun but to have fun with him. Whoever he is.

The meaning of statues is complex and many-layered and derives, as this introductory
chapter has argued, from a number of diferent factors including political afliations,
history, relationships to other monuments in the same setting, their ability to call to
mind other types of sculpted likeness, the uncanny way in which they can evoke a liv-
ing presence and, perhaps above all, from the signifcance of the space in which they
stand. This sweeping overview has focussed mainly on recent history, mainly on case
studies from modern Western countries, especially the United Kingdom and the United
States. I have deliberately juxtaposed ‘Sleepwalker’—anonymous, coloured, hyperreal
and standing on ground level—with a number of examples of the types of sculpture
that would probably more readily spring to mind if most people were asked to think
of a statue—monochrome, standing atop a pedestal inscribed with a name—in order
to provoke refection on the range of meanings associated with statues in modern
Western culture and on the ways in which our statues interact with their settings in
public spaces to generate meaning. I have focussed on the things that statues in difer-
ent times and places arguably have in common—the ways that decisions about setting
them up and taking them down are bound up with power and politics, the ways that
their meaning is shaped by and in turn shapes the setting in which they stand, and the
ways that we respond to them. In light of this book’s title questions, which I hope will
have been nagging the reader throughout, are to what extent attitudes toward and
meanings of statues are culturally specifc and whether people in other parts of the
world and at other times in history might have experienced, responded to and given
meaning to the statues that they set up in their public spaces in very diferent ways.
A full history of public statues has yet to be written, and it is not the aim of this book
to fll that hiatus, but a brief overview of the phenomenon is useful to set the stage for
the chapters that follow.
Public statues are as old as cities themselves. As early as the third millennium bce,
the frst urban cultures of Mesopotamia were erecting images of gods, worshippers
and kings, sculpted in the round.50 In the course of the Bronze Age this Near Eastern
tradition infuenced the development of statuary practices in Egypt,51 where sculpture
became increasingly naturalistic, and Egypt in turn infuenced Greece. The debt of
Egyptian models to Archaic Greek kouroi is well known and blatantly apparent.52
These fgures of naked male youths, standing with one foot striding forward, hands
held at the side, with their elongated heads, almond shaped eyes and curious smile,
were set up as votive oferings in sanctuaries and as grave monuments. Sometimes they
seem to have represented gods, particularly Apollo, yet despite their non-individualised
appearance they generally seem to have been intended as representations of real indi-
viduals. To the same period belong the clothed female statues known as ‘korai’ dedi-
cated in large numbers on the Athenian Acropolis.53 Throughout the sixth century
bce the appearance of statues became increasingly lifelike, leading to the well-known
explosion of naturalistic human sculpture in the ffth century. Some of the earliest
statues of real people set up in public spaces and sanctuaries were for athletes, but
votive portraits dedicated to the gods also became increasingly common in religious
space.54 In the fourth century, a culture of setting up honorifc statues for politicians,
generals and civic benefactors developed, probably in several Greek cities simultane-
ously, though especially in Athens and, following in the wake of the expansion of
Greek horizons with the conquests of Alexander, the practice spread throughout the
Mediterranean world.55 This expansion went in hand with stylistic developments, a
higher striving for realism and refection of character for politicians, a new heroic style
for the kings who carved up Alexander’s empire and sought to emulate him, a more
baroque, dramatic style for religious and mythological tableaux.56 For our purposes
the publicness of these monuments is worth stressing—they were to be found in thea-
tres, gymnasia and, especially, in the agora, the town square.57
Roman sources written under the Empire preserve traditions of commemorative
portrait statues being set up in the city under the early Republic (5th—3rd century
bce).58 There is, however, no hard evidence that early—certainly no archaeological
evidence59—raising suspicions that the stories of these monuments were later inven-
tions, perhaps attached to statues set up after the third century; statues of gods in
human form presumably stood in temples from an early date, as they did in other
Latin towns, and the neighbouring Etruscans had developed their own tradition of
realistic human sculpture in terracotta for their grave monuments.60 However, once
Rome had gained control of all of Italy and expanded its infuence into the Eastern
Mediterranean (third–frst century bce), Rome embraced the Greek statuary habit
with enthusiasm. Works of freestanding Greek sculpture were collected by power-
ful and wealthy Romans to decorate their villas, and public honorifc monuments
began to proliferate in public spaces at Rome and other conquered towns.61 Under the
Empire, the statuary habit arguably reached its peak. New statues were set up with
increasing frequency. In the Greek world at least, they joined countless monuments
that had been set up over the preceding centuries. Statues of emperors were ubiqui-
tous, skilfully drawing on the repertoire of styles developed over preceding centuries
to create an imperial image that served to consolidate the ruler’s power.62 Never before
or since has there been an urban culture where statues were so ubiquitous. One source
claims that at Rhodes, Athens and Delos in the frst century bce, there were 3,000
bronze statues.63 An astonishing fgure, even if exaggerated, since the living popula-
tions cannot have numbered more than a few tens of thousands.
By the fourth century ce, it was so widely accepted that great cities needed an assem-
blage of public statues that Constantine and his successors brought large amounts
numbers of them from elsewhere in the Empire to adorn their new capital Constan-
tinople.64 By this time, however, the statuary habit was declining under economic and
political pressures and the imperatives of new modes of expression brought by Chris-
tianity. Very few public statues were set up in Roman cities in the ffth century ce, and
thereafter the habit disappeared, not to be revived until the ffteenth century, when
the cities of Italy, especially Florence, in direct emulation of antiquity began setting
up free standing statues of saints, fgures from Classical mythology and even politi-
cal fgures on the facades of public buildings and on freestanding pedestals in public
squares.65 Donatello, who created some of the most important early public statues in
Renaissance Florence, is often credited with an important landmark in the revival of
the ancient statuary habit—the frst public equestrian statue in over a thousand years,
set up to honour the condottiero Erasmo di Narni (perhaps better known as Gattame-
lata, ‘Honeyed Cat’) in Padua in 1453, drawing explicitly on an antique model, the
statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.66 The statues of Renaissance Italy served a clear
political purpose, acting as focal points for communal identity and conveying subtle
messages about shifting power relations both between city-states and within them.
From Italy, the statuary habit slowly revived across Europe. In a world comprised
mainly of monarchies, such monuments were, for a long time, reserved mainly for
kings.67 In the course of the nineteenth century, the twin forces of nationalism and
empire conspired to create a need for new popular heroes—both contemporary fg-
ures and fgures from history—and the statuary habit reached a crescendo throughout
much of the world that contemporaries, at least in the United Kingdom, described as
‘statuemania’.68 It was then that Edward Colston’s statue was set up in Bristol, the
Shelley Memorial installed at University College. In the twentieth century that mania
subsided, at least in the Western world, as old certainties were shaken by the terrors
of worldwide confict, as dictatorships were seen to deploy sculpted likeness of leaders
as instruments of totalitarian control, and as modernism and then post-modernism
called the very value of realistic representation in art into question. But it is only in
comparison with the nineteenth century that we can speak of a decline in the statuary
habit. Although we might not often pay attention to them, there are more statues to be
seen in many modern towns and cities—and of a more diverse range of subjects—than
at any time since the Roman Empire. Today, statues are just as, if not more, likely to
be erected for writers, musicians, sportsmen or generic fgures with a link to the indus-
try, culture or economy of a particular place, such as soldiers, miners or fshermen, as
political leaders.
This rapid overview is conventional and unlikely to generate controversy. It places
emphasis on continuities and similarities. The debt to antiquity in statuary practice
in later periods is incontrovertible and was often quite self-conscious—note again
Canning’s toga. Nonetheless, continuity and similarity are only part of the story. If,
as has been argued here, public statues have always been bound up with contestations
of power and have thus played an important role in constituting publicness itself, this
does not mean that the relationship between space and setting was the same in all
times and cultures. The political relationships at stake were very diferent in the Syrian
oasis city of Palmyra on the eastern fringe of the Roman Empire than in Georgian Eng-
land. We might well ask how the types of activity taking place in settings where statues
stood afected the way they were perceived by creating a particular audience for them.
That audience would have been very diferent in the temple complexes of Pharaonic
Egypt than on the streets of Renaissance Rome at carnival time. Religious modes of
viewing statues are likely, too, to have shaped the way more secular monuments were
viewed. The earliest Bronze Age statues in the Near East were seen as having a living
presence—statues of kings spoke through the texts that were inscribed on their bodies,
statues of gods were sent on ceremonial excursions from one temple to another and
even between cultures. The idea that statues had a living presence is sometimes held
69
to have been undermined by the Greek striving for ‘mimesis’, a more lifelike represen-
tation of the human form in the Classical period.70 As statues became more lifelike, the
skill of the artist became more apparent, thereby supposedly transforming statues into
mere representations rather than manifestations of a living presence.
Realism is the most common mode for contemporary statues, and our secular dis-
position encourages us to project assumptions about the modern reception of statues
onto the past and to suppose that people in past societies must have seen realistic
looking statues as we do, primarily as works of art or as purely political monuments
lacking any association with the icon. Yet can we really assume that in Greek and
Roman antiquity, when the gods were still worshipped in statuary form in temples,
that the associations with cult statues didn’t afect the ways that portraits of real peo-
ple were viewed? In the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, ancient-looking statues
suddenly returned to the public realm in great numbers—both new creations and
genuine survivals from antiquity unearthed through excavation. Yet human likenesses
had never completely disappeared from public view; they had simply shifted to the
purely religious setting of the church. Is the experience of seeing public sculpture not
then likely to have been shaped in profound ways of viewing sculptures of Christ, the
Virgin, saints and martyrs, often in wood, as well as stone tombs of the rich and pow-
erful in interior, sacred settings? The unease at viewing human likenesses in Western
culture, which arises from the biblical prohibition against worshipping icons, has been
referred to above. While such tensions have been much discussed, they have rarely
been considered specifcally in relation to ‘the statue’, as argued here to be a very
specifc category of sculpture and monument. And these tensions are likely to have
been even more pronounced for people whose cultures have traditionally enforced an
even stricter prohibition of images, such as the Jews and Muslims. How might public
statues have been viewed in modern states like the Turkish Republic, where they had
previously been almost completely unknown and associated with idolatry? As these
questions and the foregoing discussion suggest, the meaning of and response to stat-
ues in any historical and cultural context is profoundly shaped both by spatial setting
and the associations and meanings of other types of artwork, particular other types
of sculpture, in that culture. And the issue of other artistic media—of human fgures
sculpted in high relief or placed in niches, of three-dimensional images of non-human
subjects in the round—brings us back to the problematic question with which we
began—what, after all, is a statue?
Rarely have scholars paused to consider the rich variety of meanings that rather
similar—at least superfcially—practices of setting up objects that we so easily refer to
as statues in past societies might conceal. That is the subject of this book. The contri-
butions focus on some of the cultures alluded to here, but this is not a handbook, and
no attempt is made to be comprehensive, either in the cultures considered or the issues
addressed. The chapters do not systematically consider all of the issues touched upon
in this introduction for their respective times and cultures. Instead, it is hoped that that
this collection of articles will provoke refection on the diversity of ways that public
statues have been used in past societies, about the ways in which they have been given
meaning and have in turn exerted an infuence over the meaning of the spaces around
them and the people who have frequented those spaces. Statues have shared our public
spaces for so long that it is all too easy to take their presence for granted, both when
moving about our own cities and imagining those of past cultures. When the public
statues of past societies have been considered, whether by art historians, historians or
archaeologists, there has been rather little discussion between those working on difer-
ent places and periods. This book is a call to pay more attention to statues as a cultural
phenomenon. It is also an argument that there is much to be gained from bringing
together a range of experts from diferent academic backgrounds and working on dif-
ferent periods and, as such, with very diferent evidence at their disposal.
The book is ofered in acute awareness of the many, many periods and places
where statues have been set up that are not included. There is no consideration of the
famous Terracotta Army of Qin China, of the rich tradition of religious statuary in
Hindu culture, of ways in which the legend of the golem might relate to attitudes to
statues in Jewish culture, of the traditions of three-dimensional sculpted images that
developed separately in Mesoamerican cultures. It is to be hoped, however, that by
broadening our conception of and approach toward public statues, the discussions
here might prompt consideration of similarities—and arguably much more interest-
ing, diferences—in how people viewed and interacted with statues in these cultures.
The use of public statues across time and cultures is a potentially vast region of
comparative study that would repay more expansive exploration. This book might
be seen as a preliminary foray into that terrain—not the fnal word on the subject but
rather the opening up of a discussion. The considerable recent attention for the ques-
tion of what statues mean to us today suggests that this is a discussion worth having.
Notes
1. www.change.org/p/president-h-kim-bottomly-move-the-sleepwalker-inside-the-davis-
museum [accessed 20.8.2020].
2. The response can be found beneath the petition at the change.org website. See n.1.
3. In the United Kingdom alone, the story was featured in the Times, the Independent, the
Guardian, the Mirror, the Metro, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph and also made it to the
BBC website.
4. The episode is discussed briefy as an example of such controversies by McDermott 2016,
26–27.
5. Matelli refers to the piece as ‘this statue or sculpture’ in an interview for the online art mag-
azine, The Creative Independent, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/tony-matelli-
on-the-power-of-objects [accessed 20.8.2020].
6. On the earliest bronze statues in the Near East, see Bahrani 2017. For the beginnings of
life-size bronze statues in Greek culture, see Mattusch 1996.
7. For some interesting considerations on the relationship between sculpture and pedestals, see
the essays in Gerstein 2007.
8. This interpretation of the monument’s signifcance is proposed convincingly by Craske
2007, 234–235.
9. For a highly theorized investigation of modern public space as contested, see the studies of
the plazas of Costa Rica by Low 2000.
10. Mitchell 2003, 5.
11. There are, of course, statues of enormous scale that can be entered, the Statue of Liberty
being the most famous, but such statues are still not buildings. They are still designed to be
seen and not used.
12. White, Michael. Thatcher Statue Decapitated, 4 July 2002, The Guardian: www.
theguardian.com/uk/2002/jul/04/artsnews.redbox [accessed 20.8.2020].
13. Unveiling of a Statue of Baroness Thatcher in Members Lobby, House of Commons:
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/acwa/thatcherstatue/ [accessed
20.8.2020].
14. Mason, Rowena. Proposal for Margaret Thatcher Statue Near Parliament Turned Down,
6 July 2017, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/06/proposals-for-
margaret-thatcher-statue-near-parliament-turned-down and Walker, Peter. Westminster
Council Rejects Margaret Thatcher Statue Plans, 23 January 2018, The Guardian: www.
theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/23/plans-margaret-thatcher-statue-westminster-rejected
[accessed 20.8.2020].
15. Roman period copies of the statues survive and there is ample iconographic and literary
evidence that they were famous throughout the ancient world—Azoulay 2017.
16. The disagreement about the monument’s meaning is touched upon by the two great histori-
ans of the ffth century: Herodotus Histories 5.55–56, 5.63–64 and Thucydides History of
the Peloponnesian War 6.53–59 and 1.20.2.
17. Furness, Hannah. Gallery Denies ‘Banishing’ Decapitated Baroness Thatcher Statue,
27 January 2015, The Telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howabout
that/11372871/Gallery-denies-banishing-decapitated-Baroness-Thatcher-statue.html
[accessed 20.8.2020].
18. Though the pose is not a reference to that work but rather a representation of Thatcher's
own description of how she was in the habit of standing at the despatch box—personal
communication, Antony Dufort.
19. For a diferent—and more detailed—consideration of the meanings of the statues of Parlia-
ment Square discussed here, see Burch 2020, 41–44, 65–82, 100–106, 112–114, 115–123.
20. It is no coincidence that Barack Obama has referred to the three—together with Mar-
tin Luther King, with whom they are often mentioned in the same breath—as sources of
inspiration: https://timesofndia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Lincoln-Gandhi-Mandela-are-my-
heroes-Obama/articleshow/4742860.cms [accessed 20.8.2020].
21. The political dimensions of playful behaviour in public space have been explored by Stevens
2007.
22. As discussed by Cherry 2006.
23. Under the Roman Empire, the Greeks developed the cost-efective way of honouring powerful
Romans by simply inscribing their names on existing statues. The orator Dio Chrysostom, in
his well-known 31st oration, berates the people of Rhodes for the practice; the speech makes
plain that they had forgotten who the original recipients of many of their old statues had been.
24. See the collection of photos of the unveiling in The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/
artanddesign/gallery/2018/apr/24/millicent-fawcett-statue-unveiled-in-parliament-square-
in-pictures [accessed 20.8.2020].
25. Purvis, June. A Sufragist Statue in Parliament Square Would Write Emmeline Pankhurst Out
of History, 27 September 2017, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/
sep/27/sufragist-statue-parliament-square-emmeline-pankhurst-millicent-fawcett [accessed
20.8.2020].
26. The statue was unveiled in 1930 but moved to its present location, from a spot further
south, in 1958, when it was incorporated within a curved wall that included a bust of
Emmeline’s daughter Christabel, who had died that year, on one of its ends; Matthews
2012, 38–39.
27. Khomami, Nadia. Anger Over Plan to Move Pankhurst Statue Away From Parliament, 17
August 2018, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/aug/17/anger-over-plan-
to-move-pankhurst-statue-away-from-parliament [accessed 20.8.2020].
28. Yarwood, Sam. Emmeline Is Coming Home—Plans for Statue of Sufragette in St Peter's
Square Approved, 9 February 2018, Manchester Evening News: www.manchester
eveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/emmeline-pankhurst-sufragette-statue-
manchester-14265979 [accessed 20.8.2020].
29. www.invisiblewomen.org.uk [accessed 20.8.2020].
30. Baird, Julia. Why We Should Put Women on Pedestals, 4 September 2017, New York Times:
www.nytimes.com/2017/09/04/opinion/women-statues.html [accessed 20.8.2020].
31. See the list in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_
removed_during_the_George_Floyd_protests [accessed 20.8.2020].
32. Anonymous. London Monuments Boarded Up Ahead of Protests, 12 June 2020, BBC:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-53020306 [accessed 20.8.2020].
33. Hussain, Danyal. ‘Are They Worried About Jane Austen Fans?’: Statue Defenders Draw
Scorn as They Stand in Front of Sculpture of Writer George Eliot During Black Lives
Matter Protest, 16 June 2020, Mail Online: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8426005/
Statue-defenders-stand-sculpture-writer-George-Eliot-Black-Lives-Matter-demo.html
[accessed 20.8.2020].
34. Nyamnjoh 2016.
35. Robinson, Yussef. Oxford’s Cecil Rhodes Statue Must Fall—It Stands in the Way of Inclu-
sivity, 19 January 2016, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/19/
rhodes-fall-oxford-university-inclusivity-black-students [accessed 20.8.2020].
36. Astor, Maggie, Christina Caron, and Daniel Victor. A Guide to the Charlottesville After-
math, 13 August 2017, New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-
virginia-overview.html [accessed 20.8.2020].
37. Olusoga, David. Statues Are Not the Issue. These Are ‘History Wars’, a Battle Over the Past,
27 August 2017, The Guardian: As historian David Olusoga has argued; www.theguardian.
com/commentisfree/2017/aug/26/statues-were-not-erected-to-teach-us-history-but-to-
exert-power [accessed 20.8.2020].
38. Edward Colston Statue Toppled: How Bristol Came to See the Slave Trader as a Hero
and Philanthropist, 8 June 2020, The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/edward-
colston-statue-toppled-how-bristol-came-to-see-the-slave-trader-as-a-hero-and-philanthropist-
140271 [accessed 20.8.2020].
39. E.g. Moss, Chris. Why the Toppling of Colston's Statue Was a Missed Opportunity,
9 June 2020, The Telegraph: www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/colston-statue-monuments-
to-malefactors/ [accessed 20.8.2020].
40. Emelife, Aindrea. ‘Hope Flows Through This Statue’: Marc Quinn on Replacing Colston
with Jen Reid, a Black Lives Matter Protester, 15 July 2020, The Guardian: www.
theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jul/15/marc-quinn-statue-colston-jen-reid-black-lives-
matter-bristol [accessed 20.8.2020].
41. Bland, Archie. Black Lives Matter Sculpture of Jen Reid Removed from Colston Plinth,
16 July 2020, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/16/black-lives-matter-
sculpture-of-jen-reid-removed-colston--bristol [accessed 20.8.2020].
42. On the Shelley memorial, see Haskell 1978.
43. The way that the Pankhurst Memorial contributed to the transformation of Emmeline
Pankhurst’s posthumous reputation from dangerous subversive to symbol of the steady
march of democratic progress is explored by Mayhall 1999.
44. Pilbeam 2003, 1–16.
45. Harvey and Mortimer 1994.
46. For an excellent recent history of lifelike sculpture see Syson 2018. On the tensions pro-
duced by images (not just statues) when they began to proliferate in the Early Modern
period, see Cole and Zorach 2009; and Nagel 2011.
47. As Luke Syson has shown: Syson 2018.
48. Freedberg 1989.
49. Anonymous. Churchill and Thatcher Statues ‘Under Threat’ from Touching by MPs,
2 August 2013, The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/02/churchill-
thatcher-statues-mps-touching [accessed 20.8.2020].
50. Evans 2012; Feldman 2020, 362–365.
51. On which see Price, this volume.
52. A good recent overview can be found in Fullerton 2016, 23–68. The standard work remains
Richter and Richter 1942.
53. Keesling 2003.
54. Smith 2007; Keesling 2017.
55. Dillon 2006; Ma 2013; Biard 2017.
56. On stylistic developments in Hellenistic sculpture see Pollitt 1986; and Smith 1991.
57. On the agora as setting for statues, see Dickenson 2017.
58. Pliny the Elder, for instance, refers to statues dating to the sixth or ffth century bce, of
a Vestal Virgin (34.25), the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (34.26), the Athenian general
Alcibiades (34.26) and the Roman general Horatius Cocles (34.22).
59. One of the earliest examples of Roman portrait statuary, the famous ‘Capitoline Brutus’,
a bronze bust tenuously associated with the man who had expelled Rome's last king and
thereby initiated the Republic in 509 bce, is now thought to date to anywhere between the
fourth and second centuries bce; Papini 2015, 104.
60. On early Roman sculpture, see Kleiner 1992, 23–27. Etruscan sculpture: Brendel and Serra
Ridgway 1995.
61. On collecting, see Rutledge 2012; Bounia 2004. On statues in Roman culture under the
Empire, see Stewart 2003 and Fejfer 2008.
62. The literature is immense, but for an introduction with bibliography, see Kellum 2015.
63. Pliny Natural History 34.36.
64. Bassett 2015. See also Chatterjee, Chapter 5, this volume.
65. On the end of the statuary habit in antiquity, see Smith and Ward-Perkins 2016. On the
rebirth of public statuary in Renaissance Florence, McHam 2000.
66. Stewart 2012, 273.
67. For example, by the early nineteenth century in Britain, public statues were still almost
exclusively for royalty—see Craske, Chapter 9, this volume.
68. Hall 1999.
69. Sumerian sculpture Bahrani 2017, 66–75; Akkadian Statues, 117–125, statues of Gudea
134–153.
70. E.g., by Bahrani 2003 with the purpose of highlighting how art in earlier times had been
experienced very diferently.
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2 How Accessible Were Statues in
Pharaonic Egypt?
Campbell Price
Introduction
Statues dominate both popular and academic reimaginations of ancient Egypt, a civili-
zation which spanned three millennia from ‘state’ formation around 3000 bce. Egyp-
tian statue-images range in scale from portable statuettes of various forms to colossal
sculptures representing divine and royal persons. To gauge the extent to which the
ancient Egyptian population as a whole could interact with statuary requires a critical
reassessment of both our own expectations and of the surviving evidence of this most
quintessential product of Pharaonic material culture. Ancient Egyptian distinctions
between ‘public’ and ‘private’ space were conceptually diferent from other ancient or
more recent societies; encounters with sculpture were more architecturally and cultur-
ally circumscribed than modern experiences of the remaining spaces might suggest.
In ancient Egypt, statues provided a terrestrial anchor for nonphysical and preter-
natural entities, namely deities and the dead.1 Egyptian statues exerted an infuence
and had an immediacy not easily shared by other object categories. Especially in the
museum setting in which most Pharaonic sculpture is now located, with its emphasis
on public display and anticipated reaction, this power is very apparent when observ-
ing encounters between people and statues. These interactions can be instructive in
recognising our assumptions about access.
The Egyptian displays at the British Museum during the nineteenth century—
particularly over-life-sized sculptures—were marked out as aberrant and lacking in
intellectual value compared to those of Greece and Rome. Despite often carrying
impenetrable hieroglyphic texts, Pharaonic works:
did not require the same kind of contemplation and insight that the classical
antiquities required; they could be read promptly, easily and without any prior
knowledge . . . [they were] more legible for this less educated visitor.2
Somewhat paradoxically, therefore, Egyptian sculpture has often been perceived to

be inherently accessible—a cultural judgement that has persistently informed recon-
structions of the statues’ original settings and functions.
For the ancient Egyptians themselves, however, both physical and intellectual access
to sculpture was mediated by several factors that are likely to have difered from the
constraints present in other cultures, ancient or modern. Images of Egyptian deities,
kings and the elite stood apart to a degree which, it may be suspected, was unusual for
the ancient world. In this chapter, I explore the main forms and contexts of Egyptian
Pharaonic Egypt 33
sculpture in relation to issues of access and consider how statues addressed those per-
mitted to encounter them. I examine divine images, colossal statues of the king and
sculptures of non-royal persons in turn.
The main context for most types of Pharaonic sculpture was in the temples of
the gods; public spaces corresponding to the streets, agoras and forums of Greece
and Rome, for example, are not obviously attested in the Egyptian archaeological
record.3 While tomb chapels appear to have been the location in which non-royal
sculpture frst appeared, this function was soon shared and eventually almost com-
pletely monopolised by the temple. In contrast to fantastical Hollywood recreations,
evidence of sizeable sculpture from royal palaces is extremely limited.4 It is, however,
worth noting that settlement sites from ancient Egypt are relatively little-explored,
meaning that evidence for possible domestic settings for statues is especially obscured.
Household (‘private’) chapels of gods and ancestors—as found at a ffteenth-century
bce urban villa at the southern site of Tell Edfu5—may be an exception to an other-
wise much more circumscribed set of engagements with sculpture of any considerable
size. Domestic spaces lay at the most humble end of a cultural continuum on which
the large stone-built temples are the most prestigious and exclusive.
Creating sizeable sculpture required resources monopolised by the ancient Egyptian
elite, and our sources for statue interaction come generally from elite contexts: that
is, tomb or temple depictions of statues in two dimensions, with their inherent biases
and distortions, or the statues themselves. Egyptian statues are rarely found in situ;
where it is possible to establish, their ‘archaeology’ tends to be of deliberate, sec-
ondary depositions—so-called cache(tte)s—that provide only incidental information
about the original use-lives of sculptures. The intentional gathering and careful burial
of large amounts of sculpture—and other objects that saw ritual use—in temple areas
throughout the Pharaonic period implies that the function of these items was thought
to continue indefnitely despite their lack of physical accessibility to the living.6
Numbers of statues in wood and metal are likely to have been signifcant in
Pharaonic Egypt, but these have not survived evenly (wooden sculpture in particular is
almost exclusively known from closed tomb contexts), with a resulting bias in favour
of stone. Texts inscribed on some statues—normally those representing non-royal
elite persons—occasionally prescribe their own role and function, allowing a special
glimpse into Pharaonic conceptualisations of statue interactions.7 Much of this mate-
rial is little known outside of Egyptology and is here ofered in the context of the fruit-
ful interdisciplinary dialogue enjoyed at the workshop on which this volume is based.
Encountering the Divine

Arguably, the statue an ancient Egyptian was least likely to encounter was that rep-
resenting a god. There were, however, gradations in divine imagery ranging from
numerous modest votive fgurines through sizeable stone images to relatively small cult
images made of precious materials. Manufacture of any image was a highly skilled,
quasi-divine process in Pharaonic Egypt, efected chiefy by trained and properly initi-
ated people. Making an image of a god was a particularly special act, as in other cul-
tures.8 In Egypt, one among several accounts of the creation of the universe, attested
from around 700 bce, describes the god Ptah: ‘He gave birth to the gods. . . . He
placed the gods in their shrines. . . . He made their bodies according to their wishes.
Thus the gods entered into their bodies, of every wood, every stone, every clay’.9 Two
34 Campbell Price
key points arise from this. First, that Egyptian deities could be immanent in physical
forms made from a multiplicity of materials and, second, that these statue forms ought
to be placed in—and were to some extent constrained by—containers (i.e., shrines and
temples). The Egyptian gods were omnipresent yet—in physical form, at least—also
vulnerable, and required protection.
Thus, the aging sun god is described in a mythic text known as the ‘Book of the
Celestial Cow’ (versions appear in royal tombs, 1325–1150 bce) as having bones of
silver, fesh of gold and hair of lapis lazuli.10 Although this text is often quoted to dem-
onstrate the ideal materials from which to craft divine statues as the principal focus of
cult, it in fact describes a sub-par manifestation of the sun god, who is compromised
by age and appears semi-fossilised, not at full strength. Even if composed of appar-
ently enduring and untarnishable materials, the gods’ physical bodies on earth were
susceptible to attack. This anxiety about statue bodies is stated explicitly in texts on
non-royal statues (see below) and explains to some extent the need for circumspection
in approaching divine statues. All divine images, especially cult images, were defned
by their secrecy—with one term for divine statue (bes) actually meaning ‘secret’.11
For most of the Pharaonic period, divine images were housed chiefy in stone-built
temples known as a ‘mansion-of-the-god’ (hut-netjer), of which the complex at Kar-
nak (modern Luxor) in southern Egypt is the most expansive surviving example.
A similarly extensive complex centred on the worship of the god Ptah once existed at
the northern capital, Memphis. The modern city of Cairo is built on top—and often
from the remnants—of this series of structures. Similar conditions afect the survival
of other, perhaps somewhat more modest, Pharaonic temples built in honour of hun-
dreds of other gods throughout Egypt.
Architectural restrictions aimed to limit those with direct access to and therefore
knowledge of the cult images of the gods, but also to other statue forms that might
be located within sacred precincts. Upon entry, the standard plan of an Egyptian
temple progressed from wide, open areas, through columned halls, to the increasingly
dark, intimate space of the sanctuary at the rear.12 On a fundamental level, the divine
image was (meta)physically protected by being located at this innermost part of the
temple, probably enclosed within a gilded wooden shrine with bolted doors within
a stone version of the same (often termed a ‘naos’, from Greek); ritual texts describe
the important act of opening such a shrine, and comparable physical examples have
survived in the undisturbed tomb of Tutankhamun.
The normal inaccessibility of the divine image is suggested by a private letter of
around 1100 bce in which a man appeals directly to the god:
I was looking for you (the deity) to tell you some afairs of mine, but you hap-
pened to be hidden in your sanctuary, and there was nobody having access to it
to send in to you. Now, when I was waiting, I found Hori, this scribe of the tem-
ple . . . and he said to me ‘I have access’, so I am sending him to you. Look, you
must cast of mystery today and come out in the course of a procession, so that
you may judge the matters.13
The writer here was someone conversant with the vizier—the chief civil authority
in Pharaonic Egypt—and the letter is written on expensive papyrus. This suggests that
even for a relatively important individual, access to the god’s statue within its temple
was not always easy, and certainly not automatic, but required mediation by select
temple staf.
Pharaonic Egypt 35
As the earthly home of a divinity, temples in ancient Egypt were essentially inward-
looking and exclusionary and did not accommodate nor target congregational wor-
ship. In countless repeated scenes on their walls, it is only ever the Pharaoh shown
interacting directly with the gods; waking, clothing, feeding and attending the deity.
In this way Egyptian temples were self-sustaining, as wall representations reifed the
rituals they depicted. These images should not be taken as an accurate account of the
king (or his delegate) actually coming face to face with particular statues, although
they have often been read as such.14 Rather, they are hieroglyphic, prospective, ideal-
ised and hyperreal—in the sense that they depict ritual actions which need not always
have been carried out in reality but existed and were eternally valid simply by being
depicted.
Pharaoh is regularly shown at the same scale as the deity with whom he is inter-
acting, emphasising their conceptual equivalence in terms of status. Yet this artistic
conceit may have helped foster the inference that divine cult statues were themselves
life-sized. In the case of ithyphallic gods such as forms of Amun and Min, some com-
mentators assume that this might permit simulation of sexual acts of regeneration.15
However, judging by the size of remaining stone naos shrines, cult statues seem more
likely to have been rather small—little more than a foot high.16 That such cult statues
were most likely made from precious materials accounts for the fact that so few have
survived. Unlike in Classical Greece, Egyptian cult statues were not colossal (but see
below), and this can only have helped maintain the secrecy surrounding them.
It is an Egyptological axiom to state that the king could not possibly be in every
temple at once, and so he delegated the daily duty of cultic performance to temple
staf. Inscriptions in temples of the Ptolemaic period (c. 300–30 bce) such as Edfu
make this explicit by recording the formalised speech of those sanctioned (and sancti-
fed) to enter the temple: ‘I am a god’s-servant. It is the king who has sent me to see
the god. . . . I am pure’.17 At entrance portals of the contemporary temples of Esna and
Philae (built and decorated between 300 bce and 250 ce) are inscribed complex stipu-
lations concerning people entering the temple and even interdictions against those in a
state of impurity.18 These texts refect a more general concern with proper purifcation
for upstanding members of society, both during life and after death.19
Degrees of interaction with the god’s statue depended on a hierarchy of purity and
initiation; we may assume, therefore, that the high priest of each temple normally per-
formed rituals for the divine statue. However, that specifc role is rather poetically des-
ignated by another priestly title—‘Opener of the Doors of the Sky’ (a typically cosmic
Egyptian metaphor for sacred space)—which was held by those other than the highest
priests.20 While it is generally agreed amongst Egyptologists that only the most privi-
leged initiates of the god’s service—including women—could enter the holy of holies,
it is often assumed that larger numbers of people could gain access to the outer parts
of the temple. This issue is at the core of understanding the accessibility of Egyptian
sculpture, as most of it—depicting gods, royalty and elites—stood within the temple
itself. So who could gain access to temple spaces in order to actually see most statues?
Access and Exclusion

The extensively decorated Egyptian temple was addressed chiefy to the gods; scenes
and texts were often difcult to see, read or interpret with the human eye beyond
those actively involved in the construction and decoration of these spaces. Hiero-
glyphic script is described in Egyptian as ‘divine words’ (medu netjer), which need
36 Campbell Price
not have been visible to be efective. The population at large—lacking literacy or
comprehension of hieroglyphic script—simply does not appear to have fgured in
this scheme.
This is doubtless due to the exclusive nature of Ancient Egyptian high culture. John
Baines and Norman Yofee have articulated this most efectively for ancient Egypt
and Mesopotamia, stressing the importance of the world of the gods as a target for
elite communication rather than the present world of the living. Material and sym-
bolic resources were tightly controlled by elites who were ‘scarcely subject to cultural
requirements to disburse them in fulflment of social obligations’,21 within a wider
context of restricted access to high cultural forms in society generally.
Secrecy was central to high culture in Pharaonic Egypt, particularly with regard
to divine images; the root of the name of the chief god ‘Amun’ means ‘he-who-is-
hidden’. Leaving the interior space of the temple, divine statues were enclosed in port-
able shrines carried within model boats (often termed ‘barques’ by Egyptologists) and
obscured and shielded by a billowing linen curtain.22 The very act of shading or caus-
ing a shadow to fall on a divine image seems to have been understood to indicate the
spiritual presence of the deity;23 such concealment was apparently a constant feature
of popular cultic display.24 Processional display of an uncovered statue of the ithy-
phallic god Min—who bore the epithet ‘he who faunts his potency’25—appears to
have been a notable exception to the usual hiddenness of the divine image, at least as
represented on temple walls.
Another, more permanent, form of secrecy is represented by the well-attested pro-
cess of deliberately gathering and caching statues of deities, kings and elites within
and underneath sacred areas.26 This act ensured the hiddenness and security of the
sculptures while also giving them a permanent presence and rendering their intentions
visible exclusively to the gods and also the dead.
The term ‘public’ is frequently employed in Egyptological discourse in relation to
the question of access to temples but without any real qualifcation of who ‘the public’
were. Anachronistic connotations of an undiferentiated populace similar to many
parts of the modern, urban world are inescapable, creating a persistent and generally
unchallenged reconstruction of a curious ‘middle class’ milling around waiting for
something to happen. The vast majority of the ancient Egyptian population are likely
to have been farmers and their families, engaged in agricultural work.27 An inner
elite of individuals with some signifcant degree of literacy, especially those with any
contact to the royal court, are likely to have been a small group.28 They were in turn
surrounded by service personnel who were actively involved in supplying the needs of
elite life, including the creation of sculpture.
Several Egyptologists have sought a place for the non-elite in the interior of enclosed
sacred spaces. Most notably, Lanny Bell envisaged widespread occasional access to
the main temple courtyard, using the temple of Luxor as a case study.29 Bell draws
on much more recent socio-religious practice at the festival of the Islamic saint Abu
Haggag as a comparable spectacle for large numbers of people to enter the colon-
nade courtyard at Luxor.30 Bell suggests that a designated ‘people’s gate’, along with
hieroglyphic depictions of the rekhyt-bird (symbolic of the ‘people of Egypt’), acted as
signposts for access by the non-elite to enter the temple on certain festival occasions.
This theory has, however, been convincingly rejected by Kenneth Grifn,31 who inter-
prets the rekhyt symbol as an emblem ensuring the metaphysical presence of the entire
‘people of Egypt’, perpetually in the act of adoration within the temple. As Grifn
Pharaonic Egypt 37
Figure 2.1 Peristyle courtyard at the rear of Luxor temple, with mosque of Abu Haggag in the
distance.
highlights, the symbol also appears in some of the innermost parts of the temple,
where the actual presence of such people would not be permitted.
The strongly exclusionary nature of Egyptian temple architecture is important to con-
sider here. John Baines poses the problem concisely: ‘Egyptian temples . . . enclose spaces
whose vastness people now fnd it difcult to comprehend if they were never flled with
crowds’32 (Figure 2.1). Modern cinematic recreations amplify assumptions of how these
spaces were originally populated—teeming with crowds as, for example, in scenes from
the 1955 flm ‘Land of the Pharaohs’, which use monolithic Pharaonic temple architecture
as the settings for proclamations to assembled multitudes. These scenes are as much a
refection of scholarly assumptions as of cinematic licence, and such flms themselves subse-
quently had an impact on both academic research and popular ideas about ancient Egypt.
Even broad thoroughfares, such as processional avenues fanked by sphinx statues,
do not appear to have been freely accessible in ancient times. Thus, contemporary
inscriptions located near the avenue between Karnak and Luxor describe it as being
backed by walls during at least the fourth century bce.33 These routes were intended
for the ritual navigation of gods and a select group of ritualists—to allow the gods’
statues to be carried in ritual safety between one enclosed sacred area and another.34
These routes were not designed for the quotidian needs of ‘ordinary’ people.
In recent decades, most Pharaonic temples and other archaeological sites have been
comprehensively cleared to facilitate the movement of large groups of tourists, and it
is easy to assume that this was an original intention of the structures’ planners. Viewed
through our own unrestricted gaze and the rose-tinted underlying assumption of egali-
tarian access in the ancient world, these sweeping vistas seem primed for both physical
and intellectual access to the site by a curious visitor. The ancient reality appears to
38 Campbell Price
have been far more circumscribed. Firm evidence of access comes in the form of graf-
fti recording the presence of certain visitors in tombs and other sacred spaces (such as
ruined ancient pyramids and temples35)—but these appear to have been executed by
a literate (sub-)elite long after the spaces had ceased to have an active cultic function.
Conversely, unauthorised ancient incursions into sacred space were to be deplored.
This is highlighted by an apparently rather specifc account from a stele commemorat-
ing the restoration of elite statues at Karnak by the temple’s High Priest, a man named
Bakenkhonsu, around 1184 bce:36
he saw the statues of the praised ones, the statues of the ancestors, the statues of
the august kings which have fallen into a state of destruction in the enclosure of
the gates of the open court, some on their sides, others on their backs, in the great
forecourt of the way(?) of the temple, by the hands of the wretched people.
The implication is of an aberrant state of afairs, possibly caused by civil unrest,

in which ‘wretched’ commoners had wantonly gained entry to the sacred area of the
temple and wreaked havoc. The same theme appears in later biographical texts, which
link individuals’ pious embellishment of temples with the ‘purifcation’ of enclosed
spaces through removal of encroaching dwellings, people or other potential impuri-
ties.37 Although the repeated motif in several texts may imply something of a literary
cliché, it also suggests an underlying anxiety about the experienced reality of temple
spaces and the safety of sculpture within them.
Perambulating Deities
Egyptian deities were, as has been suggested, characterised by their multiplicity of
manifestations. Although Egyptologists often assume a ‘main’ image for cult rituals,
in fact several cultic images of the same god might exist in diferent contexts, including
those designed to leave the temple in procession.38 The most numerous collection of
statues of a single deity to survive—and most probably ever to have been created—is
that composed of hundreds of examples of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet set
up at the west Theban mortuary temple of Amenhotep III (c. 1390–1352 bce).39 It
seems to have been necessary for certain rituals, notably the heb sed jubilee festival
celebrated by Egyptian kings after a reign of 30 years, to gather together statues of
the gods for the king’s reinvigoration and to confrm his divinity.40 While many of
Amenhotep’s Sekhmets are of extremely fne execution, the quality of craftsmanship
is notably varied across the set,41 pointing towards an overall intended efect of the
group. Even so, the statues ought not to be interpreted in the manner of large numbers
of ornamental statues elsewhere in the ancient word; each Sekhmet was an efective
vessel to house the goddess’ spirit and to act as a participant in ritual.
After an earthquake damaged the temple in around 1200 bce, many of the Sekhmet
statues were relocated to new ritual contexts—notably across the river Nile to the tem-
ple of the goddess Mut in southern Karnak.42 Much more recently, individual Sekhmet
statues have been moved to new locations, creating the misleading impression for
modern viewers that now-isolated examples were intended to stand alone or, perhaps
most misleadingly, to fank door- or gateways (Figures 2.2a and 2.2b)—implying a
degree of accessibility that was not in keeping with their original setting at Amenhotep
III’s temple. The sheer number and iconographic similarity of the set strongly implies
Pharaonic Egypt 39
Figure 2.2a Collection of statues of the goddess Sekhmet relocated to Karnak temple from the
temple of Amenhotep III.
a programmatic approach to manufacture, for one or more ritual reasons.43 Such a

ritual purpose did not require a sizeable human audience. To quote Baines and Yofee,
‘part of the extravagance of high culture is that its meanings should be fully received
by few or none’.44
One context in which an ‘ordinary’ ancient Egyptian might encounter a divine statue
was that of a ritual procession, attested in tomb and temple scenes and in texts. For
those outside the temple (i.e., the vast majority), processions of portable divine statues
carried in their barques provided a potential opportunity to gain physical proximity
to the divine outside normal interactions within the closed temple. Processions could
encompass long journeys between temples or short trips, such as from the sanctuary
onto the temple roof to ‘re-charge’ the image like a battery with divine energy from
direct sunlight.45 The latter process emphasises the usual hiddenness of the statue,
sequestered in the dark sanctuary, and was itself shielded from outsiders’ gaze. It
is also a reminder of the immense power statues were believed to store, which—by
means not fully understood—could become depleted or be replenished.
Once outside the temple enclosure, processions would likely have moved along
demarcated routes, resting in designated barque shrines along the way. Shouldering
the barque aloft on carrying poles was a privilege that individuals boasted of in bio-
graphical texts on tomb chapel walls and on temple monuments;46 this performance
allowed the possibility for those nearby to have physical proximity to the divine
presence even if not directly with the divine statue. Deir el-Medina—the town built
to house the builders of the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings (c. 1500–1070
bce)—furnishes us with evidence of attempted communication with gods through
their statues. A series of written questions and suggested answers addressed to the
40 Campbell Price
Figure 2.2b Repositioned statue of Sekhmet at the entrance to temple of Ramesses III, Medinet
Habu.
deity carried in procession have been found at the site of the town in the form of
inked fakes of limestone.47 These imply that the fakes—with two or more options—
were placed on the ground as a procession passed. Observers might therefore inter-
pret the swaying motion of the barque carried aloft as a response from the god—a
little to the left, perhaps, represented one answer; a little to the right another, whether
connected with a suggested written response or only in the mind of an observer. The
transitory nature of such a divine encounter served to heighten its value for the par-
ticipant; what social restrictions may have been placed on close attendance at such
processions is unknown.
Pharaonic Egypt 41
Figure 2.3 Scene from the Theban tomb chapel (no. 277) of Ameneminet, showing statues of
deifed King Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.
Some senior ofcials of Deir el-Medina also chose to decorate their tomb chapels
with scenes of divine statues in procession, apparently neither enshrined nor veiled.
These parallel similar scenes in some nearby elite tomb chapels in western Thebes.
One example is that of Ameneminet, a priest in the mortuary temple of King Amenho-
tep III, who lived some 200 years after that king’s death. Ameneminet’s tomb chapel
(Theban Tomb no. 277) lay only a short distance away from the temple in which he
served. In the chapel appear depictions of statues of the deifed Amenhotep III and his
wife, Queen Tiye, being dragged on sledges in the context of a funeral procession (Fig-
ure 2.3). Although the content of this scene is prospective—presumably being painted
some time before the funeral actually took place—it shares with those depictions from
Deir el-Medina a degree of familiarity with statuary not commonly experienced out-
side a relatively restricted and initiated group of craftsmen and ritualists.
As an ofciant within Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple, Ameneminet would have
performed rituals for some of the many statues that existed within that complex.
A tomb chapel was the arena of maximum boastfulness; here the owner vaunts his
access to the divine (images) he claims to have enjoyed in life, in the same way as
important workmen did at Deir el-Medina. The whole raison d’etre of that com-
munity lay in the fashioning of images in royal tombs, and the village was saturated
with a heightened awareness of rituals, of the presence of kings past and present and
other gods in both two- and three-dimensional representations. It is important to note
Ameneminet’s depiction of these statues on sledges—as the sledge can also be used
in ancient Egyptian art to indicate the divinity of whatever is placed on top;48 this
is an important reminder that any Pharaonic scene cannot be read simply and that
the procession may, therefore, not have happened in actuality as it is represented.
42 Campbell Price
These depictions of apparently intimate encounters with royal-divine statues are fl-
tered through the lens of decorum and special privilege; the survival of these particular
scenes should not necessarily be taken to refect the experiences of ancient Egyptians
more widely.
Approaching the Colossal

It might reasonably be assumed that colossal statues of Pharaoh and the gods—so
emblematic of ‘Ancient Egypt’ in general—were the most visible and therefore the
most accessible of sculptures for the Egyptians themselves.49 Paired groups of royal
colossi typically fronted the outer pylon gateways of temples, where they stood to
some extent at the interface of the sacred and profane realms. While colossi were part
of the monumental presentation of kingship that belonged within the temple, they also
looked outwards. Egyptologists have tended to assume a propagandising intention
aimed at an audience among the living. Yet, as I have cautioned elsewhere,50 these stat-
ues are best interpreted as principally addressed to the gods; their colossal scale was
intended to put the (living) king on a par with the divine. Yet the colossi also afrm the
king’s (semi-)divine position to himself, and Amenhotep III and Ramesses II—rulers
who had the most colossi raised in their image—ought to be counted as an important
target audience for their own monuments.51 To an unusually extensive degree, both
rulers mobilised worship of themselves whilst they were still alive; they individualised
many of their colossal statues by giving each a name representing a divinised form of
the living Pharaoh, allowing each ‘cult colossus’ a separate identity to act as an indi-
vidual object of veneration.52
While the quarrying, transportation, installation and activation of the colossi would
have provided opportunities for interaction with signifcant numbers of people,53 it is
also important to recognise potential forms of mediation that may have been in efect
to control access—physical and spiritual—to these huge statues. Access to the colossi
would have been limited by enclosure walls beyond the outer walls of the temple
proper,54 and there is evidence that several cult colossi had their own specifed priests.55
The impression of unimpeded physical approachability is mainly due to the depre-
dations of time. To take one well-known example, the one-time ‘singing’ colossus of
Amenhotep III (c. 1390–1352 bce) is one of a pair that fronted the king’s mortuary
temple at western Thebes (Figure 2.4) and which were damaged by a signifcant earth-
quake in the frst century bce. As a result, the northern of the two statues reportedly
emitted an ethereal twang at dawn and was associated by Greek and Roman visitors
with the tragic Ethiopian hero Memnon.56 Previous earthquake damage had led to
the intensive use of Amenhotep’s temple as a quarry only a couple of centuries after
it had been completed, stripping the colossi of their intended architectural context
by Graeco-Roman times. The statues’ pathetic ruined state and apparently isolated
location only added to their romance for Roman tourists before the colossus fell silent
after repair at the end of the second century ce. The mournful sentinels inevitably
appealed to orientalist painters of the nineteenth century,57 and their popularity in this
form endures even today in the Ptolemaic Period landscape recreations in the com-
puter game Assassin’s Creed: Origins.
Over 100 Greek and Latin grafti left by Roman period sightseers cover the legs of
the northern ‘Memnon’ colossus58 and are the best evidence of a loosening of restric-
tions on access to the colossi by the frst centuries ce; similar grafti on the legs of the
Pharaonic Egypt 43
Figure 2.4 The ‘Colossi of Memnon’, representing Amenhotep III, Kom el-Heitan, western
Thebes.
rock-cut colossi of Abu Simbel illustrate the same trend of increased access after the
end of active cult a few centuries earlier. The scenario is imagined, rather colourfully,
by the French artist Dominique-Vivant Denon: ‘when the ancient Egyptian govern-
ment and the jealousy of the priests no longer forbade strangers to touch these monu-
ments, the love of the marvellous retained its empire over the minds of those that
came hither as visitors’.59 Any mediation of access by local ‘priests’ or interpreters may
have been a more opportunistic way of capitalising on the interest of visitors than an
attempt to safeguard the sculptures themselves;60 the popular desire for tactile contact
with the sculptures is also worth noting.
Another, much earlier—and even larger—pair of colossi are noteworthy in this
regard. Representing King Amenemhat III (c. 1831–1786 bce) and situated at Biahmu
near the Faiyum lake, these colossi are sometimes remarked upon as being unusual for
Egyptian colossal sculpture in appearing to have been originally isolated and exposed,
lacking any obvious indication of an adjacent temple structure. Yet there is clear evi-
dence that although visible from some distance away, the colossi were in fact originally
surrounded by walls that enclosed a chapel area in front of them61—thus restricting
the ability to approach them directly. In the 1240s ce, the historian Al-Nablusi refers
to the popular belief in the healing efects of the colossi, with incense being burnt at
their feet.62 These practices refect a local Islamic tradition in the Faiyum region63 and
need not be taken as indicative of Pharaonic times, when access to the colossi appears
to have been much more circumscribed.
The Sphinx of Giza—the largest single sculpture to survive from ancient Egypt—
poses similar questions of architectural access. Although the statue’s original identity
and purpose are a matter of continuing debate, by the early New Kingdom (c. 1400
44 Campbell Price
bce), the Sphinx was worshipped as a manifestation of the sun god, Haremakhet
(Horus-in-the-Horizon) and appeared as the object of devotion on a number of royal
and non-royal monuments in a manner very similar to representations of the cult
colossi discussed above. The enclosure from which the Sphinx is hewn was referred
to during the New Kingdom as setepet ‘the chosen or select (place)’, and mudbrick
walls built to protect it from encroaching sand served also to limit human access to
it,64 signalling that even the most colossal and apparently well-known statue may not
necessarily have been approached directly. In each of these cases of colossal sculpture,
direct physical access to the statue itself was not a prerequisite for the pious devotion
each inspired.
Private Persons and Portraits

By far the most numerous sculptures in many Egyptian temples were those of private
(i.e., non-royal) persons. Non-royal sculpture evolved from the fundamentally bipar-
tite nature of the elite Egyptian tomb, with its sealed and supposedly secure burial
space, usually underground, and an open tomb chapel to receive visitors and oferings.
The tomb chapel was the primary context of non-royal sculpture in the Old King-
dom (or ‘Pyramid Age’, c. 2600–2200 bce). So-called ‘appeal to the living’ texts were
inscribed on walls, encouraging passers-by to stop and perform ritual service for the
deceased. At their most elaborate, such texts developed into contracts drawn up with
local temple staf to provide regular oferings for the deceased tomb owner(s), present
in the form of a statue. A tension clearly existed between the desire for a steady stream
of living people to enter a tomb chapel in order to perform rituals and to leave ofer-
ings and the fear that they might do so in a state of impurity or threaten the security
the burial itself. Thus, a text in the Fifth Dynasty (c. 2400 bce) tomb of Pehenwikai at
Abusir has a curse: ‘as for any man who will enter upon these images (= statues and/
or two-dimensional reliefs) of mine in his impurity there will be judgement with him
in the place where judgement is’.65 Statues were the main conduits for spiritual forces
and the focal points of funerary cult rituals. As such, a real fear existed that the statue,
as a serviceable alternative body for the spirit of the deceased, would be damaged with
unspecifed but presumably negative efects on the deceased’s existence in the afterlife.
Pharaonic statues were individualised and activated principally by inscriptions and
did not aim for mimetic portraiture. Therefore, a statue might readily be repurposed
by even partially reinscribing it with a new owner’s name. This created a social and
cultural need for the Egyptians to place statues of the (normally male) tomb owner—
and those of wives, other family members and even servants—within an enclosed
chamber called the serdab (the Arabic word for ‘cellar’), usually visible to the living
visitor through a small aperture in a wall of the chapel (Figure 2.5). Another slightly
less labour-intensive solution to the same problem was to sculpt statues directly out of
the rock—often multiple times—as an insurance against removal.
Unlike statues of deities and the pharaoh, which were more likely to be assured of
some form of regular ritual service, the statues of private persons were dependant on
those who might happen to stop by the tomb chapel. Particular occasions, notably a
series of annual festivals, are often specifed in inscriptions. A certain cynicism may
have developed regarding the assurance of funerary obligations, which was what per-
haps led to a shift in the early second millennium bce from tomb chapels as the main
locus of private sculpture to statues placed in temples of the gods.
Pharaonic Egypt 45
Figure 2.5 Aperture in the serdab of the tomb chapel of Ti at Saqqara (c. 2400 BCE); the statue
of the tomb owner within is a replica of the original.
Readily accessible tomb sculpture persisted until the end of the second millennium
bce, and the number of surviving examples displaying signs of deliberate damage is
signifcant. Tomb chapel sculpture tended to favour the conjugal ‘pair statue’ showing
both man and wife together—connecting the potential of sexual union with rebirth
and potency in the afterlife. On the other hand, temples tended to house individual
male statues, in an attitude vis-à-vis a deity. The privilege of having a statue within a
temple was aforded to the elite from the Old Kingdom, c. 2400 bce, and became pro-
gressively more common until the temple became the principal setting for non-royal
statuary in the frst millennium bce.
Just as tombs of the Old Kingdom onwards carried inscribed ‘appeals’ to the liv-
ing, so elite statues between 1800 and 30 bce made appeals targeted at the temple
staf, whom it was hoped would frequent the areas in which the statues stood. Thus,
a typical example from around 300 bce asks those few with privileged access (and
therefore more likely to be able to read the hieroglyphic text on monuments) to act for
46 Campbell Price
the statue: ‘O initiates of Amun, lector priests and pure priests of the sacred place, you
shall say “He shall favour you” for this statue, you shall bend your arms (in ofering)
for it’.66 With a growing number of statues in sacred spaces clamouring to be read and
respected, a strongly competitive environment emerged. Some texts imply the expecta-
tion that oferings would be so extensive that statues would require cleaning:
You [the god Amun] shall establish it [the statue] in your house for eternity, among
your followers, who do what you want in pouring water for my form, protecting
(my) statue from all the remains of your oferings, wiping away the dirt from me,
consisting of (remains of) his [the deity’s] oferings . . . .
(He) who removes me from my place, the same shall be done to him; (but) you
shall cause me to remain. I have entered into your house (because) I know (that)
the god reciprocates.67
This text enters into a typically rhetorical reciprocal arrangement of promise and
threat; what you do shall in turn be done to you. In the same vein, a curse text on
another statue warns:
As for anyone, any scribe, any junior, any learned man of this temple who destroys
(my) statue in this temple or damages its writing, they shall fall to the anger of
Amun and they shall be guilty ones of the king.68
Such anxiety about damage must have arisen from experience. Even within the
sacred precincts of the temple, statues might be deliberately damaged. Defacements
and usurpations were the result of engaging with a literate audience; inscriptions
allowed an individual to be identifed and singled out for veneration—or attack. Egyp-
tian statues could thus be the sites of contest and of protest, refecting the interlinked
social networks—and corresponding rivalries and resentments—of generations of the
same families within temple society.69
Simple seated or standing statue forms do not appear to have been common in
temples; much more popular was the compact ‘block’ type, which provided a conveni-
ently squat, sturdy monument with a generous amount of relatively fat space both
(vertically) to cloak the fgure in inscriptions and, as implied earlier in this chapter
(horizontally) to rest oferings. Although sometimes characterised as a passive stance,
the ‘block’ form also implies the favoured status of an individual,70 not least as a con-
spicuous consumer of linen in which the fgure is represented as shrouded. More obvi-
ously active poses developed later, making explicit the function of the statue (owner)
as a participant in temple ritual. Inscriptions reify this intent and address the deity
directly. Thus, on a statue of an ofcial named Udjahorresnet from around 520 bce,
which depicts him holding a naos-shrine with an image of the god Osiris within, a
text specifes the reciprocal relationship between the divine and the statue (owner):
‘O Osiris, lord of eternity, the Chief Physician Udjahorresnet has placed his hands
around you in protection. Your Ka-spirit shall command that everything good be done
for him, inasmuch as he has made protection around you forever’.71 By being shown
in the act of protecting the divine image, the statue (owner) might beneft from god’s
benevolence—reciprocity represented in three-dimensional stone. Given the concern
to avoid damage to the statue, one wonders whether there was another practical con-
cern motivating the depiction of men holding divine images; individuals could thus in
Pharaonic Egypt 47
some sense ‘hide’ behind the divine efgy, using it as something of a talismanic shield,
hoping the presence of the deity would dissuade any would-be attackers or usurpers
from harming the statue and incurring divine wrath.
The shrine-bearing form appears to have been introduced by an enterprising ofcial
called Senenmut around 1450 bce. He held numerous high-ranking titles during the
reign of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Proximity to the throne and commensurate
access to resources enabled Senenmut to commemorate himself in an unusually large
number of statues, experimenting with a number of new forms.72 Thereafter statues
of elite men (apparently never women) increasingly depict them as holding or sup-
porting a representation of a divine image (a so-called ‘theophorous’ pose) or within a
shrine (‘naophorous’) (Figure 2.6). These statues were themselves set up mostly within
temples, and their forms claim physical and ritual knowledge of usually hidden divine
images, emphasising the privilege of gaining access to them. These statues display the
Figure 2.6 Naophorous statue of an ofcial named Hor, c. 590 bce, now in Manchester
Museum.
48 Campbell Price
‘exclusive intimate service’ of ritual procession,73 appropriate to display in a temple
setting but a privilege unlikely to have been permitted to all those allowed within the
sacred precincts. This implies a relatively small audience of those with the required
cultural knowledge to understand and appreciate the meaning of these sculptures.
A similar desire to stand out from the crowd in order to secure the attention of
temple staf, and presumably of the gods themselves, is illustrated by the deliberate
evocation of old-fashioned or outmoded forms, through which it was possible to catch
the eye of those (few) with knowledge of much older, venerable sculpture. This phe-
nomenon of ‘archaism’ is sometimes explained by Egyptologists as motivated by a
general sense of nostalgia. Rather, the trend is more likely to have been driven by a
more prosaic need to attract oferings and prayers, based on the assumed observation
of and comparison with the statues of great men of the past that still received atten-
tion.74 Again, the number of individuals with the requisite experience and apprecia-
tion of sculptural forms within the temple was limited—but even amongst this small
group, competition is likely to have been active.
Desired visual salience might also be achieved by simply usurping a particularly
striking-looking older piece of sculpture. To take one example, an almost life-sized
statue of the Mayor of Thebes, Sennefer, and his wife (c. 1450 bce) is unusual in a
temple context for displaying the conjugal pairing of man and wife—more suited to
the tomb. In fact, their statue pair may have originated from the couple’s tomb chapel
on the west bank of Thebes and was for some reason transported over to Karnak at
a later period. Distinctive patterns of abrasion on the lap of the statue and an addi-
tional dedication inscription carved onto the side of the sculpture seem likely to have
occurred after the monument was transferred to Karnak, the abrasion over a pro-
longed period of time, as a result of temple staf habitually touching the sculpture.75
Similar wear occurs on the laps of several statues depicting a roughly contemporary
Master of Works under King Amenhotep III, Amenhotep son of Hapu, as a squatting
scribe.76 This prestigious sculptural form proclaimed literacy and therefore admin-
istrative power. Several of Amenhotep’s statues make the unusual assertion in their
inscriptions that they were given as a personal gift from the king during his lifetime,
a privilege that doubtless added prestige. Even more unusually, a number of Amen-
hotep’s statues claimed to be able to transmit prayers or petitions spoken to their ears
directly to the gods. Almost exceptionally for non-royal people, Amenhotep son of
Hapu was later deifed and became associated with healing; one wonders if the claims
made by his statues—and indeed the reputation they helped to generate—may have
helped promote him to divinity.
Such an intermediary function was an ideal rhetorical device to secure the attention
(as well as anticipated oferings and prayers) from those within the temple and was
also mobilised by another relatively rare statue-type: mendicant or ‘begging’ statues,
the so-called ‘chauves of (the goddess) Hathor’. Through their apparently abject atti-
tude, these bald-headed squatting fgures must have arrested the attention of those
passers-by able to access sacred spaces because they are unlike most other, rather more
‘dignifed’ elite sculptures found in great numbers elsewhere in temples. Like Amenho-
tep son of Hapu, the chauves’ inscriptions vaunt special access to the divine and claim
to be able to pass on messages in exchange for beer poured into their cupped hands or
ointment applied to their bald heads.77
A later form of the same strategy appears with so-called ‘healing statues’. Again,
these statues are a relatively rare and visually striking type, able to stand out in a
Pharaonic Egypt 49
crowded courtyard because they are entirely covered in text, except the face. The
inscriptions are predominantly composed of spells against snakebites and scorpion
stings, and the statues display a prominent ‘Horus cippus’ element, a powerful magi-
cal motif depicting the innocent child god Horus overcoming ferocious and poisonous
creatures.78
A handful of examples of the healing statues and a signifcant number of other stat-
ues of the last centuries bce and early years ce display apparently ‘lifelike’ facial fea-
tures and have attracted the attention of a number of commentators, for whom they
demonstrate the infuence of Greek and Roman lifelike portraiture.79 Egyptian sculp-
ture was never concerned with mimetic reproduction of the face. Statues were not
located in the same contexts as Graeco-Roman sculpture until well into the Roman
period. Rather, the incidence of sculpted faces that could have belonged to living indi-
viduals—always incongruously attached to generically young and athletic bodies—
were designed to arrest the attention of the initiated passer-by, a deliberate ploy to
maximise the efectiveness of the statue in the context of a temple flled with many
other statues, each jostling for an interface with the living and the gods.
It is often assumed that the ‘healing statues’ (and, to a lesser extent, those of Amen-
hotep son of Hapu and the chauves), were placed for ‘public access’ and intended
for the common good—that is, for those unable to access the inner parts of the tem-
ple. Elsewhere, I have argued against such a sentimental vision of elite concerns in
Pharaonic Egypt.80 Each of these examples directly address their audience, exploiting
weaknesses and insecurities of those within the temple, who were doubtless eager for
a ‘quick fx’. As Rosenmeyer observes of apparently devotional Greek and Latin graf-
fti on the Memnon colossus, perhaps unsurprisingly, piety often overlaps with self-
interest.81 A rather cynical picture of elite monopolisation of access to sculpture seems
likely, emphasising the recondite nature of high culture; to those commissioning, con-
suming and creating such works of statuary, those outside are hardly of account.82
Conclusion
Statues in ancient Egypt were to a signifcant extent self-sustaining. To be represented
as a statue conferred the qualities of idealised perfection, durability and divine per-
manence upon whomsoever was represented. Additional ‘statue-ness’ was conveyed,
almost without exception, by the presence of a solid base-pedestal and the inclusion of
a back pillar, providing (meta)physical strength and stability. Thus, Egyptian sculpture
was in essence the hieroglyphic script realised in three dimensions—replicating earlier
versions of itself rather than referring back to the observable world. The resulting
poses are static and unnaturalistic when compared to Greek and Roman sculpture—
yet canonical Pharaonic forms endured for over three millennia and attracted the
attention and admiration of many subsequent viewers.
Whether representing gods, kings or non-royals, Egyptian statues had the power to
act as one among several hosts for the spiritual essence of a being. Ideally, the suste-
nance of that spiritual force was provided and maintained by a living group of pious
individuals. As such Egyptian statues were vessels that demanded attention. A series
of strategies were employed, from active or unusual ritual poses, to evoking ancient
statues’ types and displaying lifelike faces. None of these ploys aimed at the mimetic
reproduction of life but deployed a culturally constructed ideal of ‘livingness’; the
statue could be described as a ‘living image’ (tut ankh), enlivened through ritual rather
50 Campbell Price
than the appearance of life. Extensive inscriptions on non-royal statues express the
wish to share the security and seclusion of the gods, enjoying perpetual prayers and
food and drink oferings from the gods’ ofering tables, protected from contamination
and destruction. It is repeatedly stated that desired interactions were with the literate,
properly sanctioned (and sanctifed) people permitted access to sacred space.
Statues were set up by the elite for the elite, depending on systems of personal
patronage and occasionally royal permission; as such, given the numbers of people
involved, these served small-scale private concerns, despite the fact that much statu-
ary was located in sweeping open spaces that might seem instinctively ‘public’ to a
modern Western mind.
The strangeness of Egyptian sculpture—its ability to reproduce a recognisable
‘Egyptian’ ideal—makes it intriguingly familiar to a modern viewer; photography and
epigraphic techniques make the material apparently more ‘knowable’ to scholars and
interested laypersons, providing a far greater, global overview of Egyptian works of
sculpture than was ever available to the ancient Egyptians themselves. In a deeply
unequal society, temples and even elite tomb chapels were accessible to very few. Our
expectations of how ancient Egyptian sculpture ought to have been seen is fundamen-
tally shaped by our own unrestricted access to pieces in museums and at sites, which
are far more open than they were ever intended to be in ancient times. The modern
appeal of Egyptian sculpture in popular and academic media does not equate to its
accessibility in ancient times.
Notes
1. I intentionally keep Egyptological references to a minimum. For an overview of the three
relatively distinct categories of divine, royal and non-royal sculpture in ancient Egypt with
bibliography, see Price 2020.
2. Moser 2006, 227.
3. See Dillon, Chapter 3, this volume.
4. For aspects of Egyptian palace architecture, see recently: Bietak and Prell 2018. The unu-
sual palace site of Amarna may be a special case: Hill 2012, 153–163.
5. Recently excavated by a University of Chicago Oriental Institute team: Ministry of Antiqui-
ties. 2018. ‘New Discoveries of a Domestic Shrine for Ancestor Worship of the Early New
Kingdom (c. 1500 bce) at Tell Edfu’: https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/tell-edfu/
latest-news [accessed 7.4.2019].
6. On the composition and purpose of the Karnak Cachette, the largest such deposition of
sculpture to survive from Egypt; see Jambon 2016, 131–175. Dating is unclear, but the
Cachette must have been ‘complete’ by the frst century ce.
7. For examples of non-royal sculpture dating to between 1400 and 1100 bce, with insightful
discussion of ekphrasis in an Egyptian context, see Frood 2019. The forms and functions of
later non-royal sculpture (c. 750–30 bce) are addressed in my doctoral dissertation (Price
2011a), currently being revised for publication (Price Forthcoming).
8. A discussion of Egyptian evidence in a more broadly anthropological context can be found
in Meskell 2003, 87–115, although a similar multidisciplinary approach to Egyptian sculp-
ture has rarely been attempted otherwise.
9. A reliable translation can be found in Lichtheim 1976, 55.
10. For a relatively accessible discussion of some rather arcane material, see Assmann 2001,
113–114.
11. Standard concise dictionary of ancient Egyptian: Faulkner 1962, 84.
12. For a general overview of the Egyptian temple, see Wilkinson 2000. A more detailed account
of functions and stafng is given by Shafer 1997, 1–30.
13. Translation: McDowell 1999, 110.
Pharaonic Egypt 51
14. On the purpose of Pharaonic temple decoration, see Eaton 2013.
15. For example, the vivid reimagining of Eighteenth Dynasty temple ritual in Cooney 2014, 39.
16. Lorton 1999, 128.
17. Quack 2013, 127.
18. Quack 2013, 119–122.
19. Gee 1998.
20. Broekman 2011, 93–115.
21. Baines and Yofee 1998, 233.
22. Excellent discussion of the meanings associated with linen and wrapping in ancient Egypt:
Riggs 2014, 167–170.
23. Brand 2007, 61–65.
24. Baines 2006, 268.
25. Frood 2007, 127.
26. On the largest and best-known deposit ever found in Egypt, the so-called ‘Karnak Cachette’,
see Coulon 2016; for a smaller group of divine statues also found buried at Karnak, com-
pare Charloux et al. 2017, 1189–1204.
27. For example, see the still-useful discussion of Butzer 1976.
28. Baines and Eyre 2007, 65–67.
29. Bell 1997, 164–172.
30. Bell 1997, Fig. 74.
31. Grifn 2007, 66–84.
32. Baines 2006, 283.
33. Razik 1968, 157.
34. On the function of processional routes at Thebes in Pharaonic times, see Cabrol 2001.
35. Navrátilová 2007.
36. Translation of this rather complex text: Boraik 2007, 125.
37. Spencer 2010, 441–490.
38. Lorton 1999, 145–147; Eaton 2007, 15–25.
39. Bryan 1997, 37–81. Amenhotep III specifcally states in an inscription that he ‘rejoiced
greatly’ because of the numerousness of ‘monuments’ in his temple (Bryan 1997, 57).
40. Frandsen 1990, 188–189. Indeed, several of Amenhotep’s many divine statues carry the
hieroglyphic epithet ‘lady/lord of the jubilee’, providing their ritualised raison d’être.
41. I am grateful to Hourig Sourouzian, Director of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III
Temple Conservation Project, for sight of newly excavated examples at Kom el-Heitan in
December 2017.
42. Fazzini 2005, 85–94.
43. Bryan 1997, 37–81.
45. Lorton 1999, 146. Visibility of the temple roof for someone on the ground—even nearby—
would have been extremely limited.
46. Useful series of translations: Frood 2007, 35–116.
47. McDowell 1999, 107–109.
48. Yamamoto 2011, 284–285.
49. For example Malek 1996, 862, which exemplifes the assumptions of many Egyptologists.
50. Price 2011b, 407, n. 45.
51. A perceptive observation made by Beard 2018, 68.
52. On the context and interpretation of royal colossi, see Price 2011b, 403–411.
53. Price 2008, 113–121.
54. The exclusionary efect of massive mudbrick walls that once enclosed temple complexes,
especially during the frst millennium bce, is often underestimated (e.g. Golvin and Hegazy
1993, 145–160). At least one colossus of Ramesses II at the King’s mortuary temple on the
Theban west bank was located inside a courtyard (Kitchen 1982, 175).
55. For evidence of the statue cults, see Amer 1996, 1–7.
56. The plural ‘Colossi of Memnon’ is, thus, a misnomer. On the Graeco-Roman reception of
the colossi, see Rosenmeyer 2018.
57. De Meulenaere 1992, 58–61.
58. Rosenmeyer 2018, esp. 33–38.
52 Campbell Price
59. Denon 1803, II: 92–96; Rosenmeyer 2018, 180–183.
60. Rosenmeyer 2018, 11, n. 31, 16.
61. For an account by the excavator of the site, see Petrie 1889, 53–57, pl. 26.
62. For this and other mediaeval Arabic sources, see El Daly 2005, 52–53.
63. Keenan 2005, 204. Compare the earliest known colossal statues from Egypt—those appar-
ently depicting the ithyphallic god Min—with deep gouges created some time after they
toppled over.
64. Zivie-Coche 2002, 73.
65. Translation: Strudwick 2005, 232.
66. Price 2011a, 49–50.
67. Price 2011a, 58–59.
68. Price 2011a, 26.
69. For some examples of damage at Karnak, see Price 2011a, 254–255.
70. For in depth discussion of the meaning of the ‘block’ statue form, see Schulz 1992; for the
specifc association between this form and ‘favoured’ status, see Price 2011a, 160–172.
71. Baines 1996, 91.
72. A useful summary of Senenmut’s monuments and his innovations within the context of
Hatshepsut’s reign is provided by Roehrig 2005, 117–133.
73. The theological signifcance of the theophorous and naophorous poses is discussed by Klotz
2014, 291–293.
74. On archaism as a tool to engender interaction, see Price 2011a, 219–220.
75. Legrain (1916, 153–158), points out that with some statues of deities Ptah and Sekhmet
have a polish caused by ‘hundreds of worshippers’ up until fairly recent times, when restric-
tions on access were not in place.
76. Amenhotep son of Hapu is interesting because some of his statues appear, exceptionally, to
have been found in what might be considered their ancient context, next to a pylon gateway
at Karnak (Varille 1968). Gateways were important because they optimised opportunities
for interactions in temple activity and the attention of those permitted to pass into or out of
large open spaces.
77. Clère 1995 provides a comprehensive study of the chauve statues.
78. For a summary of the forms and functions of ‘healing statues’, see Price 2016, 169–182.
79. The existence of real portraiture in the last centuries bce in Egypt was a major preoccupa-
tion of art historian Bernard Bothmer, whose exhibition catalogue on the subject (1960) still
dominates studies of this feld.
80. See Price 2016, 175–179.
81. Rosenmeyer 2018, 25.
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3 Portrait Statues in the Athenian
Agora in the Roman Period
The Archaeological Evidence
Sheila Dillon
Introduction
The travel writer Pausanias’ Description of Greece, written in the later second cen-
tury ce, is a rich source of information for understanding the buildings, monuments,
and topography of the city of Athens. His detailed account of the Acropolis and
the Agora are invaluable for reconstructing the monument landscape of these two
important sites.1 Pausanias’ text, however, is not without its problems, particularly if
one is interested in the monuments of the period in which he himself lived, as it has
been well documented that Pausanias’ chief concern was the buildings and statues of
the Archaic and Classical periods.2 In his description of the Agora, for example, he
mentions encountering over 20 portrait statues, all of which—save for the statue of
Hadrian—are pre-Roman in date.3 We know from the archaeology of the site that
Pausanias passed over without mention a number of prominent post-Classical build-
ings that were certainly standing when he visited Athens, such as the monumental Stoa
of Attalos and the nearby Library of Pantainos. Archaeology also shows us that Pau-
sanias failed to mention a large number of post-Hellenistic portrait monuments that
he surely would have seen during his peregrination through the Agora. The aim of this
chapter is to focus specifcally on the archaeological evidence for these Roman-period
portrait statues. I argue that our reliance on Pausanias in reconstructing the statue
landscape of the Agora has led to the misinterpretation of the area as a ‘museum’ or
memorial space where one would have seen mostly old statues.4 The archaeological
evidence presented here demonstrates that the Agora remained in the Roman period
a very prestigious place in which to set up portrait statues of both local and foreign
benefactors, and that most of these monuments were public honorifc statues set up by
the polis authorities, a continuation of pre Roman-period practice.5
Athens had a rich and long history of publicly displayed portrait statues that goes
back at least to the early ffth century bce. Because of this long history, which contin-
ues into late Antiquity,6 and the central importance of the portrait to Athenian sculp-
tural production, one could certainly understand fundamental aspects of the public art
of Greece and Rome by focusing exclusively on portraiture. This is not a claim that
can be made for any other genre of Classical sculpture.
Problems of the Evidence

Before discussing the archaeological evidence for Roman-period portrait statues in
the Agora in more detail, we must frst understand some of the problems with and
The Athenian Agora in the Roman Period 57
limitations of that evidence. Surely one of the main reasons that scholars have been
reluctant to rely on the inscriptions and sculpture found in the Agora excavations for
reconstructing its statue landscape is that in many cases it is impossible to be sure this
material originally came from the Agora. In reference to Daniel Geagan’s volume on
the dedicatory monuments, Christopher P. Dickenson states: ‘it is impossible to be
certain that any of the several hundred monuments discussed actually stood on the
agora’.7 P.J. Rhodes went so far as to call into question the usefulness of publishing
together the groups of objects found in the Agora excavations:
An area corresponding approximately to the Athenian Agora can be designated

as a distinct site for excavation, as has been done; but the objects found within
this area are not intrinsically diferent from the objects found outside, and in that
respect the Agora is not a separate site whose fnds automatically deserve to be
published separately from items found elsewhere in Attica.8
And in a later review of Woodhead’s volume on the decrees, Rhodes states that
‘the concept of a corpus of public inscriptions found in the Agora is therefore a dubi-
ous concept’.9 These authors do have a point. In addition, Andrew Stewart, who has
recently published a series of important articles on sculpture from the Agora excava-
tions, cautions the following:
First, however, a caveat about provenance and chronology. Unfortunately, the

discovery of a piece of sculpture in the Agora by no means guarantees that it once
stood there. In the Byzantine, medieval, and Turkish periods, huge quantities of
broken-up marble architectural elements, sculptures, and inscriptions were ferried
into the Agora from all over Athens (the Acropolis included) for use as building
material. As a result, only those pieces found in authentically ancient contexts,
preferably ones that predate the Herulian sack of A.D. 267, can be assumed prima
facie to have stood within the Agora or its immediate environs.10
These evidentiary difculties are surely why, when trying to understand and
reconstruct the portrait statue landscape of the Agora, so many have relied almost
exclusively on literary testimonia, and have focused either on the pre-Roman statue
landscape11 or on the few high profle portrait monuments, such as the Tyrannicides
and the Demosthenes, about which a great deal is known.12 For what can we possibly
say about the Roman-period statues that Pausanias failed to mention but that were
surely standing in the Agora in his day?
Stewart’s suggestion that one must look for material from ‘authentically ancient
contexts’ provides, I believe, a way forward. While he specifcally highlights the
importance of pre-Herulian deposits, which—while they do exist—are few and far
between,13 the building of the Post-Herulian Wall ofers another archaeological con-
text, secure in its later third century ce date, that is known to have incorporated mate-
rial which was close to hand, either in its face or in its fll (Figure 3.1).14 For example,
the section of the wall that stretched the entire length of the Stoa of Attalos contained
many architectural members from this building, including fragments of its monumen-
tal inscription, which allowed for its secure identifcation.15 The section of the wall
to the south of the Stoa of Attalos was built directly on top of the remains of the
Library of Pantainos and the South Stoa and contained much architectural material
58 Sheila Dillon
Figure 3.1 John Travlos, plan of the Post-Herulian Wall, 1984.

Source: Courtesy of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens: Agora Excavations.
from these buildings, including the inscribed lintel from the library that allowed for its
identifcation.16 And fnally, the fll of the stretch of the wall by the sanctuary of City
Eleusinion, the urban annex of the shrine of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis, contained
many fragments of the Attic Stelai, which we know stood in this sanctuary.17 Although
some of the material used to build the wall could in theory have been brought in from
outside the Agora, most of the architecture has been shown to come from buildings in
the Agora. The same, then, is likely to be the case for the inscribed statue bases that
were found in the wall.
According to Geagan’s catalogue, there are about 50 Roman-period statue bases
that were found in the Post-Herulian Wall, with most of the material concentrated
in Towers W4, W5, and W6 in the area of the Stoa of Attalos. While, with perhaps
one exception, we do not know precisely where these monuments stood in the Agora,
the inscribed bases give us a good idea of at least some of the statues that stood
in the vicinity of the Stoa of Attalos and along the Panathenaic Way up until the
time the wall was built. The many monument foundations preserved in this area, both
in front of the Stoa and along the Panathenaic Way next to the Odeion of Agrippa,
also suggest a dense statue landscape (Figure 3.2). That these Roman-period portrait
Figure 3.2 R.C. Anderson, plan of the Athenian Agora (centre), second century ce, 1992.
60 Sheila Dillon
monuments mostly stood on the eastern side of the Agora might help to explain why
Pausanias does not include this area in his description: this was an overwhelmingly
Roman statue landscape.
Portrait Monuments in Front of the Stoa of Attalos and Along the

Panathenaic Way
The long terrace wall in front of the Stoa of Attalos was a prime location for statue
monuments. On certain plans of the area one can see numerous foundations of vari-
ous sizes that constituted an almost continuous series of monuments which once stood
in the front of the building (see Figure 3.2).18 Most prominently at the centre, just
behind the bema, is the roughly square foundation of the so-called donor’s monument,
more than a hundred blocks of which were found built into Tower W6 of the Post-
Herulian Wall.19 This monument, which presumably originally honoured Attalos II of
Pergamon as donor of the stoa, was a tall pedestal that supported a bronze four-horse
chariot group, similar to the monument for Agrippa, the great Roman general, states-
man, and righthand man of the emperor Augustus, at the entrance to the Acropolis.
The monument for Attalos was rededicated in the Imperial period to the emperor
Tiberius by the People (Demos), the Senate (Boule), and the Council of the Areopa-
gus.20 Also found in Tower W6 were the fragments of a semi-circular monument of
c. 140 bce. that supported the bronze portrait statues of three male members of a
prominent Delian-Athenian family, set up by another family member, Kleopatra of
Myrrhinoutte.21 This monument, which may have been an exedra with space for seat-
ing, surely stood in front of the stoa facing the Panathenaic Way.22 Two additional
statue bases from Tower W6 show that the area in front of the stoa continued to attract
monuments well into the Roman period. A highly fragmentary base set up in the sec-
ond century ce honours a woman for her moral excellence (arete), goodwill (eunoia),
and nobility of character (kalokagathia) toward her homeland. Such language suggests
this was a public honorifc monument. Then, in the late-second or early-third century,
the city set up a statue of Claudius Sopsis, altar-priest of the Eleusinian Mysteries, who
was a member of the great Claudii family of Melite, one of the districts of Athens that
included the Agora.23 The statue stood on a tall slender base made of Pentelic marble
with heavy projecting upper mouldings. Additional members of this distinguished fam-
ily were honoured nearby with a group portrait statue monument that stood along the
street to the Roman Agora, discussed in more detail below.24
Tower W5, at the southwest corner of the Stoa of Attalos,25 yielded the largest
number of bases for portrait statue monuments—12 in all.26 That such a large con-
centration of statues stood in the vicinity is not surprising; the general area—at the
end of a stoa and at the intersection of the Panathenaic Way and the street that led to
the Roman Agora—would surely have been a prominent and prestigious location for
statue monuments.27 With the exception of two of the bases,28 all of the monuments
are late-Republican or early-Imperial period in date. Three are for equestrian statues,29
one—that of Julius Caesar—supported a colossal standing bronze statue,30 and fve
are from column monuments.31
None of the column monuments are well enough preserved to reconstruct their
original height, but we can get some idea of what they looked like from two better-
preserved examples: the column monument for Quintus Lutatius that stood at the
opposite (northern) end of the Stoa of Attalos and the other for Xenokles of Rhamnous,
a four-term hoplite general, an important magistrate responsible for the city’s grain
supply,32 which must have stood further south along the Panathenaic Way, as it was
found rebuilt into Tower W2 just below the City Eleusinion.33 The monument for
Q. Lutatius consisted of four unfuted column drums of Hymettian marble, with the
lowest drum bearing the inscription. The total height of the column was just over 7
meters. The capital, into which the statue would have been set, has not been found.
Assuming a statue height of around 2 m, the complete monument would have been
around 10 m tall; about, therefore, as high as the Stoa of Attalos itself.34 The monu-
ment for Xenokles (Figures 3.3–3.4) also comprised four Hymettian marble drums for
Figure 3.3 Inscribed drum from the monument to Xenokles. Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 3299.
62 Sheila Dillon
Figure 3.4 The monument to Xenokles on site, inside the remains of Tower W2.
a column height of 7.5 m; in this case, both the white marble Ionic base and capital
are preserved, for a total monument height of 8.15 m.35 With its statue, this column
monument would then have been about the same height as the one for Q. Lutatius.
Given the similar dimensions of the preserved drums from the fve column monuments
from Tower W5, I think we can safely assume they too would have reached equally
lofty heights.36
Tower W4, built over the northwestern corner of the Library of Pantainos just
opposite Tower W5, contained the bases for six portrait monuments, fve of which
are still embedded in the wall.37 The tower itself was built over the foundations of
a large nearly square monument base (5.15 × 5.35 m), which was very prominently
positioned at the entrance to the street to the Roman Agora. The bases from the tower
are all for single bronze statues: three from the early Imperial period and three from
the second century ce. The earliest honours the Athenian Antipatros of Phlya after
his seventh hoplite generalship, set up by the merchants in the late frst century bce.38
Two Romans are honoured in the early frst century ce: the statue of an Imperial leg-
ate, whose name is not preserved, was set up by the demos, and Publius Appuleius
Varus, who was honoured by the People, the Senate, and the Council of the Areopagus
on account of his moral excellence (arete) and goodwill (eunoia) (Figure 3.5).39 Both
statues stood on low bases made of Hymettian marble. From the second century ce
Figure 3.5 Base for the statue of Publius Appuleius Varus, built into Tower W4. Agora Excava-
tions, inv.no. I 928. H. 0.21 m. W. 0.79 m. D. 0.70 m.
come two statues of archons of the Panhellenion, a religious organization established

by Hadrian and based in Athens that was a league of eastern Greek city-states.40 One,
for Titus Flavius Kyllos of Hypata, a member of a very infuential family from Roman
Thessaly, was set up by the koinon of the Thessalians, surely with local authorization.
The statue honoured Kyllos for his service as agonothetes or festival organizer of the
Great Panhellenic Games and for his arete and eunoia towards the Panhellenion and
the city of Athens.41 The second, an over-life-size bronze portrait statue of Tiberius
Claudius Jason Magnus of Cyrene, was set up by his homonymous son with permis-
sion from the Areopagus (Figures 3.6–3.7).42 Both statue bases are made of Pentelic
marble, stand over a meter in height, and have projecting molded profles both above
and below.43 The fact that both bases are in the lowest foundations of Tower W4 and
are completely preserved suggests to me, as it did to Benjamin, that the statues origi-
nally stood nearby.44 And if Lee Ann Riccardi is correct that the over-life-size marble
head of a man wearing an elaborate bust crown found in the Agora Excavations
possibly represents an archon (chief magistrate) or agonothetes of the Panhellenion
(Figure 3.8), these two portrait statues would have been impressive indeed.45
From the evidence, then, of the inscribed statue bases found in the Post-Herulian
Wall, we can say that in the second century, the Roman-period portrait monuments
on the eastern side of the Agora—in front of the Stoa of Attalos and to its south along
64 Sheila Dillon
Figure 3.6 Base for the statue of Tiberius Claudius Jason Magnus of Cyrene, built into Tower
W4. Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 6737. H. 1.24 m. W. 0.87 m. D. 0.56 m.
Figure 3.7 Top view, with footprints and attachment holes, of the base for the bronze statue of
Tiberius Claudius Jason Magnus of Cyrene, built into Tower W 4. L. of left foot-
print 0.29 m.
Figure 3.8 Portrait of man wearing elaborate bust crown, perhaps an archon or agonothetes of
the Panhellenion. Agora Excavations, inv.no. S 3500. P.H. 0.36 m.
the Panathenaic Way—included at least the following: a chariot monument on top of

a tall pillar at the centre of the stoa, seven statues on columns, three equestrian statue
monuments, a colossal bronze Julius Caesar, the statue of an Imperial legate, and
two statues of archons of the Panhellenion. A landscape of such statue monuments
would surely have been impressive. This clustering of portrait statues demonstrates in
a powerful way how ‘statues attract statues’ and how proximity and grouping might
act both as a suggestion of relationships between statues and as a multiplier efect to
impress or overwhelm the viewer.46 In addition to the dramatic backdrop of the Stoa
of Attalos, the location of the bema at the centre of this monumental building may
have made the area particularly attractive as a location for Roman-period monuments,
given its potential as a focus of audience attention.47 The concentration of so many
monuments to Romans in the vicinity of the street that led to the Roman Agora may
also have been deliberate—these were, after all, public honorifc monuments whose
placement by the authorities was surely not arbitrary.
66 Sheila Dillon
The setting of so many Roman-period statues on the eastern side of the Agora may
also in part have been practical: this is where there was available space. From Pausan-
ias’ description and from in-situ monument foundations, we know that the western
side of the Agora was a favoured location for portrait statues beginning in the fourth
century bce, when such monuments frst begin to be set up in the Agora. By the time
of the Roman period, this side of the Agora was crowded with statue monuments and
therefore would not have ofered an obvious epiphanestatos topos (the most promi-
nent location), particularly if one desired some degree of isolation for their honorifc
monument. In addition to a less densely populated statue landscape, at least initially,
and the dramatic backdrop of the Stoa of Attalos, the eastern side of the Agora may
have also ofered proximity to the venerable monument of the Tyrannicides: if a recent
study by Elizabeth Baltes is correct, this statue group stood on a monumental stepped
base at the northeast corner of the Odeion, across the Panathenaic Way and directly
opposite the Stoa of Attalos.48 A display location for one’s statue in the general area of
the Tyrannicides would clearly have constituted an epiphanestatos topos, as proxim-
ity to this monument was regulated by law, at least through the Hellenistic period.49
In sum, although none of these Roman-period statue monuments were mentioned
by Pausanias, we know from their fnd contexts that they must have been standing
on the Agora when he visited. And Pausanias certainly describes other statues and
buildings in close proximity to these monuments, so he surely must have seen them
(Figure 3.9).50 His selective bias against Roman monuments and his keen interest in
the antique and the sacred is also evident even in his more complete description of
the statue monuments on the western side of the Agora. In front of the Stoa of Zeus
Eleutherios (1.3.2), Pausanias mentions the image of Zeus Eleutherios, the portraits
of Konon, Timotheos, Evagoras, all of the fourth century bce, and a statue of the
emperor Hadrian, but he passes over a large exedra for statues that was dated by
the excavator to the Hadrianic period.51 Pausanias comments on the statue of Apollo
Patroos by the late Classical sculptor Euphranor in that god’s temple but neglects to
mention the statue of the emperor Claudius as Apollo Patroos, which is also thought
to have stood in the shrine.52 He does mention the statue monuments of the Hellenistic
Kings in the area in front of the Odeion of Agrippa (1.8.2–9.4, 1.11.1), but he hardly
takes note of any statues later than the Hellenistic period.
His passing over the forest of Roman-period monuments on the eastern side of the
Agora is therefore not surprising—Pausanias clearly could not describe everything he
saw, and he was primarily interested in the monuments and statues of earlier periods.
Statues of the Roman Emperors in the Athenian Agora

The dramatic architectural transformation of the Agora in the early Imperial period,
with the construction of the Odeion of Agrippa, the re-erection of the Temple of Ares,
transplanted from Pallene, and the building of the Southwest Temple, using material
from a Doric building at Thorikos, is typically interpreted as a striking example of
the Romanization of this venerable civic space.53 Portraits of the emperors are also
thought to have had a transformative efect on the statue landscape of the Agora. By
the early Imperial period, Geofrey Schmalz has claimed that ‘honorifc images of the
imperial family began to crowd the Agora’.54 But was this in fact the case?
Approximately 24 bases for portrait statues of members of the Imperial family were
found in the Agora excavations, ranging in date from the mid-frst century bce to the
Figure 3.9 Helen Besi, plan of proposed route of Pausanias through the Agora, 1973.
68 Sheila Dillon
frst half of the third century ce.55 Most of these statue bases, however, come from
post-Antique or modern contexts, so we cannot be certain that they actually originally
stood in the Agora. The same is the case for the large number of Imperial altars found
in the excavations, the majority of which came from the demolition of the modern
houses prior to excavation.56 While these altars have been interpreted as one of the
‘manifestations of the imperial cult in the Agora’,57 we cannot on present evidence be
at all certain that they originally stood in the Agora. In addition, it has recently been
argued that the fragment of an inscribed statue base for a Roman subject, which was a
crucial piece of evidence in the argument that one of the rooms of the late frst century
bce annex of the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios housed the Imperial cult in the Augustan
period,58 does not belong to the base that stood in the annex’s southern chamber.59
The inscription, which was found built into a nearby late Roman wall, is now broadly
dated by Geagan to the frst century bce–second century ce. Finally, while the trans-
planted Temple of Ares was long considered to have housed the Imperial cult, there
seems to be no hard evidence to support this view.60
If we adhere to the guidelines set out above, that is, to include only those inscribed
bases found in authentically ancient contexts, how many Imperial statues can we say
for certain actually stood on the Agora? Out of 24, only three: the statue of Tiberius,
which replaced Attalos II as the honorand of the tall pillar monument in front of the
Stoa of Attalos;61 the statue of Claudius as Apollo Patroos, which stood inside the tem-
ple to that god;62 and the statue of Trajan, from the so-called Street Stoa.63 The base
for a bronze statue of Livia as Artemis Boulaia may well constitute a fourth; while it
was found in a Byzantine-period wall near the Southwest Temple, it is thought with
good reason to have stood either in that temple or in the Bouleuterion precinct.64
The sculptural evidence for portraits of the emperors is similarly sparse. At present,
there are only fve portraits found in the excavations that are identifed as emperors:
two very fragmentary armoured statues, both probably of Trajan, from the Street
Stoa;65 a head of Trajan, which may belong to one of these statues (Figure 3.10);66 a
headless armoured statue of Hadrian;67 a well preserved bust of Antoninus Pius, also
wearing armour, from a late Antique house on the slopes of the Areopagus;68 and
a small fragment from a cuirass bust that may represent either Marcus Aurelius or
Lucius Verus, found in the wall of a late Roman house.69 Of this material evidence, we
can only be certain that the statues of Hadrian and Trajan originally stood in the area
of the Agora. The busts come from late contexts and could easily have been brought
in from elsewhere, and their format also suggests that they were originally meant for
interior domestic display. The armoured statues from the Street Stoa were displayed
somewhere in that building,70 and the statue of Hadrian, which was found reused in
late Antiquity as a cover slab of the Great Drain near the Metroon, likely stood on
the western side of the Agora.71 This may well be the statue Pausanias saw standing
in front of the Stoa of Zeus (1.3.2), as it was found not too far from this location,
although its fne state of preservation suggests the possibility that it stood in an inte-
rior setting.
The placement of these Imperial statues—mostly set up in shrines or in interior
spaces—difers from the typical locations in which one would have encountered the
portraits of Athenian citizens and foreign civic benefactors,72 which mostly stood out-
side on the square and along the Panathenaic Way. That is, the way in which the
public would have come into contact with statues of the Imperial family is unlike how
they would have seen and experienced these other honorifc images. One of the other
Figure 3.10 Portrait head of Trajan worked for insertion into a statue, wearing laurel crown.
Agora Excavations, inv.no. S 347. H. 0.59 m. H. of head (from chin to crown, not
including laurel crown) c. 0.28 m.
main diferences is that the statues of Imperial subjects were clearly in the minority;
the notion that the images of the imperial family crowded the Agora in any period is
simply not borne out by the available evidence.73
The Importance of Public Portrait Statues in Athens

The setting up of marble and bronze statues—what is called the ancient statue habit—
was a distinctive feature of Classical Mediterranean culture. Statues were powerful
symbols of a broad array of religious, social, and political concerns, and they monu-
mentalized a range of relationships—between, for example, gods and humans, rul-
ers and their subjects, the city and its benefactors, and family members. The ancient
Mediterranean statue habit also has an exceedingly long history, beginning in about
600 bce and continuing until about 600 ce, with the peak output in the Hellenistic
and Roman periods. This habit is particularly well documented at Athens. Indeed, few
ancient centres can match the range, density, and chronological scope of the Athenian
evidence: we know more about where and why portrait statues were set up in Athens
over its long history than just about any other city in the Greek East. Portrait statues
stood not only in the Agora but also on the Acropolis, in the Theatre of Dionysos,
in the city’s many gymnasia, in its urban shrines, such as the City Eleusinion and the
70 Sheila Dillon
Asklepieion, in various public buildings, and at deme sites such as Rhamnous, and
they were also an important feature of the great sanctuary of the Two Goddesses at
Eleusis, particularly in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods.74 Athens was a city of
portrait statues. In terms of sheer numbers, there were probably more portraits in the
city than any other kind of statue. Just as at Rome, in Athens portrait statues consti-
tuted what has vividly been called a city’s ‘other populace’.75
While the Acropolis was likely the most prestigious sanctuary in the city in which
to set up a portrait, the Agora was the most prestigious civic space for these monu-
ments. And unlike a sanctuary, where access might sometimes have been restricted
or at times even blocked altogether, the Agora was not a space that could be closed.
Major roads ran through the Agora—the Panathenaic Way was not only the grand
processional thoroughfare for the parade in celebration of Athena’s birthday, but it
was also the principal route from the city’s main gate to central parts of the city and
would therefore have been in constant daily use. This accessibility was surely one of
the things that made the Agora such a desirable location for one’s portrait statue.
Portrait statue monuments were meant—indeed they needed—to be seen. The require-
ment of visibility is what is behind the stipulation in some decrees that a statue be set
up in the most prominent location (epiphanestatos topos).76 The desire for accessibil-
ity is in stark contrast, for example, to Pharaonic Egypt;77 portrait statues in Classical
Mediterranean culture seem to have been widely accessible to the public, placed in
locations where they could be seen (or ignored) on a daily basis by the full range the
city’s inhabitants.
That the Athenian Agora continued to be a very vibrant space with lots of activity
right up until the time of the Herulian sack in 267 is shown by the fact that portrait
statue monuments continue to be set up there even after Pausanias’ visit. We know
this both from inscribed statue bases and portrait sculpture. For example, in the late
second–early third century, a family group monument was set up by the Areopagus,
the Senate, and the People in a privileged position in front of the Street Stoa and along
the street that led to the Roman Agora (Figure 3.11).78 The base, part of which is still
in situ, supported the portrait statues of three members of the Claudii Metelli, an
infuential Athenian family who had deep Eleusinian connections and who claimed
descent from a famous ancestor of the Classical period: Perikles. A base for the bronze
statue of the young ephebe Aurelius Appianus, son of the kosmetes Aurelius Chrestos,
an ofcial in charge of the gymnasium, was found nearby, built into the Post-Herulian
Wall at the northwest corner of the Library of Pantainos (Figure 3.12).79 The statue,
which stood on a tall base, was set up by the Council of the Areopagus and the Senate
in the frst half of the third century. We know from a diferent inscription that Appi-
anus was killed by accident during a religious festival;80 perhaps this statue was set up
as compensation for his untimely and tragic loss.
Finally, there are two well-preserved male portrait heads that were found in Her-
ulian debris deposits and therefore likely stood in the Agora.81 Both are dated to
around the middle of the third century ce, and both were found in a well near the
Tholos. One depicts a young man with a thick cap of hair worn low on the forehead
(Figure 3.13). He has a wispy moustache and the beginnings of a beard, and thick
eyebrows that meet in the middle at the root of the nose. The other head, which is not
nearly as fne a work, represents a more mature man with short curly hair and a close-
cropped moustache and beard (Figure 3.14). There is evidence of burning underneath
Figure 3.11 William Bell Dinsmoor, Jr., plan of the Library of Pantainos and vicinity, with the
location of Agora I7483 indicated, 1975.
the chin and at the back of the head, damage sustained surely during the sack. The
relatively fne state of the surface preservation of both heads shows neither was on
display for very long. Given the context in which they were found—the well is located
in between the Tholos and the Bouleuterion—the statues surely stood somewhere in
this area, perhaps on one of the many monument foundations preserved in front of
the Metroon.82
Conclusion
The archaeological, epigraphic, and sculptural evidence presented here clearly dem-
onstrates that the Agora remained a very important and prestigious display location
72 Sheila Dillon
Figure 3.12 Base for a statue of Aurelius Appianus, set up in the frst half of the third century ce
by the Council of the Areopagus and the Senate. Agora Excavations, inv.no. I 673.
H. 1.05 m. W. 0.50 m. D. 0.50 m.
for portrait statues throughout the Roman period. The People and the Senate con-
tinued to vote these statue honours, just as they had in the pre-Roman period. These
Roman-period monuments stood mostly on the eastern side of the Agora, in front of
the Stoa of Attalos, along the Panathenaic Way, and on the road to the Roman Agora,
although there were clearly some Roman portraits interspersed among the older statue
monuments on the square’s western side as well. The continual addition to the statue
landscape of contemporary imperial-period monuments underscores the vibrant and
ever-changing nature of this important civic space.
Figure 3.13 Portrait of a young man, early third century ce. Agora Excavations, inv.no. S 954.
H. 0.32 m. H. of head 0.25 m.
Figure 3.14 Portrait of a mature man, mid-third century ce. Agora Excavations, inv.no. S 950.
H. 0.27 m. H. of head 0.25 m.
74 Sheila Dillon
Notes
1. For Pausanias in the Athenian Agora, see Thompson and Wycherley 1972, 204–207.
Pausanias’ description of the Agora is contained in Book 1, Chapters 3–17. For his route
through the Agora, see Vanderpool 1949. Leone 2020 came to my attention too late to inte-
grate into the text of this chapter. Where possible, I have inserted into the notes references
to his catalogue of statue bases.
2. Habicht 1985, 22–24, where he also indicates Pausanias’ preference for sacred over public
buildings and sacred over secular statues; Dickenson 2017b, 435, who states that Pau-
sanias ‘does not mention a single honorifc statue on any of the agoras he visited that dates
later than the Hellenistic period’, Pausanias’ interests do, however, include the history and
monuments of the Roman period much more than has been allowed, as Arafat (1996) has
demonstrated. See also Leone 2020, 15–28, for a discussion of why Pausanias might have
included certain statue monuments and not others in his description of the Agora.
3. The statues Pausanias mentions are most easily accessible in Wycherley 1957, 207–217.
4. Walker 1997 (museum); Alcock 2002, esp. 51–71 and 88–89 (memorial space); Spawforth
2012, 70 (museumifcation). For a recent critique of the Agora as a museum, see Dickenson
2017a, 396–401. For the continued importance of the Agora as a prestigious site for monu-
ments in the Roman period, see Dickenson 2017b.
5. For the priority of the demos and the boule, see Oliver 2007, 197–198, who analyzes the
decrees of the Hellenistic period.
6. Gehn 2016.
7. Dickenson 2017b, 436. The difculties with the evidence of inscribed statue bases is also
one of the main reasons Dickenson did not deal at length with honorifc statues in agorai in
his book On the Agora—Dickenson 2017a.
8. Rhodes 1976, 194.
9. Rhodes 1998.
10. Stewart 2012, 269.
11. E.g., Krumeich and Witschel 2009, 197–209.
12. E.g., Demosthenes: Shear 2017; von den Hof 2009; and Dickenson 2020, 115–117. Tyran-
nicides: Azoulay 2017.
13. For destruction or damage associated with the sack of Sulla and its aftermath, see Hof
1997; Parigi’s recent analysis of the archaeological evidence from the Agora (Parigi 2019)
is much more conservative in its conclusions.
14. Built in the reign of Probus (ce 276–282) or slightly after: Frantz et al. 1988, 11; a section-
by-section description of the wall and its material by Travlos is provided in an appendix,
125–141. For a more recent assessment of the wall’s date, with construction completed by
ce 300, see Theocharaki 2020, 125–126.
15. Frantz et al. 1988, 131–133.
16. Frantz et al. 1988, 130–131.
17. Frantz et al. 1988, 128–130.
18. Thompson 1950, 318; Ma 2013, 104. For the importance of this side of the Agora for
statues of Romans, see Krumeich and Witschel 2009, 208–209.
19. Camp 2010, 122–123; for a full description of this section of the wall and its excavation see
Frantz et al. 1988, 131–136; material found in Tower 6: 133–134.
20. Geagan 2011, H253; Leone 2020, cat.no. 37, 187–188.
21. Geagan 2011, H329.
22. For this monument and its relationship to the Delian monuments of this extended family,
see Dillon In Press.
23. Geagan 2011, H381; Clinton 1974, 85 n. 13.
24. Clinton 2004; and Woloch 1969. Members of this family were also honored with monu-
ments at Eleusis.
25. For a description of some of the material found in Tower 5, the interior of which was used
as a church (Panagia Pyrgiotissa), see Frantz et al. 1988, 133.
26. Julius Caesar: Geagan 2011, H251; Leone 2020, cat.no. 8, 162–163; Tiberius: Geagan
2011, H252; Leone 2020, cat.no. 25, 177–178; Claudius as Apollo Patroos: Geagan 2011,
H258; Leone 2020, cat.no. 46, 194–195; Euthyphron: Geagan 2011, H337; Tiberius
Claudius Atticus Herodes: Geagan 2011, H371; Leone 2020, cat.no. 74, 219–220; Quintus
Caecilius Metellus: Geagan 2011, H410; Leone 2020, cat.no. 6, 159–160; Appius Claudius
Pulcher: Geagan 2011, H411; Leone 2020, cat.no. 7, 161–162; Gaius Cocceius Balbus:
Geagan 2011, H412; Leone 2020, cat.no. 11, 165–166; Paullus Aemilius Lepidus: Gea-
gan 2011, H414; Leone 2020, cat.no. 13, 167–168; Publius Cornelius Dolabella: Geagan
2011, H415; Leone 2020, cat.no. 26, 178–179; Sextus Vibidius Virro: Geagan 2011, H421;
Leone 2020, cat.no. 31, 182–183; Gaius Asinius Pollio: Geagan 2011, H425; Leone 2020,
cat.no. 32, 183–184; Publius Memmius Regulus: Geagan 2011, H426; Leone 2020, cat.no.
40, 190–191.
27. The dromos on Delos shows a similar concentration of statue monuments at the end of a
stoa and along an important street: Dillon and Baltes 2013.
28. Geagan 2011, H337 (Euthyphron, Hellenistic), H371 (Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes,
Hadrianic).
29. Ibid., H410 (Quintus Caecilius Metellus, 67–62 bce), H421 (Sextus Vibidius Virro, early
frst century ce), H426 (Gaius Asinius, c. ce 20).
30. Ibid., H251 (Julius Caesar, 49 bce). The size of the statue, in bronze holding a spear, is
derived from the size of the block into which the statue was set: H. 27 cm; W. 1.145 m; Th.
87 cm.
31. Ibid., H252 (Tiberius, before ce 4), H412 (Gaius Cocceius Balbus, 45–27 bce), H414
(Paullus Aemilius Lepidus, 31–22 bce), H415 (Publius Cornelius Dolabella, 30 or 7 bce),
H425 (Gaius Asinius, c. ce 20).
32. Geagan 1967, 18–31.
33. For the description of their fnd spots, see Frantz et al. 1988, 129.
34. Quintus Lutatius (c. 87–84 bce): Geagan 2011, H408, H. and D. of inscribed drum: 1.6 m,
88 cm; Leone 2020, cat.no. 2, 156–157.
35. Xenokles (end of frst century bce): Geagan 2011, H345, H. and D. of inscribed drum:
1.78 m, 75 cm; Leone 2020, cat.no. 19, 173.
36. The size and diameter of the preserved inscribed drums: Geagan 2011, H252 (Tiberius)
H. 1.10 m, D. 79 cm; H412 (Gaius Cocceius Balbus) H. 2.04 m, D. 67 cm; H414 (Paullus
Aemilius Lepidus) H. 1.66 m, D. 73 cm; H415 (Publius Cornelius Dolabella) H. 1.34 m,
D. 73; H425 (Gaius Asinius) H. 1.83, D. 65. For a brief discussion of these column monu-
ments, see also Schmalz 1994, 83–84; and Dickenson 2017a, 168–169.
37. For a description of some of the material found in Tower 4, see Frantz et al. 1988, 130–131.
The bases include Antipatros of Phlya (c. 18/7 bce or later): Geagan 2011, H343; Leone
2020, cat.no. 16, 170–171; Tiberius Claudius Sostratos (late frst–early second century ce):
Geagan 2011, H367; Leone 2020, cat.no. 64, 210–211; Titus Flavius Kyllos (after ce 157):
Geagan 2011, H402; Leone 2020, cat.no. 97, 238; Tiberius Claudius Magnus (after ce
161): Geagan 2011, H404; Leone 2020, cat.no. 98, 239; Publius Appuleius Varus: (early
frst century ce): Geagan 2011, H423; Leone 2020, cat.no. 34, 185; unnamed Roman mag-
istrate (imperial legate, ce 1–50): Geagan 2011, H430; Leone 2020, cat.no. 48, 196–197.
38. Schmalz 2009, 149–150, n. 186.
39. Schmalz 2009, 187–188, n. 239.
40. Benjamin 1968. On the Panhellenion, see Spawforth 2012, 246–255, with further
bibliography.
41. Sekunda 1997, 218–219, who traces the long history of this important Thessalian aristo-
cratic family.
42. Spawforth and Walker 1986, 98–100.
43. Geagan 2011, H402 (Titus Flavius Kyllos) H. 1.33 m, W. 48 cm; H404 (Tiberius Claudius
Jason Magnus) H. 1.24 m, W. 87 cm.
44. Benjamin 1968, 338.
45. Agora Excavations inv. S 3500: Riccardi 2007. The head, which is broken of from a statue,
was found in 2002 in Byzantine fll south of the City Eleusinion.
46. Phrase used by Ma, who analyzes in depth the spatial dynamics of statues—Ma 2013,
111–151.
47. See Dickenson 2017a, 168–169.
48. Baltes 2020. On the statues of the Tyrannicides in the Roman period, see Azoulay 2017,
139–161.
76 Sheila Dillon
49. Azoulay 2017, 124; Oliver 2007, 198–199.
50. See also the plan of his route in Thompson and Wycherley 1972, 206, Fig. 52.
51. Thompson 1937, 58, 68; Dickenson 2017b, 442, n. 33.
52. Geagan 2011, H258; the statue was dedicated by Dionysodoros of Sounion, who had served
as hoplite general and priest of the Imperial cult, and made by the sculptor Euboulides of
Piraeus. Although the base was found in Tower W5, the statue is thought to have stood in
the temple: Shear 1981, 363; a view endorsed by Arafat 1996, 86.
53. Shear 1981; Walker 1997; Alcock 1993, 192–198; Alcock 2002, esp. 51–64; Spawforth
2012, 59–86 (on the Odeion of Agrippa). For the suggestion by John Hayes that the Odeion
was actually built by a diferent Agrippa altogether and in the mid-frst century ce, see Raja
2012, 106, n. 401. For a more nuanced view of the ‘Romanization’ of the Agora in the early
Imperial period, see Dickenson 2017a, Ch. 3 passim.
54. Schmalz 1994, 84. The prominence of the imperial image on the Agora is implied in Alcock
1993, 195–196; Alcock 2002, 60–64.
55. Geagan 2011, H249–271; and a second statue of Trajan not included in Geagan’s cata-
logue: Shear 1973, 175–176, n. 2; Højte 2005: no. Trajan 101.
56. Geagan 2011, H273–315. Of the 43 altars, only one (H 281), perhaps for Augustus, was
found in a context that predated the Herulian sack, which means that it is the only one
surely to have come from the immediate area.
57. Alcock 1993, 182:
manifestations of the imperial cult in the agora will be discussed in some detail below
(pp. 195–196), and here it is simply worth noting that of the ffteen public Athenian
altars to Augustus, all but one were found in or near this area.
58. Thompson 1966; Alcock 1993, 195; Alcock 2002, 60; Spawforth 2012, 132 (although
earlier he was more uncertain about the association: cf. Spawforth 1997, 186, n. 21).
59. Geagan 2011, H470; broadly dated to the frst century bce–second century ce, with the
observation that the ‘profles of the chamfered upper edges do not align closely enough to
confrm Thompson’s association with capping stones from the Annex to the Stoa of Zeus’.
60. Stewart 2016, 601–602, nn. 56–57; Stephanidou-Tiveriou 2008, 25–26; both provide
extensive earlier bibliography.
61. Geagan 2011, H253 (the extent of the reuse—simply reinscription or a new statue?—is not
known).
62. The base for the statue of Claudius as Apollo Patroos (Geagan 2011, H258) was found at
Tower W5 (Church of Panagia Pyrgiotissa) in 1871.
63. Inscribed base for the statue of Trajan: Shear 1973, 175–176, n. 2; Højte 2005: no. Trajan
101. Sculptural remains of the statue of Trajan from the Street Stoa: Dillon 2019 in prepa-
ration. On the Street Stoa, see Camp 2010, 128–130, n. 47.
64. Geagan 2011, H254; Leone 2020, cat.no. 36, 186–187. For the location of the temple, see
Camp 2010, 68, n. 20. The statue of the empress was set up by the boule, the demos and
the Areopagus, suggesting that it indeed stood in the Agora.
65. Agora Excavations inv.no. S 2518, legs of armored statue: Riccardi 2009, 62, Fig. 60 (only
publishing a small selection of the fragments that belong to this statue); for fuller publica-
tion see Dillon Forthcoming; second armored imperial statue: Agora Excavations inv.nos
S 2501, 2502, 2504 (unpublished).
66. Agora Excavations inv.no. S 347: Harrison 1953, 27–28, cat.no. 17; Leone 2020, cat.no.
53, 201 (portrait of a man of the Flavian-Trajanic period); Freyer-Schauenburg and Goette
2020, 173–175, B1.1, fg. 17a–f; Dillon Forthcoming.
67. Agora Excavations inv.no. S 166: Harrison 1953, 71–74, cat.no. 56; Gergel 2004; Leone
2020, cat.no. 71, 216–217.
68. Agora Excavations inv.no. S 2436: Shear 1973, 170–177.
69. Agora Excavations inv.no. S 1855: Dillon 2018, 383, Fig. 3.
70. Dillon Forthcoming.
71. Harrison 1953, n. 56, 71–74; Gergel 2004; Bergmann 2010; Spawforth 2012, 255–261;
Karanastasi 2012-2013.
72. Smith 2015, 733, where he also notes that ‘Statue honors for the emperor and his family
were in the minority’.
73. For the argument that local visual history, rather than stylistic infuence from Rome, profoundly
shaped the appearance of Attic portraits of the Roman period see Dillon Under Review.
74. Clinton 2005 includes around 300 portrait statue bases in his catalogue, which makes
up around 45% of the total number of inscriptions from Eleusis. The majority of these
inscribed statue bases are Roman in date.
75. Stewart 2004, 118.
76. For a full discussion of the locations of statues, see Ma 2013, 67–110. On decrees from
Athens and the location of honorifc portraits, see Oliver 2007.
77. See the chapter by Price (Chapter 2) in this volume.
78. Agora Excavations inv.no. I 7483: Clinton 2004.
79. Geagan 2011, C145; Harrison 1960, Fig. 37.
80. IG II2 3765.
81. Harrison 1953, 51, n. 38 (ce 215–225), 62–63, n. 48 (ce 253–268).
82. Camp 2010, 63, n. 15.
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4 Populating Public Palmyra
The Display of Statues and Their
Impact on the Perception of Public
Space in Roman Palmyra
Rubina Raja
Palmyrene Society and the Sculptural Habit in Palmyra—

An Urban Matter
Palmyra in the Syrian Desert is a famed oasis city which fourished in the frst three
centuries ce. It did so as a result of the trade relations that the city managed to upkeep
through its connections based on the caravan trade, which gave a substantial basis for
a solid and fourishing economy that was only entirely destroyed when the Romans
under the emperor Aurelian sacked the city in 272 ce.1 The city was situated more
or less halfway between the river Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast in a region
that can be termed steppe desert, which means that parts of the hinterland could be
cultivated as well as used for pasturing.2 Although Palmyra was a city highly aware of
its surrounding world and an important player in parts of the global trade networks
of the Roman period, Palmyra was not, and never became, a metropolis like Rome,
Alexandria or Antioch. It was at the larger end of the spectrum of middle-sized cit-
ies, covering about 120 hectares at its largest extent (Figure 4.1).3 With the surge in
urban wealth, which can be detected already from the late frst century bce, followed
a physical monumentalisation of the urban landscape and its surroundings, which
was intensifed in the frst and second centuries ce and continued well into the third
century ce.4 With the monumentalisation of the urban settlement followed also the
monumentalisation of the funerary environment, since as the society expanded, there
also came a growing need for disposing of the dead (Figure 4.2).5
Palmyrene society was a tribal-based society and had a set of strong elite families
that dominated the public and religious life of the city.6 Men were most important,
but we have some evidence testifying to the fact that women could also hold property
and take part in some aspects of public life.7 It was the wealth and social status of
primarily the male elite members that we see refected both in the public and religious
sphere in Palmyra as well as in the funerary sphere.8 As Jean-Baptiste Yon has aptly
put it: ‘the history of Palmyra in the Roman period is mostly the history of its elites’.9
The funerary sphere was dominated by a set of monumental grave buildings, namely
the large grave towers, which hover over the city to this day and are characteristic
features of Palmyra.10 The tower tombs were followed by the introduction of large
underground graves, hypogea, which were not that visible in the landscape. However,
they were impressively monumental in their underground architectural expressions,
and some could hold up to 400 burials. In these graves, locally produced limestone
funerary portrait busts were set up (Figure 4.3). This portrait tradition continued for
almost 300 years, supplemented by the sarcophagi adorning numerous of the graves
82 Rubina Raja
Figure 4.1 Map of Palmyra, after Schnädelbach, 2010.
Figure 4.2 View of tower tombs outside the city centre of Palmyra.
Populating Public Palmyra 83
Figure 4.3 Double loculus relief depicting a man and a woman, inv.no. 1028.
Source: Courtesy of Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; photographer Anders Sune Berg.
from the second century onwards. These sarcophagi were lavish monuments displayed
in the family graves underlining the importance of the elite families and their family
connections.11
The surviving locally produced limestone funerary portraits from Palmyra number
more than 4,000, which all have been collected since 2012 within the framework of
the Palmyra Portrait Project.12 The portraits were made in a signifcant and charac-
teristic local style, which is recognizable throughout the 300 years in which they were
produced.13 Since many portraits have been lost over time as a result of looting—also
in antiquity—vandalism and general deterioration of the often fairly soft limestone,
we must assume that many more existed in antiquity.14 However, whether all graves
were ever meant to have been flled up remains an open question. The Palmyrene
graves over time became lavish family galleries where the development of a family
could be studied over generations and connections between families could be made
out by the individuals who were granted access to the graves.15
The portrait habit which we detect in Palmyra was strong for about 300 years
and allows us a unique insight into its development and continuity—at least in the
84 Rubina Raja
funerary sphere.16 However, as will be shown in this contribution—perhaps not sur-
prisingly—the public sphere was no diferent, and here the portrait habit also seems
to have been particularly strong.17 What did, however, difer is that the sculptural
habit in the public sphere seems to have been more diverse and drew on sculptural
trends, including imported material, from a much broader palette than the funerary
material. While we are now able to study the development of the funerary sculpture in
detail, the role statuary played in the public sphere of Palmyra and how it would have
impacted the urban experience for inhabitants and visitors to Palmyra remain much
less studied. This is due to the fact that much less sculpture from the public sphere has
survived. In this chapter I focus on this material and explore central aspects on the
basis of case studies.
The Public Sculptural Environment in Roman Palmyra—Social

Media of Antiquity
As Palmyra rapidly expanded from the frst century ce onwards, the urban core grew
and became monumentalised. All buildings and complexes were constructed in the
local limestone that came from the numerous quarries situated in the hinterland of
the city, while only some elements were imported, such as granite columns and a few
other architectural elements.18 The local limestone was of varying quality from very
good—almost resembling marble when polished—to quite poor and porous. Streets
lined with columns were laid out, and porticoes, public monuments such as theatres,
baths and agora as well as temples with large courtyards were constructed as, of
course, were private houses.19 The streets of Palmyra stand out today, since they, in
addition to a few other large monuments, remain for tourists to stroll through—at
least until 2011, when the confict in Syria broke out and made it impossible to visit
the country as a tourist. The number of stretches of street left with columns that
carry statue bases testify to the fact that the public spaces in Palmyra must have been
crowded with visual representations of the city’s elite—mostly men, but also women,
who we know could receive honorifc statues for their deeds. In many ways, this situ-
ation parallels the one encountered in the graves—namely a dense representational
landscape of faces and bodies—confronting the visitor. One large diference would of
course have been that whereas the focus in the graves were on the immediate family,
the focus in the public spaces would have been on the elite in general.
Today the public sculpture from Palmyra makes up a much smaller corpus of
material in comparison to the vast amounts of funerary sculpture due to a number
of factors. These include the fact that the funerary sculpture was often much better
preserved, since the sculpture was located within the grave buildings—protected in
the tower graves and the underground graves. Furthermore, some public sculpture
in antiquity was made of bronze and marble. Both materials were considered pre-
cious, and they were imported to Palmyra, often from far away. They were therefore
reused and recycled intensely over time, since they were non-indigenous to the region.
Bronze and marble sculpture in Palmyra have therefore not survived to any large
extent. Bronze would have been melted down in later periods for reuse, and marble
was often burned to lime slake for use in later building projects.
In total, only about 60 more or less fragmented sculptures belonging to the
public sphere and assigned as being honorifc statues survive from Palmyra. They
include sculptures made in the local limestone, imported marble as well as bronze
(Figures 4.4–4.6). The surviving examples clearly show that the public statuary dis-
20
played variety in a very diferent way than the funerary sculpture. In the public sphere,
many more choices could be made. These concerned the material used, namely local
limestone (Figures 4.4–4.5), marble (Figure 4.6) or bronze as well as the style in which
the statue was executed. The marble statuary was mainly imported in a fnished or
close-to-fnished state. The evidence available shows that the imported marble sculp-
ture aligned with the general sculptural trends in the Roman Empire, in the case of
both male and female representations.21 The limestone sculpture was produced in the
local workshops, none of which have been found. However, these workshops can
be distinguished in the sculpture to a certain extent.22 Their sculptural expressions
adhered to the local traditions of displaying men and women in the local clothing in
Parthian-inspired styles as well as in Graeco-Roman-inspired clothing styles—both
styles that also were present in the funerary sculpture.23 The locally produced sculp-
tures in the round were adapted for display on the column consoles lining the streets
as well as for display on bases. From the architectural remains, we can deduce that
sculptural representations would also have been set up widely in sanctuaries and other
public spaces such as the agora.24 The bronze sculptural material is very fragmentary,
Figure 4.4 Male sculpture in the round on base wearing himation, 170–200 ce. Musée du
Louvre, Paris, inv.no. AO 22252.
Source: Palmyra Portrait Project, Ingholt Archive at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, PS 558.
86 Rubina Raja
Figure 4.5 Male sculpture in the round on base wearing himation and Parthian trousers and
soft boots, second century ce. Palmyra Museum.
and not much can be said about the overall patterns of these sculptures. From the
scattered evidence available, it is possible to conclude that the representations of the
Palmyrene elite in the public spaces in Palmyra were more diverse in their choice of
style than in the funerary sphere. In the funerary sphere, the focus was exclusively on
the representation of the family and its important members. However, attention was
rarely given to their importance in the public life of the city.25
What we can conclude from the architectural, epigraphic and sculptural evidence
in Palmyra’s urban landscape is that the habit of representing individuals in the public
space was one which was used extensively in the city throughout almost 300 years.
This is specifcally seen in the evidence for the monumentalisation of the city in the
period in which the main street and side streets as well as many public and religious
monuments were constructed. The streets were colonnaded, and one unique feature,
only encountered in a few other places in the East, such as Apamea, but nowhere to
the extent that they were used in Palmyra, was the consoles, which protruded from
the columns lining the streets (Figures 4.7–4.8). On these consoles, statues would
have been located. We know this for a fact because the bases carry imprints from the
statues and clamp holes. Furthermore, inscriptions are often located below the con-
soles, which tell us who was displayed in the Palmyrene public sphere.26 The consoles,
which were placed several meters above street level, seem to have been introduced at
the time when the streets were laid out, going hand in hand with the introduction of
the extensive use of portraits—also in the graves. The statues standing on the consoles
would have been visible from afar and hovered over the urban landscape, reminding
Figure 4.6 Female marble statue found near the city council building, 200–225 ce. National
Museum of Damascus, Damascus, inv.no. C4023.
Source: Palmyra Portrait Project, Ingholt Archive at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, PS 1130B.
the people in the city about the deeds and wealth of the various individuals as well as
society in general. These statues would have been more visible than those standing on
the ground, and they would have represented an entire new level of sculptural envi-
ronment that almost was foating above the city.
Judging from the number of consoles (several hundred) as well as statue bases stem-
ming from statues standing on the ground found in Palmyra, it can be concluded that
the public spaces in Palmyra—and not only the graves—must have been flled with
visual representations of Palmyrene citizens who had done well in their hometown
and therefore were given the honour or were allowed by the city council to put up
88 Rubina Raja
Figure 4.7 Statue displayed on column console on street, Palmyra.

Figure 4.8 View of a stretch of street with the typical column consoles, Palmyra.
statues of themselves or family members. The dedication of honorifc statues was a
common practice throughout the Roman world. Palmyra was, so to say, stacked with
visual representations of its elite citizens—both in the public and the funerary sphere.
This piling up of visual representations would have had an impact on the viewers,
and it would have given them something to talk about, something to experience and
something to strive for—namely to get one for themselves.
Other Media Refecting Trends in the Public Sculptural

Representations—Imitating Bronze and Marble
The Imitation of Bronze Sculpture in the Local Limestone

Sculpture—A Rare Phenomenon
Bronze statuary from Palmyra is not plentiful in the evidence from the city. A few
scraps from statues have been recovered and published. As mentioned above, this is
due to the fact that such metal objects would have been recycled in post-antiquity and
are therefore rarely handed down to us. Nonetheless, we know that such statuary was
present in Palmyra. It has often been assumed that it was imported in a fnished state.
However, there is evidence that points in a diferent direction and also gives insight
into knowledge about bronze-working in Palmyra. This evidence comes in the shape
of a sculptural fragment which most likely comes from the public sphere in Palmyra
(Figures 4.9–4.10). It is an intriguing piece which until now has not been connected
with knowledge of bronze-working. Nonetheless, this fragment gives insight into
Figure 4.9 Fragmented limestone male head from sculpture in the round imitating bronze
sculpture, inv.no. 1028.
90 Rubina Raja
Figure 4.10 Side view of fragmented limestone male head from sculpture in the round imitating
bronze sculpture, inv.no. 1028.
complex layers of the sculptural habit in Palmyra and into the processes surrounding
the production as well as the knowledge which circulated about the various materials
and the ways in which they were worked. The object is a slightly over-life-size male
limestone head in the collection of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, origi-
nally purchased by the Danish consul Julius Løytved for Carl Jacobsen’s private col-
lection.27 The head was broken of from a sculpture in the round just below the neck,
as the working of the sculpture on all sides indicates. According to the measures of the
sculpture as well as the fact that it was well-worked on all sides, including the back
side, it most likely belonged to an over-life-size sculpture in the round, which would
have been displayed in the public sphere—either on a column console or on a base
standing directly on the ground or a podium. The male head looks straight ahead.
The hair is arranged in fve rows of well-shaped locks, the direction of which alternate
from row to row. The individual thick strands of hair are clearly indicated by incised
lines. The face of the male is oval-shaped, and there are two slightly upward curv-
ing furrows over the middle of the forehead—one almost disappears under the front
hair, which has been depicted as brushed forward over the front head. The eyebrows,
rendered through thin protruding ridges, are curving and start from the root of the
nose. The eyes are large and almond-shaped and have thick and clearly carved eyelids.
The pupils and irises are indicated through deeply incised concentric circles. The ears
are elongated and lie fat on the head with the helix, tragus, scapha and the earlobes
clearly carved. The nose, which is broken of, is wide, and the mouth slim with thin
lips. The chin is rounded and the neck long and broad with a curving groove. The
piece is well worked and shows a high level of artisanship.
When looking at the carving technique applied in the production of this high-quality
piece of locally produced limestone sculpture, it is clear that it drew on knowledge
about the way in which bronze sculptures were produced. The techniques applied are
not techniques needed for the production of limestone sculpture. The rigidly incised
lines in the hair, which divide the hair into neat rows, as well as the carefully organised
strands of hair forming the locks, call to mind bronze sculpture of the Classical and
later periods. Furthermore, the carving of the eyes with small incisions on the inner
side of the pupils as well as above them are traits that are drawn from techniques
known from the production of bronze sculpture. This locally produced limestone
sculpture dated to about the turn of the second century ce was therefore a conscious
imitation of a bronze sculpture or at least a sculpture which sought to imitate bronze-
sculpture production techniques even in its smallest details. This points to the fact that
the maker/craftsman would have had frst-hand knowledge about bronze sculpture
and about how it was made and which traits were common for it. There is absolutely
no reason to have applied these incision techniques except to imitate—and through
this imitation show of a superb inside knowledge of—bronze-working. This is a very
exciting observation in the large corpus of the limestone sculpture, which underlines
that despite the fact that Palmyrene sculpture has often been characterised as provin-
cial and of poor craftsmanship, there are indeed surprising pieces if one takes the time
to look at the details.
What remains a riddle to us is whether the sculpture might have been painted to
look as if it was bronze or whether it was simply done in a bronze-working technique
to show of the abilities of the carver. There are no visible colour traces left on the
sculpture. The piece does not defnitely prove whether bronze-working took place at
Palmyra or whether bronze objects were exclusively imported in fnished state. It is,
however, suggestive of a local bronze-working tradition. In recent years, it has become
clear that even middle-sized cities could possess bronze workshops, and therefore it
should not be ruled out that Palmyra also possessed such workshops.28 The male head
testifes to the fact that sculptural trends in Palmyra were even more wide-ranging
than previously thought.
Evidence for Public Statuary as Refected in Wall Paintings—The Case of

the Tomb of Ḥairan
While the public statuary remains scarce in the evidence from Palmyra, wall paintings
from the funerary sphere provide further indications of its existence. The underground
tomb of H ִ airan in the Southwest Necropolis of Palmyra was excavated by Harald
Ingholt during one of his feldwork campaigns.29 Among other fnds, the tomb held
almost life-size wall paintings which depicted honorifc statues of the tomb’s owner
and his wife. Parts of the tomb were published in 1932, where focus was given to the
wall paintings discovered inside the tomb.30 The most detailed accounts of the tomb,
however, come from Ingholt’s unpublished excavation diaries, which were written in
Danish.31 The frst observations and descriptions of the tombs stem from his 1924
campaign diary. In the 1932 publication of parts of the grave, Ingholt named the tomb
92 Rubina Raja
after its founder, the tomb of H ִ airan, after having called it by a variety of other names
in earlier diaries.32
Through a combination of the accounts from Ingholt’s 1924 and 1928 diaries and
his sketch from 1925, a full overview of the tomb’s layout can now be given.33 The
tomb was of a larger T-shaped type, composed of a central middle chamber and two
side chambers. In the diary, Ingholt notes that there were four niches followed by a
small chamber, an exedra with frescos and four niches.34 It is in the exedra that the
wall paintings were located (Figure 4.11).
On the ceiling of the exedra, an eagle is depicted in its ‘natural colours’, as Ingholt
describes it, while the leaves are painted in green.35 On the back wall of the exedra, there
is a medallion with the portrait of a man. He is fanked by two winged fgures with dark
brown hair. They are holding wreath and palm branches. The width of the medallion is
c. 0.53 m.36 Ingholt also notices a partial inscription in two lines. He gives the transcrip-
tion and translation of it in the dairy: ‘Image of M . . .’.37 He further notes that the back
wall in the exedra is ‘red with black edges’.38 Of interest to this chapter, however, are the
two depictions of life-size honorifc statues on the sidewalls of the exedra fanking the
burial niches. At the time of the campaign, two watercolours were made by a Danish
Figure 4.11 Wall paintings superimposed upon niche model.

Source: By Scott McAvoy and Rubina Raja.
architect, Charles Christensen, who accompanied Ingholt to Palmyra. On the basis of
the watercolours and Ingholt’s descriptions as well as the 1932 publication, we get a
good impression of how the wall painting looked at the time of discovery.
To the right on the sidewall of the exedra, a woman, surrounded by lush red and
green vines with large clusters of purple grapes, is depicted (Figure 4.12). The woman
is painted with black hair pulled back with a row of small curls visible across her front
head. According to Ingholt’s notes, her skin colour was ‘very light yellow’.39 She wears
a green tunic with a red band (clavus) on her right side and a yellow himation fastened
with a brooch over the left shoulder. From the brooch, two keys are suspended. She
wears a veil of the same yellow colour, which is pulled over her hair. She is wearing
black closed shoes. The woman measures 1.65 m in height (including base), and she
is 0.48 m wide.40 She is standing on a high square base with a profle, which is only
Figure 4.12 Charles Christensen, watercolour of female fgure from wall painting in Ḥairan’s
grave.
Source: Courtesy of Mary Ebba Underdown.
94 Rubina Raja
partly visible. The base is a clear indication that this is not a representation of a per-
son in the fesh but is a painted representation of a sculpture in the round. The same
is the case with the man, who is represented in a wall painting on the left short side
exedra wall, also standing on a base with a profle (Figure 4.13). He is identifed by
an inscription above his head as being H ִ airan, son of Taimarsou. He is surrounded
by green and red vines with lush purple clusters of grapes. Above the vine motifs, an
architectural setting is also painted (part of a pediment or architrave). This setting
gives a clear impression that the statue is painted as standing in front of a building, or
potentially in a niche in or outside a building. H ִ airan’s hair is brown and waves are
indicated, imitating a curly hairdo. He wears a yellow tunic with a black band run-
ning over his right shoulder down the front (a clavus). On top of the tunic he wears a
yellow himation (‘arm-sling’ type) with neat red fnishing bands along the edges and
thicker fnishing stripes on the lower left side as well as tassels. He wears black shoes.
ִ
Figure 4.13 Charles Christensen, watercolour of Hairan ִ
from wall painting in Hairan’s
grave.
Source: Courtesy of Mary Ebba Underdown.
He measures 1.45 m in height (including base) and 0.45 m across the chest. Both wall
paintings are executed in a high quality. They incorporated a range of colour choices
and showed the tomb owner H ִ airan and his wife as they would have been represented
in the public sphere in Palmyra. These two wall paintings are in fact representations
of honorifc statues of the two individuals, which would have been set up in some
public space because of their importance to Palmyrene society, most likely as benefac-
tors in some connection unknown to us.41 As such, these wall painting are important
evidence for the sculptural habit in Palmyra but have until now not been brought into
the discussion about how sculpture in the round would have looked when displayed in
the public realm in Palmyra. The colour scheme applied in both cases also raises ques-
tions about whether—or to which extent—Palmyrene sculpture in the public sphere
was polychrome. In the case of the tomb of H ִ airan, the public sphere was, so to say,
brought into the funerary sphere, which rarely happened in Palmyrene grave settings.
However, in this unique case, the founder of the tomb and his wife were displayed—
most likely framing their funerary portraits, which are gone—as important public
persons in Palmyrene society.
Palmyra: One World—Many Habits

While Palmyra is undoubtedly the city in the eastern Roman world that has left us
the most evidence for a strong and continuous portrait habit stretching over almost
300 years, the evidence from the public sphere is fairly scarce due to the fact that the
sculpture from the public sphere has become lost over time. Nonetheless, the city’s
architecture, namely the consoles on the columns and the statue bases dispersed across
the Roman-period city, bear witness to a time in which the city would have been
crowded with visual representations of the Palmyrene elite. Held together with the
large corpus of funerary portraiture, some unique examples imitating techniques from
other production spheres such as bronze, a few wall paintings in graves and the repre-
sentations from the public sphere, it has here, however, been brought to the forefront
just how multifaceted the portrait habit in the city was and that it displayed a much
larger diversity and knowledge of broader trends and uses of media than is usually
accepted. Palmyrene society and its sculptural habit drew on a range of local and non-
local traditions as well as knowledge of the world outside Palmyra. This knowledge,
however, needs to be teased out of a complex set of fragmented material. This journey
has only just begun but promises to be one which will give an entirely new view on the
sculptural habit of this fascinating oasis city.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Christopher P. Dickenson for inviting me to give a paper at what
turned out to be a thought-provoking and stimulating conference in 2016. Further-
more, I thank the Carlsberg Foundation for funding the Palmyra Portrait Project since
2012, which has allowed me together with my research group to collect the largest
known corpus of limestone funerary sculpture from one site in the ancient world.
I also thank the Danish National Research Foundation for the grant for the establish-
ment of Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (grant: 119), which has allowed me
to explore the urban complexities of Palmyra to a much larger extent than would
otherwise be possible. I also thank Christopher Hallett and Bert Smith for discussing
96 Rubina Raja
the limestone head—which imitates bronze statuary—with me when it was on display
in the special exhibition ‘The Road to Palmyra’ at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, which
I curated together with Anne Marie Nielsen. A large thank you goes to the Palmyra
Portrait Project team members for their dedicated and thorough work within the pro-
ject. Without their dedication and eye for detail, the project would not be the success
that it is. Last but not least, I thank assisting centre administrator Mie Egelund Lind
for the editing of my text and the copyeditor at Routledge as well.
Notes
1. Seland 2015, 2016; Schörle 2017; Gawlikowski 2019.
2. Meyer 2013, 2017.
3. For comparison, a city such as the Decapolis city Gerasa covered about 85 hectares, circum-
ferenced by city walls constructed in the second century ce. Rome at its height is estimated
to have covered 1,400–1,800 ha. See Graham 2013, 283.
4. Sommer 2017; Sartre 1996, 2001; Sartre-Fauriat and Sartre 2008.
5. Raja 2018.
6. Yon; 1999a, 1999b, 2019.
7. Yon 1999b, 2002, 2002-2003; Krag 2018; Krag and Raja 2019; Yon 2019. No priestesses
are known from Palmyra, and religious ofces seem to have been restricted exclusively to
men. See Raja 2017a, 2017b, 2019c.
8. Discussions about the nature of these tribes have been undertaken elsewhere and are complex.
They should not be looked upon merely as tribes, a term which often carries colonial baggage,
but rather as organised groups, such as the phylai known from the Greek cultural sphere. For
an outline of the discussions, see Kaizer 2002, 43–51. Also see Smith 2013, 33–54. Also Piersi-
moni 1995a, 1995b (both unpublished) but summed up by Kaizer 2002, 48–49.
9. Yon 2019, 93.
10. Henning 2013a, 2013b, 2019; Gawlikowski 1970, 2003. Also see Schmidt-Colinet 1987,
1992. Discussions about the nature of these tribes have been undertaken elsewhere and are
complex.
11. Raja 2015c, 2019b, 2019d. For one quite exceptional sarcophagus, see Schmidt-Colinet
2007.
12. Raja 2019b. Also see: https://projects.au.dk/palmyraportrait/ [accessed 25.7.2020].
13. Raja 2019d.
14. Østrup 1894, 1895; Raja and Sørensen 2019; Raja 2015b, 2016a, 2016c.
15. Raja 2019a, 2019c.
16. For a standard work on the Palmyrene funerary sculpture, see Ingholt 1928. See also
Blömer and Raja 2019a, 2019b, 2019c for a new volume with several contributions on
funerary sculpture from the region. This volume presents the most up-to-date overview of
the research status on funerary sculpture in Roman Syria.
17. Raja 2019f.
18. Schmidt-Colinet 1995, 2017. Also see Raja and Steding (Forthcoming) for a set of contri-
butions which deal with production economy in Greater Roman Syria, including imported
material in Palmyra (e.g., Hirt Forthcoming).
19. Gawlikowski 2019. Also for further references.
20. Dunant and Stucky 2000; Balty 2005; Wielgosz 2000, 2010. For the various materials, see
Colledge 1976, 89–93; Balty 2005, 321–341; Wielgosz 2000, 2005, 2010. Nine of the frag-
ments stems from female honorifc sculptures: see Krag 2018, 114, who mentions about 40
fragments. This number in the Palmyra Portrait Project database is now higher. We have
up to now registered 21 sculptures either without a known context or found in a secondary
context and 36 statues with a known context (sanctuary of Baalshamin: 22; sanctuary of
Nabu: 1; temple of Allat: 1; near the Agora: 1; near the Senate Building: 1; Baths of Diocle-
tian: 1; Great colonnade: 1).
21. Krag 2018, 114–115. Furthermore, for the funerary sculpture and female representations
under Roman infuence, see Krag and Raja 2016, 2017, 2018.
22. Steding 2020.
23. Kropp and Raja 2014a, 2014b.
24. Balty 2005; Delplace and Dentzer-Feydy 2005; Gawlikowski and Pietrzykowski 1980;
Dunant and Stucky 2000.
25. See Long and Sørensen 2017 for a collection of contributions on how and where civic status
was expressed in the sculptural spheres in Palmyra. In these contributions, it is clear that
there were distinctly diferent traditions in the public and the funerary spheres in place. Also
see Raja 2015c for this observation as well as the term ‘knowledge culture’, underlining the
fact that Palmyrene society was highly aware of the choices made in the diferent cultural
spheres of which they were a part.
26. Hillers and Cussini 1996; Yon 2002, 2019. Yon 2019, 96, for the inscriptions relating to
the caravan trade.
27. Raja 2019g; I.N. 1093, 267. Also for further references. The portrait is 33.5 cm high,
20.5 cm wide and 22 cm deep in its current state. I did not note the bronze-working knowl-
edge evidence in my 2019 catalogue, since by the time of printing of the catalogue, this was
work in progress and further studies were necessary. Also see Nielsen 2019, as well as Raja
2019g for further information on the history of this collection, which is the largest collec-
tion of Palmyrene funerary sculpture outside of Syria. The collection also holds some of the
public statuary as well as a signifcant group of the so-called banqueting tesserae. For these,
see Raja 2015a, 2016b, 2019e.
28. Khalil, Seigne, and Weber 2013.
29. Raja et al. 2020 for the newest publication relating to the grave and Ingholt’s excavations.
30. Ingholt 1932.
31. Raja and Yon (Forthcoming).
32. Sørensen 2016.
33. Raja and Yon (Forthcoming).
34. Raja and Yon (Forthcoming); and Sørensen 2016.
41. Raja 2019f.
References
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Proche-Orient.
Blömer, Michael, and Rubina Raja, eds. 2019a. Funerary Portraiture in Greater Roman Syria.
Studies in Classical Archaeology 6. Turnhout: Brepols.
Blömer, Michael, and Rubina Raja. 2019b. “Funerary Portraits in Roman Greater Syria: Time
for a Reappreciation.” In Funerary Portraiture in Greater Roman Syria, edited by Michael
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5 The Statue in Byzantium
Some Questions and Cases
Paroma Chatterjee
Statues were ubiquitous in Constantinople.1 Right from the city’s dedication in 330
ce by emperor Constantine I (who, in the words of one commentator, raped and
plundered all other cities in order to adorn it) up to the depredations of the Crusaders
during the sack of the capital in 1204 ce, statues dominated the physical landscape.
Brought from various other parts of the empire and/or crafted from scratch, these
were usually wrought of materials such as bronze or marble. They stood in all the
major public spaces of the capital such as the diferent fora and the baths, along the
Mese (the main street), and, if we are to believe at least one account, even in the great
church, Hagia Sophia. The Hippodrome, or sporting arena, was a veritable sculpture
gallery, with statues studding the length of the barrier (spina) around which the races
occurred. Gods and goddesses, mythological heroes, fantastic birds and beasts, and
historical fgures were some of the three-dimensional characters one could spot whilst
strolling in the city.2 Indeed, so imposing were some of these (a statue of Herakles was
reported to be so huge that one of its thumbs measured the size of one man) that they
were inescapable to the passersby. Accordingly, they were also invested with a mighty
and often fearsome charisma which was perceived to work either for or against the
inhabitants of the capital, depending on the historical moment at hand.3
Despite the fact that several sources spanning the Byzantine era (even well beyond
the Fourth Crusade) mention, describe, and wax eloquent on the statuary of Con-
stantinople, art historical scholarship has produced relatively little literature on the
subject. Whilst there are studies of a few individual pieces (a couple of instances would
include the now lost statue of Constantine I that was positioned on that emperor’s
eponymous column and the still extant obelisk of Theodosius I),4 the category of the
Byzantine statue as a whole is remarkable for the scarcity of scholarship it has elicited.
Historians such as R.M. Dawkins, Cyril Mango, and Gilbert Dagron drew attention
to their importance in the textual record and aspects of their reception, and Averil
Cameron, Judith Herrin, and Albrecht Berger delved into the patriographic tradition,
in which statues loom large (all discussed in detailbelow), but art historians have
concentrated on the sacred icon in media such as mosaic, fresco, ivory, and wood, to
the relative neglect of the statue. The standard, most comprehensive work in art his-
tory on the latter is Sarah Bassett’s meticulous examination of the corpus of objects
that were brought to and set up in the city from the fourth to the sixth centuries ce,
although Liz James and Benjamin Anderson’s contributions to the subject in the spe-
cifc genre of patriography are important for the feld.5 The paucity of scholarship on
the statue is partly to do with the perception of a sharp divide between Late Antiquity
and the Middle Ages, with the latter being regarded as a period almost exclusively
The Statue in Byzantium 103
devoted to the production of Christian art and the disavowal of its pagan counter-
parts.6 Certainly, in the case of Byzantium, the Orthodox icon is usually posited as its
most signifcant and characteristic feature, which is no surprise given the greater num-
bers in which its exemplars exist both in situ and in museum collections. Yet a perusal
of the textual evidence (as collected by the scholars mentioned above) suggests that the
pre- and non-Christian statues that stood in the capital of the Eastern Romans were
not simply forgotten or rendered invisible with the passing of antiquity, even to the
most fervently Orthodox viewer. They remained an imposing and crucial part of the
experience of Constantinopolitans and visitors alike and, to judge from the evidence
of Byzantine patriographies, chronicles, and novels, were much pondered upon and
written about.
In light of the above points, this chapter has a twofold goal. First, it will discuss
some of the most important historical studies regarding the statues of Constantinople.
These are signifcant for the various issues they raise, many of which intersect squarely
with art historical concerns. Second, the essay presents evidence for the long-lasting
resonance of the statues in the spheres of prophecy and temporality. Indeed, it was
the pre- and non-Christian statue rather than the Christian Orthodox icon that was
perceived to be particularly powerful in those arenas and were treated as such in the
genre of patriography and the chronicle. Although the chapter will gesture to a variety
of texts, for reasons of space it will examine in detail one from each genre: the tenth-
century Patria (a large portion of which is derived from an earlier compilation known
as the Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai) and the chronicle of Theophanes the Confes-
sor from the ninth century. The Patria is a straight-forward refection of the material
consequence of statues in the Byzantine topographical imagination. The chronicle of
Theophanes, on the other hand, does not mention statues as often. However, the
modes in which it presents the Orthodox image is in telling contrast to the statues and
highlights the extent to which the Christian icon was perceived to have failed precisely
when its powers were needed the most. In thus analyzing the statue in tandem with
the sacred icon in Byzantium, this chapter argues for the necessity of studying these
images in relation to each other rather than as distinct and separate categories, all the
better to appreciate the reasons why the former was at times valued equally, if not
even more, than the latter.
The Problem of the Byzantine Statue: The Historical Perspective

When the Crusaders attacked Constantinople, they made sure that the bulk of its
statuary that stood in the fora, the Hippodrome, the marketplaces, and along the
Mese or the main ceremonial artery of the city was melted down, carted away, and/
or smashed. These statues have left few physical traces, but they certainly abound in
the textual tradition (as mentioned above). How then do we, as art historians, attempt
to recuperate this category of image when it is essentially absent in the modes we are
accustomed to dealing with? Our discipline certainly makes use of textual sources and
integrates them into analyses of the visual corpus. The feld of Byzantine studies, in
particular, has produced several excellent studies on the relationships between words
and images, not to mention a series of fnely calibrated meditations on topics such as
ekphrasis and image theories in the period.7 However, in most cases the texts serve to
augment, complicate, and/or supplement our understanding of an extant image or cat-
egory of images. The texts are anchored to a set of images or objects whose continued
104 Paroma Chatterjee
material existence into the present enables their productive use; without the images,
the texts would remain unmoored from the imperatives of a specifcally art historical
inquiry. That is why we would be hard put to fnd an art historical publication (treat-
ing almost any period) with absolutely no accompanying imagery whatsoever.
Given the above, it is no surprise that until recently most scholarship on the Byzan-
tine statue emanated from archaeologists invested in recovering the history of ancient
masterpieces and historians seeking to understand the Byzantine attitude toward
Antiquity. The historians require some elaboration, as a number of their concerns
directly refect those that art historians currently grapple with. The earliest systematic
treatment of the statues in the twentieth century is the foundational article by R.M.
Dawkins dating to 1924 titled ‘Ancient Statues in Medieval Constantinople’ and pub-
lished in the journal Folklore. It attempts to recover audience response to the pagan
statues of the capital through the lens of the textual record.8 No pictures are included.
The project was prompted partly by Dawkins’ personal interest in modern Greek
folklore and explains his wish to highlight the quotidian experiences of the ‘vulgar’,
as opposed to the erudite elite; the unlettered and unlearned citizen who passed by,
looked upon, and interacted with those ancient monuments on a regular basis.9
Some 40 years later, Cyril Mango’s article ‘Antique Statuary and the Byzantine
Beholder’ sought to capture the efects of pagan statues on their spectator.
How did he look upon these statues? Did he admire them and derive from them
some inspiration for his own artistic creations? Was he, on the contrary, shocked
by them, or perhaps simply indiferent? The purpose of asking these questions is
to set up a test case of the Byzantine attitudes towards antiquity.10
Like Dawkins, Mango asserts that even those unschooled in the classics (‘the butcher,
the candle-maker, and the lower-class saint’) ‘could and did look at these statues’.11
Although Mango goes further than Dawkins in attempting to detect traces of classi-
cal statuary in examples of Byzantine art, their goals are both remarkably similar and
strikingly modern in tenor. Above all, their questions delve into one of the issues at the
heart of art historical inquiry: the reception of images.
A third scholar in this context is French historian Gilbert Dagron, whose magis-
terial book, Constantinople Imaginaire, does not deal with statues per se but with
the major literary sources that record their existence: the patriographies.12 Dagron’s
greatest contribution was his insistence that these particular records—incoherent,
badly written, and sometimes downright wrong—were nonetheless invaluable for the
links they revealed between memory and site, lived history, and history accumulated
through book reading (or otherwise, since the author/s of the patriographies seem not
to have read too much or too accurately). But the importance of their interpretations
foreground once more the deep interest in recovering a non-elite and usually forgotten
dimension of the culture at hand. Although Dagron’s work does not evince the sort of
(sometimes accidental) art history so evident in Dawkins’ and Mango’s publications,
the preface nicely articulates certain themes that the discipline has lately been atten-
tive to: the links between what was and is and what one reads, says, and sees. Each
of those acts—reading, saying, and seeing—may yield incongruent results at diferent
moments of time even if performed on the same subject.13 Dagron was referring to
the author/s of the patriographies when he made the above observation, but they are
a signal reminder of the dangers and responsibilities attending the examination of
physical objects by scholars who must needs account for them in a completely difer-
ent medium (in this case, words).
The frst serious exploration of the patriographic evidence—a major source of our
knowledge of Byzantine statues—was performed by Averil Cameron and Judith Her-
rin.14 Their insights are invaluable for the recent work on the subject by art historians
such as Liz James and Benjamin Anderson, who have recuperated important attitudes
toward viewership, image theories, and authorship in their studies, thus paving the
way in the discipline for a consideration of these hitherto under-examined texts.15
Prophecy
The prophetic abilities of the Constantinopolitan statues is a constant in the genres of
the patriography and chronicle. It is also evident in the Byzantine novels scripted in
the twelfth century, if to a less striking extent. There is no doubt that the Byzantine
court in the middle years of the empire and beyond had a fascination with the putative
tools one could manipulate in order to predict the future. Some of the most glaring
instances of prophetic pronouncements intersect with the image debates that occurred
in the same period. In one infamous case, Methodius the monk (soon to be patriarch)
was imprisoned in the royal palace by the iconoclast emperor Theophilus because he
predicted the deaths of three emperors—all iconoclasts—including that of Theophilus
himself. The prophecies reached the ears of the emperor probably because they had
been distributed by the iconophiles, thus attesting to the propagandistic value per-
ceived to reside in such predictions.16
Although astrology was prohibited in theory during some periods, it continued to
be practiced along with other modes of divination such as lecanomancy (dish divina-
tion, or using the water poured in a vessel to divine the future), cloud-chasing, and
dream interpretation.17 Some of these techniques were imported to Byzantium from
the Arab world, but the deciphering of prophecies as they were spelled out by statues
is distinctively Byzantine, as Paul Magdalino has pointed out.18 The implications of
this insight are twofold. First, if Byzantium were unique in developing this particular
form of divination, then Constantinople, which features as the focus of such activi-
ties, also must have been a unique urban centre in the medieval era in being endowed
with such objects. Indeed, no other medieval city seems to have possessed such a
plethora of prophetic statues. Second, studies have posited these objects as symbols
of the wide reach and resources of the early Byzantine emperors, who could plunder
the most precious booty of other cities to adorn their chosen capital. Sarah Bassett
has argued that the statues were put up with a view to constructing an urban his-
tory for Constantinople rooted in the rise and fall of more venerably ancient cities
such as Rome and, in her view, also Troy.19 ‘What mattered in the long run to the
Roman imagination was the legitimating force of hoary, epic antiquity, and this is the
bond that was claimed for Constantinople in the great Constantinian collections’.20
Emperor Constantine I wished to project ‘an all-encompassing vision of romanitas,
the city’s sculptured installations were intended to shore up that vision . . . and ensure
Constantinople pride of place among the already distinguished cities of the Roman
world’.21 Imperial pride, urban splendour, and the weight of a noble lineage projected
through sculptural and architectural embellishment: these are the themes informing
most recent studies on the foundation and early history of the New Rome on the
Bosphorus.22
But the patriographies remind us that in later periods those very objects refected
imperial tensions. Two extant texts constitute this genre in Byzantium: the Parasta-
seis Syntomoi Chronikai and the Patria. The Parastaseis is notorious for the difcult,
often erroneous Greek it deploys and the puzzling information it furnishes regarding
the topography of Constantinople and the behaviour of its monuments and viewers.23
Nonetheless, it is an invaluable document recording attitudes to antiquity (the era
most of the monuments described are from) and prevailing attitudes to contemporary
image theory. It also gives us a fair idea of the look of urban Constantinople, even if
scholars are sceptical about some of its claims. Paolo Odorico argued convincingly
that the texts comprising the Parastaseis were most probably put together for the pur-
poses of a historical chronicle.24 The Patria, dated to the tenth century, repeats large
chunks of the Parastaseis, thus testifying to the latter’s perceived historical validity and
value in the Byzantine era.25
Both texts posit public statues as a category of images that are decidedly resistant to
imperial control and which, sometimes, even damage imperial prestige.26 As the repos-
itories of arcane prophecies,27 the statues thwart the eforts of emperors to decipher
them or profer up disquieting omens when they do deign to reveal their secrets. Or to
put it another way, these texts refect a dimension of imperial activity that is markedly
diferent from the normative one in which emperors busy themselves in building or
tearing down monuments, depending on their fnances and proclivities. In this par-
ticular case, the emperors are at a loss as to what some of those objects mean; often,
they are overtly apprehensive of them. Furthermore, the facility with which imperial
fgures apparently tampered with, removed, and/or destroyed holy icons, especially
during the period of Iconoclasm in the eighth and ninth centuries, is in telling contrast
to the problems they encounter when trying to do the same with the statues mentioned
in the patriographies.
The Patria
The Patria is emphatic about the importance of prophetic imagery and the need to
decipher it properly.28 The text, as mentioned, was compiled in the late tenth century
and consists of three major portions: an account of the legendary foundation of Byz-
antion up to the time of Constantine the Great, an account of the statues and buildings
of the city, and an account of the construction of Hagia Sophia in the reign of Justin-
ian I. Legend and fact are intertwined in each of these accounts, but they are no less
important for that. Indeed, the very range of objects and events included attests to the
accommodation of a fuid, vibrant, and even contradictory sense of the city as it was
understood by the compilers and audience of the text. In it, Constantinople emerges
as a protean entity, constantly subject to change, which allows for its very continuity
into time and space. The city also allows rank outsiders to inhabit and manipulate it,
with particular consequences, as we shall see. This section focuses on the statues listed
and described in Book Two of the Patria (as given in the latest edition of the text), but
will also skip back and ahead to Books One and Three where useful.
Book Two largely consists of material from the Parastaseis, with some changes.29 It
begins with a series of places and objects that start with the letter alpha. These passages
were excerpted from the work of a sixth-century author, John Lydos. Chapter 1 talks
about the region of Adiabene, while 2–14 mention statues (agalmata). These are not
said to be located in Constantinople, but since Chapter 15 is about the Augoustion,
from which point we are taken to various sites within the capital, it would only make
sense that Chapters 2–14 are also somewhat concerned with Constantinople. Clearly
the editor/s of the Patria deemed those parts of John Lydos’ work to be pertinent to
the patriographic account they were compiling. They are worth examining for how
statues were imagined in a written discourse associated with the city.
Chapters 2–14 profer a wealth of detail for the art historian. Take the contents of
Chapter 2:
On the statue of January—The statue of January is represented as a tetramorph

because of the four seasons. Others fashion him holding a key in his right hand,
as the beginning of the year, as both the opening of the year and its doorkeeper,
while others show him holding three hundred pebbles in his right hand, and sixty-
fve in his left, like the year. Hence Longinos attempts to interpret him as being
Aionarios, the father of time.30
Whilst leaving us in the dark about its location and audience (other than the said
‘Longinos’, about whom we know not much else other than his name), the passage
elucidates on the reasons why this particular statue of January was fashioned as a
tetramorph and how he is represented by ‘others’, scrupulously attributing a reason
for each of the forms crafted. A similar dynamic of brief description and explication
informs Chapters 3–14. A statue of Athene is said to hold a spear and shield ‘because
of her steadfastness and courage, and because she wards of every scheme by her wis-
dom’; her helmet signifes the peak of wisdom, an olive branch refers to purity, and a
Gorgon on Athene’s breast alludes to the ‘quickness of her mind’.31 And so on with the
agalmata of Apollo, Hera, Zeus, Aphrodite, Hermes, Priapos, and others.32
These passages are not representative of extant Byzantine texts on images, be they in
the genre of the chronicle, the novel, sermons, or treatises. Their very zeal in matching
the attributes held by the personages to their innate qualities renders them exceptional.
The norm is either a far less detailed reference to an image or images or, in contrast,
a far more forid ekphrastic exercise which is also—and often deliberately—imprecise
and elliptical;33 where the latter is concerned, the audience has to grope toward the
sculpture, navigating a sea of adjectives which do more to conjure impressions rather
than to pin down any specifc features the objects might possess. But Chapters 2–14
in the Patria certainly demonstrate a desire for precision when it comes to the statues
of the pagan gods; a need to explain, for instance, why Hera should be shown clutch-
ing a pair of scissors (a metaphor for cleanliness, it is claimed) and Apollo a lyre (a
metaphor for harmony and the creation of life).34
One particular episode further foregrounds the importance perceived to reside in
the appreciation of such details.35 Describing the area known as the Kynegion (which
was situated by the acropolis in the northeastern part of the city), it proceeds thus:
On the Kynegion—Formerly, the condemned were thrown into the Kynegion;

there were also some statues there. When the lector Theodore went there with
Himerios the chartoularios, he saw a statue that was small in stature and very
squat. ‘While I was marvelling, Himerios said: ‘You are right to marvel, for he
is the builder of the Kynegion.’ When I said: ‘Maximinos was the builder and
Aristides the architect,’ the statue immediately fell from the height there and dealt
Himerios a great blow and killed him on the spot. In my terror I sought asylum in
the Great Church, and when I recounted what had happened, I was not believed
until I resorted to confrmation by oath. So the dead man’s relatives and the
friends of the emperor went with me to the Kynegion and, before approaching the
man’s body, marveled at the fallen statue.’ A certain John, a philosopher, said that
‘I found beneath this statue the depicted relief image of a man who will be killed.’
When the emperor Philippikos was informed about this, he ordered that the same
statue be buried in the same place.36
This pithy paragraph in the Patria makes a case for images: beneath the statue was
depicted the relief image of a man who would be killed, according to John the phi-
losopher. Whether the relief was positioned beneath the statue itself or whether there
was a diferent block of stone or metal with the relief engraved/incised on it is unclear
in the text, just as the characters named in it, apart from the emperor Philippikos, are
also enigmatic. Theodore and Himerius seem from their designations of ‘lector’ and
‘chartoularious’ to have been a reader and a fscal administrator, respectively, in the
Byzantine court. By the same token, the ‘Demosthenes’ mentioned might refer to the
ancient philosopher of the same name, but the text simply does not clarify whether this
is, in fact, the case. The same episode, when described in the earlier Parastaseis (which,
as mentioned above, was a rich source for the contents of the Patria), posited ‘the writ-
ings of Demosthenes’ as the only marker of the identity of the man destined for death.
Notice how in the Patria it is not writing but the image beneath the statue which showed
the man himself. That image is presented as an unambiguous object of interpretation,
disclosing identity and destiny with clarity, even if it is located beneath the statue and
uncovered after the fact. Is there a hint here of supplementary images lurking around or
under statues and thereby bestowing a prophetic charge on them? The detail is perhaps
too slight to elaborate upon, but it is worth considering. Similar hints—of statues gradu-
ally revealing or concealing more than appears to the eye—also appear in other texts
in later periods. For instance, in the ffteenth century, the diplomat and scholar Manuel
Chrysoloras mentions a ‘statue made of white stone or marble, which seems to rest on
its elbow’ before going on to claim that ‘There are many other such things that I have
not seen myself, but that I heard are hidden in certain places’. Despite their brevity and
sometimes seemingly casual mention, these details allude to an enigmatic dimension of
the city, one which is expressly related to its wealth of statuary.
Possibly the most enigmatic and magical site in Constantinople, as posited by the
Patria (and the Parastaseis), is the Hippodrome. As the main sporting arena of the
city and the site where foreign dignitaries were received, prisoners of war paraded,
and emperors acclaimed and/or publicly humiliated, the Hippodrome was a highly
charged sociopolitical space. The most interesting episode regarding the site concerns
the visit of the emperor Theodosius to the arena in an efort to interpret its statues.
The resulting predictions by the ‘philosophers’ charged with the task all concern the
fate of the capital and, by extension, the empire itself. It is notable that the Patria is
painstaking about setting down the wide-ranging provenance of the objects placed
in the Hippodrome, in contrast to the other sites of the city it describes. Chapter 73
opens with the statement that many ‘extraordinary pieces’ were brought from Rome
and Nikomedeia, as were statues brought by Constantine the Great from
Athens, Kyzikos, Kaisareia, Tralles, Sardis, Mokesos, Sebasteia, Satala, Chaldeia,

Antioch the Great, Cyprus, Crete, Rhodes, Chios, Attaleia, Smyrna and Seleukeia,
and from Tyana, Ikonion, Nikaia in Bithynia, Sicily and all the towns of the east
and west, which were set up and enchanted, and those that pass by and are expe-
rienced fnd there infallible knowledge of the last days.37
In no other section of the Patria do we encounter such a litany of towns, nor such
insistent signposting as to the original locations of the objects at hand. The Hip-
podrome emerges as a site refective not of Constantinople per se but of the various
places ‘of the east and west’ from where statues were plundered. The Patria thus
marks the Hippodrome as a space expressly inhabited by foreign idols. Although this
was certainly the case in actuality, it is intriguing that the dimension of foreignness is
not emphasized to the same degree for other spaces similarly inhabited by statues from
elsewhere, such as the Forum of Constantine. Why is the Hippodrome singled out in
this respect? Chapter 79 gives us a clue:
The other statues of the Hippodrome, both male and female, the various horses,
the stone and bronze columns of the turning points, the bronze obelisks of the
turning points, the reliefs on the obelisk, the charioteer’s statues with their relief
bases, the columns of the galleries with their capitals and bases, those in the
Sphendone, their balustrades and wall revetments, their steps and podia, and
simply every place where an inscription can be found, especially on the bronze
statues—all these are depictions of the last days and of the future. Apollonios of
Tyana set them up to commemorate these events as they are imperishable. In a
similar way, he also enchanted the statues throughout the city. Those who are
experienced with the workings of statues will fnd everything without missing
anything. The tripods of the Delphic pots and the equestrian statues also bear
inscriptions, explaining why they have been set up and what they mean.38
Might there be a connection between the foreign origins of these statues and the
‘last days’ depicted on them? It is certainly plausible if we consider the prophecies that
circulated in Constantinople and were expressly mapped out on the city’s topogra-
phy.39 The so-called Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius was the most enduring proph-
ecy that gained currency from the eighth century on throughout the medieval world
and which was translated into Greek, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, and Old Slavonic,
among others.40 This prophecy positioned New Rome at the centre of the last days
to come and described its capture by a Western power. The Greek interpolation notes
the progress of the conquering invaders in baleful detail, starting from the Xylokerkos
gate and moving across the Forum of Arkadios to the Forum of the Ox. It reads thus,
Woe to you, city of Byzas, that Ishmael will conquer you. Since every horse will
cross over and the frst of them will set up his tent opposite you, Byzas, and will
begin the fght and crush the Xylokerkos gate and enter until the Forum of the Ox.
Then the Ox will bellow loudly and the Xerolophos will roar since they are being
smashed by the Ishmaelites.41
The interpolation possibly refers to the Arab siege of 717–18 ce but was also perceived
to map out the trajectory of future invaders. The Xylokerkos gate, the Forum of the
Ox and the Xerolophos, the seventh hill of Constantinople, were strongly associated
with the apocalypse and shaped the city’s urban planning.42 Isaac II, who reigned in
the last part of the twelfth century and then again briefy in the thirteenth had the
Xylokerkos gate walled up to prevent the Crusaders from storming the city.43 Thus,
it is not a stretch to claim that the emphatic foreignness of the Hippodrome statues in
the Patria alludes to those who shall, in due course, lead to the fnal days of Constan-
tinople. These statues call attention to the fact that they do not really belong to New
Rome at all, despite having stood on its soil over centuries. This outsider status, if you
will, is most visible in the notorious episode of the enraged Constantinopolitan mob
that pulled down the imposing statue of Athena in the Forum because it believed she
was beckoning the enemy invaders toward the city. The episode may not have actually
occurred, but since it is recorded at some length it makes for a compelling instance of
how a statue could be perceived as an enemy collaborator. Indeed, the notion that an
ancient statue might be in league with inimical foreigners had long historical roots, as
Andrew Feldherr has shown in his discussion of the Greek statues brought to Rome
as spolia which, instead of commemorating Roman victory, appeared ‘to have taken
Rome captive’ instead.44
The editor/s of the Patria were convinced that the city would have to confront its
last days, no matter how illustrious its past and present. It even identifes the people
who would bring Constantinople to its knees. Chapter 47 describes an equestrian
statue on a four-sided stone cut plinth with
relief narratives of the fnal days of the city, of the Rhos who will conquer this
city. . . . Similarly, both the huge, hollow column there and the Xerolophos have
the story of the fnal days of the city and its conquests depicted as relief.45
These ominous events can and should be deciphered by the experienced viewer who,
the Patria claims, shall not ‘[miss] anything’. The text is vehement about the neces-
sity of close and careful viewing: of the ten chapters devoted to the Hippodrome, the
longest ones observe that those experienced in looking at statues can uncover what
they portend. Cursory glances do not sufce for apocalyptic imagery, which needs
to be mined with a fne-toothed comb, a searching gaze buttressed with a wealth of
knowledge. The fip side of this exhortation is that the inexperienced viewer (the
vast majority, it would seem) would not be able to understand the images, no mat-
ter how hard s/he tried. The objects that demand such a refned viewer are literally
standing testimonials to the relative futility and powerlessness of the grandees—
emperors, charioteers, court ofcials, aristocrats—who preside at the site in the
present moment, for they point inescapably to the future which shall annul—or at
the very least, diminish—any immediate triumphs. Importantly, those far-of (but
also frighteningly near) events are described as being ‘imperishable’. And they are
inscribed on statues.
In light of the above, it is apparent that the inexorability of the ‘last days’ conferred
a corresponding invincibility on the statues upon which they were etched out. This is
by no means a literal invincibility; statues were certainly moved about and destroyed
by individual emperors and other people, as the Parastaseis and Patria attest (as in the
actions of emperor Philippikos in burying the murderous statue discussed above, to
give one instance). But of importance here is the perception that statues were endowed
with a vital and sometimes inaccessible knowledge. This knowledge grants them an
edge over their Christian counterparts (i.e., Orthodox icons) and enables them to
endure in the literary landscape of Byzantium. It is surely signifcant that holy icons
are nowhere mentioned in this context. Indeed, they are barely mentioned at all in the
Patria or the Parastaseis, which is odd given that both texts were compiled during and
in the aftermath of Iconoclasm, when sacred images formed the very substance and
crux of the debates over their validity.
But perhaps it is not odd when we consider the functions of images in the eighth
and ninth centuries in the context of prophecy and eschatology. Paul Magdalino pos-
its a defnite shift in the eighth century interpretation of holy icons in this sphere. The
Historia Ecclesiastica of patriarch Germanos (715–30 ce)—an important player in the
frst phase of Iconoclasm—observes that the Orthodox liturgy was not an already real-
ized eschatology, as Maximos the Confessor (Germanos’ predecessor) had asserted.
Instead, in his text Germanos wished to issue an
authoritative statement to the efect that eschatology was still about 300 years
from being realized . . . the patriarch’s purpose . . . [was to] divest the liturgy and,
perhaps, other images of Christ, of the expectancy that surrounded them, and to
dismiss any idea that the terrible events through which the empire was living were
the Last Things.
(emphasis added)46
If patriarchal eforts were engaged in divesting holy icons of any supposed prophetic
and/or apocalyptic powers, then it is surely plausible that other images were required
to fulfl those functions in their stead. Those ‘others’, the Parastaseis and Patria sug-
gest, were the prevailing pagan statues which had escaped the persecutions of the
iconoclasts because they were not deemed holy or, in fact, worthy of destruction, even
as their Christian counterparts were subjected to the same. Indeed, they were divested
of any autonomous power at all. But in an ironic twist, it was those very statues that
posed a potent challenge to imperial authority at a time when some emperors were
engaged in destroying and/or prohibiting Christian imagery. In the patriographic tra-
dition, the statues emerge unscathed for the most part, and sometimes even trium-
phant, against imperial domination.
Temporality
The History of Theophylact Simocatta, considered the last major historian of Late
Antiquity, includes an intriguing episode. Book Eight, which describes the dreadful
end of emperor Maurice, also mentions ‘an act most worthy of record and particu-
larly worthy of the tablets of history’.47 It seems that a calligrapher in Alexandria was
returning home after a midnight revel.
[A]s he was approaching the city’s Tychaeum, as it is called (this is a famous place
in Alexandria), he saw the famous statues stealing down from their pedestals; they
emitted to him a very loud utterance, addressing the man by name, and in loud
and vehement utterance describing the calamities which had attended the emperor
Maurice on that day.48
Suitably awed by this vision, the calligrapher recounted it to the authorities.

When it came to the ears of Egypt’s prefect, the latter forbade the calligrapher
to speak to anyone of ‘these mysterious and secret descriptions’. Nine days after
the incident, a messenger arrived with news of Maurice’s murder, after which the
prefect, having
discerned the outcome of the events predicted by the statues, or to speak more
appropriately demons, publicly paraded the prophecy, brought to prominence
the man who wrote for adornment [the calligrapher], and pointed him out as the
authority for the story.49
The anecdote is worth examining for several reasons, not least the fact that the Egyp-
tian prefect at the time was a relative of Theophylact’s, thus attesting to the high social
and administrative position of the historian’s family in Egypt.50 No less compelling is
the emphasis on the augury of Maurice’s death, since such predictions could be used
as proof of the deceased’s saintliness. The person who made the prophecy public was
Theophylact’s relative, thereby serving as an extension of the historian in crafting a
story that would establish Maurice’s holiness.51 The story is repeated in abbreviated
form in the chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, dated to the ninth century.52 This
is not surprising, given that the genre of the chronicle was dependent on looking back,
cross-referencing, and outright copying from past exemplars.
The anecdote reveals some of the same powerful tropes concerning statues that
informed texts such as the Parastaseis and the Patria. Imperial prophecy forms the
crux of the story, although in this case the statues seem to make their pronounce-
ments even as the gory events unfold in Constantinople, almost in simultaneity. But
even more remarkable, the statues seem to enact the downfall of the emperor and his
family. The calligrapher apparently saw the more famous statues ‘stealing down from
their pedestals’.53 Even as Maurice had his head cut of and his body fung into the sea,
so too the more renowned inhabitants of the Tychaeum of Alexandria efaced their
own grandeur, stepping of their pedestals as they narrated the dire fate that befell the
imperial family. The attitudes of these statues seem to refect an identity with imperial
fortune, or misfortune, that is surely disconcerting.
Apart from the falling statues in Egypt, Theophylact of Simocatta’s narrative does
not dwell too much on those objects. Theophanes the Confessor’s narrative, on the
other hand, deploys them in ways that need some comment. Theophanes was an abbot
who probably fell afoul of the iconoclast authorities. He drew extensively on various
extant and lost works whilst composing his chronicle.54 The chapter describing the
events of annus mundi 6099 commences with the tyrant Phokas marrying his daugh-
ter Domentzia to a patrician, Priskos. Phokas then ordered horse-races to be held in
celebration of the marriage. Consequently, the leaders of the two factions ‘erected
images of Priskos and Domentzia with the imperial portraits on a four-columned
monument’,55 which were probably statues (discussed in more detail below). This
incurred the wrath of Phokas to such an extent that he had the leaders of the factions
stripped naked in the Hippodrome and ordered their execution.
First, though, he sent his chief courier to ask them what had prompted them to
do this. They said that the artists had followed custom in doing it. . . . The artists
were asked why they had done it. They said, ‘Everyone called them children of the
Emperor; we did it for their sake.’ Since the masses were crying for him to have
mercy on the leaders of the demes, the Emperor acquiesced.56
It is further reported that Priskos was terrifed by and resentful of Phokas’ anger, from
which point onward he was never in agreement with his father-in-law.
The story is unusual in including artists as agents of their own time rather than
invoking their Biblical and Classical counterparts. These artists are also quite power-
ful in their own right. Their product invites a vehement imperial response. Although
they are not publicly chastised, as are the unfortunate faction leaders, they are impor-
tant enough to be interrogated. In justifcation they point back to tradition, a classic
Byzantine manoeuvre. They also raise the question of naming: everyone called them
(the imperial couple) the children of the emperor, and therefore their images were
deemed worthy of being positioned along with that of their illustrious father. This is
simply an imperial family portrait, the artists seem to assert. That the emperor read it
as a statement of imperial power-sharing, or worse, rivalry, adds a signifcant under-
tone to the image and the possible framework of responses such a portrait could
elicit. It also underlines the diference between a distinctly imperial visuality and oth-
ers; the former cannot tolerate any ambiguities in its own presentation, whereas the
others—the faction leaders, the artists, and even ‘the masses’—are not particularly
troubled by it. One should not dismiss Phokas’ fury as the typical reaction of the
paranoid ruler (although one would be somewhat justifed in doing so); rather, his
extravagant wrath refects the stringent rules by which imperial representations had
to abide if they were to be at all efective. What sparked of the brouhaha was put-
ting up Phokas’ image along with that of his daughter and son-in-law; the ensemble,
in the emperor’s eyes, compromised the imperial representation. Finally, and most
tellingly, the images in question are most probably statues, stationed as they are on
a ‘four-columned monument’, like other imperial statues located on such high pedes-
tals. In this particular context, the images have the power to trigger executions and
to change the course of history itself by pitting an emperor and his son-in-law against
each other.
The Powers and Limits of Icons

The chronicle of Theophanes does not completely eschew the mention of Christian
images. Various objects pertaining to the Orthodox church do crop up in the course
of events described: a diadem from the church of the Mother of God at Artake,57 an
acheiropoietos (not made by hands) image of Christ,58 the relic of the True Cross,59
and the remains of holy people such as Eustathios and John the Baptist.60 Only once,
though, are holy images mentioned. During the annus mundi 6218, the Saracens
attacked Nikaia in large numbers.
Even after a long siege and the partial destruction of the walls, they could not
enter Nikaia’s sacred precinct of the honoured and holy fathers because of its
inhabitants’ prayers, which were acceptable to God. The images of the fathers
were set up there, and have been honoured until the present by their fellow
believers.61
In the same chapter we read of an incident concerning the humiliation of an icon when
a groom threw a stone at, then broke and trampled on, an image of the Theotokos
(Mother of God), for which act his head was smashed the following day in battle. All
these events are contextualized against the iconoclastic policy of Leo III who, The-
ophanes claims, was an
impious fellow . . . mistaken about the natural reverence due the revered icons,
but also about the intercession of the wholly sacred Mother of God and of the
saints. Like his teachers the Arabs, the totally bloody man loathed their remains.62
The chapter ends with a brief description of Leo’s harassment of the patriarch Germa-
nos and all those who revered icons.
While there is no doubt that Theophanes reviled Iconoclasm and the destruction
of holy images it entailed, there is also surprisingly little in his narrative attesting to
any substantive powers invested in holy images per se, other than the sole incident at
Nikaia mentioned above. If anything, more anecdotes concern the failure of Christian
images at moments of crisis. The harrowing events leading to the murder of the boy
prince Tiberius are a case in point. The henchmen of Philippikos found Tiberius in the
church of the Blachernai, ‘holding with one hand the leg of the altar’s holy table . . .
with the other the True Cross. Round his neck were protective amulets’.63 None of
these sacred accoutrements saved Tiberius. Not only was he brutally murdered; the
amulets were fastened around the neck of one of the murderers during the bloody
deed, and the True Cross was, rather tamely, ‘put on the holy table’. Furthermore,
Philippikos is vehemently denounced by Theophanes as an impious and shameless
ruler. Despite this, the holy altar and the True Cross are powerless against his actions.
Although Theophanes is a ferce critic of various emperors, including the icono-
clasts, the chronicle’s stance toward sacred objects as they are handled by these char-
acters is not entirely consistent with iconophile assumptions regarding the sheer might
of icons or even church buildings. For instance, Emperor Justinian II is uniformly criti-
cized for his rashness in political and military matters. Yet when he demands that the
patriarch ‘make a prayer so he could tear down the metropolitan’s church dedicated
to the Mother of God . . . to erect a fountain and build seats for the Blue faction so
its members could receive the Emperor there’, his plans go unopposed. The patriarch
Kallinikos demurs, then gives in; the church is torn down, and the fountain built.64 At
fault here, Theophanes suggests, is the clergy and its inability to withstand imperial
pressure as much as the emperor’s essential wrong-headedness. And whilst Theopha-
nes is emphatically not in favour of pulling down churches for fountains, the fate of
that worthy monument does not seem to matter as much as the actions of the emperor
and the patriarch. Churches, icons and even altars seem to be tools at the hands of the
powerful to be used as they please. These objects should be revered, it is implied, but
they are not endowed with any incipient powers against their enemies other than in
the lone incident of the siege of Nikaia.
At this point, it is important to review some observations regarding the status of
holy images in the tenth century and beyond. Annemarie Weyl Carr had called atten-
tion to the surprising dearth of sacred icons in our evidence regarding Byzantine court
culture, a point that has not received the attention it should.65 Carr rightly observes
that the Byzantine emperor is hardly—indeed, never—shown with an identifable icon,
although he does feature with Christ and the Theotokos. Not only is the presence of
specifc holy icons a rarity in imperial imagery, so is their occurrence in court ceremo-
nies and rituals of state. The tenth-century Book of Ceremonies contains references to
very few icons, most of which are mentioned in passing, mere ‘place-markers in the
ritual’ rather than the goal of processions or focal points of rites. This was probably
because the great icon cults had not yet developed in Constantinople, a possibility that
Carr doubts but which ought to be considered seriously given the paucity of evidence
for such cults.66 More recently, Anthony Kaldellis has argued that post-Iconoclasm,
holy icons became no more than weapons in the imperial arsenal so as not to detract
from the emperor’s personal glory. This was particularly pertinent to icons of the The-
otokos, the protector of Constantinople. Kaldellis shows that where once in the year
626 ce she had apparently defended the capital against the ferce Avars and brought
triumph to the Romans, later ‘her icons . . . provided no guarantee of victory, at
least not in the view of the later historians’.67 Primary agency was retained by human
actors, whilst the Theotokos’ images were relegated to the background of these narra-
tives so crucial to the fate of Byzantium.
So we read in Anna Comnena’s Alexiad that her father, emperor Alexios Comnenos,
carried the maphorion (the Theotokos’ cloak, and a revered relic) into battle against
the Scythians (Pechenegs). When his entire army fed, the emperor stood on the bat-
tlefeld, the maphorion in one hand and a sword in the other, but to no avail. Michael
Attaleiates’ chronicle tells us that the Theotokos icon of the Blachernai church was
taken on military campaigns as ‘an invincible weapon’,68 but curiously, the context
Attaleiates locates it in is that of failure, namely, the Battle of Mantzikert (1071 ce),
which was catastrophic for the Romans. Eustathios of Thessalonike scofs at the Con-
stantinopolitan belief that ‘the Hodegetria, the protectress of the city (poliouchos)
will be enough all by itself, to secure our welfare’.69 And Nicetas Choniates records
that ‘the icon of the Mother of God, which the emperors of the Romans make their
fellow general’ was captured by the Latins, eventually leading to the disaster of the
Fourth Crusade (1204 ce). In each case, the emphasis on the icon’s status as a fellow
general only goes to highlight its abject omissions. Theophanes’ chronicle may be
convincingly read as part of the larger trend governing the genre between the ninth
and twelfth centuries, whereby the very real limits of icons in theatres of confict were
heavily underscored.
Epilogue
Constantinople’s hefty sculpted arsenal wasn’t of much help in critical situations
either—or at least the chronicles do not let on if they were. Indeed, Theophanes’
chronicle ends with the siege of Constantinople by Krum, ruler of the Bulgars, who
whilst raiding the capital, also ‘loaded the bronze lion from its hippodrome, the bear,
the water-spouting dragon, and selected marbles into wagons’.70 Nonetheless, the
genre construes this body of objects as integral both to the notion and representa-
tion of the uninterrupted continuity of the Roman empire. Holy icons simply do not
sustain such an association. This may have been partly owing to their more recent
eruption into history, a fact that the chronicles gesture toward overtly or covertly and
which the patriographies do by means of the sheer numbers and emphasis they place
on statues.
The antiquity of Constantinople’s statues was equated with the charismatic aura of
old age and, thereby, the privilege of coming ‘frst’, or at least ‘before’ the images of
Christ and the saints. It is pertinent here to refer to Susanne Conklin Akbari’s com-
ments on the role of image-making as a temporal and spatial marker in the ordering
of history in the medieval era more broadly. The rise and fall of idols (or statues)
delimited the beginning and end of key moments, even entire eras, in the universal
histories composed in the period. Akbari highlights three diferent models for the
deployment of idols to signify temporal disjunctions: frst, a ‘historiographical’ model
in which the idol marks a boundary between time periods; second, the ‘incarnational’
model in which the destruction of idols marks the imminence of a new era and the
advent of Christ; and third, a ‘covenantal’ model in which the idol marks the foun-
dation of the Mosaic law and the establishment of an agreement, or bond, between
God and man.71 We detect all three models in the Byzantine chronicles, although the
‘historiographical’ and ‘incarnational’ recur more frequently and forcefully than the
‘covenantal’.
When accorded the role of the gatekeepers of time, the sculpted bounty of a capital
city acquires a weighty, special resonance, particularly at transitional and decisive
moments. In this light, Nicetas Choniates’ epilogue to his chronicle, composed right
after the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, comes as no surprise.
Through lavish verbal renditions of the statues, Choniates brings them vividly to life
even as he laments their destruction at the hands of the Crusading armies. The vio-
lence inficted on the statues is registered as the violence wrought on the empire itself,
which leads to its temporary, but still shocking, dissolution. While the statues stood,
Constantinople and Romania remained somewhat intact. The former’s disappearance
spells death for the latter on an overarching scale; a shattering of temporal continuity
and the end of civilization as Choniates and the Romans knew it.
Notes
1. Constantinople was perhaps the only city in the Roman world signifcantly invested in set-
ting up statues on a large scale well after the habit was mostly dead in other cities. See Gehn
and Ward-Perkins 2016, 136.
2. For a list of the statues and their locations, see the appendix in Bassett 2004.
3. Chatterjee 2018, 243–266.
4. A few instances are Ousterhout 2014, 304–326; Angelova 2015, 130; Kiilerich 1998; and
Safran 1993, 409–435.
5. Bassett 2004; James 1996, 12–20; Anderson 2011, 1–19.
6. A recent and useful summary of this narrative is found in Anderson 2016, 290–309.
7. A few recent examples include James 2007; Barbers 2002; Chatterjee 2013, 209–225.
8. Dawkins 1924, 209–248.
9. Mackridge 2000, 185–195.
10. Mango 1963, 53 and 55–75 at 55.
11. Mango 1963.
12. Dagron 1984.
13. Art historians have recognized this in their own discipline. See Nelson 2000, 143–168 and
Muth, Neer, Rouveret, and Webb 2012, 219–236.
14. See Cameron and Herrin 1984, 89–91.
15. James 1996, 12–20; Anderson 2011, 1–19; and Chatterjee 2017, 137–149.
16. Treadgold 2004, 229–237.
17. Magdalino 2006, 134.
18. Magdalino 2006, 134.
19. Bassett 2004, 76.
20. Bassett 2004, 76.
21. Bassett 2004, 78.
22. See also Angelova 2015, 129.
23. Cameron and Herrin 1984.
24. Odorico 2014, 755–784.
25. Berger 2013.
26. See Cameron and Herrin 1984, 107–111, in which one emperor’s downfall is predicted and
laughed about; 111–15 in which statues identify emperors as fornicators; 117–121 in which
an emperor pursues thieves who steal a statue and is upset when the statue is drowned.
27. Paul Magdalino remarks that the Parastaseis, to his knowledge, is the earliest text to use the
word stoicheion to refer to enchanted statues in Magdalino 2006, 134.
28. General studies on the Patria include Dagron 1984; Berger 1988; Sevcenko 1992, 279–293;
and Kazhdan 1987, 196–250.
29. Berger 2013, XIV.
30. Berger 2013, 49–51.
31. Berger 2013, 51.
32. Berger 2013, 49–57.
33. Literature on ekphrasis is vast. For a few representative works on Byzantine ekphrases see,
James and Webb 1991, 1–17; Webb 2009; Webb 2007, 13–31; and Chatterjee 2013, 209–225.
34. Berger 2013, 51.
35. Berger 2013, XIII, comments that more than half the entries in Book 2 of the Patria are
derived from the Parastaseis.
36. Berger 2013, 65–67.
37. Berger 2013, 101.
38. Berger 2013, 103.
39. Berger 2008, 135–156.
40. Bonura 2016, 260–276.
41. Kraft 2012, 27.
42. Berger 2008, 136–137; Brandes 2008, 193–195.
43. Magoulias 1984, 222.
44. Feldherr 1998, 42–44, at 43.
45. Berger 2013, 83.
46. Magdalino 1993, 22–23.
47. Whitby and Whitby 1986, 231.
50. Whitby and Whitby 1986, footnote 81.
51. Whitby and Whitby 1986, footnote 82.
52. Turtledove 1982, 2.
54. See the introduction in Mango and Scott 1997, XLIII-C; and Kazhdan 1999.
60. Turtledove 1982, 109, 130.
64. Turtledove 1982, 65–66.
65. Carr 2004, 81–100.
66. Carr 2004, footnote 37.
67. Kaldellis 2013, 61.
68. Kaldellis 2013, 68.
69. Kaldellis 2013, 71.
71. Akbari 2012, 139.
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6 Looking Up in Judgement
How to See the Early Modern Statue
Through the Late Medieval Crucifx
in Italy
Peter Dent
Introduction
In the 1320s, the sculptor Paolo di Giovanni was commissioned to furnish his home-
town of Florence with statues of the Virgin and saints for two of the city’s new gates,
the Porta Romana and the Porta San Gallo.1 Florence had embarked on the construc-
tion of its fnal circle of walls in the mid-1280s, and these gates straddled the major
arterial roads linking the city to the wider world.2 Such gates were important public
assertions of civic identity for the self-governing communes of central Italy in the
late medieval period. The Porta Romana, for example, faced south towards Rome,
as its modern name suggests. Originally known as the Porta San Pier Gattolino, it
was traditionally the gate through which new bishops appointed by the pope would
arrive before processing along the streets and across the main squares in an elabo-
rate ceremony that included a symbolic marriage to the Florentine church.3 Paolo di
Giovanni was required to carve fgures of the papal saints, Peter and Paul, to stand
on this ‘Roman’ Gate, images that acknowledged the status of the universal church.
But this gate also received prominent statues of the Virgin, to whom the new cathe-
dral of Santa Maria del Fiore was dedicated, and of John the Baptist, the city’s most
important patron saint, in whose church of San Giovanni all young Florentines were
baptised. In other words, the sculptural decoration of the gate asserted the particular
and local identity of the city.
Some of these fgures from the Porta Romana have survived: a seated Virgin and
Child and Saints Peter and Paul. In his pioneering discussion of the fgural decoration
of city gates in medieval Italy, an important genre of public statuary, Julian Gardner
observed that the contract for the second gate, the Porta San Gallo, instructed Paolo
to produce fgures of a size required by the height (‘sicut requiritur dicte altitudini’).4
According to Gardner, this phrasing suggests a ‘visual sensitivity of some moment’
that is refected in the ‘stilting’ of the surviving works.5 In other words, the slender and
confned proportions of the standing fgures in particular have been determined by
their elevation in relation to the viewer. There is perhaps some ambiguity here in how
the document might be interpreted. The height of the statues themselves is specifed—
not the height of their location—and their overall proportions should be calibrated
according to that height (dicte altitudini—the said height), not necessarily according
to their height of the ground.6 That said, the very fact that the document makes a
point of recording the instruction in this way implies that the relationship between
height and proportions was signifcant for such a location.
122 Peter Dent
The idea of accommodating a viewer’s position through optical corrections is
ancient.7 Amongst others, Plato mentions it in the Sophist. As is often the case in
philosophical discussions of sculpture as a medium, the context concerns the rela-
tionship between truth and appearance. Sculpture produces the truest likenesses
because the medium is able to capture ‘the proportions of the original in terms
of length and breadth and depth, and in addition to that also gives it the colours
that belong to each part’.8 In colossal works, however, the sculptor must sacrifce
this kind of accuracy in order to make sure that the image appears correct for the
viewer looking up at it; otherwise optical distortions arise: ‘If they reproduced the
true proportions of the various parts of the body, then as you know the upper parts
would appear to us smaller than they should and the lower parts bigger’.9 Plato is
here concerned with a wider discussion of the nature of knowledge and, in par-
ticular, how we can judge whether the eponymous sophist is somebody who deals
in likenesses or apparitions. Visual art serves as an illustration of the diference
between appearance (apparition) and reality (likeness). However, the observation
refects an important issue in relation to public sculpture, not just confned to colos-
sal works, or even to those elevated at steep angles to the viewer on structures such
as columns, plinths, facades and gates (like the example from Florence). Should
the sculptor’s priority be to represent the required subject matter as truthfully as
possible, in and of itself, without regard to the viewer, or is it better to make an
image that efectively accommodates the viewer’s location even if the content must
be distorted in the process? In other words, should the sculptor focus on accuracy
or appearance, on the internal truth of the message or on its efective presentation
to an audience? This is precisely the concern voiced by the Visitor from Elea in the
Sophist: ‘So don’t the artists in this case say goodbye to the truth, and instead create
those proportions in their images that seem beautiful instead of the actual propor-
tions?’10 These issues of public sculpture, viewer location and judgements about
truth, as they play out in the transition from the middle ages to the early modern
period, are the focus of this chapter.
Plato’s text was unknown in late medieval Italy. It was only during the sixteenth
century that observations of a similar sort began to appear, this time not primarily
in philosophical discussion but in the emerging discourse on art. A motivating factor
here must have been Marsilio Ficino’s translation of the Sophist in the mid-1460s,
followed by his commentary Icastes of 1496.11 The idea of painting as a sophistic art
subsequently entered the paragone debate.12 Both artists and intellectuals contributed
to the paragone, a comparative discourse concerned with the aesthetic merits of the
various arts, which became particularly popular in sixteenth-century Italy. The Flor-
entine writer Benedetto Varchi, who collated and codifed many of the arguments in
the years around 1550, observed in his Due lezzioni that ‘painting is, as we would
say, sophistic, that is only appearance and not the truth . . . which is not the case in
sculpture’.13 The issues of knowledge and judgement remain fundamental in this new
context, although they are now reconfgured around the ability to judge art, a feld in
which good judgement—taste—itself can be visibly performed.14 Frequently, the abil-
ity to judge the diference between appearance and reality is also deployed in order to
articulate tensions in the changing relationship between artist and patron. Anecdotes
of this sort, for example, form part of the stock of stories that Giorgio Vasari told
about sculptural works in his groundbreaking Lives of the Artists, frst published in
1550 and in a much-expanded edition in 1568.
Looking Up in Judgement 123
In the life of Donatello, for example, Vasari recounts an anecdote about the statue
of St Mark that the Guild of Linen Drapers commissioned in 1411 for Orsanmichele
in Florence:
This fgure was wrought by Donato with so great judgement that its excellence
was not recognized, while it stood on the ground, by those who had no judge-
ment, and the Consuls of that Guild were inclined to refuse to have it put into
place; whereupon Donato besought them to let him set it on high, saying that he
wished to work on it and to show them a diferent fgure as a result. His request
being granted, he covered it up for a fortnight, and then uncovered it without hav-
ing otherwise touched it, flling everyone with wonder.15
In other words, Donatello had anticipated the viewer’s location and accommodated
this in designing the work. A similar tale is subsequently told about Michelangelo’s
David. The patron, Piero Soderini, complained about the fgure’s nose, which Michel-
angelo then pretended to recarve. Vasari reveals Soderini’s error of judgement arose
because of his ignorance: he was standing in the wrong location ‘beneath the Giant,
and . . . his point of view prevented him from seeing it properly’.16 Like the statues
imagined in the Sophist, not only was the David a colossus, it was also originally
intended for a location high on the cathedral with a steep angle of view. Whether
either Donatello or Michelangelo actually did much to accommodate the viewer’s
location in either case has, in turn, become an issue of art historical judgement, with
diferent scholars arriving at diferent conclusions. But these anecdotes should prob-
ably be understood as didactic fctions. The reader is instructed in a question of judge-
ment and, as Pat Rubin puts it: ‘The artist’s judgment in matters of art prevails’.17
In pursuing this question of judgement—both in relation to art and to truth more
generally—in what follows, I am interested in how a late medieval confguration of
these elements—public sculpture, viewer location and judgement—persists into the
early modern period. It is not easy, however, to ascertain late medieval attitudes
towards sculpture as a medium. While there are texts that discuss sculptural objects,
they rarely address the medial qualities of sculpture in ways that diferentiate it from
other types of image.18 More to the point, although the practical question of accom-
modating a viewer’s perspective must have repeatedly arisen for sculptors across these
centuries, it never enters the written record as a concern that might carry epistemologi-
cal weight. The contract about the gates from Florence is perhaps a unique testimony,
but here, at most, only the practical consequences are at issue, not their wider implica-
tions. As Gardner dryly observes after discussing the surviving statues and documents:
‘The rest is silence’.19
We can, however, fll this silence with evidence drawn from other sources in order
to assemble a working picture of how questions of judgement might be related to
sculptural practice in the late medieval period. With this in mind, I will give particular
consideration to the most common sculptural encounter during which such questions
arose—interaction with the sculpted crucifx, an image typically encountered within
the public space of the church nave. In a book about statues, it might be objected that
the crucifx cannot really be described as a statue at all. Indeed, in some important
respects the image of a man hanging from a cross is almost the deliberate anti-type
of the fgure of status raised on a plinth.20 But a stricter adherence to a narrower
defnition that excludes the sculpted crucifx would miss the profound way in which
124 Peter Dent
medieval Europe came to be oriented towards this sculpted image of the body. And,
after all, the statue is not a universal category but one that is historically and culturally
defned, and far from straightforward even in the original Roman context.21 However,
at the end of the medieval period, there was a concerted return to a ‘classical’ statue.
In order to explore this reorientation, I will return to Florence and its public statuary,
with an early modern example, Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa. The marked
contrast with the medieval crucifx is deliberate. The Perseus is as characteristic in its
own way of early modern sculpture as the wooden crucifx is in the medieval context.
Certainly, the Perseus sets a new standard for public statuary in a piazza that had
become one of the great arenas for comparative judgements about art, a kind of open-
air gallery against which all similar confgurations came to be measured. Through
an extended case study, I hope to demonstrate that for all their diferences, there are
some fundamental continuities between these medieval and early modern contexts.
The issues of judgement raised by the Perseus are informed in some profound respects
by the patterns established in the late medieval encounter with the crucifx.
The Late Medieval Sculptural Encounter

Medieval sculptors certainly had to anticipate viewers situated well below the planned
location of their work. Church exteriors, for example, were perhaps the most char-
acteristic site in which such issues arose. For the Italian context, Christopher Lakey
has recently demonstrated at length that the programmes of relief sculpture designed
for church facades were carefully calibrated to viewers entering the building below.22
These ideas reach a particular sophistication in the decades leading up to 1300, with
the Florentine sculptor-architect Arnolfo di Cambio. The Italian art historian Angiola
Maria Romanini has argued that Arnolfo frequently operated according to a criterion
of visibility, with optical efects and elements of the fnishing geared towards viewer
location.23 Arnolfo is signifcant here because of his involvement in two major civic
building projects in the heart of Florence: the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
and, perhaps, the Palazzo della Signoria. Over the long term, extending well beyond
the span of Arnolfo’s involvement, these projects also entailed the opening of large
squares around both edifces. The Palazzo della Signoria and its piazza form the pub-
lic stage to which we will return in due course as the context for Cellini’s work. The
wider context for Arnolfo’s practice lies in a burgeoning interest in optics developing
in the thirteenth century at the new universities, amongst the medicant orders, and
at the papal court. Not only was there considerable debate around the mechanics of
competing models of vision but also concern about vision itself as a potentially fallible
sense, one easily deceived by appearances, and the attendant moral implications of
its defciencies.24 Elements of these debates were disseminated in vernacular contexts,
through poetry, for example, or by means of preaching informed by texts like the
Moral Treatise on the Eye composed by the Sorbonne theologian Peter of Limoges at
some point between 1274/75 and 1289.25
In other words, some key elements—sculptural interest in viewer location and the
epistemological value of sight—were clearly in place. The missing ingredient in this
late medieval context appears to be an explicit discourse binding these into a coherent
relationship in the context of sculptural aesthetics. It is not until Francesco Petrarch’s
dialogues on sculpture and painting in De remediis utriusque fortunae, composed
at some point in the decade or so after the mid-1350s, that the claim that sculpture
represents reality with greater fdelity than painting is frmly articulated.26 In these
dialogues, two protagonists—Reason and either Joy, Hope, Sorrow or Fear—debate
the value of a multitude of diferent topics. When sculpture arises in the dialogue ‘On
statues’ and Joy enthusiastically but uncritically declares that ‘Statues please me’, Rea-
son immediately interjects that ‘Sculpture is nearer to nature than painting. Pictures
appeal much to the eye, but sculptures can be touched, feel substantial and solid, and
are of durable body’.27 In short, largely by reason of its three-dimensionality, sculp-
ture is more faithful in representing reality than its sister art. In the present context, it
is also interesting, of course, that the opposition is not strictly between painting and
sculpture but between painting and statues. This is partly a result of Petrarch’s orien-
tation to the classical world. He adopts his terminology from Pliny’s Natural History,
and many of his examples also derive from this source.28 At this date, in vernacular
contexts, ‘statue’ is rather rare. Writers tend to settle for looser terms such as image or
fgure, perhaps with a qualifying adjective indicating that it is carved or sculpted. The
insistence on ‘statues’ gives Petrarch’s text a distinctly classical favour, in line with a
reinvention of the ‘classical’ statue at the end of the medieval period.
At the same time, however, the term statue also grounds Petrarch’s moral purpose,
and it is this matter of moral judgement running in parallel with the frst foreshadow-
ing of a paragone debate that renders this text particularly valuable. Throughout the
dialogues, Reason shows Joy and its companions how to navigate the snares of good
and bad fortune: ‘if the mind were submissive or obedient to reason, it would lead
you to a better end by a straighter way’.29 When it comes to the question of sculpture,
Reason laments that once ‘statues were the hallmarks of virtue; now, they are attrac-
tions for the eyes’.30 The examples Reason cites are all public images of exemplary
or deplorable fgures. The emphasis on statues rather than on sculpture more gener-
ally helps to maintain this core focus on representations of individuals, connecting it
frmly to the rhetoric of praise and blame through which Petrarch articulates these
moral judgements. The dialogue concludes with Reason recapitulating the fnal line
of the First Epistle of John—‘keep yourselves from idols’—and instructing Joy to look
towards the Creator of all things, who puts to shame any earthly work of art.
In other words, at this point Petrarch’s text combines moral and aesthetic judge-
ment, although it is important to recognise that this distinction would have made little
sense to Petrarch himself. Art in the modern sense has no special place in the scheme
of his work, and the judgement of works of art is not diferent in quality from the
judgement of other objects. Although Petrarch’s brief foray into comparative aesthet-
ics may point forward to the future development of a discourse on art, the overarching
moral framework broadly aligns with the ethical concerns of other late medieval writ-
ers. Paying attention to this framework makes it easier to recognize similar concerns
in a key text of the early fourteenth century in which the distinctive aesthetic claims
of sculpture are not explicitly articulated but are implicitly present: the Commedia by
Dante Alighieri. The experience of being guided, in Petrarch’s words, to ‘a better end
by a straighter way’ is the fundamental dynamic of the poem. The Dante-character is
led frst by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory and then by Beatrice towards a vision of
the Trinity in Paradise. As with Reason in Petrarch’s text, Virgil and Beatrice help this
pilgrim to navigate his way correctly through a multitude of encounters. One of these
encounters involves works of sculpture.
Just beyond the gate into Purgatory, Dante describes a series of three narrative
reliefs carved into the mountain wall: the Annunciation, King David dancing before
126 Peter Dent
the Ark of the Covenant, and Trajan and the Widow [Purgatorio, 10]. These three are
supplemented by a further series of scriptural and classical subjects carved into the
foor [Purgatorio, 12]. None of these are statues like the examples cited by Petrarch,
but they are certainly imagined as public works of sculpture. They have been put
here for the instruction of every penitent sinner who enters Purgatory. And on one
level they serve a similar purpose as the statues of good and bad fgures discussed
by Petrarch. The main individuals represented in the wall reliefs—Mary, David and
Trajan—are exemplars of humility to be emulated, while those depicted on the foor
should be shunned for their acts of pride.
This sculptural encounter is extremely rich in its signifcance, taking place close to
the centre of the poem at a threshold, a defnitive turning point in the narrative.31 But
in the present context we can restrict the discussion to the other elements of interest
here—viewer location and judgement. The text makes it clear that the Dante-character
must frst move into the right position in order to see each relief clearly. This is spelled
out as his attention shifts from the Annunciation to King David. Virgil prompts him—
‘Do not fx your mind on one place alone’—and Dante turns to see ‘another story
carved in the rock’. Glimpsing it from an oblique angle, he steps past Virgil ‘so that
it would be wholly before my eyes’.32 It is clear from how Dante discusses optics else-
where that this location is signifcant because the eye is perpendicular to the object
of attention, meaning that visual information enters the pupil in the most efective
fashion, via the centric ray.33 Once in this sweet spot, Dante stands the best chance of
being able to judge the true signifcance of the image.
However, this sculptural encounter is not only a visual experience. Dante also ima-
gines that he hears and smells certain elements. In front of the second relief this sen-
sory engagement indicates that a process of cognition is underway that will conclude
in some kind of judgement.34 He thinks that he smells incense and hears choirs in song.
The three senses afected—sight, hearing and smell—engage in a brief dialogue:
Before it [the ark of the covenant] appeared people; and all of them,
divided into seven choruses, made one of my two
senses say: ‘No,’ the other: ‘Yes, they are singing.’
Just so the smoke of the incense imaged there
made eyes and nose discordant as to yes and no.
[Purgatorio, 10.58–62]35
The ‘sic et non’ (‘l’un: “No,” l’altro: “Sì”. . . e al sì e al no’) structure in the lines above
recalls the dialectic of medieval theological debate.36 What we glimpse here is Dante
processing the information provided by his diferent senses in the internal faculty of
the ‘common sense’ before it is presented to the intellect for judgement.37 We know
that this process has been successful when Dante declares that the images are ‘precious
to see’ not only as exemplars of humility but ‘also because of their maker’. In other
words, he has correctly absorbed their message and understood that they also function
as signposts that direct him further along the path towards salvation and his ultimate
goal, his Creator.
Unlike Petrarch’s text, the Commedia ofers a phenomenological description of a
lived encounter with works of public sculpture. This description shows how viewer
location is fundamental in forming a correct judgement about what is seen. This judge-
ment is both moral and aesthetic at the same time, but aesthetic in the pre-Kantian
sense of concerning the way in which the senses mediate our experience of the world.38
This is not to say that Dante has no interest in something like the category of ‘art’. In
fact, this section of the poem (cantos 10–12) is full of references to this kind of activ-
ity and its products. But these elements are entirely integrated into the moral universe
that he has constructed. However, approached through Petrarch’s text, it becomes
easier to see how the elements of interest here—public sculpture, viewer location and
judgement—were not only discussed in a late medieval context but also organised into
a coherent relationship.
Looking Up at the Sculpted Crucifx

Dante, however, was hardly a typical fgure. To what extent were members of the
public in all their variety able to parse these elements in their own sculptural encoun-
ters? As suggested above, relevant ideas were, by this date, beginning to circulate in
the vernacular, in sermons and in texts like the Commedia itself, but without some
kind of practical framework it seems unlikely that these would enter the habitual
viewing practices of the general population. I would argue, however, that just such
a practical ‘framework’ existed in this period and that it was perfectly suited to
ingraining habits that might guide interaction with other public works: the sculpted
crucifx.
The wooden polychromed crucifx was probably one of the most ubiquitous sculp-
tural images encountered by late medieval viewers. It was found primarily in church
interiors in various locations: raised above altars; standing on dividing screens or
beams; suspended from walls and pillars. In all these locations, and also by virtue of
the fact that it represented a body nailed to an upright cross, the real (and implied)
position for the viewer entailed an upwards gaze. In the decades around 1300, there is
an increase in the number of surprising and unexpected efects that enrich the experi-
ence of looking up towards Christ from acute angles of view. I will turn to some of
these efects in a moment, but frst something needs to be said about the ‘public’ con-
text of the church interior.
As the contributions to this volume illustrate, what constitutes public and private
space in any particular period is culturally determined, if such a boundary is drawn at
all. For the late medieval period, the church nave is fundamentally a public space, and
the images within are in this sense public works of art. The body of the church was
often divided by a substantial screen separating the area around the high altar from
the rest of the building. Access beyond the screen tended to be restricted according
to status and gender.39 The area outside the barrier in the nave was to all intents and
purposes open to all and was also, to a certain extent, the sphere of the laity. It gen-
erally contained an altar known as the lay altar where members of the congregation
engaged in communion. This lay altar was often dedicated to the cross and sometimes
carried a sculpted crucifx, but such images were certainly available in this area of the
church, especially at specifc points in the liturgical calendar, as we will see. Activities
conducted in the nave extended well beyond religious worship. Amongst other things,
it was a place of business, a hall for meetings, and a storage space for goods.40 In other
words, in Italy the nave functioned in part as a piazza shaded from both summer heat
and winter showers.
In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, this similarity to the piazza was more
evident than might now be apparent. In many central Italian towns, the old medieval
128 Peter Dent
centres were densely packed with buildings and lacked large open spaces. In scale, a
cathedral nave, for example, could well rival a piazza. As populations increased, how-
ever, towns expanded, relieving pressure on the centre, which was often remodelled
in the process. This sequence of events led not only to the new walls with city gates
and sculptural decoration at Florence, for example, but also to the new squares carved
out in the heart of the city during the 1300s. Another driver for this process was
the construction of new churches by the mendicant orders, primarily the Franciscans
and Dominicans, from the thirteenth century onwards.41 As preaching orders keen
to engage urban congregations, these groups tended to build large churches on the
periphery of the old centres fronted by equally large squares. Florence again is a good
example. Both interior and exterior spaces were geared towards the activity of preach-
ing, with pulpits often attached to the outer façade. Structurally, this meant that the
piazza and church façade functioned as a unit in a similar way to the nave and the
internal screen, from which sermons were also often delivered. In some respects, even
this structural similarity underestimates the continuities between square and nave.
The extended, ad-hoc nature of building campaigns meant that mendicant churches
tended to be experienced as semi-permanent construction sites. The zones furnished
with walls and roofs most rapidly were those at the east end, housing the high altar.
The nave meanwhile might spend years in a state of incompletion, in use by the laity,
but without vaulting and bounded perhaps only by a low wall that marked its limits.
In other words, these spaces began life as open squares and only subsequently became
covered naves.
The paradigmatic sculptural encounter in this nave-piazza was the wooden crucifx,
and the century running from 1250 through to 1350 witnesses some quite dramatic
changes in these images. In line with a growing devotion to Christ’s sufering human-
ity, crucifxes focussed increasingly, for example, on the physical contortion of Christ’s
body, or on the many wounds that he received during the Passion. In seeking to engage
viewers with these elements of Christ’s human embodiment, sculptors developed new
efects, some relatively subtle, others quite dramatic. Many of these efects have pre-
viously gone unremarked in the scholarship on these objects, not least because they
require the modern viewer to approach them like a medieval devotee. Indeed, such cru-
cifxes reveal a new level of attention to the location of this devotee, above all in terms
of subsidiary views alongside the canonical frontal view of the image, especially in close
proximity along an arc running from directly below and round to Christ’s righthand
side. These subsidiary views assume a beholder looking up at a relatively steep angle
towards Christ’s body. While not new in itself, it is this habit of looking upwards at the
crucifx that draws together viewer location and judgement into a single experience.
Of the various cases I have identifed, I would frst like to ofer two examples in
relatively quick succession that illustrate this way of organising a subsidiary view,
before turning to a third, more complicated example after some further contextual
discussion.42 The frst case is an early fourteenth-century crucifx from San Nicola
in Pisa attributed to Giovanni Pisano (Figure 6.1).43 When we move away from the
canonical frontal view towards Christ’s right, we fnd ourselves looking up at his half-
lidded eyes and open mouth. As a subtle signal that frames this view, a set of formal
correspondences also emerge at this point. The curved swags of cloth that run out
across the knees mirror the arch of the rib cage. The lappets hanging down across the
thigh pick up the fow of blood from Christ’s side wound. Even the intersection of the
pectoral muscle and armpit fnds its echo in a kink along the upper edge of the loin
Figure 6.1 ?Giovanni Pisano, Crucifx, polychromed wood, c. 1300, San Nicola, Pisa.
cloth. These formal resonances operate almost below the level of conscious recogni-
tion, but they ofer a structured address that raises the dialogue between subject and
object to a heightened pitch at this particular location.
The second example exploits a similar angle of view but in more dramatic fashion.
It is also attributed to a sculptor from central Italy, one of Giovanni’s younger con-
temporaries, Marco Romano (Figure 6.2).44 It ofers a blunter and more direct version
of the same address. From his right, Christ’s face clearly appeals to the viewer with
an unexpected expression of agony when compared to the relatively subdued frontal
view. Here it is the more direct formal correspondence between the mouth and the
side wound that indicates to the beholder that a signifcant angle of approach has been
constructed. In both this case and in Giovanni’s crucifx at Pisa, the subsidiary view
involves eye contact between Christ and the beholder.
As with Dante’s description of the experience before the reliefs in Purgatory, these
privileged angles of view are only fully available to one person at a time standing in
130 Peter Dent
Figure 6.2 ?Marco Romano, Crucifx, polychromed wood, c. 1310, Museo Civico e Diocesano,
Colle di Val d’Elsa.
the right location. With the crucifxes, we can account for such a viewer in two ways.
If Christ is making eye contact with any fgure in this area to his right, it would be
his mother, who generally appears in this position in representations of the Crucifx-
ion.45 Indeed, a sculpted crucifx might well be fanked by a statue of the Virgin with
just such an interaction built into the ensemble. However, it is equally likely that the
Virgin’s location was not occupied by an actual sculpted image but merely implied by
Christ’s gaze, meaning that the viewer could step into her shoes and share imagina-
tively in her emotional reactions to the spectacle of her son in the midst of his sufer-
ing. The desire to experience the Crucifxion through the Virgin was a characteristic
development of medieval piety.46
A second set of circumstances also brought individual viewers into close proxim-
ity with the crucifx in a way that is of particular relevance to its public function: the
Easter rite of the Adoration of the Cross. This ritual provided the communal backdrop
to individual acts of viewing. During the Adoration on Good Friday, the privileged
view below the cross was shared by the congregation as a sequence of individuals
carrying out the same actions.47 For the Adoration, a veiled crucifx was brought out
into the public space of the nave, where it was displayed to those present and then
unveiled. Congregants subsequently crept forward to this cross, or others set aside in
the church for the same purpose, bowing and praying, before kissing Christ’s feet. All
crucifxes would have been covered with a veil throughout the entirety of Lent. In this
context, the privileged view acquired during the ritual of the Adoration functions as a
reward for the devotee after the austerities of Lenten penance. Given the late medieval
desire to identify with Christ, it is no surprise that this sweet spot usually revolved
around two key features, often in combination, the side wound and the face. Both lead
the viewer beyond the exterior representation of Christ’s sufering towards his interior
sorrow, the face as the window for the soul and the side wound as the route to his
heart. They are the points at which the beholder might transcend the immediate pres-
ence of the sculptural object towards an experience that goes beyond it.
What might the signifcance of this transcendent experience be for a viewer arriv-
ing at this location? A miraculous story involving a sculpted crucifx acquired by the
Dominican friar Blessed Giacomo of Bevagna (d. 1301) ofers a clear answer.48 As
Giacomo’s vita tells us, he set the work up in his church, where it can still be seen.
Kneeling in front of it and looking up towards Christ, he began to pray for a sign con-
frming his salvation. A miracle then occurred. Christ spoke to him through the cruci-
fx, saying ‘Let this be a sign and symbol’. With these words blood and water sprayed
from the side wound, striking the friar on the lips. For Giacomo, this experience of
looking up at Christ’s face and at the side wound is fundamentally tied to the question
of judgement. He seeks a sign of salvation and is rewarded by a miracle. Implicitly,
he is standing close to the crucifx at this point, given that he is struck by blood and
water. Indeed, we can go further and assume that he stands to Christ’s right in view
of the wound itself. In representations of Christ in judgement, the saved are always
positioned on his righthand side, the damned to his left. In other words, the question
of judgement arises in a powerful fashion here in relation to the viewer’s location.
This judgement concerns frstly the viewer’s ability to address the image correctly,
that is, to get into the right position like Dante before the reliefs in Purgatory. It also
fundamentally concerns existential judgement, the question of whether the viewer is
saved or damned. The nature of this existential judgement is readily available in the
context of the crucifx. The image, after all, represents the act by which the possibility
of salvation—the possibility of being judged positively—is extended to everybody. As
the viewer looks up in expectation, Christ looks down in judgement.
These aspects are all on display in a remarkable late medieval crucifx from the
church of San Domenico in Chioggia (Figures 6.3–6.4).49 It is probably the work of
an itinerant sculptor from north of the Alps. The image is immediately striking for its
scale. The fgure of Christ is 330 cm tall, and the full crucifx towers some four and
half metres of the ground, dwarfng the viewer. In the context of medieval crucifxes,
it is colossal, and some of the optical implications addressed in the Sophist come into
play in an interesting fashion. From a distance, Christ’s form is grotesquely contorted,
but if the viewer approaches and stands beneath it by the lacerated feet, the distor-
tions of legs and arms and head largely resolve themselves. In this case, these do func-
tion as optical corrections to compensate in part for the enormous scale of the work.
While the exaggerated size of the head ensures that the face remains prominent from
this angle, there is no exchange of glances on this occasion. Instead, a peculiar detail
comes to the fore once the beholder is stood beside the feet and slightly to Christ’s
right. Two strange swellings on the upper lip of the side wound that are inexplicable
from the frontal view are now transformed into two drops of blood. This transforma-
tion is produced by the moving viewer who, standing below, not only sees the drops
as drops for the frst time but lies directly in their path as they are about to fall, bind-
ing the viewer to the image in a moment of contact that possesses the most profound
signifcance.
132 Peter Dent
Figure 6.3 Crucifx, polychromed wood, early fourteenth century, San Domenico, Chioggia.
Indeed, I would suggest that the entire experience of viewing the crucifx func-
tions in this case as an analogue for the process of salvation. The beholder encoun-
ters something like the experience granted to Giacomo, but without the miraculous
elements. From a distance the fgure of Christ is woefully contorted as a result of
the accommodations required for the view beside the feet. But these distortions can
be folded into the narrative of Christ’s sufering on the cross, which is caused by
the sin of each and every viewer. This sin is often also described as distance from
the saviour, whereas salvation corresponds to proximity. As the viewer moves for-
ward towards a position by the feet, the distortions start to resolve themselves as
the perspective shifts until from below they acquire a kind of beauty. It is at this
point that the drops of blood ofer the beholder a visceral experience that com-
municates precisely how fnal proximity to Christ, ultimate reconciliation with the
saviour, might be acquired, through his saving blood shed on the cross and shared
on the altar.
Figure 6.4 Detail of Figure 6.3.

An Early Modern Sculptural Encounter: Perseus and Medusa

It is hard to overstate the centrality of the sculpted crucifx within the late medieval
context. Indeed, it could be argued, given their ubiquity, that such objects ofered
the defnitive sculptural experience of this period in Latin Christendom. Crucifxes
certainly bore the full scrutiny directed at Christ’s body that is such a salient charac-
teristic of the religious culture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But to what
extent did the habits of viewing that developed around such images shape or prepare
the ground for encounters with public sculpture on the other side of the profound
shifts in visual culture that we associate with the long Renaissance, running from the
fourteenth through to the sixteenth century? From a modern perspective, there is a
tendency to focus on what changes across this epochal divide. However, while it is
easy to see such changes in the form and content of images, it is harder to reconstruct
how this new material was absorbed in part through deeply ingrained cultural habits
that persisted well into the early modern period. Without some understanding of this
process, it is easy to misread, for example, the evolving relationship between moral
and aesthetic judgement and to overstate, as a result, the distinctive nature of (early)
modernity. This is a large question with many facets, so I am able to ofer only a pro-
vocative juxtaposition here as a way of indicating some possibilities. This juxtaposi-
tion deliberately involves a very diferent type of statue, Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa,
134 Peter Dent
Figure 6.5 Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus and Medusa, unveiled 1554, Loggia dei Lanzi, Piazza
della Signoria, Florence.
which stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, looking out onto the Piazza della
Signoria (Figure 6.5).
Cellini’s own testimony suggests that he came to the Perseus with the classical rela-
tionship between judgement and location as it had been revived in the ffteenth cen-
tury fresh in his mind. Later in life he wrote a treatise on sculpture containing a section
on how to fashion the perfect colossus. This recounts his experience of working on
a colossal fgure for the King of France. Sure enough, before unveiling the full-scale
model, Cellini took care to position the king so that he would see it from the right per-
spective: ‘I made him enter the court-yard, placing him at the point whence my great
statue told to the best advantage’.50 The king duly arrived at the correct judgement of
the work, praising it as a success. However, before bringing it to completion, Cellini
was granted permission for a temporary return to Italy, where Duke Cosimo I de’
Medici immediately commissioned the Perseus. Whether this anecdote refects actual
events or is a partial fction fashioned to the same template followed by writers like
Vasari, it confrms that Cellini was well aware of this way of confguring the relation-
ship between sculpture, viewpoint and judgement.
Nevertheless, is it possible that the ostensibly very diferent type of relationship
between sculpture, viewpoint and judgement engaged when looking up at a wooden
crucifx could also have been a factor for Cellini or his audience? As a work of public
sculpture, the Perseus and Medusa is utterly unlike the tradition of sculpted crucifxes
discussed above: it is mythological in subject matter rather than Christian; it is cast
in bronze rather than carved in wood; it is monochrome rather than polychrome; the
representation of the human form is robust and classical rather than sufering and
gothic; and the fgure stands on a plinth rather than hangs from a cross. The siting
is also a point of contrast. Cellini’s Perseus is positioned beneath the eastern bay of
the large fourteenth-century loggia that runs along the south edge of the Piazza della
Signoria. Framed by an arch, it is partly sheltered by the building, not quite physically
in the square but certainly in dialogue with the other sculptural works along its bor-
ders. Indeed, by the mid-sixteenth century, the Piazza della Signoria had become a cel-
ebrated arena for public sculpture, playing host to works by Donatello, Michelangelo
and Baccio Bandinelli.51 In such a location, for all of the diferences just mentioned,
the Perseus enjoyed a level of attention comparable to the scrutiny directed at the
crucifx by late medieval viewers.
The setting for Cellini’s bronze, however, should caution against overstating the
obvious contrasts with the crucifxes. It has already been observed that the nave and
the piazza were not entirely unrelated spaces for late medieval viewers. This probably
still holds true to some extent even in the sixteenth century. The Loggia dei Lanzi
itself possesses a partial similarity to the architecture of the church interior, extending
like a vaulted but incomplete aisle alongside the open ‘nave’ of the square. Be that as
at it may, the square itself is largely a late medieval artefact. The frst section—the
Platea Ubertorum immediately to the north of the Palazzo della Signoria—was cleared
towards the end of the thirteenth century.52 This space was then extended in a series
of campaigns during the course of the fourteenth century, with the Loggia (1374–
1382) as a late addition just before the western limit was completed in the mid-1380s.
Although there were many subsequent cosmetic changes, from this point until Duke
Cosimo commissioned Cellini to work on his new statue in 1545, the structure of the
piazza remained essentially intact. In other words, the Perseus was an early modern
ornament in a largely medieval setting.
This medieval setting was not a neutral backdrop. It resonated with political and
aesthetic signifcance. The origin of the Platea Ubertorum, the frst section of the
piazza, lay in the destruction of the Uberti family towers in 1258 by the primo popolo.
This act of political erasure was in part an assertion of a new type of communal gov-
ernment over disruptive and factional elements in the ruling elite. Marvin Trachten-
berg has argued that the subsequent development of the Palazzo della Signoria, the
seat of government, and the surrounding piazza was geared towards making sure that
this expression of civic power was as imposing as possible. In his view, several gen-
erations of urban planners were working towards an ideal set of viewpoints around
this building in order to ensure that the architecture would have maximum impact
on the viewer.53 The visual logic underpinning this approach to urban planning was
based on the same optical science employed by Dante in relation to the reliefs on the
Ledge of Pride. That is to say that there are certain angles of view that best impress the
136 Peter Dent
eye.54 For the present discussion of the view from below, this meant ensuring that the
relationship between the height of the building and the location of the viewer tended
towards an ideal angle of 45°. For the Palazzo della Signoria, this view was achieved
from the northwest corner of the piazza in its fnal phase.
At the beginning of the ffteenth century, this diagonal view across the piazza
acquired further aesthetic signifcance with the introduction of single point perspec-
tive, a development that we retrospectively associate with the art of painting.55 The
concepts underpinning this way of producing an illusion of three-dimensionality for a
viewer standing in a predetermined location were developed by Filippo Brunelleschi,
recently engaged as an architect at the cathedral. He demonstrated his discovery by
creating two panels. One of these panels depicted the Baptistery seen from the entrance
to the new cathedral. The second reproduced the ideal view of the Palazzo della Signo-
ria seen from the far corner of the square. This longer history of the site in which the
aesthetic and the political are intertwined was certainly of interest in the period from
1545 to 1554, while Cellini was working on the Perseus. In 1550, Vasari published
the frst version of his Lives of the Artists. In the section on Brunelleschi, he described
this second panel that ‘portrayed the palace, the piazza and the loggia de’ Signori’ and
recounts how both demonstration images aroused the curiosity of other artists, who
studied them with great attention.56
Cellini’s sculpture was commissioned to stand at the heart of this perspective, a
perspective that had in efect also become an artefact in its own right. A great deal was
at stake for both the patron and the artist on this very public stage. A successful work
would secure both men a permanent monument in a space on which the political and
artistic history of the city was inscribed. Indeed, these two intertwined strands have
inevitably informed the two main lines of interpretation that have opened up around
the commission.57 One approach contextualises the Perseus within the Duke’s political
propaganda and his brutal suppression of opposition; the other, in Cellini’s attempts to
position himself against his sculptural forebears and competitors. Both interpretations
depend upon a dialogue with the other statues in the space, such as Donatello’s Judith
and Holofernes and Michelangelo’s David. On the one hand, these earlier works detail
previous stages in the political relationship between the Medici family and the city; on
the other, they were also displays of sculptural mastery that documented the contours
of an evolving tradition of Florentine art. To a certain extent, these parallel demon-
strations of political and artistic power worked hand in hand. To paraphrase Alfred
Gell, Cellini’s mastery of his art corresponds to Duke Cosimo’s mastery of his state.58
Whatever Cellini can do to the bronze, Cosimo can do to his subjects.
This interrelationship, however, is not normally addressed from the ‘perspective’
provided by the medieval framework of the square. Indeed, Cellini’s own views on
sculpture dictate that the ideal statue has no principle perspective as such. In 1546,
shortly after he began work on the Perseus, he intervened in the paragone debate with
a letter to Benedetto Varchi, who was collecting contributions on the topic: ‘I say that
the art of sculpture amongst all the arts involving design is seven times greater, because
a sculpted statue requires eight views, and they must all be equally good’.59 Only the
sculptor lacking in love for his art would content himself with one or two views.
To a certain extent this concern for multiple perspectives is borne out by Cel-
lini’s design. Although the statue is framed by the loggia, Cellini sought to avoid this
becoming the dominant approach.60 A surviving wax model records an early design
that involved a cylindrical base. The fnal work has a more conventional rectangular
plinth, but the implied four-directional mode of address is of-set by Medusa’s body,
which lies athwart this form like a disruptive second support, inspired by Donatel-
lo’s earlier bronze Judith and Holofernes. Perseus stands astride the body, one foot
planted towards the front corner on his right side, the other hanging back to the rear
corner on his left. As a result, his whole posture twists on its axis towards the point
defned by the dramatic fow of blood that spurts from the severed neck of the corpse
below. However, in reproductions of the statue, this perspective is rarely adopted. The
dominant views are assumed to be frontal or from the north east.61 After seeing the
statue from above in 1997, John Shearman noted that these assumptions were prob-
ably a mistake:
Only then did I see what ought to have been apparent before . . . the design of the
body in the free space of the bronze-sculptor’s envelope, turned in relation to the
base about ten degrees to its left—that is, to the centre of the Piazza. That centre
is defned by the plastic design itself as the principal viewpoint.62
Shearman goes on to relate this insight to the resulting lateral view of the two marble
giganti, Michelangelo’s David and Bandinelli’s Hercules, arguing that it reinforces the
conceit that these fgures are the petrifed victims of Cellini’s work.63
However, to say that the statue is oriented towards the centre of the square is to
think of that space defned as an abstract volume rather than as a piazza experienced
by a viewer. There is no view from the centre that is not frst preceded by a view
from the margins. In turning towards the centre, Perseus also turns towards the visi-
tor entering the square from the north-west corner where the via Calzaiuoli leads of
towards the Duomo. This viewer initially sees the statue from the perspective defned
by the fourteenth-century town planners, the perspective that Brunelleschi adopted
for his demonstration panel. In turn, it could be said that Cellini’s demonstration of
sculptural aesthetics as multidirectional, three-dimensional form is embedded within a
vista defned by the pictorial aesthetics of linear perspective with its singular and ideal
point of view.
The Perseus stands towards the focal point of this vista, but the fgure does not
address such a viewer directly. From a distance the statue is not easily extracted from
the loggia, and at certain times of the day the dark bronze is barely legible in the shad-
ows. This obscurity in itself is an invitation to move closer. We know from contempo-
rary accounts that visitors sought out the city’s sculptural highlights, and the whole
cluster of sculpted fgures around the base of the Palazzo and in the Loggia functions
as a point of attraction to pull the viewer across the square.64 At the same time, this
viewer perhaps steps forward with a certain trepidation through such an open space
haunted by acts of political violence and exposed below the looming presence of the
Palazzo della Signoria. As the visitor draws nearer and the detail of the statue begins
to emerge, it becomes clear that from this angle of approach the faces of the two pro-
tagonists are almost juxtaposed one above the other, although neither looks directly
at us. Indeed, the uncanny similarity between the features of the victor and his victim
foregrounds this as a choice: to which of these two faces should we be aligned?65 In
turn, the resulting ambiguity complicates the question of which way the sculpture
itself ‘faces’. Approaching diagonally across the square, Medusa is more prominent.
Her head is encountered frst, elevated in our feld of vision; her gaze is also aligned
with the frontal view. But this does not make her sightline more desirable. After all,
138 Peter Dent
the question of the gaze here is right at the forefront of our ability to process the sub-
ject matter of the group, given that Medusa’s face, even in death, retains the power
to petrify within the fction of the story. As a result, her traditional apotropaic role
operates here as a deterrent to adopting the frontal view. Meanwhile, Perseus’s face is
withdrawn: not simply further back in our feld of vision but also lost in triumphant
contemplation as he stares down towards the severed neck of the corpse lying at his
feet.66 The only way to meet his ‘living’ gaze is to step right up to the plinth itself.
Once in this location, the viewer can fnally look up into a face and is rewarded with
eye contact (Figure 6.6). But now a new choice arises: in order to reciprocate the hero’s
gaze, we must stand squarely in the path of the Gorgon’s blood. It is this blood that
caught the attention of early viewers. In 1552, Bishop Bernardetto Minerbetti wrote
to Vasari, having seen the sculpture before installation:
I say that in the countenance of this statue can be seen a remarkable pride in such
a sweet face; the gesture of the left arm, which holds the head of Medusa by its
Figure 6.6 Detail of Figure 6.5.

mane, is an incredible thing, that seeing it, it seems as though as a living being he
shows it to the world; and in that head death can be seen to have carried out his
cruel ofces in the eyes and in the mouth. I cannot get enough of watching the
blood that pours impetuously from the trunk. This, although it is metal, seems
nonetheless so real, and it drives others away out of fear that they will be soaked
with it.67
Indeed, Minerbetti almost sets out the parameters of the engagement sketched here: a
comparison of the two faces leads to an encounter with the blood. But having avoided
the Gorgon’s baleful stare, Minerbetti nevertheless fnds himself transfxed.
We have been here before: the downward gaze, the fow of blood. It is as though Cel-
lini has reconfgured the sculpted crucifx for a new cultural context. Such a thought is
less counter-intuitive than it might at frst appear. Perseus himself was already under-
stood as a type of Christ. In his Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, Boccaccio selected
Perseus in order to demonstrate the nature of interpretation:
Perseus, the son of Jupiter, killed the Gorgon in the poetic fction, and, victorious,
he fies up into the air. . . . [A]n anagogical interpretation would say that the fable
reconfgures the ascension of Christ to the Father after overcoming the ruler of
the world.68
Scholars have also argued that the pedestal of the statue takes the form of a Roman
altar. This has a basis in the mythological context, with interesting ramifcations for
both the political and artistic claims made through this subject matter by Cellini and
his patron.69 But the pagan altar inevitably calls forth its Christian counterpart, rein-
forcing the impression that the statue inverts the viewer’s expectations of the bleeding
fgure who would normally occupy this space within a church. Even without these
prompts, I would argue that the correlation between blood fow and gaze is enough to
invoke the dynamics of that sculptural encounter.
In a brilliant study of the Perseus, Michael Cole has demonstrated the complex
signifcance of the blood fow in relation to Cellini’s own craft of casting the bronze
with a single pour and in playfully elaborating on the mythological subject matter.70
But if we approach the sculpture now with the kind of visual habits formed around
crucifxes like that at Chioggia, we can read the encounter in a diferent fashion. To
do as Minerbetti did—to look up at the countenance of Perseus—requires us to get
close to the foot of the plinth. But once in this location, we are exactly where the fow
of blood has its greatest impact, exactly where we might—as Minerbetti says—be
driven away for fear of being soaked. Indeed, if we look up even further, the severed
head also hovers over our own.71 In Perseus’s downward gaze, in the fow of blood
that threatens to spatter the viewer, Cellini has apparently transformed the sculptural
encounter found in the late medieval crucifx and turned it into a dreadful parody.
Instead of the ofer of salvation, there is a threat: a monstrous efusion, not a fow of
sacred and redemptive lifeblood.
The pressure to move, to get out of the way, forces the viewer into a decision, simi-
lar to that faced in a crucifx. And this I think is precisely the point. We must exercise
our judgement whether to step to the left or right. And just like a crucifx, this deci-
sion functions as an analogue for judgement in general. In other words, judgement is
at stake in the fow of blood: the Perseus is like the crucifx at Chioggia or the Blessed
140 Peter Dent
Giacomo’s miraculous experience of blood at Bevagna. But here the similarity ends. In
the cross, the judgement is about salvation or damnation, and the spot from which the
work is transcended corresponds to the source of the blood: the side wound. Through
that wound the viewer embarks on a new kind of journey, a spiritual journey, with
the journey round the image complete. In contrast, the blood of Medusa represents
a diferent point of departure. Whether we jump left or right we are thrown imme-
diately back into the work itself—there is no point of rest from which to transcend
the object. Indeed, this is reinforced by what happens if we take the obvious choice
to move towards the frontal view: we fall immediately beneath Medusa’s apotropaic
gaze, and so the fction moves us on again. In other words, Cellini forces the viewer to
encounter his sculpture in the round and therefore to apprehend its sculptural quality.
No self-respecting sculptor, according to Cellini, would be happy with just one or two
views. As a result, our movement round the statue is not about moral judgement; it is
aesthetic judgement that is at stake: is the work good or bad in terms of art?
One fnal detail of the statue seems to confrm this line of thought. Even as the
viewer contemplates the sweet sight of Perseus’s face and feels the pressure to fee the
spurting blood, a third element comes into focus. In the mid-zone, where in a crucifx
we might expect to see the side wound, we fnd instead a leather strap running across
Perseus’s fank. Clearly picked out on its surface, we can read Cellini’s name. The
immediate reference is Michelangelo’s famous signature on the ribbon that traverses
the Virgin’s breast in the St Peter’s Pieta. In other words, it evokes another sculptural
image of a woman and a man, another image that combines a living fgure and a
corpse: the Virgin bearing the body of her son across her lap. And in calling up that
image of Christ’s Passion, it also reworks it by reversing the genders. But perhaps
more importantly, the signature itself reorients the nature of the encounter. Where
the function of the medieval crucifx was to lead the viewer towards Christ, Cellini’s
work leads us just as surely back to his own hand. Rather than the open door of the
side wound, it bears the unmistakeable stamp of the work of art, the artist’s name. It
would be wrong, however, to take this as yet another mark of the traditional gulf that
separates the medieval from the early modern. Cellini’s presentation of this idea shows
that these things are not yet worlds apart but actually still so close as to overlap, to be
amenable to superimposition.
Coda
In many ways, of course, these two worlds were superimposed. The churches of early
modern Italy were full of crucifxes, many of late medieval origin. Some of these
crucifxes had already become cult objects by Cellini’s day.72 The sixteenth-century
beholder of Cellini’s Perseus may well have arrived straight from an encounter with a
crucifx. Indeed, the bronze statue was fnally unveiled towards the end of April 1554
in the period immediately after Easter. Most of the public had probably participated in
the annual Good Friday unveiling and Adoration ceremony. Perhaps that experience
was still fresh in their minds as the Perseus itself was unveiled in the square. But these
two worlds were also superimposed in Cellini’s career. Shortly after completing the
Perseus, he embarked in earnest on his fnal major project, a life-size marble crucifx.73
This was a personal labour rather than a commissioned work. It began as a dream-
vision that Cellini experienced in 1539 while imprisoned in Rome. He saw Christ
Crucifed, and the Virgin and Child, accompanied by two angels and St Peter. His will
of 1555 contained plans to carve the crucifx and set it up in association with a tomb
in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. In this case, Brunelleschi was explicitly mentioned
in the arrangement. Cellini’s tomb and crucifx were to stand opposite Brunelleschi’s
wooden crucifx so that the two images of Christ on the Cross would read as a pair. In
other words, just as the Perseus was inserted into the scenography of a public square
defned as a scene by Brunelleschi’s demonstration panel, so the marble crucifx was to
be inserted into a church interior in association with the same artistic forebear. In his
autobiography, Cellini describes his original request to the friars that he ‘be allowed
to construct on the ground under the foot of my Crucifx a little tomb to receive me
after I was dead’.74 This proposal immediately ran into difculties, and in the end the
crucifx was acquired by Duke Cosimo and subsequently gifted to Philip II of Spain,
who installed it at the Escorial.
The crucifx is in many ways an innovative work. Carved from a single block of
marble, it was another opportunity for Cellini to demonstrate his artistic mastery
in the feld of sculpture. Christ has the same beautiful proportions and well-defned
musculature as the Perseus. In style and execution, his physique is a long way from
the sufering and disfgured bodies depicted in the polychromed wooden crucifxes of
the early fourteenth century. But they are not entirely diferent: Cellini’s Christ inclines
his head to the side; his gaze is turned sharply down; his eyes are still open; his mouth
ajar. Perhaps Cellini imagined St Peter, stood at the foot of the crucifx, turned towards
Christ, interceding on his behalf, as he did in the vision all those years before. But per-
haps he also imagined himself, lying in the tomb below, gazing upwards endlessly into
Christ’s eyes in the hope that God would judge him worthy in the end of salvation.
Notes
1. Gardner 1987, 211.
2. Najemy 2006, 97–99.
3. Strocchia 2007, 346–368.
4. Gardner 1987, 211.
5. Gardner 1987, 211.
6. ‘Item facere et intalliare fguram siue ymaginem beati Johannis baptiste et sancte Reparate,
altitudinis quelibet ipsarum fgurarum bracchiorum quattuor et grossitiei sicut requiritur
dicte altitudini et fguris’ [‘Item to make and to carve a fgure that is an image of the blessed
John the Baptist and Saint Reparata, each of those fgures of the height of four bracchia and
of the size as required by the said height and fgures’]. Milanesi 1901, 39.
7. See Pucci 2003, 15–16.
8. Plato, Sophist, 235e1 (trans. Rowe 2015, 127).
9. Plato, Sophist, 235e5–236a (trans. Rowe 2015, 127).
10. Plato, Sophist, 236a5 (trans. Rowe 2015, 127).
11. See Allen 1989.
12. See Hessler 2014, 132–138 in particular.
13. ‘la pittura è, come noi diremmo, sofstica, cioè apparente e non vera . . . il che non avviene
nella scultura’. Varchi in Barocchi 1960, 41 [22].
14. On taste and judgement, see Agamben (trans. Francis 2017).
15. Vasari (trans. de Vere 1996, Vol. 1, 366) An anecdote recorded by the Byzantine writer
John Tzetzes (c.1110–1180) in the Chiliades (book 8.38, story 193, lines 340–69) may
also be pertinent. He tells how Phidias and Alcamenes both carved statues of Athena and
that Alcamenes was judged to have produced the better work until the statue by Phidias
was placed on its column. For an English translation, see www.theoi.com/Text/Tzetzes
Chiliades1.html [accessed 31.1.2020].
16. Vasari (trans. de Vere 1996, Vol. 2, 654).
142 Peter Dent
17. Rubin 1995, 336.
18. For an overview of the medieval discourse on art in the European context, see Levi 2010.
19. Gardner 1987, 211.
20. See in general terms Camille 1994 and Fricke 2015 for the medieval status of the statue as
a category and the opposition between the image of the crucifx and the idol (often repre-
sented as a cult statue on a column).
21. Stewart 2003, 19–45, in particular.
22. Lakey 2018.
23. For a recent consolidation of this argument, see Righetti 2009, 547–563. Romanini made
multiple contributions to this topic. Rather than listing them here, the reader is referred to
D’Achille and Pomarici 2006 (see for example the entries for Romanini on pp. 228–229,
229–231, 248, 256–258, 258–259, 284, 288–289, 290, 291, 302, 307, 307–308, 316–318,
327, but also those by: Pomarici, pp. 242–243; Simi Varanelli, pp. 244–245, 249; Cagli-
anone and Iazeolla, pp. 250–251; Refce, pp. 255–256; D’Achille, pp. 305–306, 314, 331;
Ballardini, pp. 309–310; Cecchini, pp. 310–311, 311; and Moskowitz, p. 316).
24. On this, see in particular Denery 2005.
25. See Newhauser 2012 and Clark 1977, 329–343.
26. For the wider context of discourse on art in this period, see Baxandall 1971 (51–66 for
Petrarch).
27. Rawski 1991, Vol. 1,130. The best recent study of these sections of the work is Perucchi
2014 (182–191 for text and translation of De statuis and 262–277 for commentary).
28. See Perucchi 2014, 264.
29. For an introduction to the text, see Kircher 2009, 245–253. Kircher cites this explanation
given by Reason to Joy, which is found in dialogue 1.63 on fshponds, at 247.
30. Rawski 1991, 133.
31. The critical literature is extensive. For a classic account, see Barolini 1992, 122–142. For a
discussion by the present author, see Dent 2012, 86–100.
32.
“Non tener pur ad un loco la mente,”/ disse ’l dolce maestro. . . . Per ch’i’ mi mossi col
viso, e vedea . . . un’altra storia ne la roccia imposta; / per ch’io varcai Virgilio, e fe’mi
presso, / acciò che fosse a li occhi miei disposta.
(Translation and text here and subsequently from Durling 2003, 160–161
Purgatorio 10.46–54).
33. See Dante’s Convivio, 2.9.4–5: ‘nevertheless that which enters along a straight line into the
center of the pupil is the only one that is truly seen and which stamps itself upon the imagi-
nation’. Lansing’s translation, which can be consulted here with the original Italian: https://
digitaldante.columbia.edu/text/library/the-convivio/ [accessed 23.8.2020].
34. See Casagrande 1990, 21–57, also available here www.gicas.net/purg.html#* [accessed
4.6.2020].
35.
Dinanzi parea gente; e tutta quanta, / partita in sette cori, a’ due mie’ sensi / faceva dir
l’un: ‘No’, l’altro: ‘Sì, canta’. / Similemente al fummo de li ’ncensi / che v’era imaginato,
li occhi e ’l naso / e al sì e al no discordi fensi.
(Purgatorio 10 58–62)
36. Sic et non was a medieval scholastic text by Peter Abelard.
37. This is a very compressed account. For late medieval models of cognition, see Karnes 2011.
38. For a wider discussion of the pre-Kantian context, see Nehamas 2007; Konstan 2015; Por-
ter 2010, 1–69.
39. See Cooper 2011, 90–107.
40. See Thompson 2005, 23–24.
41. See Bruzelius 2014, 124–133 in particular.
42. For further discussion with additional examples, see: Dent 2017a, 208–239; Dent 2018,
73–87; and Dent 2017b, 18–32.
43. See Seidel 2000, 79–94 (90–92 in particular).
44. See the catalogue entry by Alessandro Bagnoli in Bagnoli 2010, 176–180 (cat.no. 7).
45. There are other possibilities, but the Virgin Mary is the most important.
46. For a good overview, see Bino 2008.
47. For a brief overview in the Italian context, see Thompson 2005, 324–326.
48. For a good contextual discussion, see Lunghi 2000, 39–50 and the catalogue entry by Lunghi
in Bassetti and Toscano 2012, 171–178 (cat.no. 6). For the vita, see Paoli 1997, 253–299.
49. See Mor 2013, 47–59 (54) and Tosello 2006, and Dent 2017b.
50. Cellini (trans. Ashbee 1967, 142).
51. For an overview of Florentine public sculpture of this period, see McHam 1998, 149–188
(esp. 158–188 for the Piazza della Signoria).
52. For the piazza’s origins, see Trachtenberg 1997, 87–147.
53. On medieval building campaigns, as well as Trachtenberg 1997, see Trachtenberg 2010
(with specifc reference to the Piazza della Signoria at 186–205).
54. See Trachtenberg 1997, 223–243.
55. For the relationship between these panels and the urban development of the Piazza della
Signoria, see: Trachtenberg 1997, and the short recapitulation in Trachtenberg 2002, 697–
698, along with his earlier article, Trachtenberg 1988, 14–44.
56. Vasari (Bettarini and Barocchi eds. 1966–1987, 188 [295–296]), consulted at www.memofonte.
it/home/fles/pdf/vasari_vite_torrentiniana.pdf [accessed 5.6.2020]. My translation.
57. See the comments in Shearman 2003, 19–36.
58. Gell 1992, 52.
59. Letter to Benedetto Varchi, dated 28 January 1546, published in Barocchi 1960, Vol. 1,
48 [80]. Consulted at www.memofonte.it/home/fles/pdf/scritti_varchi1.pdf [accessed
5.6.2020]. My translation.
60. For the evolution of the design and Cellini’s main sources of inspiration, see the account in
Pope-Hennessy 1985, 163–186 (168–170 in particular).
61. This is the view in the standard survey text, Pope-Hennessy 1996, plate 144.
62. Shearman 2003, 29.
63. This interpretation is frst developed in Shearman 1992, 44–58.
64. Shearman 1992, 44.
65. On the similarity of the faces, see Corretti 2015, 26.
66. For Donatello’s David as one source for the downward gaze, see Pope-Hennessy 1985,
183–184.
67.
Dico che questa fgura si vede nel volto una ferezza mirabile in una faccia dolcissima; el
moto del braccio manco, che sostiene per e’ crini la testa di Medusa, è cosa incredibile,
che vedendola par che vivamente la mostri al mondo; et in quella testa si vede la morte
negli ochi e nella bocca fare el suo crudele ofzio. E quel che non posso saziarmi di
guardare con stupore è el sangue, che impetuosamente esce del tronco, che, ancorchè di
metallo sia, par niente di meno tanto da dovero, che scaccia altrui per paura di essere
insanguinato.
(Minerbetti to Vasari, 20 August 1552 in Barocchi 1973:2:1198–1200)
68. Boccaccio 2011, 51.
69. Weil-Garris 1983, 409–410; and Cole 1999, 226–227.
70. Cole 1999, 215–235.
71. Corretti argues that the viewer ends up standing beneath Perseus’s sword and that the
‘Greek hero seems to watch for the spectator’s reaction’. Corretti 2015, 109. I would argue
that his gaze only encompasses the viewer when standing at the corner by Medusa’s neck.
72. For Florence specifcally, see Holmes 2013.
73. For this work, see Pope-Hennessy 1985, 253–260.
74. Bull 1998, 387.
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7 When Venus Mocked the Pope
Ancient Sculptures in the Possessi of
Renaissance Rome
Kathleen W. Christian
In Renaissance Rome, each pope marked the beginning of his reign with a ceremo-
nial possesso, a procession in which the new pontif and his retinue traversed the
city, marching in triumph from the Vatican to St John Lateran and back again. The
event asserted the pope’s status as Rome’s bishop through the ‘possession’ of his
episcopal seat at the Lateran. At the same time, on his march through Rome, he
took symbolic possession of the city itself, opening up controversies surrounding
the papal appropriation of civic authority.1 On these occasions the residents of the
Via Papalis—the name given to the route of the possesso since at least the twelfth
century—festively outftted the street with decorations such as tapestries, fowers
and greenery hung from windows. It was also longstanding practice to set up trium-
phal arches on the Via Papalis, and by the time of Alexander VI’s possesso of 1492,
if not earlier, these had become the most elaborate element of the street décor.2 As
will be the focus of this discussion, beginning at least from the time of the pos-
sesso of Pope Julius II (1503) and likely that of Alexander VI (1492), noble Roman
families living along the Via Papalis displayed their antique sculptures on tempo-
rary arches set up along the route. When incorporated into ephemeral decoration,
ancient statues added to the splendour of the event and underscored its laudatory
themes. Yet they could also, as I will argue, assume more challenging and disruptive
identities when removed from the private sphere and exhibited on the street. Just as
Valeria Cafà has linked the construction of new palaces by Roman noble families
on the Via Papalis with the desire to contest the ascendance of papal power, ancient
statues could assert a sense of native pride, expressing native Roman ownership of
the city and its heritage.3 Moreover, as I will suggest, statues of pagan gods and
goddesses in public space had the potential to invert hierarchies, in keeping with
the possesso’s raucous atmosphere.
Antique Statues and Public Space: The Via Papalis

The pope’s frst foray into the Urbs was rife with political tension and undercur-
rents of violence. Each possesso took place immediately after the disorder of the sede
vacante (the interregnum between popes), when the popolo vented their antagonisms
with looting targeted at the new pope and other high-ranking members of the curia.4
The possesso was known for its rowdiness and could on occasion descend into riots:
one of its recurring rituals was the theft by the Romans of the pope’s white mule and
the baldacchino covering him, which was sometimes ripped apart by the crowd. Dur-
ing the possessi of Sixtus IV (1471) and Innocent VIII (1484), fghts over the mule and
148 Kathleen W. Christian
baldacchino were so violent as to interrupt the event, amid fears for the pope’s safety.5
During his possesso, Julius II handed over his baldacchino and mule in a carefully
managed ceremony in order to avoid possible conficts. Yet even in his highly staged
entry in 1513, Pope Leo X could not avoid hazing from the crowd and, as will be dis-
cussed below, in one part of the procession it was a nude antique statue of Venus who
mocked him. While the possesso has sometimes been understood as a blunt assertion
of papal authority, recent research has emphasised the participatory nature of the
event: each possesso was an expression of interests and counter-interests, a negotia-
tion carried out in the language of triumphal imagery, inscriptions, statues and poetic
recitations. It ofered an opportunity to Roman citizens and a wide variety of social
groups and nationalities to voice their expectations, to remind the pope of his obliga-
tions to Rome and also to suggest their capacity for rebellion.6
Arguably, as will be explored here, the expansion of private antiquities collections
in Rome can itself be linked to the increasingly prominent role given to ancient statues
in the possesso. Although there were many diferent, complex factors that contributed
to the spread of collecting towards the end of the ffteenth century, one can trace
signifcant overlaps between the logistics and history of antiquities collecting, the pos-
sesso and the Via Papalis. A high proportion of Rome’s antiquities collections were
sited along the processional route, and collectors residing on the street took the oppor-
tunity to exhibit them in public space during papal entries, thereby claiming the power
to script the event. Considered from the perspective of the possesso, collections can be
understood as lasting traces of ephemeral celebrations and a type of display similar to
triumphal spolia and triumphal arches. Examining these relationships in more detail
loosens an overly strict understanding of Rome’s early collections as private ‘muse-
ums’ and focuses attention on the movement of antique sculptures between private
and public space. Now enshrined in museums, ancient sculptures seem far removed
from the history of processions and temporary décor. However, even if they seem to
exist in the austere realm of Winkelmann’s ‘noble simplicity and calm grandeur’, their
ability to be displayed on the street during papal entries may have been an important
part of their appeal for collectors.
In Rome, fragments of antiquities had long been integrated as spolia in the street-
facing decor of houses and palaces, as is still visible in the twelfth-century Casa di
Crescenzio, an exceptional surviving example of what must have been a widespread
practice. From the mid-Quattrocento onwards, however, these practices shifted as col-
lections of fgural reliefs and free-standing, often life-sized marbles began to be dis-
played in gardens and courtyards; an important development in this move seems to
have been Sixtus IV’s Restauratio Romae of the 1470s and ’80s, when the porticoes
that had previously lined the Via Papalis and other Roman thoroughfares were demol-
ished. It seems it was around the same time that collectors increasingly favoured myth-
ological subjects and fgural nudes arranged in interior reception spaces. While objects
immured on public façades were often portraits or heraldic images, closely related to
family stemme or civic symbolism, in the more controlled and restricted atmosphere
of the collection, poetic themes and fgural works valued as artistic masterpieces were
favoured. As the display of antiquities moved inwards, their relationship with the pub-
lic was governed by rules of admission and physical or psychological boundaries (such
as doors and gates, or the presence of a servant who could supervise entry). It may
be that some collections were partially visible from the street, at least during the day
when doors were open, yet it seems it was only via a specifc process of admission that
pilgrims, tourists and artists were able to enter collections to take a closer look.7 While
When Venus Mocked the Pope 149
private collections of antiquities certainly rivalled and evoked the age-old practice of
viewing Rome’s famous Mirabilia in public,8 since they existed in private space they
were incorporated into host–guest relationships and reception rituals. The proprietor
could control who entered (only men? only Christians or only the socially elite?), when
they were able to visit, as well as the collection’s over-arching setting and context.
When antiquities moved onto the street during possessi, the parameters changed. Dur-
ing these events, noble families on the Via Papalis took the opportunity to align them-
selves with the pope by celebrating his election with solemn panegyrics and laudatory
imagery complemented by antique works of art. They themselves took ‘possession’ of
public space by displaying their statues like the spolia the ancient Romans had paraded
in triumphal processions. At the same time, collecting families put a type of pagan,
often nude or sexualised imagery usually reserved for a more restricted audience in
public space. This move seems itself characteristic of the boundary-crossings and the
loss of restriction typical of Carnival and other inversion rituals; it hints as well at the
power of the Roman nobility to upend social convention in public space, precisely
when and where these families were confronted with papal authority.
I frst began to investigate the relationship between antiquities collections and the
papal possesso after mapping the most important collections of antique sculpture
in Rome formed between c. 1470 and the Sack of 1527.9 Looking at a map show-
ing major collections of antique sculpture known before 1527 (Figure 7.1), one can
Figure 7.1 Giambattista Nolli, Pianta Grande di Roma, 1748, marked with the location of the
Via Papalis and of antiquities collections formed before the 1527 Sack of Rome: (1)
Sassi; (2) Mellini; (3) Galli; (4) Riario; (5) Pasquino; (6) Pichi; (7) Massimo; (8) Pic-
colomini; (9) Della Valle; (10) Cafarelli; (11) Medici; (12) Alberini; (13) Cesarini;
(14) Altieri; (15) Astalli; (16) de’ Rossi.
Source: Image of map courtesy of University of Oregon Nolli Map, © 2006, and reprinted by permission of
the University of Oregon Nolli Map Project (http://nolli.uoregon.edu).
discern a distinct relationship between the location of these collections and the route
of the Via Papalis. Many of Rome’s early collections of antique statuary were located
along the processional route, for example, at the houses of the Sasso d’Amateschi, the
Massimi, the de’ Rossi or the Della Valle. Prominent and relatively broad stretches of
the street became favoured sites for antiquities collections, and one can even discern a
correlation between the location of well-known collections and the sites of the muta-
tiones, the ceremonies marking the hand-over of the pope’s baldacchino from one
group to another. The mutationes were solemnly observed at signifcant openings of
the Via Papalis. During the possesso of Innocent VIII, the papal Master of Ceremonies
Johannes Burchard specifes 13 spots where they took place, including at the Piazza di
Parione, at the houses of the Della Valle (Figures 7.2–7.3), the palazzi of the Cesarini
family and San Marco.10 The display of antique statuary at these key nodes is sugges-
tive of an inherent link between antiquities collecting and what was arguably Rome’s
most important public ritual.
The stretch of the Via Papalis where antiquities collections formed is roughly equiv-
alent to the current via del Governo Vecchio and the broad, trafc-ridden Corso Vit-
torio Emanuele II (Figure 7.1). Before the construction of the Corso Vittorio in the
nineteenth century, the Via Papalis was a narrow passage winding through densely
inhabited quarters. Traditionally, it hosted very few shops and only a handful of
churches, and was dominated instead by the palazzi of the Roman nobility.11 On the
west end was the Orsini’s fortifed cluster of houses at Monte Giordano; then, at a wide
opening of the processional street at Piazza di Parione, was the Palazzo Orsini rented
by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, where Carafa displayed his famous statue of Pasquino
Figure 7.2 Maarten van Heemskerck, Courtyard of the Palazzo Della Valle di Cantone, c.
1532–1537, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.no. 79.D.2, fol. 20r.
Figure 7.3 Hermann Vischer the Younger, House of the Palazzo ‘di Mezzo’ Della Valle, c. 1515,
Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.no. 19,051.
(Figure 7.4). Further along the route were the palaces of other Roman noble families:
the Pichi, Massimi, Alberini, Cafarelli and Cesarini, all of them collectors of antique
sculpture. As Valeria Cafà has argued, the local nobility vied to establish a presence
on the street as soon as they had achieved sufcient status and wealth. As an example,
just months before his death in 1505, Jacopo Galli, the Roman merchant-banker and
Figure 7.4 Piazza di Pasquino, Rome; formerly known as Piazza di Parione.

early sponsor of Michelangelo, managed to purchase a large palace on the papal street
directly across from the Pasquino.12 Cafà points out that almost all of the important
palazzi built new by Roman nobles in the sixteenth century, such as those of the Pichi,
Massimi, Alberini and Cafarelli, were sited on the Via Papalis.
The inaugural procession of the pope through such emphatically Roman territory
set up a poignant encounter between the new de facto ruler of Rome and the noble
residents of the Via Papalis. As Cafà has highlighted, Romans’ investment in grand
palazzi along the route can be understood as an expression of pride and autonomy
set before the eyes of the pope. After the return of the papacy from Avignon, as has
often been described, the papacy assumed an increasingly monarchical identity vis
à vis the Roman nobility. The late Quattrocento and early Cinquecento was a time
when the papacy and the powerful foreigners who populated the Cardinals’ college
and the Curia siphoned away the city’s laws, its powers to tax and govern, and even its
control over the city’s ancient monuments. Palazzi on the Via Papalis and the display
of ancient statues during the possesso allowed the native Roman nobility to express
a sense of pride in their own Romanitas while staking a claim on the city, its past
and its antiquities. If the Via Papalis was the territory of the Romans, architecture,
ephemeral decoration and the display of antique sculpture along the route could be
understood as a reminder to the pope to recognise and honour Rome’s nobility.13 One
aspect of collecting was likely the desire to vaunt the possession of ancient spolia in a
triumphal context; by the end of the Quattrocento, the exhibition of the sort of objects
that had been processed as spoils in the ancient Roman triumph—statues sculpted by
master artists and other works—once again became symbols of victory and power
during the ceremony of the possesso. Andrea Mantegna’s famous Triumphs of Cae-
sar (Figure 7.5) refects the artist’s knowledge of Plutarch’s account of the triumph
of Aemilius Paullus, in particular his description of over 200 cartloads of ‘captured
statues, paintings and colossi’ displayed during the frst day, followed on the next by
wagons of weapons and armour.14 Written descriptions of the ancient triumph like-
wise ofered a vivid exemplum and point of reference for antiquarians and collectors
in Renaissance Rome. So too did surviving antique triumphal arches, which clarifed
an association between the display of artistic spolia and the triumphal procession.
Figure 7.5 Andrea Mantegna, ‘Carts of Spolia and Standard-Bearers’ from the Triumphs of
Caesar cycle, 1484–1492, Hampton Court Palace, London.
Source: Photo: Bridgeman Art Library.
The Arch of Constantine, with its integrated reliefs and statues of barbarian prisoners,
ofered a particularly prominent example of the ancient practice of exhibiting sculp-
tural spolia on arches in public space.
At the same time, the display of ancient spolia along the Via Papalis arguably raised
the spectre of pillage, or the ‘rights of spoil’ traditionally asserted by the people of
Rome through the looting and lawlessness of the sede vacante. Triumphalist imagery
and the display of ancient statues in public space played upon the tensions that ran
through the ceremony of the possesso, opening up unresolved questions about the bal-
ance of power between the pope, the local aristocracy and the popolo. Nude gods and
goddesses, Bacchus and his entourage, and such fgures normally visible in controlled
environments were presumably extraordinary sights when they moved from private to
public space. Such imagery may have seemed appropriate since the ceremony was—
like the Carnival or like the pillage unleashed by each pope’s death—a moment of
upheaval and transition. Moving antique sculpture onto the street was a ftting com-
pliment to these ‘ruptures’ and a channel for the expressive and dynamic qualities of
antique imagery highlighted by Aby Warburg, who considered the Renaissance revival
of pagan imagery an expression of ‘exuberant vitality, the awareness of a germinating,
creative will-to-life, and an unspoken, maybe an unconscious opposition to the strict
discipline of the Church’.15 Up until the mid-sixteenth century, at least, the possesso
was not only a papal triumph but also a festival of the popolo, ofering up fountains
of wine, carnival-like elements and the reversal of social norms.16
Pagan Imagery, Ephemeral Décor and Public Festivals in Rome

The issue of the display of antiquities as a proud marker of native Romanitas by the
local nobility has been explored in an expanding body of scholarship on antiquarian-
ism and antiquities collecting by Roman aristocratic families.17 Less often discussed is
the overlap between the development of antiquities collections and the subjects and
appearance of festival apparati. Even if Jacob Burckhardt already expressed an interest
in the study of triumphal arches and ‘festival sculpture’, these topics have lingered on
the periphery of art history and antiquarian studies.18 A closer consideration of ephem-
eral décor suggests, however, a correlation between the expansion of antiquities collect-
ing and interest in pagan-themed ephemera. Over the course of the second half of the
Quattrocento, triumphal arches decorated with all’antica painting, stucco sculptures,
and classicizing inscriptions gradually replaced allegorical carri inspired by Petrarch’s
Triumphs. Rather than personifcations of Christian virtues, characters from the ancient
past made appearances at weddings, banquets, processions, triumphal entries and car-
nival celebrations. Bacchic imagery and other pagan subjects could suggest exuberance
and the loosening of social convention, as when paper mâché giants, fauns, and Pans
appeared on the streets of Florence during the Festa di San Giovanni of 1475.19
In Rome, the transition towards the display of antique and all’antica imagery in
ephemeral decoration took place at a time when the ancient triumph became the dom-
inant conceptual model for festivals of all sorts. As Charles Stinger put it,
in Rome the theme of triumph was more important than elsewhere, not only
because the ancient triumphs of Rome’s imperial glory had actually taken place
there, but also because triumph was fundamental to the meaning and purpose of
the city.20
In Rome particularly, a signifcant development was the antiquarian research in the
late 1450s of Flavio Biondo, who in his Roma triumphans would compare the ancient
Roman triumph to the papal possessi of his own time.21 The ancient triumph became
in the ffteenth century a paragon for rituals of entry, reception and procession in
Rome, with transformative efects in the genre of ephemeral décor. A striking, early
example is a quasi-pagan procession held in honour of Pope Paul II. While the event
has been associated with Carnival, it was one of a list of honours granted to Paul II for
his rapid and successful campaign against the Counts of Anguillara in 1465. The pope
himself provided the funds for a triumphal procession put on by the city of Rome and
celebrated in April 1466. For the occasion, the pope’s biographer Michele Canensio
writes, actors dressed in pagan garb and images of the ancient gods were paraded
through the streets:
Advancing in orderly fashion, at the front was the masquerade of the giants, then
winged Cupid with his arrows, then Diana on horseback, surrounded by a large
band of nymphs, then one hundred sixty youths, or even more, in white . . . then
the king and other generals conquered by the Romans, ambitious Cleopatra con-
quered by Augustus Caesar, Mars, Fauns, Bacchus and a large crowd of those
whom the ancients falsely believed to be gods.22
Although a seventeenth-century source gives the date of this procession as ‘26 April’,
the event likely coincided with festivities for the birthday of Rome, traditionally iden-
tifed as the 21st of that month. The same source describes the route of this triumphal
entry, Bacchic triumph and celebratory parade, which went from San Marco, to Santa
Maria sopra Minerva, along the Via Papalis and then to Piazza di Parione, where the
carri ended their journey.23 Arguably, the foats and ‘living images’ of gods and god-
desses paraded in Paul II’s triumphal procession are part of a larger transition towards
all’antica festival ephemera that developed hand-in-hand with antiquities collecting in
the private sphere.
Antiquities and possessi: Sixtus IV to Julius II

At the same time that processions and celebrations became more classicising, urban
projects of the ffteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to transform Rome into a grand
stage for ceremonial and street processions. Sixtus IV widened the Via Papalis, as did
Innocent VIII and Julius II.24 Ephemeral decorations for the possessi became more
signifcant, requiring more substantial creative input from artists.25 Unfortunately,
descriptions of the possessi of Sixtus IV in 1471 and Innocent VIII in 1484 are limited
and shed little light on the decorations that might have adorned the Via Papalis during
their triumphal entries.26 The documentation is more abundant, however, for Alexan-
der VI’s possesso of 1492. According to Marcello Fagiolo and Maria Luisa Madonna,
his was the frst that could be considered an all’antica triumph. For Ingersoll, it marks
the moment in which ‘the possesso was defned from the papal point of view. The
triumph . . . became its organizing metaphor’.27 A picture of the expense and efort
the papal treasury put into the event is given by the records of payments authorised
by the Camera Apostolica for temporary architecture, singers and musicians, crimson
brocade and painted standards.28 A description of the event by the Milanese historian
Bernardino Corio gives a sense of the elaborate decorations set up through papal
and private enterprise; most of the street from Banchi to San Giovanni was ‘covered
with blue cloth’, the ground carpeted with herbs and fowers, the route adorned with
‘superbissimi archi trionfali’. The most elaborate arches were those near San Celso:
one was modelled on the Arch of Constantine, with four large columns topped by
fgures of armed men ‘a guisa d’antichi baroni’. The other was stafed by young girls
who recited verses in honour of the pope in Latin and Italian, actors dressed as repre-
sentatives of East and West, and a personifcation of Rome in the middle with a papal
mitre in her hands and a globe at her feet. Apparati were set up further along at the
house of Franceschetto Cybo, at the palazzo of Cardinal Carafa and at the house of
Ludovico Agnello.29 Other triumphal arches—of which unfortunately no description
survives—were constructed at the house of the Massimi, at the piazza San Marco and
on the approach to the Lateran.
The sources for Alexander’s possesso describe actors dressed as nymphs, gods,
and classical allegories who enlivened the triumphal arches set up on the street.30
At the same time, the earliest indications of the practice of antiquities collecting on
the processional route date to around the time of Alexander VI’s possesso. A let-
ter of 1490 by the courtier Giovanni da Tolentino, for example, references antique
sculptures in the house of the Della Valle which were ‘probably not inferior’ to those
in public settings.31 Many more private antiquities collections were mentioned in a
poem written by the ‘Prospettivo Milanese’ and published under the title Antiquarie
prospetiche romane.32 Dedicated to Leonardo da Vinci, the poem recommends a visit
to Rome to see the city’s ancient marvels, including collections of antique statues on
the Via Papalis such as those of the Cafarelli, Massimi, Della Valle and Astalli. While
the date the poem’s publication had been the subject of much controversy, recent
research has established that it was printed in either 1495 or 1496.33 Another source
which seems to be from the 1490s or early 1500s, the so-called Nota d’Anticaglie,
praises many of the same collections as well as others on the Via Papalis, such as
those of the Sassi (Figure 7.6) and de’ Rossi.34 Taken together, these texts reveal that
by the last quarter of the ffteenth century a transformation had taken place. By the
time of the papal Jubilee of 1500, visitors to Rome moving between the Vatican and
the Lateran could, following the owners’ rules for admission, visit private collections
of sculpture along the Via Papalis.
One of the statues exhibited on the Via Papalis was the Pasquino. The Antiquarie
prospetiche romane is the frst source to mention the fgure, locating it ‘in Parione’
and describing it as a representation of Hercules.35 In 1501, Cardinal Carafa set up
the Pasquino on a high base inscribed with his name at the corner of his residence, the
Palazzo Orsini in the Piazza di Parione, on the route of the VIa Papalis. A slightly later
history of the Pasquino relates that before Carafa’s intervention the statue had been
lying on the ground, ‘not many feet away’ from his palazzo, in a neglected and pitiful
state.36 When Carafa took it over, the statue seems to have already been the recipient
of anonymous anti-clerical poems. This is the impression given by Johannes Burchard,
who records a verse posted on a notice-board near the statue in 1501, a short epigram
predicting the death of the ‘Ox’, Pope Alexander VI Borgia, and his succession by
the ‘Wheel’, Cardinal Jorge da Costa.37 After the Cardinal’s rededication of the Pas-
quino, which is frst documented by the dedicatory base of 1501, the fgure was better
known as the centrepiece of the annual Festa di Pasquino. It has been suggested that
the Cardinal formally adopted the statue and organised a literary festival around it to
Figure 7.6 Anonymous (after Maarten Van Heemskerck?), House of the Sasso d’Amateschi, c.
1530s, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv.no. Kdz 2783.
attempt to silence the Pasquino’s critical voice. As Reynolds has argued, Carafa may
have taken on ‘a supervisory role’ as guardian and also censor of the statue.38 Under
Carafa’s protection, annually on 25 April contestants vied to compose the best poems
in the voice of the Pasquino, who was assigned a new identity every year (e.g., Hercu-
les, Mars or Apollo). The Pasquino would be dressed in an appropriate costume, and a
team of artists would transform the statue into the selected character, using temporary
additions in papier mâché and other materials.39
Once installed in its new setting, the Pasquino became a focal point of the piazza,
standing where the papal cortège would pass him during each possesso (Figure 7.4).
In a recent monograph on the Pasquino, Maddalena Spagnolo has emphasised the
close relationship between the famous statue, the piazza and the Via Papalis which ran
through it. The sources mention a triumphal arch constructed near Carafa’s residence
during Alexander VI’s possesso in the Summer of 1492: an arch at the ‘Palazzo di
Napoli’ said to have been decorated ‘with many capitals, festoons, all’antica paintings
and other things’.40 Given that the Prospettivo Milanese must have seen the Pasquino
sometime before 1496, Spagnolo has questioned whether the Pasquino may even have
frst appeared in the Piazza di Parione as part of the temporary decorations set up in
1492.41 Although this question remains open, certainly Carafa’s decision to display the
statue in such close rapport with the Via Papalis is indicative of a confuence by the
late ffteenth century between the papal triumph and the display of antique sculpture.
Eventually, the statue would become fully integrated with the event, and in 1513,
during the possesso of Leo X, the Festa di Pasquino (in that year, paid for by the Pope
himself) was closely synchronised with Leo’s possesso.42 For the literary contest in
April 1513, the Pasquino was given the identity of Apollo, underscoring the idea of
the renewal of the arts, the same themes that, as is discussed below, were emphatically
stressed during the possesso in March.43
This was Pasquino’s panegyric role, but his permanent presence on the street gave
him another identity as a critic and mouthpiece of the popolo. There are many factors
that shaped the statue’s role as a spokesman of both praise and blame—for example,
the nature of the Piazza di Parione as the centre for Rome’s printers, scribes and copy-
ists, or the presence of cedulae, or notice boards, at the Pasquino, as was mentioned by
Burchard. Yet Pasquino’s ability to voice accord or discord is also related to his posi-
tion on the Via Papalis. John M. Hunt has described the atmosphere of the possesso
as generally auspicious and, although much of the temporary decoration was aimed at
reminding the pope of his duty to care for Rome’s citizens, it was not an occasion for
direct insults (of the sort seen in the most biting of the anonymous Pasquinades).44 At
the same time, the raucous event ofered the Romans the rare opportunity for humour
and playful acts of hazing alternating with praise. The Pasquino’s sharp wit, its ability
both to extol and taunt, its role as a critic of the papacy and its chameleon-like power
to assume new identities, defned by ephemeral apparati, all echo the function and
nature of the possesso.
The next possesso to follow Alexander VI’s was that of Julius II in 1503. For this
occasion, the possesso was for the frst time split of from the ceremony of the inaugu-
ration. The separation of the two events allowed more time for the procession through
Rome, perhaps in recognition of the complexity and abundance of street décor and
tableaux vivants that the possesso now inspired. Unfortunately, however, surviv-
ing descriptions are lacking in detail.45 One of the only accounts is Burchard’s terse
account of the event, which states that the pope processed by an arch at the house of
Stefano de’ Rossi in the Botteghe Scure.46 Burchard does not describe the structure,
but the de’ Rossi owned most important antiquities collections in Rome, which they
would display on the Via Papalis for the possesso of Leo X. It seems highly likely that
they also integrated their collection into the ephemera set up for Julius’s possesso.47
Another spot where antique sculptures may have been displayed was at the Palazzo of
the Cesarini, located on the Via Papalis at the site of the current Largo Argentina. In
1510, when Francesco Albertini described the house of Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, he
emphasised two of its features: frst, its ‘ancient statues’, and second, above the door
of this palace,
the arms of the Della Rovere, along with the verses in gilded letters: ‘With
golden acorns growing again on the oak/Julius solemnly promised peace, and
he gave it.’
The words have the tone of an inscription on a triumphal arch, and might be
interpreted as a lasting trace of decorations laid out for Julius II’s possesso in
1503. The door and whatever temporary apparatus the family may have con-
structed for the event perhaps incorporated works from their well-known antiqui-
ties collection.48
The possesso of Leo X, 1513

The possesso of Leo X in 1513 was the most elaborate papal inauguration to date. It is
also the frst possesso to inspire a detailed description by a frst-hand witness, a printed
account by the Florentine physician Jacopo Penni.49 The event was billed as the begin-
ning of a new Golden Age, celebrated with fountains fowing with wine and coins
thrown out to the crowd. For Pope Leo X it was also an especially poignant moment,
since it was held on 11 March, the one-year anniversary of his capture by the French
at the Battle of Ravenna. The procession involved hundreds of participants, including
bishops and archbishops, all cardinals, the Dukes of Ferrara and Urbino, the Signori
of Camerino, and innumerable standard-bearers, musicians, and courtiers. Familiars
of Cardinals to high-ranking priests to stable grooms were decked out in silk, scarlet,
and gold. A large number of Florentines walked in solidarity with the pope, and the
ephemeral decor at the Florentine quarter of Banchi was particularly elaborate. Given
this emphasis, the pope’s arrival in Rome might have seemed a Florentine invasion.
It was billed to the Romans, however, as the homecoming of a local hero, since Leo’s
mother was the Roman noblewoman Clarice Orsini.
After Leo X’s cortège left the Vatican, it moved to the Castel Sant’Angelo, where
the pope participated in the infamous ritual humiliation of Rome’s Jews; representa-
tives of the Jewish community ofered the pope a Torah scroll, which he received, then
summarily threw to the ground with the words confrmamus sed non consentimus,
‘we allow but do not agree’.50 The procession then entered the abitato, which had
been decorated by the residents of the Via Papalis. Antiquities collectors displayed
their prized statues on the street, and every resident of the Via Papalis set up some
form of celebratory display in the form of banners, tapestries, carpets or perhaps other
precious objects and works of art. Paolo Giovio reports that ‘doors were adorned
with fowers and branches, windows and streets with textiles, while triumphal arches
appeared at every intersection, decorated in a marvellous way, following the example
of ancient grandeur, with paintings and statues’.51 An image of the magnifcent décor
set up for Leo’s possesso is suggested by artistic representations of later processions,
such as a painting attributed to Giovanni Ferri of the cavalcata of the Roman prefect
Taddeo Barberini, showing carpets or cloths hanging from every window along the via
del Corso (Figure 7.7).52
Figure 7.7 Attributed to Giovanni Ferri (Giovanni Senese), Cavalcata of the Roman Prefect
Taddeo Barberini on the Via del Corso, detail, c. 1640, Banca di Roma, Rome.
Source: Photo: Fondazione Zeri.
Dominant motifs in the overall decor included the Medici symbols of the palle or the
diamond ring, while the procession as a whole emphasised the beginning of a Golden
Age of peace and a fourishing of the arts under the new pope. The triumphal arches
echoing these themes included one set up near the Castel Sant’Angelo by its Castellan,
the Sienese Bishop Rafaello Petrucci. This arch, featuring the image of Apollo with
his lyre, laudatory frescoes and fountains of water and wine, was perhaps designed
by the Sienese artist Baldassare Peruzzi. The next arch was that constructed by Ago-
stino Chigi, also likely designed by Peruzzi, situated near the Chigi bank. This arch
featured the inscription ‘Venus had her time, Mars had his and now Pallas [Minerva]
has hers’, in reference to the end of the voluptuous Alexander VI and the bellicose
Julius II (in whose pontifcate the Pasquino had been dressed as Mars, in reference to
the pope’s love of war) and the ascendency of Leo, the wise Minerva who would bring
back peace.53 Here, live actors dressed as Apollo and Mercury sang, while ‘nymphs’
and ‘small Moors’ recited verses. The witty epigram, written by Benedetto Lampridio,
uses the imagery of Graeco-Roman gods and goddesses to evoke a type of political
allegory deemed appropriate for the transition of power: the reign of one divine fgure
is superseded by the triumph of a more appropriate or benevolent one. This metaphor
of triumph—seemingly a classicization of Petrarch’s Christian allegorical triumphs—is
already evoked in the time of Pius II in 1458, judging from the pope’s own memoirs.
As Pius wrote in his Commentaries, ‘What had been a city of Mars all at once became
a city of—well, I will not say Venus, mother of Aeneas of Troy—but a city of Peace
and Quiet. Everywhere, joy and tranquillity reigned’.54 This was a type of political
allegory of critique and praise that contextualised the display of antique statues in
the possesso, just as it was signifcant in the identities chosen for the Pasquino at his
annual Festa.
It was a type of metaphor turned on its head by a statue of Venus, which the pope
encountered a few steps away from Chigi’s magnifcent arch as he moved towards the
Zecca (the papal mint). This was a fgure which the goldsmith Antonio da San Marino
set up above his shop with an inscription playing upon the inscription in Chigi’s arch,
‘There was Mars, now Pallas, but I will always be Venus’. As Penni delicately described
it, ‘clearest water spouted continuously from the statue’.55 A less censored description
of the statue by an eye witness observer, Giovanni Paolo de Calzonibus, adds further
details. According to this letter, included in Marino Sanuto’s Diarii, the fgure was a
‘statua de una donna marmorea’ and therefore, one can presume, an ancient statue.
Remarkably, the letter relates that water spouted from the statue’s ‘natura’, drenching
everyone passing by, including the pope.56 The sexually-charged joke mocked papal
decorum, taking a swipe at the regal pretentions of the ceremony. Antonio da San
Marino’s display is a startling example of how the ownership of pagan antiquities gave
a local resident the license to participate in the event by adding elements of mockery
and hazing. In this case, the owner avoided any statement of solidary with the pope
of the sort seen in the antiquities displays of noble families, giving open expression to
the fgure’s humorous and ludic elements. The memory of this event, recorded an unof-
fcial description but not in the printed accounts, ofers a glimpse into the possibilities
of disorder incited by pagan imagery in the possesso. In this instance a sexualized,
nude female fgure is given the upper hand, mocking the pope and turning the event’s
carefully staged hierarchy on its head.
Further along the route the pope passed an elaborate, bifurcated arch co-sponsored
by the Florentine merchant community and Johann Zink, representative of the Fug-
ger bank in Rome and head of the Zecca. The structure, Zink’s side of which may
have been constructed by Bramante, formed a bivium marking the juncture between
the outgoing route to the Via Papalis and the return route from the via Florida
towards the Vatican.57 After passing Monte Giordano, the pope then reached a rep-
lica of the ancient Spinario on the Capitoline hill made into a fountain, with water
spurting from the wound on his foot. Leo’s possesso took place on 11 April, and
a poem posted nearby played upon the fact that several important events of Leo’s
life had all taken place on the 11th day of the month: 11 December was the day of
his birth, on 11 April he had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Ravenna, and on
11 March he had been elected pope.58 According to Penni, the poem near the Spi-
nario read, ‘Decembre fu al suo natal favore. Aprile al cor li diè pena et tormento.
Marzo cavato l’à d’ogni dolore’ (‘December was favourable to his birth. April gave
his heart torment. March liberated him from all pain’).59 A copy of Rome’s famous
thorn-puller thus became a visualisation of the word cavare (‘to extract’ or ‘to lib-
erate’), with an inscription that activated the work, suggesting yet another way in
which antique images (or, in this case, a copy of a famous antiquity) were given a
voice in the procession.
Further along the route, on the Via di Parione ‘near the piazza di Parione’, the pope
encountered an elaborate arch constructed by Ferdinando Ponzetti, Chierico of the
Camera Apostolica, featuring fgures of Perseus and Apollo.60 Moving through the
piazza di Parione, Leo X then processed past the statue of Pasquino on the corner of
the Palazzo Orsini. Neither Penni nor de Calzonibus mention the fgure, yet it may
have been incorporated into the decorations for the possesso by the tenant then resid-
ing at the Palazzo, Cardinal Antonio Maria Ciocchi Del Monte. According to Vasari,
the artist Niccolò Soggi, a pupil of Perugino,
went to Rome where he visited Messer Antonio di Monte [Antonio Maria Cioc-
chi Del Monte] who was then a Cardinal. He . . . immediately put him to work
to paint, at the time of the beginning of Leo X’s papacy, a large fresco of the
pope’s coat of arms on the façade of the palazzo where the statue of Maestro
Pasquino stands. In the middle were the arms of the Popolo romano and those of
the Cardinal.61
Judging by the description, it may well be that the commission was part of the overall
decor marking Leo X’s possesso, tying together the event, the statue and its sponsor
with an enduring record of the papal entry. The frescoes suggest that the possesso
was key to the meaning of this antique statue for its public audience, not only during
the annual Festa, but also year-round. It seems that the Pasquino could have been
costumed or otherwise decorated during papal possessi; descriptions of the practice
are known from later possessi such as that of Gregory XIV in 1590, when the statue
was equipped with a helmet, a pair of scales, a sword and loaves of bread to remind
the pope of the importance of distributing bread to the popolo. During Innocent X’s
possesso in 1644, his regalia was even more elaborate: dressed as Neptune, Pasquino
rode in a shell-shaped chariot pulled by two sea horses.62
After passing the Pasquino, further down the Via Papalis Leo X encountered an
arch set up by the Della Valle family richly decorated with antique statues from the
family’s antiquities collection, including their famous pair of Pans, now in the Capi-
toline museums (Figure 7.8). Penni praises the arch ‘not as a sublime construction,
but as a memory of the ancient Romans’. On one side of this structure were pedestals
topped by the twin antique Pans; on the other side of the arch, Mercury and Hercules
on matching bases. Underneath, on both sides, were ancient statues of Ganymede,
Apollo and Bacchus, set amongst other fgures and portrait busts. The abundance of
antique statues on this arch was rivalled only by that by the de’ Rossi family further
down the Via Papalis, which was also bedecked with selected objects from their collec-
tion of antique sculpture. According to Penni, the arch included fgures in ‘marble, ala-
baster and porphyry’ worth an entire treasury. An alabaster Diana, Neptune with his
trident, Apollo with a horse, Marsyas playing the pipes, and many others appeared,
‘all unfragmented, very ancient and beautiful’, along with 12 heads of emperors and
famous Romans. While Penni does not describe how these objects were arranged,
Figure 7.8 Ancient statue of Pan formerly in the Della Valle collection, frst century bce, Capi-
toline Museums, Rome.
de Calzonibus states that ‘on one side of the street and on the other, many beautiful
antique marble statues were set up on certain high steps’.63
Antiquities Collections and Papal possessi

For Roman families, the exhibition of privately owned antique sculpture in the pos-
sesso of Leo X was an efective means of claiming a role in the papal ceremony, one
that would be recorded for posterity in Penni’s printed description of the event. Plac-
ing their collection before the eyes of the pope, they could assert the role that the
Romans—particularly, the native Roman nobility—could play in each new papacy and
in each new resurgence of Rome’s ancient splendour that was expected to come with
it. Antiquities in triumphal arches had the potential to herald the arrival of a Golden
Age of peace and liberality, signalled by the fourishing of the arts. While celebrating
the pope, displays of antique sculpture set out expectations for the pope’s protection
of the city’s ancient past; their poor reputation in this regard is echoed in Raphael’s
famous ‘Letter to Leo X’, which claims that some popes were just as guilty as the Goths
and Vandals in failing to protect Rome’s antiquities, her ‘povere reliquie’. At the same
time, in this complex and multifaceted event, one can imagine that the pontif’s solemn
procession past satyrs and pagan fgures set on the street played up the more raucous
elements of the ritual. The Venus pudica set up by a goldsmith serves as a reminder
of the ripe potential for satire and inversion when antique statues on the street were
juxtaposed with the papal cortège. One can also consider the Della Valle Pans, which
numbered among the most celebrated antique sculptures on the Via Papalis, sited at
one of its most prominent openings, and which echo the possesso’s themes of triumph,
celebration and possibly also satire.64 Later, the Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck
would recycle the imagery of the Pans in his painting of the Triumph of Bacchus, where
a bloated and naked god of wine—rather than the pope—is carried past a triumphal
arch towards the Temple of Bacchus (Figure 7.9).
The examples above suggest that antiquities collecting as a whole was shaped
by the combination of solemnity and frivolity characteristic of the possesso, by the
nature of private decorations set up for these events on the Via Papalis and by the
history of ephemeral décor. The close relationship between antiquities display, the
possesso and the Via Papalis suggests that the contrast between the Pasquino in pub-
lic space and objects in private collections is not as stark as it may seem. It also
suggests that ephemeral events on the street had a profound impact on the visual
culture of antiquities collecting in Rome. One can draw parallels with the history of
Roman architecture as it has been written by Manfredo Tafuri, Allan Ceen, Marcello
Fagiolo, Maria Luisa Madonna and others, who have traced the lasting efects of
rituals and processions on Rome’s built environment.65 Temporary decorations set
up for the possesso of Leo X have been understood, for example, as an inspiration
for the façade of Raphael’s Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila, decorated with festive
Figure 7.9 Maarten van Heemskerck, The Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1536/7, Kunsthistorisches
Museum, Vienna.
Source: Photo: Bridgeman Art Library.
Figure 7.10 Giambattista Naldini, Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila, c. 1560, Ufzi, Florence,
inv.no. 230 A r.
garlands and medallions that imitate the forms of triumphal arches (Figure 7.10).
Alexander VI had constructed the via Alessandrina, a straight, processional street, as
the frst leg of the Via Papalis leading out from the Vatican, and thereafter it became
a showcase for triumphalist architecture. Raphael’s palazzo for Jacopo da Brescia,
also built on the via Alessandrina during Leo X’s papacy, featured a Medici stemma
and triumphal arch, set not on the main facade but on the corner facing the street,
where it could face processions moving past.66 Many architectural historians have
argued that Antonio da Sangallo the Younger’s Zecca of circa 1525 likewise responds
to the procession of Leo X that had taken place before it on the Via Papalis. Its con-
vex curve echoes the shape of the street, while its triumphal arch-like facade design
originally decorated with the Medici coat of arms seems to echo the visual language
of temporary arches.67 Further down the Via Papalis, the famous curved loggia of the
Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne, built by Baldassare Peruzzi in the 1530s, honours the
shape of the processional route running in front of it, closely joining the palazzo to
the street. The efects of ephemera and ritual have been read in palace architecture or
urban planning, but the display of sculpture, too, was profoundly connected to the
history of ceremonial.
Temporary arches built for the possesso had a lasting efect on the day-to-day dis-
play of sculpture in Roman antiquities collections. It is notable, for example, that the
exhibition of statuary often seems to follow a triumphalist aesthetic and mimic the vis-
ual language of the triumphal arch.68 One element is the pairing of two mirror-image
sculptures across from each other at an entryway, as if marking a passage through a
triumphal arch. An example can be seen in the courtyard of the Sasso D’Amateschi
family, just of the processional route (Figure 7.6). Here the family paired two
similar statues—an Apollo and a statue then identifed as Marcus Aurelius—at the
springing of an arch in a manner suggestive of triumphal entryway. One can also con-
sider the palaces of the Della Valle, where the sculptures the family set on a triumphal
arch for Leo’s possesso were displayed year-round. In the 1530s, Maarten van Heem-
skerck made a drawing in the house where the Pans were displayed at a loggia built
sometime before 1516. Adjacent to it was the Palace of Bishop Andrea Della Valle and
his brother Bartolommeo, drawn circa 1515 by Hermann Vischer the Younger. The
courtyard display in both palazzi recalls the format of the triumphal arch, the frst in
the paring of Pans around an entrance and the second in its elevation of fgural statu-
ary above a colonnade and intermediary architrave created from joined-up fragments
of ancient spolia (Figures 7.2–7.3, 7.8).
After Leo X’s possesso, the smaller collections of the native Romans that had frst
sprung up in the Quattrocento began to vanish from the Via Papalis. This possesso
was the last, it seems, in which the Roman families living on the Via Papalis would
exhibit their antique statues; neither Hadrian VI in 1522 nor Clement VII in 1523
had a possesso, and by the time Paul III came to the throne in 1534, in the midst of
an austere atmosphere after the Sack of Rome, triumphal arches and other decora-
tions were more restrained. The papal possesso shed many of its traditional elements
and, as Irene Fosi has remarked, after Leo X’s entry became more universal, and
was addressed primarily to an international rather than local audience.69 Rome’s
ancient statues also began to vanish from the triumphal route. As antiquities became
more costly and more competitively sourced, powerful collectors absorbed the ear-
lier, more informal collections of downtown Rome. Some were transported to elite
façades (as is seen in surviving examples such as the Palazzo Spada-Capodiferro, the
Villa Medici on the Pincian or the Villa Borghese), while most moved to the gardens
of the Cardinals and popes in the suburban parts of Rome. In this manner displays
of classical sculpture were removed from abitato and from the Via Papalis. The
collections in downtown Rome that did survive became more secluded and more
private, as is seen in the courtyard and ‘hanging garden’ of antique statues built in
a palace constructed by Cardinal Andrea Della Valle in the 1520s. Signifcantly, this
palace was not sited on the Via Papalis but set back from it, and its courtyard col-
lection of antique sculpture was constructed in an elevated storey removed from the
public sphere. Here one fnds borrowings from the visual language of the triumphal
arch, particularly the Arch of Constantine, in the use of inscribed dedications in the
upper register of the statue court or in the display of reliefs taken from the ancient
Arcus Novus that once spanned the Via Lata (the via del Corso). In this sense, the
statue court carries forward the theatrical and triumphal elements of the earlier
Della Valle collections, but it did not continue their close relationship with the pos-
sesso, the Via Papalis and public space.70
Arguably, the triumphal display of pagan statues on the Via Papalis had accelerated
their removal from the territory of the Roman nobility and the popolo. Although these
statues would presumably have been for many spectators unfamiliar, startling and
even fear-provoking, their public exhibition helped to normalise the imagery of the
antique and the practice of private collecting. Public display helped bring about over-
all aesthetic adjustments, speeding up cultural and artistic interest in antique sculp-
ture. The movement of antiquities onto triumphal arches for the possesso ultimately
incited the envy of the powerful popes and Cardinals who participated in the event
and who were competitive collectors themselves. In 1517, four years after pope Leo
X had processed past the de’ Rossi’s statues on the Via Papalis, the family would real-
ise the risks of publicly exhibiting their antiquities in the possesso. In that year pope
Leo X attempted to seize the de’ Rossi collection by force, using the artist Raphael as
his agent.71 Elsewhere, I have argued that the intention may have been to appropri-
ate antique treasures for the villa Madama that Leo X and Raphael were then plan-
ning for Monte Mario.72 While this particular attempt failed, the sequence of events
suggests that the sixteenth century possessi had a similar efect on private collecting
of statuary which the triumphal procession had had in antiquity. In ancient Rome,
the public display of statues in triumphs brought about a fetishization of Hellenistic
sculpture by elite collectors, a vast increase in demand for statues and ultimately a
rise in more exclusive, more private methods of collecting sculpture.73 In the sixteenth
century, it seems that a similar scenario emerged, as the display of ancient statues in
possessi likewise precipitated their removal to settings that were increasingly museo-
logical, static, private and elite. The overall result was to cut ancient statues of from
the street and the public sphere.
Notes
1. For the possesso in general, see Cancellieri 1802; Cruciani 1983; Ingersoll 1985, 171–223;
Ingersoll 1993; Fagiolo and Madonna 1997b; Fosi 1997; Eadem 2002; Visceglia 2002,
53–117; Nuti 2015; Hunt 2016, 257–263.
2. For descriptions of twelfth-century possessi that passed through ancient as well as tempo-
rary triumphal arches, see Cancellieri 1802, 8–10; Nuti 2015, 117–118.
3. Cafà 2010.
4. Nussdorfer 1987; Ginzburg 1991; Paravicini Bagliani 2000, 153–155; Hunt 2016.
5. Cancellieri 1802, 45; letters from Nicodemo da Pontremoli and Giovanni Blancho da Cre-
mona to the Duke of Milan in Cruciani 1983, 147–150; Burchard’s description of Innocent
VIII’s possesso in Ibid., 196–203.
6. Interpretations of the possesso as a dialogue between competing interests are presented in
Hunt 2016, 257–263; Idem, 2019.
7. For processes of admission to Roman antiquities collections, see Cofn 1982 and Stenhouse
2005.
8. In a letter of 1490, the nobleman Giovanni da Tolentino describes how a ‘Roman citizen’
had persuaded him to visit the collections of the Della Valle on the Via Papalis, where he
would see ‘works in a private house probably not inferior to those you have seen in public’,
‘Tum civis quidam Romanus: “Quid si in privatorum quoque aedibus non inferiora fortasse
his quae publice vidisti ofenderes?”,’ trans. and cit. Schofeld 1980, 256.
9. Christian 2010, 156–157.
10. Burchard 1883–1885, Vol. 1, 87; Ingersoll 1985, 196–197.
11. For the Via Papalis, see Adinolf 1865; Ceen 1977, 104–171; Cafà 2010; Valtieri 2018. The
lack of churches on the street is noted in Ceen 1977, 122; Ingersoll 1993, 40.
12. Galli bought this palace from the Santacroce family in 1505. It faced onto the palace of
Cardinal Carafa and can be identifed with the current Palazzo Bonadies Lancellotti on the
via di San Pantaleo, Christian Forthcoming.
13. Cafà 2010; this aspect of the possesso is emphasised in Ingersoll 1993.
14. Plutarch, Aem. 32; Halliday 1994, 340–343. For other ancient sources on statue display in
the triumph, see Stewart 2003, 151.
15. Gombrich 1970, 123.
16. The upheaval brought about by rituals of transition in Rome is discussed in Nussdorfer
1987; Ginzburg 1991; Hunt 2016. The classic study of the carnivalesque is Bakhtin 1968.
17. E.g. Miglio 1983; Esposito 1994; Christian 2002.
18. Burckhardt 1987, 268–269.
19.
Vagantur et simulati gigantes et fauni per urbem, atque centauri. . . . Fauni quoque villosi
caprinisque pedibus, ac centauri dimidia parte equi apparent. Verum quidquam in his
animata caret efgie, charta picta suppletur.
Images of giants, fauns and centaurs wandered through the city . . . the hairy fauns
had goats’ feet, and centaurs seemed to be half horse. Anything lacking in these animated
images was created in painted paper.
(Letter from Pietro Cennini to Pirrino Amerino describing the Festa di
San Giovanni in Florence, 12 September 1475, cit. Mancini 1909, 224;
Ventrone 1990, 349)
20. Stinger 1981, 193; see also Pinelli 1985; Fagiolo and Madonna 1997a; Stinger 1981, 193.
21. Biondo 1482 (frst published 1472), book 10: s. p.,
The whole of the triumphal route, not only in the triumph of Paulus Aemilius, but in all
the others as well, was decorated all over with draperies and laurel. . . .
I have sometimes wondered how it happened that just as the ancient triumphal pro-
cession departed from the Vatican and the temple of Apollo that used to be there, then
proceeded to the city; still today the processions of the Christians—the most solemn that
are celebrated in Rome—also leave from the Vatican and from the church of St. Peters,
which was founded on a part of the temple of Apollo.
(Rafarin 2017)
22.
Nam gigantum primo personatus ordinatissime incedebant; tum aligeri faretratique
Cupidinis, dehinc Dianae equestris, magna Nympharum caterva illam stipante; tum
candidatorum iuvenum centum sexaginta, et eo amplius, [. . .] dein regum, aliorumque
ducum a Romanis olim devictorum, tum ambitiosae Cleopatrae ab Augusto Caesare
superatae, demum Martis, Faunorum, Bachi et nonnullorum etiam falso deorum a pris-
cis creditorum turba ingens sequebatur.
(Zippel 1904, 135; Cruciani 1983, 127–128)
23. BAV, Barb. Lat. 1991, fols 22r–v, discussed in Cruciani 1983, 126–131; Helas 1999,
105–109; Modigliani 2003, 143; D’Elia 2011, 24–26.
24. Aurelio Lippi Brandolini devoted a poem to Sixtus’s restoration of the Via Papalis, praising
the pope for having cleaned the street, widened it and made it worthy of its name, De via
quam Papalem vocant in Müntz 1878–1882, Vol. 3, 191. Albertini also noted improve-
ments to the street by several popes: ‘Via Pontifcum notissima, per quam Pontifex ad Lat-
eran. incedit a Syxto IIII. ampliata, deinde ab Innocentio VIII. Postremo a tua Beatitudine
[Julius II] multis in locis ampliata’ (‘the famous Via Papalis, on which the pope processes
to the Lateran, was widened by Sixtus IV and then by Innocent VIII. Afterwards your
Holiness [Pope Julius II] widened it in many places’), Albertini 1510, book 3, ‘De viis &
plateis’: s. p.
25. Perugino and Antoniazzo Romano were involved both in Innocent VIII’s and Alexander
VI’s possessi, the architect Lorenzo Pietrasanta in Alexander VI’s and Bramante and Peruzzi
in Leo X’s, Farinella 1992, 61–79; Quattrocchi 2001. Farinella discusses the possibility of
Ripanda’s involvement in décor for possessi.
26. For the possessi of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, see Cancellieri 1802, 45–51; Cruciani 1983,
146–150 and 194–203.
27. Fagiolo and Madonna 1997a, 35; Ingersoll 1985, 197.
28. For descriptions of Alexander VI’s triumph, see Cancellieri 1802, 51–53; Cruciani 1983,
247–252; Quattrocchi 2001.
29. See below for a discussion of Carafa’s palace.
30. Helas 1999, 110–111.
31. See above, note 8, this chapter.
32. Agosti and Isella 2004; Tura 2015.
33. Ibid.; Spagnolo 2019, 70–72.
34. Fantozzi 1994.
35. ‘Ecci un mastro Pasquille im Parione / dal sasso spinse el so’ nimico in ario: / questo è collui
che extinse Gerione’ (And there is a Maestro Pasquino in Parione in stone, he who thrusted
his enemy [Anteaus] into the air: this is the one who defeated Geryon’), Agosti and Isella
2004, 25–26 and 118–120. For a discussion of this passage and past misreadings of it, see
Spagnolo 2019, 73.
36.
Ad angulum domus Cardinalis Neapolitani statue & quidem insignis, olim est Hercu-
lis, ut quidam congnectant, quae trunca inutilave [read: mutilave] cruribus brachiis ac
naso in loco non multos pedes ab eo in quo cardinalis inpensa nunc erecta conspici-
tur distante, abiecta iacuit ac sordibus obducta annos complures. Contra illam literator
seu magister ludi cui Pasquino Pasquillove erat nomen habitabat, unde postea statuae
nomen inditum est.
At the corner of the house of the Cardinal of Naples [Cardinal Carafa] is a rather
large statue, with mutilated trunk, legs, arms and nose, which once was a Hercules. For
many years it lay cast aside in the dirt not many feet away from that place where the
Cardinal has now conspicuously put it on display. A literatus or master of [literary] con-
tests named Pasquino or Pasquillo lived across from it and therefore this was the name
given to it.
(Anonymous 1509: unpaginated preface, Reynolds 1985, 186)
The Pasquino’s base was inscribed with a dedication by Carafa and dated 1501, ‘Ad Pasqui-
lum. Oliverii Carafae benefcio hic sum. Anno salutis M.D.I.’, as noted in Schrader 1592:
fol. 218v
37.
13 dicti mensis augusti, in mane, afxa fuit cedula statue magistri Pasquino nuncupate,
site in angulo domus Rmi D. cardinalis Neapolitani, de obitu Pape, si recedat ab Urbe;
quod sine mora per totam Urbem divulgatum est . . . Predixi tibi Papa bos quod esses; /
Predico, Moriere si hinc abibis; / Succedet Rota consequens Bubulcum.
On the 13th of said month of August, in the morning, this was attached to the
announcement board at the statue of so-called Maestro Pasquino and quickly spread
throughout the city: . . . ‘I predicted, Ox, that you would be pope; I predict that if you
leave here you will die, and then the Wheel will follow the Ox’.
(Burchard 1883–1885, Vol. 3, 157; also reported in a letter from Agostino
Vespucci to Niccolò Machiavelli, 25 August 1501)
As Vespucci explained, the ‘Rota’ refers to the wheel in the stemma of Cardinal Costa
(Spagnolo 2019, 24).
38. Reynolds 1985, 207.
39. Spagnolo 2019, with previous literature. The frst edition of poems composed for the Feast
was published in 1509 (Anonymous 1509).
40.
Seguitando al Palazo di Napoli, si gli era unaltro [arco] mirabile diverso da li altri primi
lavorato con herbe, et avante larcho tanti capitelli, feste antique, penture et altre cose che
la sua belleza difcile sarebbe a discriverla.
Continuing to the Palace of [the Cardinal of] Naples, there was another marvelous
arch adorned with greenery diferent from the previous ones, and before the arch there
were many capitals, ancient festoons [feste, perhaps a misprint of teste, in reference to
ancient ‘heads’?], paintings and other things whose beauty would be difcult to describe.
(Corio 1503, anno 1492: s. p.)
41. Spagnolo 2019, 83 and 96–100.
42. Spagnolo 2019, 39.
43. On the occasion of Leo X’s possesso, Ferdinando Ponzetti put up a triumphal arch in the
Piazza di Parione featuring images of Perseus and Apollo (see discussion below, pp. 161,
this volume)
44. Hunt 2019.
45. Cancellieri 1802, 55–60; Cruciani 1983, 312–319.
46. Stefano’s house is described after his death in an inventory made for his brother Gabriele
de’ Rossi, Archivio Boccapaduli, Armario III. Mazzo I. n. 21, 13 September 1517, fols 6v-7.
The house, called the palazzo de doj torri, was in the Rione Pigna near Santa Andrea de
apothecis obscuris.
47.
Equitavit Papa non per papalem sive parionem de Campo Flore ad domum de Maximis,
inde solita via que fuit in pluribus locis cooperta et arcus ante domum Stephani Rossi
equitavimus.
The pope rode not on the Via Papalis but the via di Parione from Campo de’ Fiori to
the house of the Massimi, then on the usual street which was covered in many places,
and we rode past the arch in front of the house of Stefano de’ Rossi.
(Burchard 1883–1885, Vol. 3, 313–314)
For the de’ Rossi and their antiquities collection, see Esposito 2000; Christian 2002.
48. Albertini 1510: s.p.,
Domus reve. Iuliani de Caesarinis Diaconi Car. cum speciosa porta exornata, quam
Iulianus eiusdem domus Diac. Card. patruus fundavit, in qua sunt statuae Ro. super por-
tam vero visuntur insignia rverea [sic] cum his carminibus litteris aureis: ‘Iulius auratas
revirenti in robore glandes \ Pollicitus pacem iuraque remque dabit’.
The house of the Reverend Giuliano Cesarini Cardinal deacon, its door adorned with
precious things, was founded by Cardinal Giuliano, his uncle. There are Roman statues
in it, and above the door are the della Rovere arms and these verses in golden letters:
‘having ofered golden acorns on the newly fowering oak, Julius will give peace, laws,
and service’.
49. Penni 1513, printed in Cruciani 1983, 390–405. On the possesso of Leo X see Cruciani
1983; Fagiolo and Madonna 1997b; Visceglia 2002, 69–71; Fosi 2002; Nuti 2015
(with an appendix of payments by the Camera Apostolica for the ceremony); Lucioli
2016.
50. See Penni’s account of this incident in Cruciani 1983, 395; on the ritual, see Linder 2009;
Di Castro 2010.
51. Giovio 1551, 66, ‘ridebant ianuae civium festa fronde & foribus, fenestrae stratae tape-
tibus ornabantur, in omnibus biviis triumphales arcus occurrebant, ad veteris Romanae
magnitudinis exemplum picturis & statuis mirum in modum exornati’.
52. For the custom of hanging carpets from windows, see Mack 2002: 77–78. Examples from
the sphere of Venetian painting include Gentile Bellini’s famous Procession in Piazza San
Marco 1496, or Vittore Carpaccio’s Daughter of Emperor Gordian Exorcised by St Try-
phon, 1507, Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni.
53. According to Penni, the inscription read ‘OLIM HABUIT CYPRIS SUA TEMPORA, TEMPORA MAVORS
OLIM HABUIT SUA NUNC TEMPORA PALLAS HABET’ (‘Once Cyprus [Venus] had her era, once Mars
had his era and now Pallas [Minerva] has her era’), Cruciani 1983, 396.
54. Meserve and Simonetta 2003, 200–201.
55. According to Penni,
passato il prenarrato arco, sopra della bottega di maestro Antonio da San Marino, ore-
fce, stava una statua di Venere marmorea, la quale haveva un verso di sotto a lettere
de oro scripte, il quale illudea alquanto quelli de misser Augustino Chisi: cioè quelli che
dicea, OLIM HABUIT CYPRIS. Quello che sotto della dicta Venere stava in tal modo risonava:
MARS FUIT, EST PALLAS, CYPRIA SEMPER ERO. E di continuo la dicta statua acqua clarissima
spargeva.
After passing the aforementioned arch [of Agostino Chigi], above the shop of the
goldsmith Maestro Antonio da San Marino Penni was a marble statue of Venus, which
had verses underneath written in gold letters alluding somewhat to those of Agos-
tino Chigi, that is, to those reading ‘Once Cyprus had her time’. Those underneath
the aforementioned Venus read in this manner: ‘There was Mars, now there is Pallas
[Minerva], but I will always be Venus’. And clearest water spouted continuously from
this statue.
(Penni in Cruciani 1983, 397)
56.
Procedendo deinde verso la Cecha, a sinistra de la via in una fenestra è una statua de una
donna marmorea, de la cui natura uscia aqua nampha che bagnava qualunque passava,
etiam il Papa, soto la quale era questo monostico: ‘Mars fuit, est Pallas, Cypria semper ero’.
Then proceeding towards the Zecca, on the left side of the street in a window is a
marble statue of a woman, from whose natura spouted perfumed water which drenched
everyone passing by, even the pope. Underneath it was this epigram: There was Mars,
now there is Pallas [Minerva], but I will always be Venus.
(Letter of 12 April 1513 from Giovanni Paolo de Calzonibus of
Brescia describing Leo X’s possesso, in Sanuto 1879–1903, Vol. 16: col. 686)
According to the Vocabolario della Crusca, ‘Per onestà, si dice natura a quella parte
del corpo della femmina, onde riceve il seme, e la quale partorisce’ (‘for modesty’s sake,
one refers to the natura as that part of the female body which receives semen and which
gives birth’), Accademia della Crusca 1732, Vol. 3, 323, ‘Natura’.
57. For Bramante’s involvement, see Antonucci 2004, 215–216.
58. For this numerological symbolism, see Cox-Rearick 1984, 51–52.
59. Penni, in Cruciani 1983, 400.
60.
Pervenuto appresso alla piazza de Parione, davanti la casa di Messer Ferrando Ponzetta, della
Apostolica Camera Clerico, era un degno arco di tal struttura . . . da una parte stava un Perseo
de relievo con lo scudo in braccio: et in la man dextra teneva una corona de ulivo; sopra de
l’altra era uno Apollo che teneva in una mano una corona di lauro nell’altra una lira.
Near Piazza di Parione, in front of the house of Ferdinando Ponzetti, cleric of the
Camera Apostolica, was an impressive arch composed thus. . . . On one side was a relief
of Perseus with a shield on his arm, holding an olive crown in his right hand; on the other
side was an Apollo holding a laurel crown in one hand and a lyre in the other.
(Penni in Cruciani 1983, 400; Cantatore 2016)
Cantatore publishes a document showing that Ponzetti paid Giovanni da Pisa and Simone
di Domenico of Florence the considerable sum of 250 ducats for the arch.
61.
E se n’andò a Roma [Niccolò Soggi], dove avendo visitato il detto messer Antonio di
Monte, che allora era cardinale, fu non solamente veduto volentieri, ma sùbito messo in
opera a fare in quel principio del pontifcato di Leone, nella facciata del palazzo, dove è
la statua di maestro Pasquino, una grand’arme in fresco di papa Leone, in mezzo a quella
del Popolo romano e quella del detto cardinale.
And he [Niccolò Soggi] went to Rome, where having gone to visit Antonio di Monte,
who was then a Cardinal, was not only seen willingly but immediately put to work: he
was asked at the beginning of Leo’s pontifcate to fresco a large coat of arms of Pope Leo
between the arms of the Roman people and those of the Cardinal on the facade of the
palace where the statue of Maestro Pasquino is.
(Giorgio Vasari, Life of the painter Niccolò Soggi (1568),
noted in Spagnolo 2014, 278)
62. Cancellieri 1802, 138 and 247; Spagnolo 2014, 277.
63.
Poi a canto San Marco, denanti la casa de certi nominati de Roscia, era a l’una banda
et l’altra de la strada poste molte statue antique marmoree bellissime sopra certi
gradi alti.
Then near San Marco, in front of the house of a certain de’ Rossi, on both sides of
the street many very beautiful, marble antique statues were displayed on certain high
platforms.
(Sanuto 1879–1903, Vol. 16, 687; Christian 2002)
64. On the Pans, discovered sometime before 1481, see Christian 2010, 384–387, with previ-
ous bibliography.
65. Ceen 1977; Tafuri 1984; Fagiolo 1980; Ingersoll 1985.
66. Ceen 1977, 143–145.
67. Ceen 1977, 148–149; Tafuri 1992, 110–112; Antonucci 2004, 234–236.
68. For the overlap between the theme of the triumphal entry and Renaissance collecting, see
Falguières Guidiceli 1988; Guest 2016, 371–373.
69. Cancellieri, for example, noted the suppression of potentially disruptive elements by the
time of the possesso of Sixtus V in 1585; Cancellieri 1802, 120, n. 3; Fosi 2002, 46. Fosi
makes the point that the ever more orderly cavalcade addressed the city and its ofcials
and citizenry less and less, and foreign powers more and more. As it did so, it took on a
universalistic triumphalism, as beftted the reafrmation of Catholic supremacy after the
Reformation; Fosi 2002, 34.
70. Christian 2008.
71. Christian 2002.
72. Christian 2010, 204–205.
73. See discussion in Stewart 2003, 140–148, 151, 224–231.
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8 Monumentalising Burghers of the
Low Countries
Living Statues in the Late Medieval
and Early Modern Joyous Entries
Stijn P.M. Bussels
Introduction
Already in the ffteenth century, public statues brought local heroes into memory
in Italian cities; especially Donatello and Verrocchio excelled in emulating Graeco-
Roman models with their equestrian statues of condottieri, respectively Gattamelata
(1453) and Colleoni (1488).1 Together with individual heroicness, these grand statues
expressed civic self-awareness and pride.2 Whereas in the cities of the Low Countries
a similar civic self-awareness and pride was fowering in the late Middle Ages and
the early modern period,3 we have to wait for a hundred years to fnd a comparable
tribute to a local hero monumentalised in public space. In 1549, Prince Philip of Hab-
sburg, the future King Philip II, was ceremonially welcomed in the most important
cities of the Low Countries, in so-called joyous entries.4 For this special occasion, the
burghers of Rotterdam wanted to show of with their most celebrated son, the human-
ist scholar Erasmus, and constructed a hollow statue in wood in which a boy was
hidden to recite a welcoming poem to the prince. This statue was only intended for
temporary display, but the burghers appreciated it so much that a decade later, more
precisely in 1557, they erected a stone version.5 Finally, in 1622 Rotterdam commis-
sioned the famous architect and sculptor Hendrick de Keyzer to make a bronze statue
of the humanist scholar.6
Thus, Erasmus of Rotterdam served as the subject for the frst stone as well as the
frst bronze public statue in the Low Countries. That does not mean that before the
mid-sixteenth century, Netherlandish people entirely lacked public statues. Quite to
the contrary, hundreds, even thousands of statues were staged from the ffteenth until
the seventeenth century most prominently in public space, but in contrast with the
statue of Erasmus, temporarily. Here, the word ‘staging’ should be taken literally,
as the statues were not made out of stone or bronze: the burghers themselves per-
formed as statues by keeping quiet and standing in frozen poses for large audiences.
These living statues often posed against a painted backdrop and could be accompa-
nied by mannequins in papier-mâché or cloth. Moreover, several descriptions and
depictions of these performances clarify that Graeco-Roman statues were emulated,
especially in the poses, the clothing with rich draperies, or real or suggested nudity.
We now call these performances tableaux vivants, but actually, due to their three-
dimensionality and their indebtedness to antique sculpture, statues vivantes is a name
at least as appropriate. Modern historians have never used the term, but early modern
accounts of the joyous entries did refer to sculpture to name the civic performances.7
They describe how burghers enacted statues on wagons and stages in processions
Monumentalising Burghers 177
and theatre performances. A famous example is the Antwerp theatre competition,
8
the Landjuweel, where amateur players grouped in so-called Chambers of Rhetoric

performed theatre plays but started the competition by performing as public statues
on stages in streets and squares.9 The word ‘public’ is appropriate here, as there were
more than 4,000 actors performing for an audience multiple times larger, which con-
sisted not only of Antwerp burghers but also of Brabantines and even viewers from
much further, such as the English merchant Richard Clough, who wrote in his diary
that he was totally thrilled by the performances.10 This chapter, however, will focus
on another kind of festivities enjoyed by similar multitudes, the joyous entries. There,
the public statues were performed on dozens of stages alongside the route through-
out the cities in which the entering ruler paraded. Thus, we explore the ceremonial
context from which the very frst permanent statues originate, a context where civic
self-awareness and pride was so clearly expressed that we could speak of an eminent
tradition of ‘monumentalising’ burghers.
In the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, joyous entries were the most
important public expression of political power relations. Almost everywhere in Europe
it was a fxed and imperative diplomatic custom to welcome new rulers in the most
important cities of their territories by presenting them with abundant decorations
and celebrations.11 The new ruler entered the city with his/her own noble retinue and
was for the occasion accompanied by the most important representatives of the city.
The event gathered crowds that marvelled at the magnifcently dressed noblemen and
burghers, as well as at the many festivities and festive constructions that the wel-
coming cities had organized especially for the occasion. Moreover, tournaments were
fought and frework displays were ignited. But primarily, thousands of eyes focused
on the platforms, triumphal arches, and pageant wagons on which burghers posed.
Many of the burghers performing and witnessing must have felt pride that their city
could accomplish such marvels.
Certainly in the Low Countries, joyous entries were of the highest political impor-
tance.12 The Low Countries belonged to the Burgundian and Habsburg territories
which were scattered, and certainly under Philip’s father, Emperor Charles V, became
almost inconceivably vast. The connection between a new ruler and the Nether-
landish cities had to be strengthened by all means, especially in periods of turbulence
such as the Dutch Revolt, starting in 1568. Moreover, the powerful cities in the Low
Countries had a strong feeling of independence and self-esteem and time and again
expressed that in the joyous entries. Even more than anywhere else in Europe, in the
Low Countries, the ceremonial welcoming of a new ruler was the mass medium par
excellence to present that ruler straightforwardly to the burghers, as well as to give
central stage to these burghers. All possible visual and textual laudations alongside the
entry route had to becharm the new ruler. Similarly, in these laudations the burghers
could publicly present their list of wishes to the new ruler. The burghers addressed
the new ruler with a diplomatic monologue, as it were, expressed by inscriptions and
paintings on a rich diversity of ephemeral constructions, but even more prominently
with motionless and silent burghers on stages. That civic monologue did certainly not
call into question that the new ruler would be the most ideal ruler. The precise defni-
tion of the ideal ruler, however, was strongly defned by what the burghers thought to
be the best for their city.
The cities in the Low Countries spared no trouble or expense for the organization.
For example, Antwerp spent for Philip’s entry of 1549 about twice as much money as
178 Stijn P.M. Bussels
they would spend to build their new town hall some 15 years later.13 The municipali-
ties entrusted the public performance of the civic diplomatic monologue to the most
prominent artists and scholars. In turn, the latter relied on centuries-old traditions in
which the active role of the burghers was essential. The moment of culmination in
the joyous entries consisted of the burghers exclaiming loudly their oaths of loyalty
to the new ruler on the central square of the city (Figure 8.1). Previous to this, their
representatives already had literally aligned themselves with the ruler by joining him
or her in the parade that crossed the city. Moreover, the burghers had to present the
new ruler with their civic ideals by standing motionless and silent on a series of stages
that were erected along the entry route.
In this chapter, I will focus on the question why the municipalities and the organisers
chose again and again to place their burghers on platforms, triumphal arches and pag-
eant wagons to let them become public statues. Why did burghers enact personifca-
tions and mythological and biblical fgures with no or with only sparse movement and
words on such crucial political occasions? Since the joyous entries are well-studied,
it is surprising that this question has never been put before. Political historians con-
centrated in the frst instance at the precise message that the living statues expressed.
They linked an iconographical analysis with concrete political afairs, rarely taking the
specifc medium into consideration.14 If they concentrated on the fact that these were
men and women staging the message, this was contrasted with the paintings on the
Figure 8.1 Abraham de Bruyn, `Swearing of the Oaths at the Grand Place’. Engraving in La
joyeuse & magnifque entrée de Monseigneur François, plate 21. Antwerp: Chris-
tophe Plantin, 1582. University Library Ghent, Res. 1373.
triumphal arches, which became increasingly important in the sixteenth century and
displaced the staging of burghers in the seventeenth century. An explanation for this
was given by relying on the growing pursuit of central power by the Habsburgs.15 The
burghers, as it were, were literally pushed from the stage to give the full attention to
the ruler. In their turn, art and architectural historians have merely concentrated on
the frames of the stages, such as George Kernodle looking at ffteenth- and sixteenth-
century examples. He saw these frames as the missing link between sculpted Gothic
and Renaissance tombs and early modern theatre scenes, such as the one in Shake-
speare’s Globe.16 Kernodle presented the ephemeral decorations of the entries as the
gateway of the sculptors and architects to the theatre makers.17
Markers of Liminality
Due to their focus on the rise and fall of the living statues, historians of politics,
art and architecture have never questioned why, for centuries, the cities of the Low
Countries chose time and again to stage motionless and silent burghers on platforms,
triumphal arches and pageant wagons for crucial public events of civic diplomacy. In
order to start answering this question, we can rely on anthropology, as it is essential
to see the joyous entries as rites de passage. Thanks to the anthropologists Arnold van
Gennep and later Edith and Victor Turner, we can see the entering ruler in a joyous
entry as a novice who has to go through a so-called liminal phase to be recognized
in his or her new position. Edith and Victor Turner defne liminality as follows: ‘In
liminality the novice enters a ritual time and space that are betwixt and between those
ordered by the categories of past and future mundane existence’.18 The passage from
the one situation to the other of an individual or group, to summarise the theory in
a nutshell, can be generally accepted thanks to a ritual in which for a certain amount
of time a distance is taken from the way people deal with each other in common life.
The public acceptance of the social change stands or falls by the success in framing
the change in words and/or actions that do not achieve a direct and concrete goal and
therefore appear useless in the eyes of outsiders. However, these words and/or actions
are essential to clearly mark the passage of the individual or group to all participants
and thus to perform that passage. Therefore, the words and/or actions in a rite of pas-
sage often rely on tradition and address cultural memory.
Historians such as Edward Muir use this anthropological theory that sees (what
I would like to call) ‘traditional extraordinariness’ as the essence of the proper func-
tioning of rites of passage to explain how in many rituals of the late Middle Ages and
the early modern period exceptional moments and places had to be created.19 For
Muir, this applies to a range of rituals, from religious initiations, to rituals that took
place on joining a guild, to our central subject, the joyous entries. Historians such as
Jesse Hurlbut further focused on the latter. More precisely, they have looked at the
structure that was followed time and again to gradually accept the new ruler.20 They
studied how the liminal phase was prepared, performed and brought to a fruitful end-
ing with the help of fxed and preconceived patterns that enabled the step from every-
day life to ritual time and place and eventually the step back to everyday life, albeit in
a (slightly) changed society.
Following these anthropologists and historians, we can see the burghers’ enactment
of statues in the joyous entries as crucial elements in the passage of the central per-
son to becoming the new ruler. More precisely, we can say that the living statues are
‘markers of liminality’. The motionless and silent burghers behave extra-ordinarily,
in the literal sense of the word as ‘beyond the normal’. However, precisely because
they do so, they visualize and accentuate for all parties involved—the entering ruler
and his/her retinue, the municipality and the burghers in the parade, the thousands of
bystanders, and even for themselves—the crucial step in a diplomatic event, important
for the city as well as the ruler.
The organising municipalities attached great importance to the fact that the liv-
ing statues were all burghers. The days and weeks before the actual performances,
they used public ordinances to remind everyone that it was crucial that every actor
would show up on time. To strengthen this demand, the municipalities threatened
with heavy fnes.21 Of course, this can partly be related to practical matters, as it was
and is problematic if an actor is missing on stage. On the other hand, however, it will
also have been a factor that the burghers had to be closely involved in the support and
even the creation of the passage of the ruler. The fact that burghers were performing
on the stages did not go unnoticed. In their accounts, noblemen accompanying the
ruler praised the elegance of the actresses and the manly poses of the actors.22 One of
the clearest examples is the performance of the City Maiden, a recurring fgure in the
entries whom the noble reporters describe in the kindest words. In the descriptions, a
dozen of which have survived, we see how the beauty of the civic girl and the beauty
of her city become closely intermixed.23 In his report of Philip’s entry into Antwerp
in 1549, Juan Cristobal Calvete de Estrella, a Spanish nobleman who accompanied
the prince during his entries in the Habsburg territories, describes the performance of
Antverpia as follows:
A young girl kneeling saluted the Prince very respectfully and with a modest
expression on her face. Over a long dress in crimson satin, she wore a short robe
in white satin, and on her hair, instead of a garland, she had a beautiful two-foot
high tower like that of the church of Our Lady: this insignia, together with the
red and white colours of her dress, made her recognisable as the opulent city of
Antwerp.24
In the statue vivante of a girl elaborately dressed, everyone could literally and fgura-
tively stand still for a certain amount of time and refect on the grandeur of the city.
So besides the new identity of the central person, namely the new ruler, civic identity
was also reconfrmed by this public statue in the rite of passage.
In many cities of the Low Countries, the City Maiden welcomed the new ruler on a
platform, triumphal arch or pageant wagon right at one of the city gates, so directly
at the moment when the ruler entered the city.25 Thanks to this specifc location, we
could say that the City Maiden ushered in the liminal phase. The start of the liminal
phase of the joyous entries often relied strongly on tradition. For example, in Antwerp
practically nothing changed in the performance of Antwerp’s City Maiden Antverpia
on her magnifcent pageant wagon for more than half a century, that is, from the entry
of François d’Anjou in 1582 till the entry of Don Ferdinand in 1635.26 Time and again
the audience saw a richly dressed girl sitting silent and frozen on an impressive throne.
Since the living statue of Antverpia appeared in precisely the same way in the yearly
Whitsun procession, her performance was strongly embedded in the ritual customs of
the city.27 Moreover, the Whitsun procession was not only of religious importance,
it was also the traditional way to publicly present new members of the municipality,
Figure 8.2 Pieter van der Borcht, ‘Antverpia Welcomes Albert and Isabella’. Engraving in
Johannes Bochius, Historica narratio profectionis et inaugurationis Serenissimorum
Belgii Principum Alberti et Isabellae . . ., 186–87. Antwerp: Ofcina Plantiniana,
1602. University Library Ghent, Acc. 1858.
thus having to fnd public acceptance.28 So the ‘traditional extraordinariness’ of the

performance of the City Maiden was at least yearly used to introduce and to receive
approval for political change (Figure 8.2).
The history of Antwerp between 1582 and 1635 was turbulent. The entry of the
French Duke François d’Anjou in 1582 was a direct act of hostility towards the Habs-
burgs. Anjou’s appointment as the new Duke of Brabant meant that the Spanish King
Philip II was no longer recognized as sovereign, and this began an open revolt against
him.29 This atmosphere of defance prompted an assertive performance of Antwerp’s
self-confdence. Subsequent entries into Antwerp were performed after the Habsburg
reconquest of the southern territories by Ernest of Austria in 1594,30 by Albert and
Isabella in 1599,31 and by Don Ferdinand in 1653.32 These entries served to enforce
the power of the Spanish crown, so from the outset, the performed submission of Ant-
verpia was once again crucial. Strikingly, it was Antverpia’s pageant of 1582 that was
reused. Calvinist strategy was thus appropriated to honor the Habsburgs—the sworn
enemy.33 Thus, tradition was a crucial building stone in the functioning of the statues
vivantes as public markers of liminality. Tradition surpassed in terms of importance
the concrete political situation, even in one of the most turbulent periods in the history
of the Low Countries. Next to tradition, however, other factors of the living statues
strengthened the ‘traditional extraordinariness’, since the performance of public stat-
ues referred to painting, tapestry and sculpture in a most remarkable way.
Painting and Tapestry

Let us frst look at the ‘picturesque’ in the literal sense of the word as ‘resembling
a painting’.34 The fact that the link with painting was close is famously exemplifed
in Philip the Good’s entry into Ghent in 1458. There, only two decades after its
completion, burghers meticulously staged the famous altarpiece of the brothers Van
Eyck. Just like in the real polyptych, the stage was separated into diferent levels.
On one level, the audience could admire a living statue of God sitting enthroned
and being accompanied by Mary, John the Baptist and angels singing and making
music. On another level, the Lamb of God held the central position; whether that
was an actual lamb or a model is not documented. It was approached from all
directions by worshippers.35 By choosing to stage the altarpiece, the organisers used
this festive occasion to lay the accent on one of the city’s most precious possessions,
but at the same time on its humility. The organizers urged Philip the Good to for-
give the burghers of Ghent, as they had tried to revolt against him, just as the Lamb
bears the sins of the world.36 However, in contrast with modern historians discuss-
ing the political message, we must not forget that instead of straightforwardly using
Van Eyck’s altarpiece itself to publicly proclaim this message, burghers enacted it.
The suggestion of three-dimensionality that Jan Van Eyck had developed to unprec-
edented highlights in his use of perspective and in his paragone with sculpture
(most eminent in the grisailles of the Ghent altarpiece) was in 1458 emulated by
publicly staging living statues.
The living statues of the joyous entries often showed a close interaction with paint-
ing. For the frst frozen and silent performance in the Bruges entry of Prince Charles,
the future Emperor Charles V, in 1515, a forest was painted on the backdrop of the
stage. It is reproduced in the frst book with prints devoted to a joyous entry, Remy
Dupuys’ La tryumphante et solemnelle entrée (Figure 8.3). With the arrival of the
prince, a wild man opened one of the doors, revealing a scene of richly attired actors
re-enacting Bruges’ origin: the waldgrave Liederic divided territories, giving the city
of Bruges to his son Ganymede, who became the frst lord of Bruges. The second door
was then opened by a wild woman, treating the audience to a scene of the biblical
fgure of Joshua. In this way, the Old Testament was linked with the founding story
of Bruges. The comparison supplied the local history with an illustrious example.
Moreover, Ganymede could be associated with the entering prince, who was seen
as the successor of the legendary hero. In January of that year, the young prince was
ofcially declared of age. From that moment on, he could fulfl his role as ruler over
the Burgundian territories. Throughout the entry in 1515, the burghers of Bruges
expressed their confdence that Charles would accomplish this task with great dignity,
just as the young Ganymede had done before.37 It is striking to see how, in the frst
of Bruges’s performances, the painted landscape was very dominant. Although the
account mentions a painted forest, the woodcut shows a mountainous background
that could have met with surprise, since it does not immediately recall the plain Bru-
ges of Liederic or the dry Canaan landscape of Joshua. The mountainous countryside
does have strong similarities, however, with the renewal of landscape painting at that
time. One of the most prominent fgures here was Joachim Patinir who, till 1515, lived
Figure 8.3 Remy Dupuys, ‘First tableau vivant of the joyous entry of prince Charles in Brugge,
18 April 1515’. In La tryumphante entrée de Charles prince des Espagnes en Bruges
1515, Facsimile. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973.
in Bruges. In this city, he had begun to create groundbreaking landscape paintings,
which presented a story, often biblical, in the foreground, much like the woodcut from
Dupuys’s account.
The living statues had close afliations with other visual arts as well, enforcing
them as markers of liminality. Juan Cristobal Calvete de Estrella repeatedly expresses
his admiration for the living statues. A passage from his account of Philip’s entry into
Louvain in 1549 is exemplary. Louvain was traditionally the frst city into which
the Burgundians and Habsburgs made their entries. About the very frst performance
there, Calvete de Estrella writes:
All the characters played their roles with so much majesty and truthfulness in
their poses, that one could recognize at frst glance which hero each represented:
the bearing, the attitude, the position of the feet, the hands, the heads, the com-
plete immobility of their eyes and their bodies, the expressions of the actors, both
women and men, ofered a marvellous spectacle: one could call it a living tapestry
(tapiz de fguras vivas).38
By speaking of a ‘tapiz de fguras vivas’, Calvete de Estrella referred to the extremely

expensive tapestries from the Low Countries that for centuries and centuries had been
highly thought of in the whole of Europe in order to emphasize for his Spanish readers
the most remarkable attractions of the entries in the Low Countries. Thus, the Span-
iard acknowledges the extraordinary character of the stages with motionless actors
and makes this understandable by linking it to a prestigious medium far more familiar
to his Spanish readers. Moreover, Calvete de Estrella presents several parameters to
explain the success of the tapiz de fguras vivas. There is the recognisability of the repre-
sentation. The viewer could see immediately which character an actor enacted. Calvete
de Estrella highly esteemed the clarity with which the diplomatic message was commu-
nicated. Besides, he describes the performances as magestad (majesty) and maravillosa
(marvelous). Consequently, the tapiz de fguras vivas had to raise great admiration and
wonder. Finally, the Spanish nobleman sees the extraordinariness of the stage, its immo-
bility, as a basic condition for their success. As this parameter is explicitly addressed
by foreign viewers only, local viewers must have taken it for granted. Nevertheless, the
way the actors succeeded in being totally frozen must have been an important factor in
the excitement raised by the performance, for foreign and local viewers alike.
Statues Vivantes
Even more than to painting and tapestry, however, the sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century reporters make references to sculpture. For example, when for William of
Orange’s entry into Brussels in 1578 an actress enacted the Greek mythological fgure
of Andromeda in chains, the reporter writes that her appearance ‘could have been
taken for a marble statue’.39 The practice of referencing Graeco-Roman sculpture as
a means to strengthen the extraordinary character of the stages was already a cen-
tury old. Even if in that period that was not explicitly indicated in the reports, clear
references can be found in the visual representations of the stages, indicating that the
performing burghers were ‘monumentalised’ into antique statues.
We can fnd a telling example in a stage of the 1496 entry of Joanna of Castile, the
spouse of Philip the Fair, into Brussels, where living statues publicly represented the
Judgment of Paris. A clear diplomatic message was given. The three goddesses judged
by Paris hold three gifts: the power of Juno, the wisdom of Pallas, and the grace
of Venus. The French art historian Anne-Marie Legaré writes: ‘Reuniting in herself
the gifts that the three imperfect goddesses only own separately, Joanna of Castile
appears as the ideal and universal princess’.40 What interests us here, however, is how
this diplomatic message was staged. The drawing of the performance leads us to sup-
pose that naked women performed in Joanna’s entry (Figure 8.4). If we consider the
Figure 8.4 ‘Paris’ judgement in the joyous entry of Joanna of Castile in Brussels, 9 Decem-
ber 1496’. Manuscript 78D5, fol. 57, Kupferstichkabinetts SMB, Bildarchiv preus-
sischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, inv.no. 00049763.
Source: © bpk/ Kupferstichkabinett, photo: Jörg P. Anders.
history of late mediaeval nudity on stage, however, there are diverse possibilities. The
actresses could have been naked indeed, but they could also have worn closely ftting
skin-coloured suits and even could have been mannequins.41 Due to a lack of concrete
sources, it is hard to tell which option was chosen in the Brussels performance. Nev-
ertheless, in late medieval and early modern cities, moral restrictions concerning the
public display of the naked body were moderated during festive occasions, so actual
nudity might not be ruled out completely.42
Historians have never put the focus on the fact that the postures of the female nudes
clearly refer to antique sculptures. The fgure in the middle of the drawing recalls the
most famous female nude statue of Antiquity, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Cnidus, which
was preserved in countless Roman copies and textual descriptions.43 With one hand,
she holds a veil and protects her private parts. Holding the other hand before the left
breast, this fgure resembles a specifc variant of Praxiteles’ original, of which nowa-
days the Aphrodite of Syracuse, the Capitoline Venus and the Medici Venus are the
most famous. Interestingly, despite these connections with this Aphrodite type, follow-
ing the inscription on the drawing the fgure in the middle was not the lovely Venus but
the powerful Juno. With regard to Venus, the draughtsman chooses to represent the
moment when she turns away from the viewer. Thus, the body of the goddess of love is
the most obscured of the three. All the more since her back is covered by her long hair.
She has put one of her hands on her buttocks rather explicitly, thus emphasising she is
making a pose. Besides the fact that the Graeco-Roman statues were used as a means
to evoke ancient goddesses, the specifc setting heightened the statue-like character of
the three goddesses. Placed in front of a sort of Swiss weather house avant la lettre, the
elegant performers were moved on a rotating plate from one door to the other. Thus,
their well-considered poses could be totally fxed and were even more emphasised.
Graeco-Roman sculpture continued to infuence the stages of the joyous entries in
the Low Countries and the monumentalising of the performing burghers. We already
saw that the reporter of the entry of William of Orange into Brussels explicitly referred
to ancient sculpture. In the very same year, in 1578, Archduke Matthias had already
made his joyous entry into the city. The fact that two entries were organized so close
after each other illustrates the turbulent times. Matthias came at the request of the
country’s States General, which no longer recognized Governor Don Juan in this posi-
tion, but Philip II still supported the latter.44 However, we have to be careful not to let
this political context entirely dominate our analysis of the entry, since these festivities,
as we have already seen, were certainly not disconnected from the rich tradition of
previous entries.
A series of 24 statues vivantes ofered the Archduke various symbols of power. The
woodcuts from the ofcial account by Jean Baptiste Houwaert show that each living
statue was performed on a simple stage, most frequently with a single actor or actress.
On one of these stages, we see Temperance ofering a costly robe to the Archduke
(Figure 8.5). This cardinal virtue is represented in a traditional manner, as a woman
who pours water into a bowl of wine. An inscription points to the allegorical meaning
of this scene: ‘Temperance decorates any person far more than only with rich dresses.
She ofers his highness (of noble character) the robe of honour, splendid and delight-
ful’.45 The robe, therefore, does not primarily stand for an outer sign of richness but
instead was meant to encourage Matthias to use temperance. By dressing the entering
ruler in symbolic articles of clothing in this series of stages, the Brussels municipality
treated him as a novice who entered, to repeat Edith and Victor Turner, ‘a ritual time
and space that are betwixt and between those ordered by the categories of past and
future mundane existence’.46 The discourse ofered by the living statues was coherent
and clearly communicated by a fxed format; a personifcation gave the Archduke a
present that could be related to Matthias’ ideal government. Most often, that per-
sonifcation made a gesture that referred to ancient sculpture. Temperance provides us
with a clear example. Thanks to her gesture, but also her chiton-like garment and a
Figure 8.5 Jean Baptiste Houwaert, ‘Tableau vivant of the joyous entry of archduke Matthias
in Brussels, 18 January˛1578’. In Sommare beschrijvinghe vande triumphelijcke
Incomst . . . , plate XVII. Antwerp, 1579, 51. University Library Ghent, MEUL.
000334.
single revealed breast, the fgure of Temperance was very similar to the ancient statue
type that has become known as the Venus Genetrix. As with Praxiteles’ statue of
the goddess of love, this representation of Venus was very popular in the early mod-
ern period and was known through many copies from the Roman period, as well as
through representations on coins and descriptions, such as in Pliny’s most infuential
Naturalis Historia (35.156).
Theatricality
Thanks to their immobility and silence, as well as their speaking resemblances to
painting, tapestry and especially sculpture, the living statues were traditional in their
extraordinariness and therefore fgured as essential markers of liminality in the joyous
entries which we have seen as civic rites of passage for a new ruler. The ‘traditional
extraordinariness’ was essentially defned by making explicit references to the repre-
sentative status of the stages, thus clarifying that regular communication of everyday
life was exceeded. A last element which gave the living statues ‘traditional extraordi-
nariness’ was theatricality, again in the strict sense of the word as ‘resembling the the-
atre’. For this, we need to go back to the amateur players of the Chambers of Rhetoric
mentioned in the introduction of this chapter. Their rise and decline run parallel with
the history of the living statues in the joyous entries, increasingly developing their role
in the Low Countries throughout the ffteenth century and diminishing in importance
throughout the seventeenth century.47 In order to emphasise mutual infuencing, the
theatre historian Wim Hummelen has clarifed how much the living statues of the joy-
ous entries resembled the living statues in the theatre performances of their time, all
the more since often the Chambers of Rhetoric were responsible for both.
At a decisive moment in the plot of the plays, the Chambers of Rhetoric staged a
group of living statues to specify and strengthen the conclusion of the play.48 Here,
we can once again speak of ‘traditional extraordinariness’, and this to let the central
message penetrate as strongly as possible. More precisely, these living statues served
as representations within the representation. In other words, at the moment when the
drama was coming to its end, the action was stopped, and a stage behind the stage
was revealed by raising the curtains. On this stage, another time and place than the
time and place of the theatre play was evoked. Often, the plays of the Chambers of
Rhetoric were strongly defned by allegories. Therefore, they were situated in a time
and place that were related to the theatregoers but which were also relying on meta-
phorical meaning. Issues and occurrences of the theatregoers’ time and place were
represented in such a way that they eventually pointed at a deeper, often moral mean-
ing. For example, the personage of the priest was staged in such a way that he was
clearly recognizable for the audience, but this personage was not just an everyday
priest but a personifcation (we can even speak of an animation) of the abstract notion
of good faith. By contrast, the living statues that were performed at the play’s conclu-
sion did not work with ‘allegorical presence’ but evoked a time and place which was
not shared with the speaking and moving characters on the front stage and which
these characters could only observe, just as the theatregoers. Generally, the living
statues’ time and space is biblical or heavenly, such as the staging of the crucifxion
of Christ or God sitting enthroned. Whereas the speaking and moving characters of
the front stage do not share time and place with the statue vivante, they do comment
on what they see in the stage behind them, thus making the moral of their story clear.
Thanks to the Chambers of Rhetoric, the burghers from the Low Countries were
used to complex communication with the help of motionless and silent actors staged
at a very specifc moment in the plays that were performed regularly on the streets and
squares of cities, towns and even villages. Thanks to the parallels in the staging of the
living statues in the plays of the Chambers of Rhetoric, the living statues in the joyous
entries, which were less frequently staged, similarly urged the viewers to thoughtfully
consider what was shown on the stages and not to take these stages at face value but
to read a deeper meaning. A time and place were evoked that had to be related to their
own time and place, although there was certainly not always a direct connection.
The appearance of statues vivantes in the late medieval and early modern entries
in the Low Countries was closely linked to many media, as they shared the same
rhetorical strategies. This transmediality can be related to the creation of ‘traditional
extraordinariness’ that made the living statues successful markers of liminality. We
have seen how the picturesque aspect of the living statues from the 1458 entry into
Ghent, namely the duplication of the Ghent Altarpiece, was used to the fullest extent
but also linked to the theatrical power of the performance of this famous polyptych
by locals standing motionless and silent. The picturesque and the theatrical aspects of
this group of living statues enforced each other. Similarly, the impact of the explicit
statuesque postures on the scenes of the Archduke Matthias’ entry in 1578 strength-
ened the impact of the performance of the actresses. In this case, the combined forces
of sculpture and theatre ensured that the audience saw that there was more going on
than the Archduke only getting new clothing. The series of living statues performed
to welcome the Archduke was a powerful, transmedial marker of liminality and had
to make generally known that a new and ideal ruler was in the making. Thanks to
the fact that burghers were giving form to the public statues, the civic pride could
be expressed fully in this ritual. As actors given central attentions, burghers had an
important part in the political act. Even more, since they stood motionless and silent
and often resembled sculpture, we can speak of the Netherlandish cities monumental-
ising their burghers.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the editor of this volume, Christopher P. Dickenson, for his
excellent suggestions and remarks on a draft of this chapter.
Notes
1. Bergstein 2002; Covi 2005; Erben 1996.
2. Starn 1986.
3. See the contributions and bibliography of Blondé, Boone, and Van Bruaene 2018.
4. See Bussels 2012.
5. Heesakkers 1994.
6. Becker 1993; Scholten 2001.
7. In the time of the entries they were named in the Low Countries as toog (the act of show-
ing) or vertoog (the act of viewing). Thus, the visual aspect of the performances was given
central attention. Moreover, the perspective of the maker as well as the audience were given
attention in those names. Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal 1993: entries ‘toog’ and
‘vertoog’.
8. Hummelen 1992.
9. Vandommele 2012.
10. Burgon 1839, 388–389.
11. See, among other publications, two large research projects published as Mulryne and
Watanabe-O’Kelly 2004; and Wisch and Munshower 1990.
12. Soly 1984.
13. Soly 1984, 352.
14. An early exception is Roeder-Baumbach and Evers 1943.
15. Soly 1984.
16. Kernodle 1943.
17. Moreover, the conviction that the ephemeral design followed the stone architecture was a
clear sign, following theatre historian Wim Hummelen, of Kernodle’s lack of knowledge of
the theatre history of the Low Countries. Hummelen contradicted Kernodle’s statement and
discussed a rich series of theatre performances that had to prove that the living statues of
the entries originated from the theatre. Hummelen 1970.
18. Turner and Turner 1982, 202.
19. Muir 1997.
20. Hurlbut 2001. Cf. Lecuppre-Desjardin 2004, 135–158.
21. E.g. Bussels 2012, 35.
22. Bussels 2007.
23. Bussels and Van Oostveldt 2017.
24.
una donzella puesta de rodillas de rostro modesto, la qual con gran acatamiento salu-
daua al Principe. . . . Traya sobre una saya larga de raso carmesi una ropa corta de raso
blanco, y en lugar de guirnalda sobre sus cabellos una hermosa torre de dos pies de alto
a semejança dela que està enla yglesia mayor de nuestra Señora, por la qual y por las
colores de blanco y Colorado mostraua, que era la riquissima villa de Anvers.
(Calvete de Estrella, El felicissimo viaje: IV, 225 recto. Translation into English is by
Gijs Versteegen. I would like to thank him for his help)
27. Thofner 2007, 47.
28. Thofner 2007, 47.
29. Van Gelderen 1992, 54–55; Van Bruaene 2007.
30. Facsimile with introduction: Mielke 1970. See also Vandenbroeck 1981, 38–44.
31. Geudens 1911.
32. Knaap and Putnam 2013 is recently published and will hopefully put this joyous entry back
on the scholarly agenda.
33. However, as I have explained elsewhere, the personifcations accompanying the Maiden
were adapted to the new political situation. Bussels and Van Oostveldt 2017.
34. Bussels 2010; Bussels 2014.
35. Martens 2002; Hindriks 2019, 122–127.
36. Bergmans 1907.
37. Anglo 1973.
38. Juan C. Calvete de Estrella, El felicissimo viaje del muy Alto y muy Poderoso Principe
Don Phelippe, Hijo del Emperador Don Carlos Quinto Maximo, desde España a sus tier-
ras de la baxa Alemaña: con la descripcion de todos los Estados de Brabante y Flandes,
Anvers: Martin Nucio, 1552, III, 82. Briefy discussed and translated in Karimi 1977,
104–105.
39. Karimi 1977, 110.
40. ‘Réunissant à elle seule des dons que les trois déesses imparfaites ne possèdent que séparé-
ment, Jeanne de Castille apparaît comme la princesse idéale et universelle’ (my translation).
Legaré 2010, esp. p. 53.
41. Bussels 2007.
42. Duerr 1993.
43. Pasquier and Martinez 2007.
44. Soly 1984, 355.
45. ‘Temperantia die den persoon verciert/ Boven cieraet van cleeren hoe costelijck,/ Schenckt
sijn hoogheyt (edel ghemaniert)/ T’habijt van eeren, schoon en kostelijck’. Jean B. Houwaert,
Sommare beschrijvinghe vande triumphelijcke Incomst vanden doorluchtigen ende hoogh-
gheboren Aerts-hertoge Matthias binnen de Princelijcke stadt van Brussele in t’iaer ons
Heeren MDLXXVIII, Antwerp: Plantijn, 1579, 51.
46. Turner and Turner1982, 202.
47. Strietman 1991.
48. Hummelen 1970; Hummelen 1992.
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9 Street Monuments and the Idea
of National ‘Improvement’
Through Tolerant Coexistence
in Post-Restoration Britain
(1660–1770)
Matthew Craske
Introduction
In this chapter, I explain how, in the century or so after the Restoration of the Mon-
archy in 1660, the various urban political communities of Great Britain expressed
their political loyalties through street monuments. In the case of most of the examples
I review, a community elected to express its political ideals through erecting a statue
of a monarch who they believed had introduced a state of peace necessary to pro-
gress. I describe these monuments as the means by which abstract concepts of political
theology, derived of a sense of strong connection between the afairs of church and
state, were embodied in the form of the efgy of a dead king or prince.1 For most of
the monuments that are discussed below, the great seventeenth-century constitutional
crises took the part of the state of disorder that had, it was claimed, been bought to
a close by the monarch that was celebrated. The typical British street monument of
the hundred years after the Restoration (1660–1760) perpetuated the memory of a
sovereign who was supposed to have ofered the fnal, constitutional, solution to those
crises.
These royal statues, and their inscriptions, were, ostensibly, historical statements.
They were also the war monuments of their times. With most examples featuring an
efgy in armour, they were one of the means by which Britons came to terms with the
wars of the immediate past. However, being built to last, they had their most impor-
tant purpose as statements of confdence in a peaceable future.2 One of the main rea-
sons they deserve to be studied closely today is that they provide illuminating access
to how a civilisation planned to create a prosperous future out of its conficted past.
With the beneft of hindsight, we know that this particular civilisation was to emerge,
by the time our period closed, as the world’s foremost commercial economy and impe-
rial power. It is for this reason that these monuments provide a way of gaining access
to the values that made this transformation possible.
As David Spadafora has argued, the main indication that an Enlightenment hap-
pened in the eighteenth century is the many clear signs of widespread attachment
to the idea of progress.3 These quasi-classical statues of monarchs were, upon such
terms, icons of the British Enlightenment. They represented divergent, highly parti-
san, conceptions of what constituted a political ‘improvement’. They were tributes to
rulers who, in the perception of one particular community, introduced the terms of
benefcial change. When a civic body expressed its faith in a regal champion, it was,
Street Monuments 195
typically, making a controversial statement. The hero of one town or city was likely
to be another’s villain. What constituted a political improvement was, as we shall see,
very much a matter of opinion, to be debated in the newspapers.
For all these monuments might be the product of a modern phenomenon, newspa-
per opinion, they were conspicuously ancient in tenor. Most of the statues that are
discussed below were classical not just as a matter of style but of meaning. Those who
erected them knew much about what the ancient Romans had hoped to achieve by
putting up statues in public spaces. No doubt some of them were also aware of the
practice of damnatio memoriae, the Roman tradition of eradicating public memory
by destroying statues and inscriptions. They seem to have honoured, by emulation,
the Roman tradition of statue making but not that of statue breaking. The reluctance
to destroy commemorative statuary, which is charted in this essay, is likely to refect
an awareness that the Romans had fallen into damnatio memoriae most forcibly at
times of the decadence of empire. Considering themselves a people on the ascent,
one implementing civic ‘improvements’, these Georgians avoided every appearance
of intolerance. Owing to the phases of statue breaking during the Civil War, it was
natural for the early Georgians to associate national degeneration with this particular
form of destructive practice. Having rebuilt the nation on the basis of the Toleration
Act of 1689, a culture was formed that sought to display that political will necessary
to live with statues that one might fnd ofensive.
Pax Romana as a Condition of Civic Order

In ways that were both implied and directly stated, the quasi-Roman statues that are
reviewed below transmitted a heritage of ideas about how to improve the public realm
through wise rule. A prime source of these ideas was the great Roman histories, in
particular those of Tacitus and Suetonius. The idea of the Pax Romana, as imposed by
an enlightened head of state who was ready to go to war to establish a proftable peace
for his people, was central to the imagery of most of these monuments.
Street statues that were made in the classical milieu tended to be made in anticipa-
tion of viewing from a proper vantage. Stylistically, they belonged in wide, straight,
roads or squares, in environments redolent of the urban planning that, it was imag-
ined, characterised the attainments of the ancient Romans. They were, generally, the
waking dreams of men repulsed by flthy warrens of mediaeval streets and collapsed
pre-Civil War infrastructure. Some of the most expensive and artistically ambitious
quasi-classical street monuments were commissioned to adorn urban schemes outside
London. Here, the quality of a civic improvement was often measured in terms of the
capacity to improve upon the capital. Simply because the fashion for erecting quasi-
classical street statuary began in the metropolis and spread to the provinces, it need
not be assumed that London was considered to have set standards, either politically or
aesthetically. As the nation’s political centre, the place where people of infuence gath-
ered and competed for precedence, London was notoriously difcult place to improve.
The limited success of those who attempted to implement the Wren plan to rebuild
after the Great Fire of 1666 was indicative of a wider, more protracted, malaise.
London was, as we shall see below, a place where private and party interests often
got in the way of public-spirited improvement schemes. As a consequence, Londoners
came to expect their lives to take place amidst squalor and chaos. Street monuments
were a source of comedy because they came to take their part in the chaos rather
196 Matthew Craske
than mark the imposition of order. Symptomatic of this was the prospect of the frst
statue of this sort to be commissioned in England, the bronze equestrian monument
to Charles I that now stands in Trafalgar Square. Erected in the wake of the Restora-
tion of the monarchy in 1660, though commissioned long before, this was interpreted
as a symbol of that event. However, this monument was not necessarily associated
with improvement. It stood in an area that, by the 1730s, became a notorious eye
sore. Within a fve minute walk of Parliament, this statue was open to being seen as
an emblem of how weak governance was registered in flth and disorder. William
Hogarth was one of those who saw the potential of such an emblem as a critique of
the era of Robert Walpole’s stint as prime minister. He employed the statue of Charles
I as the focal point of a visual joke at the expense of the tenor of current afairs that
Figure 9.1 William Hogarth, Times of the Day: Night, print, 1833. Private collection of the
author.
appeared within his Times of Day series (1738). It made the ironically grandiose cen-
trepiece for his most squalid of London’s ‘times’, ‘Night’ (Figure 9.1).
Hogarth’s way of representing this statue, and the congested horror of the Char-
ing Cross area in general, was probably infuenced by an account of London by an
acquaintance, James Ralph.4 The latter wrote a once-famous pamphlet (1734) about
the need to improve London’s performance in the matter of erecting statues and public
buildings.5 In this Critical Review, Ralph raged against the blights upon planning that
retarded patriotic projects, such as the erection of an equestrian monument to William
III at Cheapside Conduit. A great admirer of the ‘vistas’ provided by straight roads
and squares, Ralph deplored the inability of Londoners to set aside their diferences
and private interests in order to make suitable environments for the receipt of patriotic
public statues. Reading Ralph’s Critical Review helps to explain why most of the great
plans for British street monuments that never came to fruition, or were hopelessly
delayed or downgraded, happened in London.
The administrators of smaller urban centres often found it easier to arrive at the clarity
of purpose necessary to execute improvements. The decision to erect a street monument
was frequently received as a fne opportunity to express publicly a provincial town’s supe-
riority to London’s administrative failures. As we shall see in this essay, the townspeople of
Dublin, Bristol or Hull believed that they could shame the Capital, set national standards
of civilisation, by commissioning the most splendid of street monuments. These places
were not entirely superior to the political divisions that characterised the capital. Indeed,
we fnd, for instance, the great metropolitan sculptor, John Michael Rysbrack, delaying
sending his monument to William III to Bristol for fear that it would be immediately
destroyed in a street riot. Nonetheless, it was much easier for the administrators of such
provincial cities to arrive at the decisiveness necessary to the avoidance of planning blight.
Some British towns or cities acted to support one another in the matter of striving for
a better future by commemorating the past. A case in point, which is discussed below, is
when the merchants of Hull imitated how their peers in Bristol went about commission-
ing a bronze equestrian statue to William III (1732–35). However, such statues were, for
the most part, the political acts of factions who conceived of their communities as in some
form of hostile competition with other national centres of civilisation. In such circum-
stances, statements of politics and churchmanship were knowingly planned to be at odds
with those of other communities. Street sculpture gave obdurate substance to important,
regional diferences in historical and theological vision. These diferences had been a
major factor in the English Civil War; the misery and impoverishment which attended
that confict being the presiding, underlying, historical stimulus to the cult of ‘improve-
ment’ that underscored the commission of these quasi-classical street monuments.
The objective of putting up such monuments does not, however, appear to have been
to infame insipient sectarian confict. On the contrary, I argue that these monuments
served to express, and in the process defuse, dangerously fundamental diferences
between the political values of urban communities. In Britain, as I explain below, cer-
tain dead monarchs, such as William III or Queen Anne, assumed the role of talismans
of party positions. In this context, one of the functions of a royal statue was to defne,
at a glance, the political identity of a given urban community as a matter of Whig or
Tory afliation. The preconception was that these would function as statements of par-
tisan loyalty that strangers of a diferent political persuasion were expected to tolerate.
Such monuments, I suggest, allowed for the permanent expression of controver-
sial values in anticipation of them being tolerated by fellow countrymen, some of
198 Matthew Craske
whom could be expected to fnd them objectionable. On this account, I describe
how street monuments served as part of the cultural apparatus that allowed a nation
to survive its divergent understandings of its past and endure potentially divisive
visions of its future. I suggest that they functioned as one means amongst many
whereby a national society, whose recent history was civil war, avoided turning
religious and political diferences into matters of confict. Through such statements,
the nation could be seen as a series of political territories, clearly defned in their
loyalties, which had found a means of coexistence. They played a part in a ‘respect
of obvious diference’ model for confict resolution that has its heir in the Good
Friday Agreement.
The Example of the Proposed Equestrian Monument to

the Duke of Cumberland
William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and younger son of George II, died in Octo-
ber 1765. He was aged just 44, and notoriously corpulent. A periodical called The
Craftsman6 attempted to generate public enthusiasm for the commission of an eques-
trian statue. It was to be positioned ‘at Whitehall, just below the entrance to parlia-
ment’.7 The plan was for the readers to subscribe to this project. The Duke, sometimes
known as ‘the Butcher of Culloden’, was a controversial character, in life and in death.
Not least he had tried and failed to have himself appointed regent in the minority of
his nephew, George, in preference for the latter’s mother, Augusta. Some interpreted
this as a kind of attempted military coup, on account of Cumberland’s earlier attempts
to increase his powers through army reforms.
Cumberland’s last years were ones of protracted humiliation, as his plans to follow
up his successes in the suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion by assuming control of
the state were foiled. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mass of subscribers were
never forthcoming that were necessary for the erection of a magnifcent monument.8
Four years later, the same newspaper announced that the monument would be made,
but at the behest of a private individual, Colonel William Strode. It was erected near
Strode’s house at Cavendish Square with an inscription stating that it was a gesture
of gratitude for a ‘private kindness’.9 The Craftsman promised that it should be cast
in bronze. However, the fnal monument, by the Cheere Company of Hyde Park Cor-
ner, was made of a cheaper material, lead, which was gilded to give the impression of
greater expense.10
The whole scheme to commemorate Cumberland in London was, thereby, down-
graded. Nonetheless, Strode presented his gift to the community as an event of con-
stitutional importance. The unveiling was organised for the birthday of William III,
5 November, to give the impression that Cumberland was that king’s natural successor;
his Battle of the Boyne being Culloden.11 The choice of date was signifcant, for when
he died, in 1776, Strode was buried beneath a monument in Westminster Abbey that
described him as ‘a strenuous asserter of Civil and Religious Liberty, as established at
the Glorious Revolution of William III’.12 This was not the only occasion on which an
equestrian monument to a member of the House of Hanover became an alter-ego for
William III, or vice versa. In 1731, the committee that formed to commission a statue
for St Anne’s Square Bristol long debated whether the man on the horse was to be
George II or King William. Famously, they opted for the latter.13 This interchangeable
conception of rule was derived of the understanding, beloved of many kinds of Whigs,
that the Hanoverian or Protestant Succession of 1714 was some sort of providential
unfolding of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.14
The Cavendish Square monument was, therefore, commissioned for the consequen-
tial political purpose of preserving respect for a Protestant succession which was taken
to have proceeded from William III’s march up from Brixham to claim the throne
in November 1688. However, by the time the monument was erected, in 1770, the
Duke’s reputation was in such a downward spiral that the very idea of him as a sur-
rogate for the fearsome and austere King William became risible. His efgy, a faithful
representation of a bloated physique masked by fashionable military attire, broke
with the athletic body image expected of a classical equestrian monument, as set by
the monument to Marcus Aurelius on Rome’s Capitol Hill. Shortly after the statue
was erected, it was lampooned in a pamphlet by a certain J. Stuart, which set out
terms for the future development of London.15 The pamphlet was written in the spirit
of Ralph’s Critical Review. Stuart’s purpose, like that of Ralph, was to show that
Londoners were incapable of marking the legacy of political improvements in terms
of appropriately dignifed monuments. A rear view of the sculpture was employed as
a spoof frontispiece. Mocked from the start, the statue never regained public favour.
James Elmes described it, in 1831, as ‘much ridiculed’.16 Within 30 years of his writ-
ing, it was so decayed it was pulled down.
Although the proposed statue of Cumberland at Whitehall was never commis-
sioned, it was signifcant. Not least, it was one of the earliest instances of a subscrip-
tion scheme being advanced for a street monument. The wording of the Craftsman’s
proposal tells us a lot about what was expected from street sculpture in Georgian
England. Such a monument was supposed to be an active infuence upon the political
choices made by the people who daily saw it. To have such as statue erected would,
The Craftsman argued, be in ‘the true interest of the country’. It would, it was hoped,
keep the people in constant mind of ‘the virtues and services of their Great Deliverer,
from Popery, slavery and arbitrary power, with the horrid consequences thereof’. The
way the proposed monument was described keyed into readers expectations of pro-
gress and their tendency to look for signs of it in civic infrastructure. The intended
situation, near to the Houses of Parliament, was proposed in the understanding that it
was being upgraded. This spot was ‘becoming the grandest in town’. Thus, the statue
was to be the centrepiece of an urban ‘improvement’.
An equestrian statue was a statement of martial potency. So it was that the monu-
ment to Cumberland was expected to intimidate, though within limits set by a suppos-
edly free society. Whitehall was selected because it was considered ‘the chief entrance
to foreigners’ into London’. Should those foreigners be Catholic, the statue was to
be considered a cautionary statement. The position was chosen because it was to be
‘opposite’ the equestrian monument to Charles I at Charing Cross (cast by Hubert
Le Seuer in 1633 but not erected until 1674)17 and near to bronze pedestrian statue
of James II in Privy Garden (Grinling Gibbons, 1686, now in front of the National
Gallery).18 The latter monument was not reviled or destroyed. On the contrary, it was
fully restored in 1730, to the approval of the London press.19 In the mid-1730s, James
Ralph registered his tolerance of the former by stating that, although James II was
‘unhappy’ in his politics, his statue was sufciently fne as to deserve an even more
conspicuous position.20 The objective of the editors of The Craftsman was similarly
tolerant. They were aiming to provide a politically superior alternative to the monu-
ments to Stuart Kings. It was that the monument to Cumberland should ‘serve as a
200 Matthew Craske
contrast’ to what was already there. This contrast was to be political, a refection upon
the superiority of the Hanoverian to the Stuart line. It is an indication that any doubts
about the reliability of the Stuart line by Protestants were not taken out on their street
monuments that George I himself paid for the restoration of the statue to Charles I on
the Mall.21
The way that those considering a monument to Cumberland, a recently deceased
prince, were expected to think of the long-dead William III said much about conven-
tional attitudes to commissioning such sculpture. In the fnal decade of the adminis-
tration of Robert Walpole (1732–42), conventions of tolerance were applied, in the
main, to the commemoration of long-dead monarchs. This is because the majority of
important British street statues in this period were of this ‘recent history’ type. Three
monarchs were so commemorated: William III, Queen Anne and Charles II. They rep-
resented the divergent interpretations of the direction of national history which were,
because this society devoted itself to the principle of toleration, allowed to coexist.
Their efgies not only outnumbered those of George I and II but were also more ambi-
tious. This refected the understanding that, whilst the nation was improving itself, the
current monarchy was commonly considered less important to that process than the
political conditions established by their forebears.
Overarching this phenomenon was a broader social development: the growing
confdence of groups of merchants that they had a major part to play in civil and
religious afairs not simply of their town or city but of the nation at large. Though
the statues themselves refect the importance of loyalty to some manifestation of the
crown within urban society, the overriding impression was of a public realm in which
courtliness was of diminishing consequence.22 Equestrian monuments to British Kings
began solely as gestures of gratitude from men who had been advanced at court to
their cherished sovereign. This did not entirely cease, as the example of William Strode
honouring the memory of Cumberland testifes. However, the most ambitious, bronze,
statues to the memory of sovereigns that were commissioned in the 1730s were tes-
timony to the combined spending power of merchants. These were gestures of civic
loyalty, as distinct from courtly duty.
Monuments and the Sacred Connotations of Market Places

Previous to the Reformation, urban public spaces in England had frequently centred
upon a cross. Many of these crosses were destroyed by iconoclasts.23 Post-Reformation
England gradually settled upon the idea that it was appropriate to place the image of
a monarch at the centre of a community, although it was only after the Restoration
of 1660 that the frst classical street monument was put in place. This monument,
Hubert Le Sueur’s Charles I at the end of Whitehall, was erected in a place formerly
occupied by an Eleanor Cross, which has subsequently given Charing Cross its name.
This cross was destroyed in 1647, in line with the iconoclastic activities of the Crom-
wellian reformers.24
A number of the monuments discussed in this chapter were erected close to the
main market place of a town or city. Some were near the demolished site of market
crosses; others, such as the equestrian monument to Charles II at Edinburgh, were
built near crosses that survived the Reformation, as accompaniments.25 These statues
served the same sort of purpose in the trading community as a market cross: that of
sanctifying the procedures of commerce and thereby granting them moral legitimacy
within the life of the community. The swapping of crosses for fgurative icons can-
not be considered one of straightforward secularisation because, in most cases, the
statue was attended by an inscription that made clear that it had religious functions.
The placement of portrait statues of rulers near to markets associated the exchange
of goods for money with certain, personifed, quasi-sacred political values.26 It was
noted, for instance, that the equestrian monument to William III in Glasgow was,
in 1735, placed beneath the steeple of the Laigh Church and near the ‘tron’, an area
formerly reserved for the weighing of goods at the market.27 This monument was not
secular, in so far as the King was described in the inscription as a warrior for religious
freedoms, who had been ‘pious, valiant, invincible’.
The monument was designed to a format determined by the erection of an equestrian
statue of King William at Kingston-upon-Hull in 1734 (Figure 9.2). Here, the market
cross, with cupola and pillars, was removed and replaced by a massive gilt-bronze
monument, which was erected by subscription at a cost of nearly 900 pounds.28 One
of the consequences of this decision to replace a cross with a statue is that the latter
retains the ecclesiastical context of the former. The statue became an adornment of the
environs of a church known as Holy Trinity in the Market Place. Indeed, this religious
function was marked in the way that annual civic jamborees were organised around
it. A few months after the statue had been set up, an ‘entertainment’ took place,
4 December 1734, to mark the ofcial unveiling. The purpose of that entertainment
was to remember how Hull had been ‘rescued out of the hands of papists’.29 One way
of thinking about the great British statues of William III is that they functioned like
protective talismans for certain urban Protestant cults. The more expensive the cult
object, and Scheemakers’ statue at Hull was conspicuously costly, the more efcacious
it was deemed to be as a charm to ward of any papists who might think of making
themselves at home in that place.
Though appropriated by Christians, the tradition of placing monuments to leaders
near markets was of Roman origin and refected the pieties operative within pagan
religion in which emperors assumed deifcation in order to stand for the immortal
aspirations of Rome itself, a supposedly eternal city. Witness, for instance, the way
in which the Trajan’s Column in Rome, which was originally topped with a bronze
statue of the emperor, was designed to look down upon Trajan’s market (built ce
98–117).30 It was from Roman history that post-Restoration Britain inherited the
understanding that one of the great functions of civic monuments was to remind those
involved in trade that they did so under political conditions established by rulers. The
role of a portrait statue in a market place was related to that played by the head of the
ruler upon coinage. By these means, the currency inherited the personal authority of
the ruler and the ruler’s successors, an association with terms of fair exchange.31 The
most dramatic expression of this idea was the erection in November 1734 of Henry
Cheere’s fne marble statue to King William, taking the part of a Roman emperor, as
the fnal embellishment of ‘the east end of the great hall’ of the recently rebuilt Bank of
England.32 Superfcially, this was a reminder that the Bank had been founded in Wil-
liam’s reign. More profoundly, it symbolised the notion that currencies, and systems
of trade and commerce, are legitimated by the icon of a respected warrior ruler.
One of the causes and consequences of street monuments being erected in market
places was that they were patronised by people involved in commerce. This was the
case with the equestrian monument to William III in Glasgow, which was commis-
sioned, though not paid for, by the mercantile town council. A verse was published to
202 Matthew Craske
Figure 9.2 Peter Scheemakers, statue of William III, 1734, Kingston upon Hull.
Source: Courtesy Kees van Tilburg.
celebrate the erection, in 1735, of this grand piece of sculpture (Figure 9.3). This ably
communicates the understanding that street monuments, when situated in commercial
centres, stood for prosperous stability derived of a state of security made possible by
a militarily potent monarchy. The verse expressed the supposedly shared understand-
ing that the Hanoverian establishment owed its existence to the martial endeavours
of King William:
By him the mighty blessings stand secured.

By him the widowed lands no more bemoan,
A broken lineage and undoubtful throne,
He fxt succession in our George’s line,
Whereby our future peace the source we fnd.33
Figure 9.3 John or Catherine Nost, statue of William III, 1735, Glasgow.
Source: © Gordon Baird Photography Dundee.
This passage of the verse was inspired the inscription which declared that William’s
revolution had been maintained and transmitted to posterity under ‘the just government
of patriotic princes of the Brunswick line’. The verse reminds us that Hanoverian mon-
archs were considered, by some, to rule by grace of William III. This monument was a
permanent reminder that the current state of peace which they enjoyed had been estab-
lished by the military reassertion of the standing of the crown in the late 1680s and 90s.
Glasgow vs Edinburgh
Not least, this verse, awkward as it is, reminds us that the early Hanoverians lived
in the shadow of a civil war that had brought about and been sustained by a crisis
of monarchy. Much as the insecurities of the previous century were associated with
failures of kingship, in specifc the Stuart line, the solutions were assumed to lie at this
level of the political order. The very sight of a permanent memorial to a ‘good’ and
strong monarch at the heart of the community gave reassurances of future peace and
prosperity. It was the association of strong kingship with the growth of commerce
204 Matthew Craske
that caused merchants such as James Macrea (1677–1744), who donated the Glasgow
statue, to lead the way in the patronage of important street sculpture in Hanoverian
Britain.
In the summer of 1733, Macrea announced his intention to present the city of Glas-
gow with a monument to King William. It was one of the frst things he did on return
to Scotland after decades in India.34 The aim was to make an equestrian monument
for Glasgow that more than competed with that to Charles I, which is now in Trafal-
gar Square. A newspaper puf upon John Nost,35 who made the monument, declared
it was ‘better than that at Charing Cross’.36 It says much about Macrea’s reasons for
commissioning this monument that he had made his fortune in service of the East India
Company, as Governor of Madras. For him and thousands of Protestants involved in
imperial trade, King William had, like Augustus, established foundations for imperial
expansion and the pathways to global markets. It was overlooked by Macrea, but not
most British merchants of a Tory persuasion, that great trading establishments such as
the East India Company had their charters in the movement sponsored by Charles II
to revive international trade after the Restoration. For Macrea, who named his retire-
ment estate in Ayrshire Orangefeld,37 it was the Glorious Revolution and not the Res-
toration which comprised the platform for the burgeoning of international trade that
occurred in the ’20s and ’30s.38 Macrea bought Orangefeld immediately after erecting
the statue.39 It was part of a greater process of ceremonious homecoming. Macrea’s
prime intention, after returning to Scotland from India, via London, was to establish
an inheritable estate, which he, as a bachelor, was obliged to bestow upon selected
heirs who hardly knew him.40 The statue, then, was the frst phase of a very wealthy
elderly individual, who had left Scotland as a poor boy, buying an inheritable stand-
ing in Scottish society, frst mercantile and civic and afterward landed and dynastic.41
When Macrea commissioned the equestrian monument, it is likely that he was
aware that Glasgow’s great rival, Edinburgh, had long had such a civic adornment
(Figure 9.4). More pertinently, he was probably aware that Edinburgh’s equestrian
monument, in memory of Charles II, had been a subtle snub to William III. Such
prominent icons of loyalty served to simplify the complex political identities of the
rival Scottish cities; one seeming to be a community devoted to the political impor-
tance of the Restoration of 1660 and the other the product of its alternative, the Glori-
ous Revolution of 1688. In times when the Jacobite cause was still viable in Scotland,
these were particularly signifcant territorial markers. Indeed, at the 1745 Jacobite
Rebellion they turned out to have real signifcance. The Duke of Cumberland consid-
ered, amongst his punitive measures, shifting the capital of Scotland from Edinburgh
to Glasgow to ensure future loyalty to the Hanoverian Succession.42
The equestrian monument at St Giles, Edinburgh, expressed civic loyalty to the
House of Stuart. This was bound, in the decades following its completion in 1689,
to develop Jacobite infections. For some reason, unstated, the inscription tablet was
removed in the late eighteenth century. The tenor of this inscription serves, perhaps,
as an explanation in itself. It was enthusiastic in its pro-Stuart sentiments to the point
of fanaticism. Charles was compared to Mars, who crushed the ‘cockatrice’ of rebel-
lion ‘in its eggs’. It is clear from the wording of the text that what was being referred
to here was not the Cromwellian rebellion but the 1676 Covenanter revolt.43 The
Restoration was likened to a rising sun and declared the will of providence. Cromwell
was described as a ‘usurper’. It need not surprise that one of the main points of the
statue was to declare a connection between the Restoration and an Augustan pax.44 It
Figure 9.4 Grinling Gibbons, statue of Charles II, 1685, Edinburgh.

was conventional to view in this way the events of 1660, in which a republic marred
by internecine confict was supplanted by strong personal rule.45 According to the
inscription, Charles had assumed frm control of the climate of confict, becoming ‘the
arbiter of peace and war’.
The monument was erected, and inscription penned, in circumstances of crisis for
Edinburgh, precipitated by the accession of James II, his fight and the subsequent
coronation of William of Orange. The circumstances naturally destabilised the frag-
ile relationships between Presbyterians and the Episcopalian parties which had been
granted a fresh political potency by Charles II. Such was the dependence of the latter
upon the favours of the house of Stuart that they were slow to recognise the acute
problem posed by James’s Catholicism and even slower to fnd anything positive in
the accession of William.46 In this respect they were correct to be concerned, for the
Glorious Revolution quickly turned into good news for the hitherto embattled Pres-
byterian cause.
It was the Episcopalian parties who had the motivation to celebrate the Restora-
tion as a Roman triumph in the period 1685–88. From the text of the inscription
alone, it is clear that these parties were responsible for this equestrian monument. It
was set up in line with the Marcat Cross, in relationship with which it continued to
have its meaning until the removal of the latter in 1756. The implication of placing
the sculpture in the symbolic heart of trade was that the Restoration had set the terms
206 Matthew Craske
of a peace in which the city had thrived economically. For some Episcopalian parties
within the trading community, that was a verity.47
The equestrian statue in Edinburgh was ostensibly a kind of funeral monument
to Charles, who died in the year of commission, 1685. It was, however, more than
this. Charles was granted an honorifc parade through the city, in direct contempt of
the Commonwealth, a decade before he was crowned in Westminster in 1660.48 So
it was that a grand image of Charles on horseback gave permanent expression to the
cavalcade of 1650, which was remembered as an indication that the city supported
the House of Stuart before all others. For some reason, either provocative or clumsy,
it was decided to build the equestrian monument, which was set on piece of land that
had formerly been the churchyard of St Giles, directly over the grave of John Knox.49
This was a somewhat incendiary decision, given the choice of Charles’ successor to
turn to Catholicism in the middle of the process of commission,
To add spice, the inscription on the plinth, penned by the advocate William Clerk,50
was put up three years later than the monument’s completion in 1686. This means
that it was installed a year after the arrival in England of William III in 1688 and
subsequent Siege of Derry. William III was not formally recognised as monarch in
Edinburgh until March 1689, and then with a measure of reluctance in some quarters,
chiefy Episcopalian. Clerk’s inscription is redolent of times when the city was coming
to terms with an imported monarchy:
HE RETURNED TO HIS OWN REALMS WITHOUT ANY SHEDDING

OF BLOOD AND SIMPLY THROUGH RECOGNITION OF HIS LAWFUL
CLAIM, WHEREUPON HE ESTABLISHED, ENLARGED, STRENGTHENED
AND CONFIRMED THE CHURCH, THE STATE, PEACE AND COMMERCE.
THEN, WINNING FAME BY HIS WAR WITH HOLLAND, HE STRAIGHT-
WAY BECAME ARBITER OF PEACE AND WAR BETWEEN EMBATTLED
NEIGHBOURS.51
It is important to note here the term ‘own realms’, which mark the appreciation that
Charles had a Scots heritage, as his successor, William, did not. It is reasonable to
think, because these words were written after King William had begun waging war
in Ireland, that these references to Charles coming to power without civil bloodshed
amounted to a complaint. The inscription was a statement of support for Charles’
recreation of a Scottish episcopacy, as marked by the appointment of James Sharp as
Archbishop of St Andrews. Note the assurance in this inscription that Charles’ frst
priority was to re-establish the church and its relationship with the state. This must
mean the restoration of an episcopal system. Yet this system was far more short-lived
than its obdurate commemoration suggests. Within a year of William’s recognition in
Scotland, the episcopacy, which seems to be praised here, was over.
The inscription profered an extraordinarily partisan interpretation of Charles’s
‘War with Holland’. By some standards, the frst of these wars (1665–67), in which
Charles had formed a secret and none too successful alliance with Louis XIV, were best
forgotten rather than memorialised. The King and nation had been humiliated by the
Dutch assault of the feet at Chatham dock in June 1667. The next phase of the war,
subsequent to the ignominious Treaty of Breda, was aimed at restoring some pride.
This ended in another treaty, signed at Westminster in 1674, which only the most
zealous observer, as William Clerk proved to be, could have described as a process of
‘winning fame’ whereby Charles imposed the terms of peace upon the Dutch. A more
accurate description of events was that the accession of William in 1688 had formed
a fortuitous conclusion to a passage of history in which Dutch naval power was con-
sistently superior to that of Britain and a threat to its plans for colonial expansion.
By becoming politically united with the Dutch in the form of the coronation of the
Prince of Orange, the threat was neutralised. It seems, then, that William Clerk was
employed to write a version of events that fattered Charles and scrupulously avoided
the impression that William was the necessary successor to a failed Stuart line. Part of
the point of this was to generate the illusion that Charles had ensured that, when the
alliance with Holland was made in 1688, it was upon terms set by a militarily ascend-
ant Stuart state.
William III, the Commemoration of a Controversial Legacy

William III was buried in Westminster Abbey in March 1702. A grand monument was
planned for the space above his grave in Henry VII Chapel but was never executed.52
Thereafter, there were many compensatory schemes to set up monuments to him in
London. Some came to fruition, others did not. One of those which remained at plan-
ning stage was a scheme of 1718 to replace Francis Bird’s monument to Queen Anne
before St Paul’s Cathedral by one to William and Mary.53 It is not recorded who
wanted this, but we can be confdent it was a person who preferred a Whig to a Tory
vision of the history of the rebuilding of the Cathedral. Wren’s building was, indeed,
consecrated during the reign of William, in December 1692. However, work was com-
pleted in the reign of Queen Anne, in 1711, which allowed a Tory lobby54 to make it
appear to be part of her and their achievement by setting up a monument in 1712.55
The most important project to commemorate William III in London was never
executed in the eighteenth century. In 1724, Samuel Travers, Auditor General to the
Prince of Wales, left a remarkable will, full of proposals for public works, which was
publicised in the newspapers.56 In this, he bequeathed 500 pounds for the making of
a bronze monument to the long dead King William as a centrepiece for St James’s
Square.57 Travers, who came from Puritan stock with Dublin connections and was a
thoroughgoing Whig, was a natural candidate for high ofce under the administra-
tion of William III. The monument was to be erected near Travers’s town house for a
reason, because it comprised the paying of a personal debt. It was to be the product
of a courtly system of preferment, like, for instance, the monuments set up to Charles
II (Windsor Castle) and James II (Whitehall) by Tobias Rustat in gratitude for holding
the lucrative ofce of Keeper to Hampton Court Palace.58
The statue at St James’s Square was intended to register Travers’s gratitude to King
William, who had laid the foundations of his massive personal fortune by appointing
him ‘Surveyor General’.59 In this capacity he had worked closely with Wren, Hawks-
moor and Vanburgh and developed a keen appreciation of the political usefulness of
public art.60 One of Travers’s great claims to fame, although he is largely forgotten
now, is that he surveyed ‘East Greenwich’, negotiated the myriad private land interests
and acquired it for William III.61 It was upon his terms that Greenwich Hospital was
surrounded by extensive ‘royal’ parkland. Travers’s desire to commemorate William
III derived, thus, from a career in which he had become accustomed to establishing
physical legacies for the crown. Unfortunately, his personal property interests were
overly complex, and after his death his estate soon became embroiled in legal claims.
208 Matthew Craske
This meant that the many attempts to enact his testament were frustrated by the
freeze placed on funds.62 In March 1739, for instance, a newspaper reported that John
Cheere of Hyde Park Corner, whose business had just been established, was about to
execute the monument.63 Frederick Prince of Wales was said to have made up for the
inadequate funds. This, however, never happened, and the scheme withered under an
extreme, to the point of bizarre, case of planning blight.64 It was eventually executed
by John Bacon junior in 1808. The sculptor who made it was born 52 years after it
was frst due to be commissioned.64
The only public monument to William III, before Samuel Travers made his bequest
in 1724, was the equestrian statue at College Green in Dublin (Grinling Gibbons,
erected 1701). Travers must have known this monument, for a branch of his fam-
ily settled in Dublin. His brother was an independent Presbyterian minister there. It
seems likely, then, that Travers was seeking to erect a version of this famous equestrian
statue in London. In turn, the Dublin monument seems to have been an antipathetic
political response to the Charles II in Edinburgh. Not only was the Dublin monument
by the same sculptor as that at Edinburgh, it was also erected by a town council. The
College Green monument was the frst public statue, in the Imperial Roman civic tra-
dition, to be erected in Ireland.66
In the eighteenth century, Dublin’s monument to William III had good claim to be
the most important sculpture, politically speaking, in the British dominions. It was the
subject of two annual ceremonials, for the King’s birthday and the anniversary of the
Battle of the Boyne, and formed a veritable rallying point for the Protestant presence
in Ireland.67 It was the Protestant Irish, indeed, who arrived at the initial idea of using
a grand war monument as means of raising the public profle of stridently ‘Orange’
and aggressive forms of British nationalism.68 The ritual processions of Orange culture
that survive to this day have as their starting point the ceremonies of paying court to
this particular statue.69 The magnifcence of the College Green monument was the
basis of a broader understanding amongst the wealthy Protestant people of Dublin
that they, having the greatest reason to fear encroachments upon their dominance,
were obliged to outdo even London in the grandeur of loyalist statuary and the civic
fummery that they were prepared to devote to it. This is why, for instance, the monu-
ment to George II at St Stephen’s Green, begun in 1752, was not just magnifcent but
honoured by a regular itinerary of loyalist military parades in which loud hoorays
were heard for ‘the Glorious Revolution’.70
The understanding that Dublin ought to lead the way in this matter of civic pomp
is made clear in a London newspaper report of a sculptor making an equestrian statue
of George I for Essex Bridge in Dublin (erected in 1722). He was seen, in 1719, tak-
ing measurements of Le Sueur’s famous monument to Charles I at Whitehall with a
specifc aim of making something better.71 The fact that this monument was commis-
sioned in 1717, partly to mark the defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion two years before,
indicates why it was important that a Georgian monument was seen to eclipse a Stuart
one. A way of understanding this one-upmanship is that Ireland, where the threat
to Protestant hegemony was most immediate, demanded an overtly martial public
image of kinship, which was expressed in equestrian street monuments. This created
an understanding that Ireland was the place where loyalty was most truly felt, as it
was most enthusiastically celebrated. Upon these terms, it is not surprising that Dublin
set terms for honouring King William that were considered worthy of emulation in
London.
In his will of 1725, Samuel Travers suggested that his statue to William III could be
erected in one of two places: St James’s Square and the Great Conduit at Cheapside.
As Travers must have been aware, the latter site had recently, in 1721, been intended
for an equestrian monument to George I.72 However, as in Bristol a few years later,
opinion shifted to having a monument of William III as a more categorical declaration
of militant Protestantism. The reply of some of London’s merchants to the delay of
the St James’s Square project was to establish their own, corporate, scheme upon the
lines of that in Dublin. This began in 1727 and continued until 1731, in which period
the consensus moved toward setting the statue up at the Great Conduit on Cheap-
side opposite Mercer’s Hall, the most categorically mercantile setting imaginable.73
The Great Conduit, which was originally designed as a water channel and drinking
fountain, had been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.74 The empty site had turned
into an informal sewer, and passing carriages tossed up flth into a pile there. This had
become an embarrassment, as it was traditionally an important staging post in civic
pageantry.75 The intention was to crown, literally, an improvement project.
This scheme was led by an old man called Samuel Burch, who made an entire late-life
patriotic reputation from it.76 The reason why he became famous was that he fought
against the humiliation of the bill to erect this statue that was proposed by Alder-
man Barnard in October 1731.77 A rival group of Aldermen blocked the proposal,
and much Whig outrage ensued. Objectors infamed the dispute by publicly claiming
that they would prefer to leave the rubbish heap there than have this sculpture. Votes
against were a remarkable 77 to 25.78 The dispute stirred up by this rejection was
one of the great political contretemps of the decade. Many editorials were published
in which recent constitutional history was vehemently debated.79 James Ralph, in his
Critical Review of 1735, was obliged to think of the Cheapside Conduit as the place
where one was most starkly reminded of the failure to improve London:80
In a place like London where so many decorations are wanted, so few to be found,
and even so little room to increase their number, one is forced to regret that any
opportunity which is neglected, or any space which is not improved as it ought.
’Tis certain that no spot is better suited to a statue, than that where the Cheapside
Conduit lately stood, and no King ever deserved that honour more form his peo-
ple than William III. I think all party disputes ought to have been dropt, and the
whole city agree to pay a compliment to themselves in doing that justice to him.
As this passage makes clear, the ofence given by the refusal of the statue was based
on something more than an aggrieved sense of loyalty to the memory of a king who
was perceived to have established national liberties. Those who refused the statue
were considered to have turned their backs on an opportunity for urban ‘improve-
ment’, an even more sacrosanct phenomenon.
Numerous bodies came forward to oppose the actions of the objectionable 77.
The merchants of Drogheda in Ireland81 voted for an equestrian statue on the River
Boyne.82 Subscriptions were raised for monuments in Bristol and Hull.83 There was a
scheme for a monument at Southwark,84 and the vestry of St James’s made a promise,
which they did not keep, to see through Samuel Travers’s will as a corporate project.
There was a proposal for an equestrian monument to King William in Lincolns Inn
Fields. The Bank of England declared its plan to erect a monument, which was realised
in 1734. The second Duke of Dorset hedged his political bets by commissioning, in
210 Matthew Craske
1733, Andries Carpentiere to make a pair of lead statues of William III and Queen
Anne for his gardens at Knole in Kent.85 It was probably also at this stage that an
elderly Whig, William Jolife, decided to put up a lead equestrian monument, upon
the lines of that at Dublin’s College Green, at the ‘circus’ before his house in the town
of Petersfeld in Hampshire. This statue, by John Cheere, was not erected until Jolife
died in 1749. He had bequeathed the sum of £500, the same as that of Samuel Trav-
ers, in his will.86 Indeed, it is reasonable to think that the current statue at Petersfeld
(Figure 9.5) is essentially that which Cheere was engaged to erect for St James’s Square
in 1739 but was abandoned.87 It is, on these grounds, reasonable to date this statue to
1739, not c. 1750.
The controversy which led to the commission of these William III monuments had
its context in the wider debates concerning the activities of the long-lasting admin-
istration of Robert Walpole. The context was the building of political tension that
erupted in the so called Excise Crisis of 1733.88 The period in which the controversy
concerning the equestrian statue at Cheapside fermented was that of a highly polar-
ised political climate, in which opposition to the Prime Minister, Robert Walpole,
began to build in earnest. Walpole’s administration was sustained by the pragmatic
manipulation of interest in the Commons, which was largely landed. He was able to
keep a majority by taking pressure of land taxes. Satisfed by this measure, George
II continued to rule through him. Conversely, this meant a greater reliance of taxes
upon international trade, which was most felt in places such as Bristol.89 This, in turn,
Figure 9.5 John Cheere, statue of William III, 1739, Petersfeld.

meant that there were, for instance, hosts of Bristol tobacco merchants who had good
reason to regret that Georges I and II kept Walpole in ofce for so long. Their loyalty
to the Hanoverians, as opposed to the wider phenomenon of Protestant succession,
was dimmed by the continual, incremental rise is maritime trade taxes.
There was a reason that the three grandest statues to William III were put up in port
cities. These were places in which the possibility of a Britain that drew its wealth from
the encouragement of international trade was most fervently pursued. People from
such places had cause to regret that George II had elected to rule through Walpole, a
man whose very nickname, ‘the Norfolk Squire’, was redolent of a landlocked politi-
cal imagination. They were, understandably, disinclined to honour the current mon-
arch and preferred William III as a patriotic alternative. This is why it was one of the
prime opponents of the Excise Bill, Sir John Barnard, who proposed the monument
to William III at Cheapside.90 It followed that the three major equestrian monuments
to William III that were erected, at Bristol, Hull and Glasgow, were oppositionist
statements.91 Naturally, a great deal of interest was taken in the divisive afair by the
newspapers that weekly grinded out criticism of the Walpole administration, such as
The Grub Street Journal, The Craftsman and Fog’s Weekly Journal, and their most
vociferous opponents, such as The Free Briton and Read’s Weekly Journal.
These three great equestrian monuments were physical expressions of the aspiration
to build a better Britain. The historically educated were aware that, in the previous
century, civic confict had been a major impediment to urban improvements. How-
ever, these had also been times of high drama and personal sacrifce, upon which was
founded that current state of stability which was necessary to economic and cultural
development. This difcult past needed to be set to rest ritualistically in order that
urban communities could move on honourably and enjoy their prosperity in due con-
fdence that it was gratefully received. The great preponderance of monuments to
long dead monarchs that were set up during the reigns of George I and II refect some
kind of indirectly stated disappointment with the House of Hanover. For many, both
Whig and Tory, the Hanoverian Succession was a compromise, as opposed to a heroic
constitutional event. There were consequently few street monuments to the Succession
of 1714.92 The only major statue that could be interpreted as such a monument was
the lead equestrian monument to George I, by John Nost, at Grosvenor Square.93 This
statue, which was paid for by Sir Richard Grosvenor,94 was efectively destroyed by as
early as 1727.95 When this monument decayed, another tribute to George I was put
up in Leicester Square in 1748. This lead equestrian statue, which also promptly fell
apart, was purchased second-hand at the sale of the efects of the Duke of Chandos96
at Canons.97
William III’s version of the Protestant Succession was, to state the obvious, followed
by a military assertion of his power in Ireland in which he himself took command. This
lent his military image a peculiar menace, which was refected in the bellicose character
of the celebrations around the College Green monument. So it was that the equestrian
image of William of Orange seems to have represented a model of kingship which, for
some, ran counter to the welcome limitations placed upon the power of the crown in
the eighteenth century. This underscored some of the reluctance to have a version of
College Green at Cheapside. For some British Protestants, ‘King Billy’ inspired strong
antipathy as a kind of military enforcer, ‘tyrant’ and foreign ‘usurper’.98 This meant
that some were inclined to erect monuments to monarchs who drew their esteem from
not being anything like him. Queen Anne, as a woman who was born in England,
212 Matthew Craske
represented a version of sovereignty that did not come as something invited in and
thereafter sustained by military muscle. For some Tories, her image, standing in full
skirts, became a soft, subtle, feminine, way of expressing regret for the imposition of
conveniently selected Continental princes. To admire Queen Anne was not to declare
for the Pretender, but it was to infer regrets for the Hanoverian Succession. This was
natural enough, because to be a Tory was, essentially, to be out of Westminster ofce
or national power from 1714 until the accession of George III.99
Thomas Estcourt of Shipton Moyne (d. 1746), a strident Tory, commissioned
Thomas Paty of Bristol to make a commemorative statue to Queen Anne to ornament
the town of Dursley in Gloucestershire. This was set into the east face of the Market
House in March 1739.100 Dursley is 25 miles from Bristol, and it is reasonable to think
of this statue an alternative to that of William III by Rysbrack, which was erected
there a few years before. When Estcourt did this and sent news of it to a London
newspaper, he was making a political gesture which constituted a challenge to the cur-
rent establishment in Westminster. It said almost everything that, with a Hanoverian
King on the throne, Estcourt overlooked him in favour of the last monarch to favour
Tory statesmen. By these means, the commercial activity of this particular part of
Gloucestershire became a distinctly Tory phenomenon. The beautiful Dursley Market
House into which the statue was inserted was itself paid for by Estcourt. It was also
adorned with a set of arms that had been granted the Estcourt family in the reign of
James I, when Thomas Estcourt I was knighted in 1607. Having been ennobled by a
Stuart King, the Estcourt family became prominent royalists in the Civil War, from
which their Toryism evolved.101 Thomas Estcourt, it seems, was employing his power
over his locality, the only sphere over which a man of his politics could exert authority
during the Whig supremacy, to assert the impression that things had been better until
the Stuart line was efectively snufed out by the terms of the Hanoverian Succession.
The choice of the Market House as the site of commemoration was reminiscent of the
erection of monuments to William III, such as that at Hull, near the forum of trade.
The City of Oxford, a Dissident Interpretation of

Constitutional History
In the 1730s, the University of Oxford employed loyalist statuary to signal that it
had its own understanding of national history. It is signifcant that the forum of civic
display was on and around the Sheldonian Theatre, which was once used as a printing
house and from where Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion had been disseminated.
A series of three statues were erected at the Sheldonian Theatre between 1735 and
1737 in memory of Charles II, the Duke of Ormond and Bishop Sheldon.102 All were
made by Henry Cheere of St Margaret’s Westminster. He had been given sole privilege
in the commission of marble statuary by the university after the death of Francis Bird
(1731),103 who had similar claims to monopoly. These statues that were funded by the
Chancellor’s exchequer in a period when the Chancellor of the University, Charles
Butler, rejoiced in a title the 1st Earl of Arran, which was bestowed upon him by
‘James III’. In 1722, when Chancellor, he had been appointed one of the nine Jacobite
Lords Regent, who were supposed to care for the realm in James’s absence. He was
the paternal grandson of James Butler, frst Duke of Ormond (1610–88), whose statue
was at the centre of this ensemble. As Nigel Aston has shown, Arran was in contact
with the Jacobite Court in Rome but not a man with trenchant loyalties. He was,
rather, a fgure who compromised with the current monarchical establishment. These
monuments, thus, ought not to be read as public statements of Jacobite allegiance.
They are, none the less, memorials to a university community who found more to
celebrate in the Restoration than the Glorious Revolution.
The frst statue to be fnished, that to Charles II, was set above the great North
Door of the Theatre in July 1735.104 In the previous decade, a grand building had
been completed adjacent, funded from the proceeds of the sale of the History, in
which the University Press was re-established upon grander terms. In 1721, a lead
statue of Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, made by Francis Bird was erected over the
courtyard entrance, south door, of Hawksmoor’s new Clarendon Building.105 One of
the purposes of the Charles II statue was, then, to complement that set up nearby to
Lord Clarendon. The subsequent movement of the Clarendon statue from its original
position—and the complete removal of the Charles II efgy—has reduced the chances
of it being noticed that the two ceremonious founder’s doorways were once supposed
to complement one another.
The statue of Clarendon recalled the story of the ‘Rebellion’, as understood in the
City, Oxford, which had once been the Royalist capital. He holds before him the
regalia of the ofce of Lord Chancellor which he had assumed two years before the
Restoration, when Charles was still in exile. The statue refers to the period, immedi-
ately after the Restoration, when Clarendon had occupied the ofce of Lord Chancel-
lor and Chancellor of the University concurrently. This was a period of history which
enshrined the claims of the City of Oxford to have once been the geographical centre
of the restored monarchical state. Cheere’s statue of Charles II, symbolic as it was of
the Restoration, paid testimony to the happy conclusion that providence had ordained
for Clarendon’s History.106
The political character of this public space, which was articulated by these two
founder’s statues, could not have been more diferent from that of the monuments to
William III. It is part of the context of the Charles II statue that it was erected at a time
when it was fashionable to put up monuments to long-dead sovereigns.107 This was no
obvious symbol of Jacobite allegiance. It might well, indeed, be interpreted as a means
by which the Earl of Arran created his own monument by stressing the importance
of his grandfather’s generation. Any remembrance that this occurred under the aegis
of another, eclipsed, royal dynasty might well have been incidental. Nonetheless, it
did signal the degree to which Oxford’s story was tied into that of its loyalty to the
Stuart dynasty. It was, probably, a stimulus to the rival university city of Cambridge
to commission its own royal image, which was intended to celebrate its claim to be
a distinctly Whig institution. No sooner had Oxford’s Charles II statue been set up
then a proposal was made by the young Lord Viscount Townshend to commission for
Cambridge’s equivalent building, the Senate House, a statue of George I (Rysbrack,
1739).108 The decision to make this came within a year of the erection of the Charles
II and was announced in the Whig press.109
In setting into context the reason for putting up the statue of Charles II in 1735 it is
relevant to recall that, 20 years later, the university notoriously employed the erection
of a monument in this area, the Radclife Camera, to stage a Jacobite protest. Con-
scious that Dr Radclife had Jacobite sympathies, Dr William King, formerly secretary
to the Earl of Arran, delivered a dedication speech (13 April 1749) in which he called
for a restoration of ‘proper’ order.110 The speech occurred in the fnal years of the Earl
of Arran’s period as Chancellor (died December 1758) and was probably intended to
214 Matthew Craske
please the old man.111 All listening in the Sheldonian knew what King meant and that
he was lamenting what had not happened at the Jacobite Rebellion in 1745.112 Indeed,
King was presented to the ‘Pretender’ in Rome a few months afterward. The area
around the Bodleian Library, which was governed by the Chancellor, appears to have
been a place where representatives of the university felt free to celebrate any version of
loyalty to the crown that they thought ft. At times it appeared to be a piece of England
in which a Stuart remained in power.
The purpose of the Charles II statue was to accentuate a point that was already
implied by the carving of a magnifcent set of royal arms above the north door of the
Sheldonian: the whole building was supposed to be a monument to the Restoration
of 1660. On account of the Theatre being proposed for construction shortly after
the Restoration, the architect, Christopher Wren, had taken as his brief the formal
architectonic celebration of that event. At the opening of the building in 1669, the
university orator, Robert South (1634–1716), explained the purpose of the project as
a reestablishment of civilisation after decades of Puritan philistinism.113 It was almost
certainly Puritanism that was being described in Streater’s ceiling painting for the
Theatre in which we see the defenders of the arts casting out Envy, Rapine and Brutal-
ity/Ignorance. Accordingly, the building presented itself to the street as a resplendent
triumph of monarchy, and with it the reassertion of the importance of the arts and
learning within the apparatus of state.
In the early twentieth century, all these statues were taken down from the Shel-
donian to assuage fears that they might fall on tourists. The statues of Sheldon and
Ormond were removed from the outer walls of the entrance facing the Divinity School,
where they had resided in two shallow niches that Wren had designed for sculptural
adornments. This might give the impression that they were intended for these niches,
but the circumstances seem to have been more complex. When the statues of Ormond
and Sheldon were frst installed, they were placed inside the Theatre. In 1749, the
antiquarian, John Pointer, described them thus in situ:
Also two fne statues (carved out of two blocks of white marble by Mr Chaire
of Westminster placed in the Theatre in 1737) one to the memory of Archbishop
Sheldon, the Founder of the Theatre: and the other to the memory of James, Late
Duke of Ormond.114
As described by Pointer, the function of these statues was to complement a series

of painted portraits of Wren, Queen Anne and Sheldon that were already installed
inside the Theatre. It is possible that the bust of Wren, which was donated by Christo-
pher Wren junior in 1738, was intended to be part of this sculptural ensemble. When
these statues were frst set up there were two others, to James II and Sheldon, in the
niches designed by Wren to fank the doorway facing the Divinity School.115 At some
time between 1749 and 56, Cheere’s interior statues were re-installed outside.116 This
meant that the statue to James II, whose reign had ended in a measure of disgrace by
any standards, was taken down in order to be replaced by an image of Ormond. The
order of events indicates that the original intention of commissioning the statues from
Cheere cannot have been to replace that of James II and its companion. This hap-
pened as an afterthought. The lost, or destroyed, statue to James II cannot have been
intended for the exterior of the theatre by Wren, the building having been completed
long before his coronation. It must have been erected in the short period between his
coronation and the accession of William III. It seems likely that, for reasons of taste
or political embarrassment, a decision was taken to replace it in the decade after
the second Jacobite Rebellion (1745). Ironically, therefore, the Tory and infamously
Jacobite city of Oxford took down a public monument to James II, whereas the one
in London’s Whitehall, which had been sponsored by Tobias Rustat, was preserved. It
would appear that self-censorship accounts for the only destruction of a monument to
the House of Stuart in the Hanoverian era.
Conclusion
Part of the function of the monuments that I have discussed in this chapter was to lend
permanent substance to public opinion, otherwise the most ephemeral phenomenon.
A testimony of this is the way in which the values that lay behind the erection of some
of them were debated in the press. One of the distinctive properties of a British street
monument, as opposed to one of another part of Europe, was that it might start life
as a newspaper proposal.
These expressions of public opinion were not the product of the monarchical state.
They were, rather, statements of loyalty, unsolicited at court. It was for this reason
that British street monuments were not typically interpreted as means of asserting
a cult of necessary obedience to the crown. This diferentiated the story of the Brit-
ish street monuments from that of contemporary France. Here almost all Bourbon
street monuments were, on account of being identifed as expressions of the autocratic
imposture of the authority of a current monarch, subsequently pulled down in the
Revolution. That British street monuments generally survived shifts in political cli-
mate was not just owing to there being nothing as calamitous as a revolution. Rather,
we must consider the underlying reality that, despite most being triumphalist declara-
tions of battles won, such statues were erected in a spirit of magnanimity. This was
made possible by a political system in which disagreements were defused by being
turned into conventional party stances. A tolerant polity, based upon a party system,
presupposed that groups of citizens were free to arrive at their own, overtly partisan,
ideas of how the nation had developed and ought to be improved. In such a society,
street sculpture was unlikely to be received as an imposition of the values of a political
elite and resented as such.
British street monuments to kings have been torn down for political reasons. These
were the statues that were erected in some of the main towns of colonial America
which did not survive the War of Independence (1776–1783). Similarly, in the early
twentieth century, Irish nationalists greeted street monuments as unwelcome testimo-
nies of British rule and destroyed the great majority of them. However, it remains true
that, as far as the towns and cities of mainland Britain are concerned, the prime reason
that street monuments have not survived is the fashion for using lead as a sculptural
material, which has proved so unsuited to stand the test of time. Tottering under their
own weight, lead statues of kings have become a practical hazard to bystanders rather
than a perceived threat to the liberties of the citizen.
However, this tradition of tolerance seems to be coming to a close. This essay is
based on a talk which was frst delivered in one of the colleges of the University of
Oxford. It was conceived at a time when there were calls that the statue to Cecil Rho-
des on the façade of Oriel College be taken down. While going through my proofs,
I hear that the college has yielded to the pressure to do this. It happens that this
216 Matthew Craske
followed, by a few days, the widely endorsed pulling down of a monument, to Edward
Colston at Bristol, which has direct relevance to the legacy of the period covered in
this essay. In addressing this legacy, it is as important to interrogate ‘our’ values as
vigorously as ‘their’ values. Thus, I will begin from an unconventional angle, that is,
with a critique which draws connections between the civic ideals of those who want
to pull street monuments down, or have constructed the ‘progressive’ way of engag-
ing the past which justifes it, with those of the people who originally erected them.
In stressing these connections rather than accentuating the supposed dislocation of
past and present, I hope to make the case for a revival of the spirit of tolerance that is
described in this essay.
When we analyse the materialist legacy of William III and his ‘Glorious Revolution’,
as we have done in this essay, we necessarily touch on the phenomenon of Whig his-
tory. This applies not just to its operation in the past, the way it underscored Georgian
notions of ‘improvement’, but to how it has morphed into the historiography of the
contemporary ‘progressive’ left. In other words, I regard this call to remove statues as
the ultimate product of the tendency within Whig history to look down on suppos-
edly defunct moral systems of the past. It has been to tease out the ethical and politi-
cal problems of looking at art through a Whig historian’s eyes and making decisions
about its continuing value upon those terms that I have chosen to analyse monuments
that were themselves designed to represent progress.
Mainstream attitudes to the material culture of this era turn on the ways that peo-
ple of leftist, ‘progressive’, opinion, the dominant force in university academia, have
found to own it as a positive moral legacy and decry it as something ‘problematic’. The
objects and images that are now ‘owned’, that is, admired both aesthetically and ideo-
logically, by people of such opinion are, broadly, things identifed with ‘enlightenment
values’. When objects associated with the values of the merchant classes are owned in
this way, it is upon terms that describe such a sector of the population as the main con-
veyer of ‘the Enlightenment’. Paul Langford provides a way of doing this in his account
of a ‘polite and commercial people’.117 The willingness of merchant societies to live
with the monuments of those with whom they disagreed proceeded, in some respects,
from those ‘middling’ values of politeness that were described by Langford. Tolerance,
which is the subject of this essay, was one of the founding values of politeness. The
key, in dealing with the legacy of these monuments to kings, is to acknowledge how
they also relate to aspects of this period—the ‘imperialism’, ‘elitism’, the ‘racism’—that
are defned as ‘problematic’. In so doing, decisions need to be made on whether they
are open to being owned as ‘enlightened’ or disowned as ‘problematic’, acknowledging
that with the latter comes, in the current climate, a threat to their continuing existence.
When considering the Georgian era, the question arises as to why we have, with
the aid of leftist cultural historians, found ways of describing our ‘progressive’ values
as an inheritance of their ‘Enlightenment’. Yet many of the forces that paid for this
Enlightenment, such as imperial commerce and slavery, appear to be abhorrent to our
‘modern’ sensibilities. The ‘polite and commercial people’ who are fondly regarded as
the makers of ‘our’ modern world had, as we have seen in this chapter, a disconcerting
tendency to think in relatively brutal and authoritarian terms about how to achieve
commercial prosperity through national security. Despite the recent tendency to fol-
low Jurgen Habermas in believing that the rise of ‘bourgeois’ public opinion was a
precondition of ‘our’ modern values, I have pointed out that such opinion could be
a vehicle for some rather ‘ancient’, and thus ‘problematic’, conceptions of proper
political order. In acknowledging this, I regard it as essential that we fnd ways of
118
tolerating and valuing what remains of them, in terms of monumental art. It is taken
for granted, when conserving the monuments of ancient Rome, such as the Arch of
Titus,119 that they are evidences of civic values that we, today, might fnd problemati-
cally brutal but require to be preserved as a common material inheritance. Thus, the
same understanding and grace ought to be accorded more recent classical monuments.
Those who refuse such grace and understanding must, it follows, explain at which
point the past becomes sufciently ‘ancient’ for its monuments to be acceptable, what-
ever their connotations.
The concept of a Pax Romana underscored these street monuments, and this was
imperialistic by implication, even if the works themselves do not seem overtly impe-
rialistic. The idea of such a Pax determined that those who resisted colonisation,
or were deemed beneath integration into its civilising process, were characterised as
barbarous. Identifed as ‘the other’, these people were enslaved and humiliated for the
public good. The tolerant commercial polity of early eighteenth-century Bristol, where
Rysbrack’s monument to William III was set up, had something in common with that
of Rome, insofar as it was built partly on an economy of slavery. In both cases, a
culturally diverse commercial population found a way to coexist and to cooperate in
the creation of a civil society that was bonded by shared value that was set on civic
freedom. The buoyancy and optimism of the economy that made this sense of freedom
possible was predicated on prosperity. This, in turn, was based on the labours of oth-
ers who did not enjoy the liberties that the citizens of Bristol, thinking in a broadly
Roman tradition, regarded as sacrosanct.120
These earliest British street statues are indicative of the tendency of civic bodies
involved in imperial commerce to signal their need for security in which to make
money, by expressing their willingness to be ruled over by a warrior prince. These
people delighted in the idea of their hero elect strutting in perpetuity through their
town in the manner of an Augustus or Marcus Aurelius. This is what once stood for
an advanced, enlightened and properly democratic (by the standards of the day) vision
of the future of urbanisation. Yet before we consider that we can reject the authori-
tarian bombast whilst preserving the lofty enlightened values such as tolerance, it is
best to consider how they became entangled in the frst place. This chapter has been
about that process of entanglement. It follows that, because these monuments are now
threatened, I must touch upon whether that process is entirely in the past.
Tolerance and liberty as experienced in the West were, and remain, a species of
luxury, for all they seem to be lofty, immaterial, ideals. Like other luxuries upon
which consumer societies turn, they are typically created for ‘us’ by distant and largely
unseen peoples who, if acknowledged to exist at all, are valued only as much as the
price we set on their work. By the measure of the increasingly cheap price of fashion-
able clothing on today’s high street, for instance, the value set on such work is not just
very close to that of slavery but getting closer by the month. Such exploitation remains
the underpinnings of any commercial culture in which the widening availability of
consumer products is considered the basis of a kind of prosperity that is ennobled
by equation with political and religious freedom. So, for instance, a young British
woman of limited means is freer to change her image this summer than she might have
been 20 years ago because her equivalents in Bangladesh have declining standards of
freedom. ‘We’, of all skin colours and ethnic origins, can claim no superiority to our
‘polite and commercial’ past when we continue to base our freedom on such systems
218 Matthew Craske
of global trade. Much as the British monuments that are described above were made
to celebrate a species of gaining freedom through global commerce that Britons have
not entirely outgrown, when we condemn them, we condemn ourselves. It would,
perhaps, be best to retain and value these monuments in order to remind ourselves of
our connectedness to ancient narratives of exploitative commerce. This is because, in
the very act of destroying or hiding them, we would only be fnding ways of creating a
dangerously bogus sense of our moral superiority to the people of the past.
Such systematic means of building ideals of civic liberty and tolerance upon enslave-
ment ultimately derive from a classical legacy. The citizens of the Roman Empire had,
indeed, known how to use statues to signal their willingness, as traders, to attribute
their prosperity not so much to their own endeavours as the policies of those who
inherited rule over them. In the Roman past, civic bodies had registered their public
gratitude to rulers and benefactors through the commission of public monuments.121
What these Britons did not inherit from the Romans was an understanding that the
function of public monuments was to celebrate how the rewards of war were best
secured by processes of robust subjugation. The story of the Roman deployment of
monuments was, in large measure, one of a cycle of destructive humiliation as cel-
ebrated in magnifcent acts of creation. This might be expressed through a processes of
balancing damnatio memoriae with the erection of street monuments to representatives
of a new order. Alternatively, it was seen in works such as Trajan’s Column, which cel-
ebrated the enslavement of rivals as necessary to the exaltation of the emperor.
Some European powers of the period considered in this chapter emulated the Romans
in their liking of street monuments that delighted in the humiliation of enemies. The
most famous example of this is the monument to Louis XIV in the Place des Victoires in
Paris (opened 1686). This featured a gigantic statue of the monarch, crowned by Fame
and set up over chained slave fgures representative of four defeated European pow-
ers. Imagery of the violent subjugation did not feature in the street sculpture of Great
Britain at this time; although the occasional line in an inscription, such as that set up
to honour Charles II in Edinburgh, had destructive connotations.122 This was probably
one factor in allowing subsequent generations, who do not have sadistic predilections,
to tolerate them. This tendency not to erect monuments that delighted in the destruc-
tion of war and not to destroy monuments that propound things in which one does
not believe is, in my view, commendable and worthy of emulation. It has set a high
standard of civilised behaviour for any culture trying to make sense of the efects of
war upon its polity. It was a decided ‘improvement’ upon times in the national story
when the will to assert new political values was expressed through inficting violence
on the cultural heritage of those one elected to despise. Iconoclasm was one of the great
disasters of the English Civil War, which the people who erected the monuments I have
reviewed remembered well enough to want to consign to the past. The peoples I have
described were the successors of statue breakers. They had learned to be wary of such
violence as a fundamental threat to the stability of their polity.
Notes
1. The tendency of historians of this era to class relationships between church and state as of
central—or marginal—importance has become a political issue. This is particularly since
Jonathon Clark’s provocation publication—Clark 1985. My approach here signals my
inclination to take Clark’s positions seriously.
2. When thinking of the King’s sculptural body as a symbolic vehicle for refections on the
fate of the ‘body politic’, I am working within anthropological theories, such as Ernst
Kantorowicz’s ‘The King’s Two Bodies’—Kantorowicz 1957. I make no argument as
to the direct application of medieval ‘political theology’, as described by Kantorowicz.
Nonetheless, I refer to a world in which theology and politics were intertwined, and the
vision of the monarch refected this. That I think of the politics of this era in this way is
an indication of my doubts as to the defnition of the cultural prerogatives of this era as
secular and, as such, distinctly modern.
3. Spadafora 1990.
4. The particular night appears to be that of the Oak Apple Day, 29 May, when Londoners
were supposed to celebrate the Restoration of 1660. It was well-known that this statue
could only be erected after the Restoration and was buried to protect it during the Civil
War. Most likely, Hogarth’s joke was that the Restoration had not brought with it the
planned improvements to London, as seen in Wren’s scheme. One can link the image
to James Ralph’s comments on the failure to erect a statue in London to William III, as
quoted below. It is safe to think that both Ralph and Hogarth shared the kind of politics
that encouraged them to think of the Restoration of the House of Stuart as a false dawn
and the Glorious Revolution as the event that Londoners ought to be celebrating. The
inference of the imagery is that Hogarth believed that had Londoners erected of monu-
ment to King William rather than to Charles I, they might not be in quite the mess that
they were today. He was, most likely, aware that it was on account of the rise of a Jaco-
bite faction in the city, unchecked by the declining Walpole administration, that no statue
to William could be erected.
5. Ralph 1734.
6. This was a revived version of a famous newspaper that took a decided Tory stance. The
new version had the opposite politics.
7. The Craftsman, 21 December 1765.
8. Late in life, the Duke was embroiled in scandal which suggested that he intended to gener-
ate a military coup to have himself established king instead of his nephew. He had been
quietly shifted out of London to Windsor Great Park in order to neutralise the perceived
threat.
9. The Craftsman, 6 May 1769.
10. It is claimed by Lawrence Weaver (2015, 152) that it is not known whether it was made
of lead. However, John Cheere was a lead sculptor, and there were reports, whilst it was
standing, that it was made of lead. See Allen 1837.
11. The Oxford Magazine, 1770, 195.
12. Cunningham 1862, 71.
13. As reported in The Grubstreet Journal, 23 December 1731.
14. For the formation of a Whig understanding of the relationship between the Revolution
and Accession, see Wilkinson 2003, 6.
15. Stuart 1770, 18–19.
16. Elmes 1831, 110.
17. Timbs 1855, 690.
18. There is a discussion of this statue in its original position in Fraser’s Magazine, 1845, Vol.
31, 164. This fgure was paid for by Tobias Rustat.
19. Universal Spectator, 25 July 1730. I am aware this was an oppositionist paper but not a
subversive Jacobite publication.
20. Ralph, The Critical Review, 46.
21. As reported in The Daily Journal of 1 July 1721.
22. For a broader argument relating to the decline of the power of the court in this period, see
Brewer 1997.
23. For a story of the old market crosses, see Rimmer 1875. An account of their destruction
appears in Walter 1999, 196.
24. Dugdale 1950, 192.
25. I refer here to the famous Mercat Cross of Edinburgh, which was a fourteenth-century
structure that was re-erected next to St Giles Cathedral in 1617 and pulled down
in 1756.
220 Matthew Craske
26. There was a well-established tradition, documented in this chapter, of monuments to
kings in British cities being set up by men involved in commerce or by the town council
who controlled the terms of trade in a given city.
27. Denholm 1797, 67.
28. Wildridge 1884, 15.
29. As quoted from the Draft Bench book, 1704–1738, f. 761. Hull Record Centre. BRB/17.
My thanks to Dr Daniel Reed for kindly passing on this reference.
30. Meneghini 1993.
31. Opinions vary, but the practice of putting a ruler’s head on a coin to legitimate the cur-
rency is often said to be of ancient Greek origin. See Schaps 2015.
32. The Daily Courant, 19 November 1734.
33. John M’Ure, A View of the City of Glasgow, Glasgow: Macvean, 1736, 320–322.
34. As announced in the St James’ Evening Post, 28 July 1733.
35. The Nost Company was presumably chosen because he had already made the gilt-lead
equestrian monument of George I for Grosvenor Square. The latter was listed in John
Nost’s obituary as his most important work (The London Evening Post, 26 April 1729).
The John Nost who died in 1729, known as ‘the second’, could not have made the monu-
ment in Glasgow because he was dead. Some press reports say it was made by John III
(died 1780), who was only 20, and others Catherine, the widow of John II.
36. The London Journal, 24 November 1733.
37. Paterson 1863, Vol. I, 596–598.
38. Macrea was probably aware of the two important acts under King William, of 1698 and
1699, for promoting East India trade. Bruce, John 1810, Vol. 3, 637. It seems likely that,
as Governor of Madras, Macrea had witnessed the close cooperation of the Dutch and
English in that place which occurred after the Glorious Revolution.
39. It is an indication that the commission of the statue was intended to turn Macrea into
a nationally acclaimed public fgure that he assured that the announcement of the work
was attended by a long biographical account. This was published in The Daily Gazetteer,
9 July 1736.
40. The monument at Glasgow was very much a means of gaining personal fame for Macrea,
who, having lived abroad for most of his life, wanted to be known in Britain. The London
Gazetteer (9 July 1736) announced the erection of the sculpture with a long biography of
Macrea, which is likely to have originated from him.
41. Aitken 1876, 120–122.
42. They were, in fact, real markers, for in the ’45 Rebellion, ‘the Pretender’ had considerable
support within Edinburgh but not in Glasgow. See Gibson 1995, 57–58.
43. The phrase, ‘in its eggs’ clearly refers to a phase of rebellion after 1660, which the King
was supposed to have stamped upon in its infancy.
44. For a survey of the context of the erection of this statue, see Jackson 2003, 21; and Mac-
rea 1930, 82–90.
45. See Gregory Chaplin’s account of the ‘Augustan moment’ in Hoxby 2016, 266–268 and
Jose 1984, 45.
46. I am dependent here upon the introductory chapter of Stephen 2013.
47. For an interesting, protracted discussion of the Presbyterian reception of celebrations of
the Restoration, see Jardine 2009. It is reasonable to think that this statue, which was
erected long after the Restoration, relates to the politics of the Covenanter movement and
its opposition in the so-called ‘Killing Times’.
48. The Topographical, Statistical and Historical Gazetteer of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1853,
Vol. 1, 475.
49. Mclean 1922, 199.
50. The date of the inscription is known from the fact, which is recorded in the minutes of the
Corporation, that William Clerk was not properly paid, in his opinion, and sued.
51. This is a translation from the Latin as provided in the Appendix of The Life, Prophecies,
and Times of Alexander Peden, Edinburgh, 1849.
52. See the Conclusion to Vallance 2006.
53. The scheme was discussed in The Weekly Journal, 14 June 1714.
54. This monument is sometimes said to have been commissioned by Wren himself, which
accords with the choice of Bird, who was employed on the façade of the Cathedral (White
1971, 18). Wren himself was an Oxford Tory, and it probably refects his politics. Oddly,
for such an important landmark, there appears to have been no research into who paid for
this monument.
55. Nicola Smith (2001) documented the Whig ire that was generated by this sculpture. This
is probably a factor behind the scheme to replace it with a monument to William III.
56. For any account of his commission of the statue and other bequests, see Parker’s Penny
Post, 25 September 1725.
57. National Archive, Kew, will, PROB11/800/185.
58. For an account of these statues, see an interesting article in Fraser’s Magazine, Vol. 31,
1845, 163.
59. For the activities of Travers in this role (1693–1710), see the National Archive at Kew
LR 17/7.
60. Travers functioned for William III in the initial creation of Blenheim Palace and was sub-
sequently responsible for supervising and employing the architects. British Library, Add
mss 28943 f 196 & Add mss 19608–09.
61. For Travers’s survey, see the initial manuscript map of the estate made by him at the
Greenwich Maritime Museum G. 2976:20/23 and National Archive at Kew MR1/253.
62. The eforts of Samuel Holditch to see through the instructions of his uncle’s will and erect
the statue are recorded in The London Daily Post, 5 December 1736. Another attempt
was made in 1741, as was reported in The London Evening Post, 7 February 1741.
63. Reads Weekly Journal, 17 March 1739.
64. The Survey of London, St James’, Westminster, London, 1960, 68.
65. For an account of this debacle, see Smith 2001.
66. For an account of this statue and the ceremonies that attended it, see Whelan 2002.
67. An early Orangemen ceremony before this statue was described in The Englishman, 26
January 1714.
68. One of the reasons that there was a hunger for an image of monarchy that was martial, and
that was satiated by William III, is that Walpole had an enduring policy of associating prosper-
ity with peace. The reluctance to protect trade lines with naval ships alienated some sectors of
towns such as Bristol and, eventually, caused the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739), which was the
efective end for Walpole. See John 1785, Vol. 5, 193–208. So it was that the eventual rise to
power of sectors of the ‘patriot’ opposition, which was responsible for these monuments, led
to a more martial model of state in all respects, from the ‘Blue Water’ to land war.
69. The November ceremonies were implicated in disturbing the peace between Catholics and
Protestants to the extent that, in October 1821, there were moves to curtail them. Talbot
archives, Devon R.O. 152m/c1821/0136.
70. One such parade, at the time of the American War of Independence, was recorded in a
painting by Francis Wheatley. For a review of the festivals at College Green, see Dickson
2014, Chapter 4.
71. The Weekly Journal, 2 June 1719.
72. The Weekly Journal, 12 August 1721.
73. It is an indication that the aim was to carry through Travers’s project that, in his will, he
had stated that the Cheapside Conduit was a good place to erect the monument if the
St James’ situation was not possible.
74. For the ceremonial uses of Cheapside and its conduits in the late medieval world, see
Manley 1997, Chapter 5, ‘Scripts for Pageant: the ceremonies of London’.
75. In late medieval times there were two drinking fountains on Cheapside. Both became too
polluted to use. One, on the junction of Honey Lane, was also the site of a great Eleanor
Cross, which was pulled down in 1643, much to the regret of John Evelyn and other High
Church fgures. The Great Conduit was at the other end of Cheapside, but it remains that
an equestrian statue was replacing a cross as the main ornament of the street. In searching
for the reasons to put the statue here, it is signifcant that this was traditionally an impor-
tant landmark in royal processions from Westminster to Guildhall.
76. A substantial obituary of Burch in which his role in trying to erect the statue was extolled
appeared in The Daily Gazetteer, 12 June 1741.
77. It was probably on account of his unsuccessful attempts to put up this statue that a fne
monument was erected to him. The plans for this monument are discussed in Old Eng-
land, 29 March 1746.
222 Matthew Craske
78. As reported in The Daily Journal, 23 October 1731.
79. This debate was very complex and might be the subject of a whole article. The main arti-
cles are: Reads Weekly Journal, 23 October 1731, Free Briton, 4 and 18 November 1731,
Grub Street Journal, 11 and 28 November 1731, Echo, 10 and 24 November 1731, The
Hype Doctor, no. 49, 1731, Daily Journal, 21 December 1731.
80. Ralph, The Critical Review, 13.
81. The decision to erect this statue was reviewed in The Daily Journal, 18 December 1731.
82. A monument which answers this description was erected in 1743 and reviewed in The
General Evening Post, 19 November 1743.
83. The decision of the merchants of Hull to erect a statue was announced in The Daily Jour-
nal, 4 April 1732.
84. The Monthly Chronicle, November 1731.
85. These statues are recorded in the St James’ Chronicle of 8 May 1733 but have since disap-
peared. Two lead statues, probably by Carpentiere, of the Gladiator and Crouching Venus
have survived.
86. For a discussion of this bequest, see The Whitehall Evening Post, 10 March 1750.
87. The report on the completion of the statue, as commissioned by the Prince of Wales, for
St James’s Square explicitly states that it was seen standing in Cheere’s yard at Hyde Park
Corner. See Reads Weekly Journal, 17 March 1739. My guess is that this was resold to
Jolife’s heirs and is what we see today in Petersfeld.
88. For a broader context, see Langford 1975.
89. Morgan 1993, 179.
90. For Barnard’s role in the excise crisis, see Pearce 2008, 299.
91. For a broader context, read Chapter 20 of Richardson 2007. This chapter is suitably enti-
tled ‘Remember the Revolution’.
92. One scheme to memorialise George I in this way, proposed by the sculptor Claude David,
was proposed as a subscription scheme, but no money was raised. See The Weekly Jour-
nal, 26 December 1719.
93. When Nost died in 1729, this was considered his fnest work. His obituary appeared in
The London Evening Post, 26 April 1729.
94. As announced in Parker’s Penny Post, 15 March 1727.
95. This equestrian statue by John Nost was admired but had a very short life. Paid for by Sir
Richard Grosvenor (as stated in Parker’s Penny Post, 15 March 1727), the lead statue was
substantially destroyed within a decade of being made. Reports as to its fate appear in The
Daily Post of 13 March 1727.
96. According to The Daily Journal of September 1722, the statue was commissioned by
Chandos in this year.
97. The General Evening Post, 14 April 1748. Money was raised by a subscription set up by
the residents, as reported in the same paper on 19 March 1748.
98. This image of the King is very strongly expressed, for instance in an anonymous The Life
of William III, Late King of England, London, 1703, 30. It was in the understanding that
Tory aldermen would refuse to honour a usurper that William’s statue at Cheapside Con-
duit was rejected.
99. Colley 1984.
100. The erection of the monument was announced in Reads Weekly Journal, 3 March 1739.
101. For an account of this family and how its status as a baronetcy was earned and lost in the
male line, see Waylen 1859, 555.
102. The monuments to Sheldon and Ormond were completed in July 1737, exactly two years
after the Charles II. For dates, see The London Evening Post, 26 July 1737.
103. For the obituary of Bird, once considered the fnest English-born sculptor, see The Monthly
Chronicle, February 1731.
104. The completion was announced in The General Evening Post, 24 July 1735. The erection
at the Sheldonian occurred in November 1735, as reported in The General Evening Post,
25 November 1735.
105. As announced in The London Journal, 23 September 1721.
106. For the way that Clarendon perceived the Restoration as a fulflment of providential will,
after a period of tribulation caused by the denial of sacred will, consult Hyde 1798, 165.
107. In the summer of 1735, the monument to William III at Bristol was frst seen by the peo-
ple of the town (London Evening Post, 26 August 1735). This was a few weeks after the
announcement of the monument in Oxford.
108. For the erection of this monument, see The Daily Gazetteer of 5 October and 5
December 1739.
109. The Old Whig and Consistent Protestant, 16 December 1736.
110. It would seem that this was one factor in it being proposed that Oxford University appoint-
ments, including that of Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, should have royal approval. See
Ellis 2012, 38.
111. Evelyn Lord asserts that the Earl was removed from the ofce of Chancellor and replaced
by the Duke of Cumberland for his part in this speech (Lord 2014).
112. Monod 1993, 36–37.
113. Wordsworth 1874, 287.
114. Pointer 1749, 152.
115. Pointer 1749, 153.
116. Inside when Pointer described them, they were outside by the time a book named A
Description of the Painting in the Theatre in Oxford was published in 1756.
117. Langford 1998. I take it that this story of the eighteenth century was developed, at least in
part, to counter the Tory vision of the period developed by J.C.D. Clark. Given that Clark
is routinely deplored in academic circles, I cite Langford’s account as mainstream.
118. I refer here to the fashion for following Habermas’s Structural Transformations of the
Public Sphere in the writing of the art history of the Georgian era, as led by Solkin (1993).
It seems to me that this has come with the understanding that the ancestry of ‘our’ liberal,
secular or ‘civic humanist’ values can be traced to the rise of ‘the bourgeois public sphere’.
These are held to be articulated through the interpretation of ‘important’ pictures. One of
the main objections that I have for this is that it depends on the Marxist dialectic and the
notion that the prerogatives of an old—feudal and ecclesiastical—order were necessarily
overturned by the rise of ‘bourgeois’ or ‘middling’ opinion. This is at the very least com-
plicated by evidence that ‘the polite and commercial people’ were activated by some very
‘ancient’ notions of ‘right’ political and social order. The public works of art discussed in
this chapter seem to characterise this problematic.
119. A monument to the sacking of the Temple of Jerusalem, this ought to be included in nar-
ratives of anti-Semitism.
120. One can chart this dependence directly by analysing the names of those responsible for
raising money for this monument and documenting their dependence on the slave trade.
121. For reference to this practice, see Zuiderhoek 2009, 7.
122. This does not mean that some such imagery of humiliation was taboo in all forms of monu-
ment. After the Seven Years War (1756–1763), a new vocabulary of strident triumphal-
ism entered the vocabulary of war monuments set up in churches. An example of this is
Wilton’s monument to James Wolfe in Westminster Abbey (1760–1772). In this, the near
naked General dies at the same time as Fame/Victory appears before him. His foot was
placed upon the feur des lis of a captured French fag. This imagery, which was found
insulting by French visitors to the Abbey, owes something to that of the Place des Vic-
toires in Paris. However, partly because the latter monument was much reviled in England,
British sculptors resisted putting up anything like it on a public street. Such language of
humiliation was lastingly associated with the vainglorious hubris and destructive appetite
for power of the main national enemy. For a fne document of this dislike of Bourbon street
monuments, it is proftable to consult Thomas Rowlandson’s famous satirical drawing
of the Place des Victoires. In this, various types of Frenchmen, who are symbolic of their
nation’s vainglory and ridiculous pomp, parade before the monument to the Sun King.
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10 From Empires Past to Nation State
Figurative Public Statues in Istanbul
Faik Gür, Melis Taner and Deniz Türker
Introduction
Statues, landmarks, and monumental architecture visibly mark and inscribe meaning
into urban space. This is true everywhere, but it is particularly striking in Istanbul.
When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople in the ffteenth century, they
encountered a city with a rich and layered history stretching back over 2,000 years,
where statues had always been important in propagating and legitimizing imperial
power. Writing in the sixth century ce, Hesychius of Miletus remarked on the legend-
ary beginnings and foundation of Byzantium, the city that was to become Constan-
tinople, and celebrated its statues.1 Even from this early and legendary beginning, the
city was believed to have been dotted with numerous statues. From the foundation
of Constantinople by Constantine the Great through to the sixth century, Byzantine
emperors had turned to Roman models of urbanism to set up pagan statues and hon-
orifc columns to commemorate victories and to showcase their imperial identity.
While the capital of the Byzantine Empire had been fashioned as a ‘second Rome’,
the recently Christianized empire had to contend with changing perspectives on pagan
statuary.2 Thus, the fourth-century author of the Vita Constantini (Life of Constan-
tine the Great) appears obliged to provide an explanation for the plethora of pagan
sculptures in the city—they were there to be ridiculed.3 At times, statues were thought
to possess demons.4 In some cases, pagan statues were also given new ‘identities’ as
Christian fgures, or in other cases, alternative explanations were provided for the
preservation of pagan statues in a Christian empire.5 The complicated relationship
to pagan statuary in a newly Christianized empire in the Late Antique period, and
indeed, during the controversies of Iconoclasm, shows the emotive power that sculp-
tures (and images) had, whether spiritual, talismanic or magisterial.
As the Byzantine Empire’s fortunes changed throughout its more than millennium-
long life—as Islam emerged in Arabia in the seventh century and quickly encroached
on Byzantine territories, as Iconoclasm took its grip in the eighth through the ninth
centuries, as the Macedonian dynasty came to power, as the Seljuqs expanded their
territories in Asia Minor at the expense of the Byzantines, as the Crusaders took
hold of Constantinople and ravaged the city, and as the Palaiologan dynasty restored
Byzantine rule to Constantinople—so the cityscape changed. Particularly during the
Fourth Crusade, the city was ravaged by both the Crusading armies and the Byzan-
tines themselves. While there was much pillaging on the part of the Crusaders, the
Byzantines, too, tore down an enormous bronze statue of Athena, fearing that she
was the cause of the attacking armies.6 Along with the changes to the urban structure
From Empires Past to Nation State 227
and its statuary, the various popular responses to public statuary also changed. Con-
sider, for example, Justinian’s bronze equestrian statue that survived into the ffteenth
century and how, during the Palaiologan period, it ‘became a centerpiece of impe-
rial renovation eforts’.7 As Liz James warns us, what statues meant to those who
erected them may not necessarily correspond to how others perceived them. More
importantly—now in the public domain—how public statuary was perceived could
and did change over time as the society changed.8
The role of statuary in the urban environment and opinions of or responses to
statues become even more complicated under Constantinople’s subsequent over-
lords, the Ottomans and eventually the successor nation-state, the Republic of Tur-
key. Here we focus on how fgurative public statuary evolved in Istanbul during the
Ottoman and early Republican periods. We begin with the Ottoman background
and then move on to Republican Istanbul and provide a detailed story of the very
frst full-size fgurative public statue of Istanbul, of the Republic of Turkey and of
Kemal Atatürk,9 the founding father and the frst president of the nascent Republic,
erected in 1926, around 470 years after the removal of the full-size public statue
of Constantine the Great. Before we delve into the detailed story of Atatürk’s frst
statue, we provide the reader with some political history to understand the context,
since the statue was meant to represent the birth of a nation and a nation-state from
the ashes of the imperial past.
Ottoman Istanbul
Despite Constantinople’s very rich history and statuary landscape, by the time Con-
stantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, much of the statuary of the city had already
been destroyed and looted, chiefy in the Latin sack of the city during the Fourth
Crusade in the early thirteenth century; most famously, the four bronze horses that
possibly marked the Hippodrome’s entrance gate were looted and taken to Venice to
adorn St. Mark’s Cathedral.10 The only surviving statues, as far as we know from late
Byzantine and early Ottoman sources, were the two obelisks, several honorifc col-
umns, the Serpent Column in the Hippodrome, the bronze equestrian statue of Justin-
ian, the reliefs at the Golden Gate and the monumental triumphal gate at the southern
end of the Theodosian Walls.11
The transformation of Constantinople from the last stronghold of the Byzantine
Empire into the capital of the expanding Ottoman Empire brought with it visible
markers to the cityscape as Mehmed II ‘selectively used’ the city’s monuments to craft
an imperial image for his Ottoman state.12 The site of the deserted Church of the Holy
Apostles, which housed the sarcophagi of the Byzantine emperors, was repurposed as
Mehmed II’s mosque complex. The sarcophagi of the Byzantine emperors were then
taken to the sultan’s palace.13 The area in the vicinity of the former Byzantine acropo-
lis on the tip of the peninsula became the site for Mehmed II’s new palace, the Topkapı
Palace. The Hagia Sophia was transformed into a mosque. These were all signifcant
acts by which the city’s Byzantine past was transformed and appropriated.
In this act of ‘selective use’, some public statues were left standing. The bronze
equestrian statue of Justinian sitting atop a column, the defnitive mark of Byzantine
imperial power, was destroyed at some point, though not immediately, after the con-
quest of the city by the Ottomans.14 Mehmed II showed great interest in Renaissance
art and architecture and even fostered contacts with Italy. It is interesting to note the
228 Faik Gür, Melis Taner and Deniz Türker
striking coincidence that the same year that Constantinople was taken by Mehmed,
1453, was also the year that Donatello’s famous equestrian statue of Erasmo da
Narni—the frst true public equestrian monument after a millennium-long hiatus—
was set up in Padua. The monument made a signifcant visual reference to Italy’s
Graeco-Roman past. That shared Graeco-Roman past was treated and employed very
diferently when it came to public statuary in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman
state and its ofcial religion of Islam tended towards aniconism in the public sphere.
This meant that the authorities would not look kindly on maintaining fgural statues
representing the rulers of a bygone empire, and it precluded preservation of Byzantine
fgural statuary and the erection of further statues in the public sphere.15
However, the famous Serpent Column, as well as the obelisks and several honorifc
columns, were left in place and still stand today. A story regarding Mehmed II throw-
ing his mace at the heads of the snakes of the Serpent column and being reprimanded
by the Patriarch Gennadius (d. 1473) found its way into text and image in a late-
sixteenth-century Ottoman manuscript, the Hünername (Book of Talents).16 As it is
interpreted by the author of this manuscript, Lokman, the ruler’s reverence for the
patriarch is clear, as is the power of talismans. Thought to protect the city against poi-
sonous snakes, the three heads were intact (with some damage to the jaw of one of the
heads) as late as 1699–1700.17 Several of these statues were believed to be endowed
with talismanic properties, as they had been in Byzantine times,18 and are described as
wonder-inducing monuments in Ottoman chronicles.19 Whatever the attitude toward
fgural imagery and sculpture may be in an aniconic culture (consider both Byzantine
Iconoclasm and Islam), sculptures defnitely had power in popular imagination.
Statues could also convey authority and might, as the case of the sixteenth-century
Grand Vizier Ibrahim Paşa (d. 1536) shows. This Grand Vizier brought several sculp-
tures of mythological fgures from the court of the Hungarian ruler Matthias Corvi-
nus (d. 1490) following the Ottoman victory over their Hungarian rivals in 1526 at
Mohács and placed them in his palace overlooking the Hippodrome. While the stat-
ues were soon destroyed, several paintings from the 1588 Hünername depict them.
Three consecutive paintings illustrating the circumcision ceremony of the princes of
the reigning sultan, Süleyman I (r. 1520– 1566), which took place in 1530, include
portrayals of these statues (see Figure 10.1a–b). However, as the author and painters
of this work would not have seen the statues when they prepared the work in the late
sixteenth century, they depicted what they imagined stood in 1530 in the palace at
the Hippodrome—the main venue for the ceremonies—with a sensitivity to historical
authenticity.20 Thus, the three sculptures that were brought from Buda were confated
into one sculptural group representing a helmeted fgure fanked by two smaller fg-
ures, placed atop a column.21
The statues that the Grand Vizier brought from Buda refected an act of appropria-
tion and victory, as well as, perhaps, personal aesthetic tastes. However, this bold act
was not looked upon favourably, and the statues were taken down. The exact cir-
cumstances are not clear, however, and the tearing down of statues possibly relate to
the execution of the Grand Vizier in 1536, the latter due likely to the Grand Vizier’s
excessive pomp and increasing power. Verses attributed to the poet Figani (d. 1532)
contrast Ibrahim Paşa unfavourably with the prophet Abraham (Ibrahim).22 Abra-
ham was famous for destroying idols, while the Grand Vizier, on the other hand, was
accused of setting up idols.23 Whatever the exact reasons for the transportation and
erection of statues from Buda may have been, it is clear from their subsequent destruc-
tion that they met with considerable disapproval.
Figure 10.1a–b The princes’ circumcision ceremony, in Hünername (The Book of Talents),
Topkapı Palace Museum Library H. 1524, fols 119b–120a.
While these statues were destroyed, others—although non-fgural—were allowed

to stand in Ottoman Istanbul. Sources from the ffteenth through the eighteenth cen-
turies, including European prints, woodcuts and albums, such as Christoforo Buon-
delmonte’s Liber Insularum Archipelagi (Book of the Islands of the Archipelago),
Hartmann Schedel’s Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles), Vavassore’s circa 1535
view of Constantinople, Pieter Coecke van Aelst’s 1553 depiction of Süleyman the
Magnifcent’s procession through the Hippodrome, Melchior Lorichs’s panorama and
studies of individual monuments,24 and sixteenth-century sketches of Constantinople
and its monuments;25 accounts of ambassadors or travellers, such as that of Pierre
Gilles and his Antiquities of Constantinople;26 and illustrated chronicles, such as
Matrakçı Nasuh’s view of Constantinople, the 1587 Surname-i Humayun (The Impe-
rial Festival Book),27 and the Surname of Vehbi chronicling the festivities surrounding
the circumcision ceremony of the sons of Ahmed III; all mention and represent the
statues within the city.28 In the Imperial Festival Book devoted to the 1582 circumci-
sion festival, the fgural sculptures in Ibrahim Paşa’s palace which were present in
the Hünername, showing the 1530 celebration, are missing, because by this time, the
statues had long been taken down.29 It must also be noted that the venues of the 1582
and 1720 festivities were diferent, with the latter celebrations taking place mainly at
Ok Meydanı. The representations of the 1582 festivity therefore place the celebrations
and processions against the backdrop of the Hippodrome, while those of the 1720
celebrations do not. In the case of the latter, however, some of the paintings represent
larger than life-size efgies as part of the entertainment. These ephemeral ‘statues’
present an interesting contrast to the overall aniconic approach in and to the public
spaces.
In these Ottoman and European depictions, the two obelisks and columns mark-
ing the Hippodrome, as well as remnants of the grandstand or other monuments in
the city, portray an interest in the antiquities of the city, show its Byzantine past and
highlight the importance of these statues as markers of the now Ottomanized capital
(in other cases, such as the Liber Chronicarum, the lack of Ottoman monuments may
conversely also have served to undermine the Ottomanness of Constantinople).30
Moving Into Modernity

Following these Early Modern representations of the city’s Late Antique past, consid-
erable time will have to pass before we have the erection of new public statues in Con-
stantinople. Even by the time of the reform-minded sultan Selim III (r. 1789–1807),
sculpture in the round—sundry wax statues of an Italian sculptor or a fountain fea-
turing sculpted pineapples inside Topkapı’s harem gardens—could only be viewed
discreetly, within the confnes of the palace.31 However, imperial and sub-imperial
patrons increased their public visibility by endowing small utilitarian structures like
fountains.32 These small but conspicuous buildings with elaborately sculpted Ottoman
Baroque and Rococo facades were commissioned by Istanbul’s elite (women foremost
among them) to defne new urban centres within the rapidly expanding capital, while
their inscriptional programs foregrounded their funders.
Sultan Mahmud II (r. 1808–1839) and his consort Bezm-i Alem (d. 1858) rekin-
dled Selim III’s reformist agenda to lay the groundwork for the radical administrative
overhauls of the Tanzimat period (1839–1878). In addition to commissioning schools,
hospitals, barracks, bridges and dams, some of the most visible markers of their
early reformist monarchism were monumental fountains along the hills and shores
of Beşiktaş, near Mahmud’s neoclassical Çırağan Palace, which itself boasted sculp-
tural motifs of a rising sun, a stand-in for the refashioned sovereign. While Mahmud
allowed his miniature portraits to be worn and his portrait paintings displayed in state
ofces,33 once a valide (queen mother) (1839–1858), Bezm-i Alem, marked her autho-
rial presence through monumental civic endowments, as well as fountains around her
Yıldız estate that displayed foral reliefs but also Replogle globes with emanating rays
(see Figure 10.2).34 While some might contest their treatment as sculptures, Ottoman
stone markers (in the form of faming torches or Baroque plaques) commemorating
feats in archery and, later, rife-shooting, dotted the new neighbourhoods of Nişantaşı
and Beşiktaş in the vicinity of Çırağan and Dolmabahçe, two of the preeminent shore-
line palaces of the Tanzimat.35 In fact, Dolmabahçe, whose construction was inaugu-
rated under Mahmud II’s son Abdülmecid I (r. 1839–1861), and its monumental land
gate (saltanat kapısı), which is in the form of a triumphal arch, quite overtly displays
ornament-mania in high-relief sculpture, bearing laurels, ribbons, baroque shells, pal-
mettes, stars, rosettes, bulbous urns, corbels, crenellations, cornices and other archi-
tectural fragments.36
There were also unrealized sculptural projects to commemorate the momentous Gül-
hane Edict of 1839 (hatt-i şerif), a text that formalized the Tanzimat reforms. Gaspare
Fossati, the Swiss architect who developed the civic architectural aesthetic of the early
Figure 10.2 Bezm-i Alem Valide Sultan’s Yıldız fountain (later removed to Topkapı) with the
central globe on column motif, c. 1843.
Reform period, conceptualized the event as an obelisk, whose base bore the edict’s text
as well as Abdülmecid’s tughra.37 Pascal Artin Bilezikçi, an Armenian sculptor, would
contribute a model to the 1855 Paris World’s Fair using the typology of a war memo-
rial, with the edict inscribed on the ephemeral structure’s hexagonal body.
Sultan Abdülaziz’s (1861–76) travels in Europe and his own commission of sculp-
tural works shed light on some changes regarding views of public statuary. In France,
Sultan Abdülaziz noticed the bashfulness of his own company, compared to the
nonchalant view of the Europeans as they all looked upon the nude statues, also com-
menting that what is prohibited leads to further fxation.38 Having travelled to Europe
and seen statues in galleries and public squares, Sultan Abdülaziz was also drawn
to the idea of having his own statue.39 He commissioned the sculptor Charles Fuller
(1830–75) to create a bust portrait and an equestrian statue for himself.40 After more
than 400 years, an equestrian statue was once again to embellish the capital. However,
this smaller than life-size equestrian statue was not placed in a public space—it has
been recorded that the queen mother was vehemently opposed to the idea, going so far
as to suggest it be thrown into the sea.41 The statue was, instead, placed in his palace
(later making stints at Topkapı, the Alhambresque mansion belonging to Abdülaziz’s
son Abdülmecid Efendi, and fnally the Beylerbeyi Palace on the Asian shore).42
While the three-dimensional likeness of the sultan (a representation that was surely
implicated by the sovereign’s caliphal role) appears to have been publicly contested
and was reserved only for the courtly gaze, the gardens of the Dolmabahçe, Çırağan
and Beylerbeyi Palaces were dotted with sculptures of animals, mainly of lions, but
also stags, swans and horses. These were mainly commissioned from sculptors, includ-
ing Antoine-Louis Barey, Pierre Louis Rouillard (1820–1881), Isidor-Jules Bonheur
(1827–1901), Louis Joseph Doumas (1801–87), Hippolyte Heizler (1828–1872) and
Paul Édouard Delabriére (1829–1912).43 An example of these foreign imports, two
life-size bronze bulls by Bonheur, were initially intended to memorialize French vic-
tory in Alsace over Germany but had complicated, itinerant afterlives that transformed
Figure 10.3 B. Kargopoulo, Parc a Yeldez, c. 1880s, Istanbul University Library, 90751–0044.
their meaning. They would arrive in Istanbul as gifts by Kaiser Wilhelm II to Abdul-
hamid II standing in for the German-Ottoman politico-economic alliance (see Fig-
ure 10.3). Mirroring the tumultuous aftermath of the war and ensuing regime change,
the sculptures travelled from one imperial residence to the next, one of them attaining
public visibility frst in Taksim’s Gezi Park and later demarcating one of Kadıköy’s
main transportation hubs.
Nineteenth-century governors and, subsequently, khedives of Egypt more readily
accepted fgural sculpture, especially to assert their political legitimacy in the public
arena. Khedive Ismail Paşa (d. 1895) commissioned Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier
and Henri-Marie-Alfred Jacquemart to create equestrian statues of his grandfather
Mehmed Ali and father Ibrahim to be placed in public squares in Alexandria and
Cairo, respectively. Their visibility pronounced the khedivial family’s desire to be free
of Ottoman suzerainty: for instance, Jacquemart’s statue of Ibrahim Paşa points in
the direction of Konya in Central Anatolia, where Egypt’s second governor had won
a momentous victory against the Ottoman army under Sultan Mahmud II in 1832.44
Egypt’s rulers considered much more monumental fgural projects to complement their
dynastic ambitions. Though none came to fruition, the monuments for the Suez Canal
by Faustin Glavany (a pyramid with four couchant sphinxes on its corners and a
sculptural cluster at its portal echoing the allegorical fgures in Michelangelo’s Medici
Chapel) and Frédéric Bartholdi (a colossal lighthouse in the form of a Egyptian fellaha
which formed the foundation for the Statue of Liberty) speak both to the immediate
postcolonial legacy of Napoleon’s failed conquest of Egypt in the early nineteenth
century and khedivial Egypt’s mobilization of its afterefects to extricate itself from
the Ottoman sphere of infuence and maintain an autonomous presence in the global/
European cultural arena.45
The Tanzimat high ofcials, whose domestic environments often mirrored and at
times even determined decorative trends adopted for the imperial residences, boasted
antique as well as contemporary sculptures. Though under-researched, anecdotes indi-
cate that not only the Francophile reformist Keçecizade Fuad Paşa but also his Hun-
garian renegade gardener Sipos Dániel had interest in and displayed antique sculptures
in their homes; Sipos would regift an ancient Egyptian statue of Osiris with inscrip-
tions that he had once received from his Ottoman employer to the Hungarian Acad-
emy.46 Abdüllatif Subhi and Mehmed Münif Paşas, two scholar-diplomats central to
the mid-century educational reforms, were also collectors of sculpture: besides a vast
coin collection, Subhi’s urban mansion in Fatih exhibited bronze sculptures of Venus,
Bacchus and Heracles, while Münif’s suburban residence in Erenköy was frequented
by Istanbul’s inhabitants for its life-size sculpture of a girafe, a nod perhaps from the
science-obsessed paşa to the British Museum’s famed taxidermy versions from the
eighteenth century.47 While the public monuments mentioned above, such as foun-
tains, tombstones, and other imperial markers abounded with non-fgural sculptural
reliefs, Istanbul’s artists also received fgural commissions from European members
of the court. The funerary relief portraits of Christian Sester, the head-gardener to all
Tanzimat sultans, and his Armenian wife, Rosa, still rest in the catacombs of the St.
Esprit Cathedral in Istanbul as illustrations of an overlooked practice.48 This sculp-
tural ensemble was most likely created by the aforementioned Armenian-Catholic
sculptor Bilezikçi.
In order to consolidate his caliphal and sultanic authority, Sultan Abdülhamid II
(r. 1876–1909) instituted and maintained ambitious civic building and infrastructural
programs across the empire. Often a defnitively non-fgural monument was placed
at a town’s centre to mark the completion of the project, which simultaneously acted
as a symbolic marker of his rule. Not unlike the practice of installing utilitarian and
visually striking kleinarchitectur of his early-Tanzimat predecessors, Abdülhamid seri-
alized the erection of clock towers with Orientalist (Neo-Mamluk and Alhambresque)
features across the provincial centres as stand-ins for his deliberately invisible but
authorial presence.49 At other times, a single inscribed or embroidered slogan, ‘Long
live the Sultan’ (Padişahım çok yaşa!), could become a sufcient and charged stand-in.
Raimondo D’Aronco, the state’s Italian engineer and architect, designed an Art Nou-
veau monument composed of a column bearing the replica of the Hamidiye Mosque
in Istanbul (the foremost architectural symbol of Abdülhamid’s caliphate) to celebrate
the completion of the telegraph lines between Damascus and the holy sites in the
Hijaz. The stylized telegraph lines on the column also evoke the sultan’s tughra.
The Hamidian regime also encouraged the erection of monuments in the capital
and elsewhere to afrm diplomatic alliances that sealed economic partnerships and
postwar treaties. One of the best known examples of such a symbol of alliance is
the German Fountain, a domed octagon with Byzantine-revivalist features gifted by
Kaiser Wilhelm II to Abdülhamid II, which was installed in Istanbul’s hippodrome to
memorialize the German-Ottoman economic partnership built on the construction
of transnational railways across the two empires.50 The monument’s inauguration in
1902 coincided with the sultan’s 25th jubilee year, which was celebrated across the
Ottoman domains with similar structures undertaken by provincial governors as ‘pre-
sents’ to the sovereign. Some of these structures of diplomacy, however, would not
sustain a monument’s presumed longevity. The Russian War Memorial, a martyrium
built by a sculptor called Buzarov in the form of a miniaturized Russian castle with
its requisite onion dome, was funded by the Ottoman state as a reparation at the end
of the 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War and erected (after resistance and arduous nego-
tiations) at Ayastefanos (Santo Stefano, today’s Yeşilköy) in 1898.51 Its existence was
incredibly transient: in 1914, at the onset of the First World War, the Ottoman state
would demolish the portentous structure that was deeply associated with a former
Russian victory. Moreover, the process of its destruction was flmed by a junior ofcer
named Fuad. The now-lost flm is considered among the frst Ottoman/Turkish flms.52
The dismantled monument’s now-vacant lot, once sold to Russia, was also confscated
during the war, and its use occupied prolonged discussions between the ministries of
war and fnance.53 In fact, there was a precedent to this transient structure: an earlier
monument deliberately conceived in the form of a hefty, unblemished, natural piece of
rock in Istanbul’s Beykoz district bearing short Ottoman and Russian commemorative
poems was erected to mark Russian military support of the Ottoman army against
military inquests into Anatolia in 1832–33 by Egyptian Governor Mehmed Ali Paşa.54
Known colloquially as the ‘Russian stone’ (‘moskof taşı’), this monument shared the
same fate as the Ayastefanos monument and was also blown up in 1914.55
Public sculpture as a powerful tool of political testament pervaded late-imperial vis-
ual ideology. While the sultans grafted the symbols of their sovereignty onto the built
environment, they closely surveilled those erected by their neighbours, especially in
territories that had recently declared their independence from Ottoman control. State
archives are replete with detailed reports outlining activities surrounding the commis-
sion, installation and inauguration of a bronze equestrian statue (heykel) of the Rus-
sian tsar Alexander II (d. 1881) in Sofa, Bulgaria.56 Meant to memorialize the tsar’s
support in Bulgaria’s liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, the statue was created
by the Italian sculptor Arnoldo Zochi (d. 1940) after an international competition
and unveiled in 1907 at its location facing the National Assembly. While Ottoman
apprehension about the Russian sway over Bulgaria through visual propaganda was
limited, they do seem to have prohibited the circulation of smaller busts of the tsar in
the Bulgarian schools still within their domains.57
Both private encounters with fgural sculptures and public debates on monuments
in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century occasionally spurred Ottoman intel-
lectuals like the radical activist and theologian Ali Suavi (d. 1878) and nationalist
poet Süleyman Nazif (d. 1927) to address the notion of Islam’s presumed aniconism.58
These inquiries followed analogous templates by frst citing examples from the Koran
and hadiths for indefnite doctrinal positions and subsequently illustrating the permis-
sibility of fgural sculpture through an early example (often the ubiquitous statue of an
archer that topped the Abbasid Palace in Baghdad) to condone fgural representation
that did not solicit outright idolatry. To contribute to the debates surrounding the
project of a monument to commemorate the frst Ottoman martyrs of aviation, the
novelist Peyami Safa would reference an article by İhsan Şerif, his journalist colleague,
which listed examples from Islamic visual cultures, such as lion sculptures and bird
automata from Umayyad Andalusia, Damad İbrahim Paşa’s placement of an Apollo
statue in front of his residence in Sultanahmet and Kavalalı Mehmed Ali’s equestrian
statue in Alexandria, which was sanctioned by the ulema of al-Azhar.59
Two austere, non-fgural monuments (abide) marked the late-Ottoman public
spaces of Istanbul: the Freedom Monument (Abide-i Hürriyet) and the aforemen-
tioned Aviation Martyrs’ Monument (Tayyare Şehitleri Abidesi). In the making of
both, the national identities of their makers (Muslim and Turkish) were equally as
important as their evocation of martyrdom. The Young Turk-led Ottoman parlia-
ment commissioned the former, a monument in the shape of an upturned cannon, as
both a memorial to those who died in 1909 defending the second constitution against
religious reactionaries and also to connote liberation (from the autocratic 30-year
Hamidian rule). Placed on an artifcial mound in Şişli, then an underpopulated suburb
of Istanbul, the structure also boasted a mihrab, thus functioning as a spacious namaz-
gah (an open-air prayer space) for collective public prayers in the memory of those
who had given their lives for the ‘freedom’ of the nation.60 Ottoman subjects and state
employees from all provinces of the state were encouraged to donate funds to its mak-
ing.61 Vedat Tek, a graduate of the empire’s frst academy of fne arts (Sanayi-i Nefse
Mektebi), conceived of the monument as a broken marble column, alluding to the cur-
tailed reconnaissance mission of the pilots in Ottoman-controlled Palestine in 1914. In
addition to commissioning such proto-nationalist monuments, the state contributed
funds for the Florence Nightingale (d. 1910) statue in London’s Pall Mall, conceived
as part of a larger Crimean War Memorial in London, because of her innovative care
techniques (from setting up prefab hospitals to novel sanitation techniques) of Otto-
man soldiers during the war (1853–56).62 Similar monetary dispensations were made
by the state for war memorials erected on behalf of the fallen soldiers of WWI’s Cen-
tral Powers (Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria).63
In many ways, antique sculpture defned the trajectory of Ottoman museology,
archaeology, and art training in the latter half of the nineteenth century.64 Osman
Hamdi Bey’s (d. 1910) discoveries of Hellenistic stone sarcophagi near Sidon, Lebanon
(especially the so-called Alexander sarcophagus that illustrated Alexander the Great
in battle against the Persians in bold relief) were central to the reincarnation of the
Ottoman Imperial Museum in 1891 as a new building that echoed their typology but
also the chronological curation of its growing collection.65 Although the museum and
the aforementioned art academy next door were conceived as a pedagogical pair—the
students would receive their historical, theoretical, and practical training through the
museum’s collections—the sculptural production in the early years of the academy
was few and far between, often a point of lamentation for the empire’s art critics.66
It is important here to remember that these students and teachers were incredibly
versatile practitioners of related skills, so a presumed underrepresentation in sculpture
might have meant production in reliefs, metalwork and other three-dimensional fac-
ture. The academy’s frst instructor in sculpture was Yervant Osgan (d. 1914), who
not only was an accomplished sculptor in various popular representational tropes of
the period (naturalistic, ethnographic, orientalist) but was also employed in the con-
servation and restoration of the archaeological fnds that entered the museum.67 As
state-endorsed partner institutions, the academy and museum often had to share their
experts with the court’s various ateliers and projects. Both Osgan and his students, İsa
Behzad and Mesrur İzzet, were employed in the imperial mint in creating templates
for coins and medals (including those meant for the contributors to the making of
the Freedom Monument) and also contributed their designs and practical know-how
on moulds and casts to the imperial porcelain factory inside Sultan Abdülhamid II’s
Yıldız Palace complex. İsa Behzad was later appointed the factory’s director under the
reign of Sultan Mehmed Reşad.
Republican Istanbul: From Empires Past to a Nation State

The aforementioned commemorative memorials such as the Freedom Monument and
Aviation Martyrs’ Monument paved the way for the evolution of the monumental
statue as fgurative art. It was not until the late 1920s, with the erection of statues and
monuments of Kemal Atatürk, that statues began to dominate public spaces in Tur-
key. The frst major republican monument, erected in Afyon in 1924 where the Turk-
ish army defeated the Greek troops and forced them to retreat to İzmir, immortalized
‘The Unknown Soldier’ who died in the War of Independence.68 The monument was
unveiled by Kemal Atatürk himself. In his speech, he stated that it represented the real
heroes of the nation, whose blood saved the country. However, it was the frst and last
major monument of its kind before the appearance of the fgurative public monuments
of Atatürk himself in the late 1920s. Thereafter, Atatürk memorials and statues domi-
nated public space in Turkey.69 The frst of these statues was placed in Sarayburnu and
became the frst public full-size fgurative statue in Istanbul about 470 years after Con-
stantine’s statue was removed from its column located in today’s Sultanahmet Square,
the central public place of the Byzantine and the Ottoman Empires.
Towards a Republican City

Sultanahmet, Beyazıt and Taksim Squares are the three most important public places
in Istanbul today. Sultanahmet was the most important of the three until the nine-
teenth century. It was the centre of politics and social life of the city, just as it was
in the time of the Byzantine Empire. Beyazıt Meydanı was the frst renaissance-style
square of the city.70 Taksim (literally ‘distribution’) was an open space and a source for
water distribution to the city until it became a central zone when Sultan Abdulmecit
II moved the royal palace to the west of the city in 1856. Moving the royal palace to
the west changed the seat of political power. The Sublime Port stayed where it was,
close to Topkapı palace, until the end of the empire. To go to the new palace, the Dol-
mabahçe Sarayı, from the sublime port, people needed to pass through the centre of
commerce, the Galata, which expanded towards Taksim at the end of the nineteenth
century. This political urbanization pushed city dwellers more toward the west of the
city. New settlements were opened there, and people were encouraged to move west.
At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, two districts,
Şişli and Teşvikiye (literally ‘encouragement’), emerged as the new middle-class areas.
Taksim was physically in the centre of these new neighbourhoods, Dolmabahçe (the
new royal palace) and the Sublime Port. As the physical centre of late nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century Istanbul, Taksim became the most important open space for
Republican Turkey, since it was not recognized as a social and political space or a
square yet, even though it was surrounded by the water reservoir, an Ottoman army
base across from the reservoir, and some houses. Therefore, when the new regime
decided to make itself visible in open spaces, Taksim was a more rational choice than
other important places such as Beyazıt and Sultanahmet. It might have been the new
regime’s goal to contrast the old and the new not only in terms of social and political
issues but also through art, architecture and urbanization. In this light, Taksim was a
sensible choice for the new regime as a place to represent the new and a venue to exer-
cise its authority on new national holidays as it evolved into a coherent political body.
The new regime’s strategy of stressing both the new and the old in terms of urbani-
zation allowed Beyazıt Meydani and Sultanahmet Meydanı to survive as spatial rep-
resentations of the empire, anchored in Islam, while Taksim emerged as the place of
the new secular and national ofcial public culture. The new regime pursued the same
strategy in most Ottoman cities, including İzmir and Samsun, two other important
port cities of Anatolia, by opening new republican squares as opposed to using those
inherited from the empire. This caused a duality in the image-making processes of
these Ottoman-Republican cities. As a result, the Republican and Ottoman squares
competed with one another for dominance as the symbol of cities in the mental maps
of the populace.
For the new regime, Istanbul—the capital city of empires—was the hardest location
to capture in the fght for representation. This was not only because the city was the
biggest city in the Republic but also because its inhabitants played a smaller role in the
War of Independence than the people of Anatolia. Residents of Istanbul were suspi-
cious of the new regime since when Kemal Atatürk and his fellows founded the Repub-
lic in 1923, they made Ankara the new capital, ostensibly ending Istanbul’s political
power. However, the new regime did not end the commercial role of the city, which
helped non-Muslims, who were the business class of the empire, to look for ways to
show acceptance of the new regime even before the Muslim middle class of the city.
The Committee of Union and Progress’s creation of economic policies to promote
the Muslim Turkish bourgeoisie during World War I (called Milli İktisat, or National
Economy) was a stimulus for the middle-class culture of the old capital.71 The Kemal-
ist regime also pursued this group, of whom they were suspicious because they con-
sidered them the supporters of the C.U.P., particularly Cavit Bey, the leader of big
business, and Kara Kemal, the representative of small business. In fact, the suspicion
was so deep that Kemal Atatürk, as the leader of the War of Independence, did not
stop in Istanbul when he frst passed the city again in 1924, fve years after he left on
15 May 1919.
It is possible that he was even afraid of an assassination attempt from the Union-
ist underground. Kemal Atatürk did not dare return to Istanbul until he eliminated
the prominent Unionists in 1926, just after they had attempted to assassinate him in
İzmir. His power to purge all his political opponents in one fell swoop made him seem
invincible to the opponents of the new regime. At that point, the Muslim middle class
in the old capital fnally showed signs of accepting the new regime. Once they were
sure that Kemalists would retain power and that their commercial relationship with
the old Unionists had ended, they started to look for ways to show their admiration
and support for the new regime.
The non-Muslim population of the city followed suit in Istanbul as in other cities,
especially in İzmir. This group was afraid that the new regime might deport them from
the country, much like they did in the population exchange of 1923. Therefore, non-
Muslim merchants did not hesitate to ofer fnancial support when the new regime
added a monumental propaganda program to the agenda after Kemal Atatürk deliv-
ered a speech on statuary at the Bursa Şark Sineması (Bursa Eastern Movie Theatre) in
1923.72 This was clearly the case when the new regime decided to erect a Cumhuriyet
abidesi (Republican monument) in Taksim that was to represent the emergence of the
new regime and its leader, Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Unsurprisingly, about 90 percent of the donations for the monument in Taksim
came from the non-Muslim population of the city.73 However, even before Taksim
became a Republican square featuring a monument in the centre, the Muslim popula-
tion of Istanbul had already shown their loyalty to the new regime and its leader by
erecting a statue of him in Sarayburnu, on 3 October 1926. This was the point of his
departure when he left for Samsun, one day after the Greek occupation of İzmir on
15 May 1919.
We argue that the statue in Sarayburnu was the result of negotiations between the
new regime and the suspicious Muslim middle class of the old capital. The donations
for the statue in Sarayburnu show that, unlike their integral role in the erection of the
Taksim statue, non-Muslims were not part of the deal. Therefore, when the statue was
unveiled, it symbolized the old Muslim middle class’ recognition of the new regime,
which, for Kemalists, also meant the end of Unionist underground infuence in the for-
mer capital. This is why the mayors of Istanbul, who were appointed by Ankara, paid
careful attention to the newly born republic, and especially to the opening ceremony
of the frst monumental public statue in Istanbul.
The First Figurative Public Statue

Immediately after Kemal Atatürk’s 1923 public speech in Şark Sineması, the Istanbul
Municipality was the frst local government to campaign to erect a statue of him. The
mayor, Emin Bey, formed a committee in 1924 that commissioned the task to the Aus-
trian sculptor Heinrich Krippel.74 The committee met on a regular basis and updated
the public about the preparation process through pieces in Şehir Emaneti Mecmusı
(the monthly journal of the Istanbul municipality) and various newspapers.75
On 25 August 1925, nearly 13 months before the unveiling ceremony of the statue,
the committee organized a public ceremony to mark the future location of the base
pedestal of the statue in Sarayburnu. This was an Imperial tradition. Istanbul deputies
of the Turkish Great Assembly, generals of the army bases in Istanbul, members of the
Republican People’s Party, ofcials from the Istanbul municipality and press represent-
atives participated in the ceremony, and all signed a document confrming the great-
ness of the saviour and noting the ofcial opening of the construction site. The mayor
himself put the document in a box and buried it in the base stone marker, and later
informed Kemal Atatürk of the ceremony by sending him and the Ministry of the Inte-
rior a telegraph message.76 He replied to this message the next day, on 26 August 1925:
‘I am pleased to see that people of Istanbul have become the frst to attempt to erect
my statue. I thank you for expressing your sincere feelings by putting the frst base
stone in the construction site.
President Ghazi Mustafa Kemal77’.
Nearly six weeks after Sehir Emaneti Mecmuasi had reported the opening of the
construction site, Krippel sent a long letter to the journal. He wrote about his meetings
with Kemal Atatürk, his feelings about sculpting the frst statue of the Turkish republic,
how a sculptor works on his/her subject and his ideas on how people perceive statues.78
Krippel’s letter was the frst from a foreign sculptor to the public. His intention in send-
ing it was basically to please the public, since the monumental propaganda of the regime
attracted the attention of many competing European sculptors even as late as 1938.79
Krippel continued to update the committee about his progress as he fnished the job,
and the committee kept informing the public accordingly. On 4 March 1926, the daily
newspaper Milliyet informed the public that Krippel had fnished sculpting the statue and
had put it on a Viennese train bound for Istanbul along with fve busts of Mustafa Kemal.
The news also stated that the opening would take place after Krippel’s arrival in Istanbul
and that the statue was to be placed on the base pedestal prepared by the municipality.
Nearly ten days later, Milliyet informed the public of a confict that had arisen
between the committee and Krippel over the base pedestal of the statue. According
to the news, Krippel had violated the contract and sculpted a statue that was too big
for the base pedestal prepared by the municipality. Krippel criticized the committee,
saying that he had sculpted a statue for a 1.51 m2 pedestal, which he claimed had
been agreed with the committee before he started the job. The committee rejected his
argument and reminded him of the fgure on the contract that he had signed, which
stipulated a 94 cm2 base pedestal. According to Milliyet, Krippel did not respond to
the committee’s accusation, and the committee had to inform the Egrem Hof museum
where Krippel was working that the committee could only approve the job if it com-
plied with the 94 cm2 specifcation for the base.
Some of the committee members met on 14 March 1926 with a representative of
the Egrem Hof museum to resolve the problem. After the meeting, Şükrü Ali Bey, the
vice mayor of the city, informed the public in a press briefng that ‘the committee had
decided to wait for the arrival of the statue and see if there was a big problem with
the base, and if there was, then the committee would reconsider the situation and act
accordingly’.80 Ten days later, on 24 March the statue arrived in Istanbul. The statue
was held by customs for six days in order to complete the paperwork, since customs
requested a tax exemption for the statue from the government.81 After Kemal Atatürk
signed the decree, the statue was stored in a building near Sarayburnu on 30 March.
The committee members arrived to see the statue on 2 April 1926. Once they saw the
statue, they realized that it was obviously too large for the pedestal prepared by the
municipality. They decided to move the statue closer to the pedestal to more accu-
rately gauge the disparity. Finally, the committee decided that the pedestal could not
be modifed to ft the statue and therefore must be changed.82
While the committee was dealing with the base pedestal, discontent over the statue
emerged in the national press. On 5 April, Falih Rıfkı, the editor of Hakimiyet-i Mil-
liye, the ofcial daily of the Kemalist regime, criticized the Istanbul municipality in his
article titled ‘Istanbul Heykeli’ (Istanbul statue). Rıfkı was one of the closest intellectual
and political fgures to Kemal Atatürk, but he accused the municipality’s committee of
spending too much money on the frst monumental statue of Turkey, especially since
a foreign sculptor benefted from the job. He added that once the municipality of the
biggest city in Turkey had hired this random foreign sculptor, the Konya and Ankara
municipalities had followed Istanbul’s example by ordering new Ataturk statues by
the same sculptor, whose previous work proved that he was not a good artist. He con-
cluded his article by warning other municipalities not to repeat the same mistakes.83
On 7 April 1926, two days after Falih Rifki’s critical article appeared, the new mayor
of Istanbul, Muhittin Bey, went to Ankara to present Kemal Atatürk with pictures of
the statue in hopes that he would approve the fnal product.84 Although the statue
did not satisfy the political or intellectual elite in Ankara, the Ministry of the Interior
approved the erection of the statue on 18 April 1926. After the approval, the com-
mittee fnished the new base pedestal on 28 June 1926, and scheduled the opening
ceremony for 3 October 1926.
The Opening Ceremony

On 29 September 1926, the Istanbul daily Yeni Ses (The New Voice) informed its read-
ers that the municipality was planning a groundbreaking opening for the frst statue
of the Republic, and that Şükrü Ali Bey, the vice mayor, was in charge of preparing
a program. The municipality press published the program on 30 September and sent
it to more than 500 notables, among them the deputies, members of the government
and the party, municipality ofcials, members of Istanbul University, high schools,
members of Türk Ocağı, Istanbul Commerce, Esnaf Komisyonu (Commission of Small
Business) and the public. The program stated that the Navy Orchestra, along with a
large group of military personnel and police forces, were among the participants.
The mayor included representatives of both the civil society and the state institu-
tions in the ceremony. Even though the mayor and the committee made certain to
tailor the ceremony to embrace all the city’s people, the ceremony had a dress code
that made it impossible to attend for those who could not aford the attire. The pro-
gram stated the dress code clearly: ‘Those who are going to participate in the opening
ceremony have to wear a suit or a dark dress’. The dark dress here symbolized the
ofcial character of the ceremony, and the suit represented the discipline of the ofcial
public culture of the Republic, in sharp and deliberate contrast to the culture of the
empire. The dress code was, in fact, almost the only diference between this ceremony
and imperial opening ceremonies. The ceremony was a follow-up to what the new
regime called the ‘Hat Revolution’. In 1924, Kemal Atatürk publicly announced the
Hat Revolution, which banned the fez, which had been a symbol of the old regime
since the reign of Mahmut II. Like Mahmut II, Kemal Atatürk and his elite knew that
visually shaping new human subjects was instrumental in exercising political power
and generating ofcial public culture.
It is important to stress the signifcance of the fact that this ceremony was not the
opening of a new building, a bridge, a park or a street, a type of occasion familiar to
the supporters of the new regime, the ofcials and the former Ottoman subjects. This
was the unveiling of a statue—a work forbidden by Islam—which made it, as our dis-
cussion of the Ottoman period illustrates, something new to both the ordinary people
and the ofcials of the Republic, even though the ritualistic measures taken during the
construction of the statue were infuenced by Ottoman traditions.
When people gathered for the opening ceremony in Sarayburnu on Sunday, 3 Octo-
ber 1926, they might not have been surprised that another protocol was enforced,
one concerning who stands where. Along with the idea of a dress code, this spatial
protocol was a familiar one from the time of the Empire. Ofcials and notables came
to the park in suits and Western hats, as demanded. The commander-in-chief of the
city’s military base was already there with a large group of military personnel and
more than a thousand privates, all of whom were in military uniforms, alongside uni-
formed police. Then the military band took its reserved place. The crowd surrounded
the ofcials and the notables, standing wherever they could, before the mayor, number
one in protocol, showed up.
According to news in Milliyet, the mayor came fve minutes late and started to
deliver his talk without hesitation. He stood directly in front of the statue, which was
covered with white fabric, as anticipated in the program:
In order to comprehend the essence and the meaning of this event . . . it is neces-
sary to think frst about the history embedded in this statue, then, to look at vari-
ous stages of the history of the Ottomans. . . . This . . . would show us from what
kind of dark age we have come and now reached happiness. . . . It would be fair
to say that we are an envied generation. I consider this envy as a way to show our
gratefulness to our saviour. Long live Gazi!85
The mayor’s words were not new to the audience or the press. The content was not
unexpected. Calling the imperial period a ‘dark age’ and Kemal Atatürk the ‘sav-
iour’ were common rhetorical practices in any ofcial talk since the foundation of
the Republic. In fact, both the ofcials and the people considered Kemal Atatürk
their saviour even before the foundation of the Republic. The wartime press almost
unequivocally expressed their perceptions of Kemal Atatürk in text and image as the
determined saviour of the country. Even before the beginning of the War of Independ-
ence, most of the ofcials and top generals of the army believed in his determined
personality and military expertise. However, these same groups did not yet consider
the Ottoman period to have been a dark age. They blamed the members of the royal
family for the collapse rather than the empire as such.
When the mayor fnished his speech, the military band played the Selam Havası,
which was another Ottoman tradition. Muhittin Bey picked up a pair of scissors
from a silver plate and cut the red ribbon surrounding the white fabric on the
statue, to the audience’s applause. The statue was unveiled to even more thunder-
ous applause. The ceremony ended immediately at this point, and the audience left
the site.86 After the opening, Muhittin Bey sent the following telegraph message to
Kemal Atatürk:
We understand the results of your revolution. Today thousands of people who

miss you cried with happiness that they were grateful to have the chance to wed
your holy representation with their tears. . . . My lord, I am happy to inform you
of this.87
Kemal Atatürk never attended the opening ceremonies of his own statues. He only
sent notes congratulating the artist and the residents of the city. As the frst president
of the Turkish nation, he sent the following open note to the residents of Istanbul,
who erected his frst statue in Sarayburnu: ‘I present my most sincere gratitude to
the people of Istanbul for their high appreciation and noble sentiments, which they
expressed by erecting my frst statue’.88 The opening of the frst monumental statue
of Turkey made headlines in the Turkish press as well as some international newspa-
pers and journals. The most prestigious and infuential among these was the French
news weekly L’illustration, a lavishly printed periodical (published between 1843 and
1944). Both L’illustration and the national press criticized Krippel for not portray-
ing Kemal Atatürk as brave and determined enough. In a press conference, Krippel
responded to these criticisms, stating: ‘In spite of these attacks, I still believe that
I was able to give Ghazi the desired brave posture. The critics in Vienna, on the other
hand, suggested that the statue embodied a modern concept of art’.89 This defence
did not stop the criticism of Krippel and his monument. These criticisms had actu-
ally begun even before the opening of the monument. Falih Rıfkı, one of the closest
intellectuals to Kemal Atatürk, wrote the earliest criticism of the monument in the
ofcial daily Hakimiyet-i Milliye on 5 April 1926, one week after the statue arrived
in Istanbul:
A couple of Krippel’s busts and a statue came to Istanbul. This is the frst statue
of the greatest personality of the Turkish nation! The artist was an unknown per-
son from Vienna. Istanbul Municipality hired this person without questioning . . .
since the municipality of the biggest city hired him, Konya Municipality and the
statue commission in Ankara placed more expensive orders. . . . Ghazi cannot be
represented in this posture and great Istanbul cannot give such a bad artifact to
her saviour.90
It seems that although the new political elite welcomed and encouraged monumental
propaganda, it was only after Falih Rıfkı criticized the local government of Istanbul
and warned the others that it began to consider standardization of monuments and
statues. Considering that Rıfkı was very close to Kemal Atatürk, one can assume
that they talked about this issue before Rıfkı published his article and that Kemal
Atatürk agreed with him about the problem. Thus, one might conclude that they
decided to use Rıfkı’s voice to advocate standardisation to the public. This assumption
is unproven, but it is an educated guess, since one of Kemal Atatürk’s key strategies for
government was to communicate with the public by saying things aloud for someone
to write down and by dictating ideas to journalists close to him, who then published
them as their own. Since it would not have been a good strategy for him to complain
about his own statue, we argue that Kemal Atatürk, perhaps in one of his well-known
dinner discussions, expressed his own opinion to Rıfkı and others so that they would
express it for him.
The Minister of Education, who was probably at Atatürk’s table when the statue
business came onto the agenda, was one of those who might have written down what
he said. On 24 May, one and a half months after Rıfkı informed the public that
the Ministry of Education had ‘discovered the way’ to stop other cities from repeat-
ing the same mistake, the Ministry of Education issued a special ministerial decision.
The decision set out objectives and explained certain measures that should be taken
regarding statues to the national press and city ofcials. This decision was the main
headline news of the ofcial daily Hakimiyet-i Milliye on 25 May:
One statue of our saviour on horseback in military uniform, one in civilian clothes
standing, and a bust will be ordered. For this our ministry is in contact with the
most distinguished sculptors . . . our ministry will mediate between the cities and
the artists to use the moulds for reproduction. This way a number of cities will
have a chance to decorate their cities with the statues of our national hero and the
country’s resources will not be wasted.91
The Ministry’s public notice includes the exact points Falih Rıfkı made in his text,
which indicates that Atatürk, Rıfkı and the member(s) of the Ministry must have
worked together on the subject. Obviously, the experience with the frst statue
forced the new regime to introduce this standardization, not only for aesthetic pur-
poses but also to prevent potential fnancial problems. The country’s economy was
not in good shape after the War of Independence, and spending too much money
for monumental propaganda would not be a rational choice in the eyes of the public
or the political elite. But instead of giving up on monumental propaganda entirely,
the political elite tried to use the fnancial resources in a productive way. Since aes-
thetic concerns were not the main issue for them in the frst place, they did not see
any problems in producing moulds for every city in the nascent Republic. Also, it
is likely that the regime took advantage of the situation by inviting more cities and
towns to raise monumental propaganda, as one can conclude from the last statement
of the ministry’s notice.92
What we do know is that even though both the public and state ofcials criticized
the frst monumental statue of the republic, Krippel was hired again to erect three more
statues of Kemal Atatürk. Two of these statues were erected after 1932 in cities Rıfkı
does not mention in his text, which leaves us to wonder why state ofcials introduced
standardisation but still let individual cities hire Krippel again. One plausible reason
is again fnancial, as state ofcials might not have been able to fnd a more afordable
choice than Krippel, which they would have realized after they approached some well-
known sculptors from France, Germany and Italy. However, there is no ofcial reason
for this disparity between practice and stated policy. The second reason is that perhaps
the political elite simply did not want to delay the monumental propaganda, which
was expected to produce didactic infuence over people considered to form the desired
new subjects of the emerging nation-state. This is perhaps why the political elite still
allowed the Istanbul municipality to publicly erect the frst national monument of the
new regime even though Krippel was criticized so brutally for his frst commission.
In sum, the monument in Sarayburnu was not only the frst full-size fgurative mon-
umental statue erected in Turkey but also the frst in a long line of monumental propa-
ganda pieces that the political elite demanded from the notables of the new regime.
After Kemal Atatürk’s Sark Sineması speech at Bursa, statuary became an instrumen-
tal political tool used by diferent interest groups in recognizing the new regime. As
mentioned before, the leader and his fellows welcomed this way of reorganization and
encouraged social groups and municipalities to implement it.93
Enforcing Sovereignty of the Nation
This frst representation of Kemal Atatürk in a full-size statue form in Sarayburnu
commemorates the birth of a national leader and a nation-state, and thus it is one of
the constitutive elements of the new regime.94 That is to say, it is not the representa-
tion of the political power per se: it is the power itself.95 One way of interpreting the
statue along this line is in relation to the preceding treaties signed by the Ottomans, in
which they were forced to ‘concede’ their lack of civilization. The 22nd article of the
Covenant of the League of Nations states:
To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased
to be under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which
are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous
conditions of the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-
being and development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilization and that
securities for the performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant.96
These authors would argue that the correlation between the article and the statue is
obvious. The stress on the words ‘sovereignty’, ‘civilization’ and ‘stand’ can be traced
in the statues design. It depicts the emergence of a national leader, his back to Istanbul
and Topkapı palace, facing Anatolia. His right leg is forward and his closed fst rests
on his thigh while his open left hand is resting at his waist. This posture creates the
impression that the statue will move at any moment to start a liberation movement
(Figure 10.4). This depiction clearly lays claim to the sovereignty of the nation and
represents the word ‘sovereignty’ in the article. The determined posture embodies the
word ‘stand’. Finally, Kemal Atatürk is shown wearing a suit, in ‘civilian’ or ‘civilizing’
clothes, which symbolizes and visualizes a new human subject but also his response
to the word ‘civilization’. The artist Samih Tiryakioglu’s comments on the monument
reveal what Atatürk himself thought of it: ‘this, in Atatürk’s own words, demonstrates
his determination to go to Anatolia and fght the enemy, abandoning any kind of ofcial
and military position and returning to the heart of the nation’.97 As the mayor pointed
out in a press conference, Sarayburnu was specifcally chosen as the place to erect the
statue because there it would be seen by those entering the straits and would tell the
story of the emergence of a national leader whose ambition, along with his political
elites, was to turn the nascent republic into a modern secular nation state under the
guidance of a new theory of action: nationalism embedded in high modernism.
One can argue that the frst political condition of such a modern nation state guided by
nationalism embed in high modernism was to transform an imperial city, in this chapter,
İstanbul, from its imperial past to its national future. Being the frst full-size fgurative
statue of the nation state and the frst of upcoming monumental propaganda initiated by
the new regime, the monumental statue in Sarayburnu became a constitutive element in
such a transformation. To enforce and fnalize this transformation, the new regime reuti-
lized Taksim and turned it into the Republic’s most important square to this day.
Two years after the unveiling of the monument in Sarayburnu, ‘The Taksim
Republican Monument’ was erected in the newly opened republican square on 8
August 1928. A committee made up of prominent political notables, with generous
donations mostly from the non-Muslim residents, sought to visualize the concept of
Figure 10.4 First full-size statue of Kemal Atatürk in Sarayburnu.

Source: Photo by Faik Gür.
‘the newly founded Republic’ in a single monument.98 The design was prepared by Pie-
tro Canonica in 1926 and was presented to Kemal Atatürk by this committee. Upon
Atatürk’s approval of the design, Canonica was entrusted with the task of sculpting
the monument (Figure 10.5a–d).99
The press briefng given by Canonica following the approval of the project provides
us with information about how the sculptor came up with the design for the monu-
ment. And it also shows that Atatürk was interested in its details. It is evident that
Canonica had been provided with photographs and perhaps with a short brief on the
War of Independence:
I was inspired by the wars fought by the Turkish nation and Ghazi Mustafa
Kemal Pasha. I examined all the photographs related to this war, and also those
of Ghazi and his friends. I based my design plan on the inspiration I took from
Figure 10.5a–d Taksim Republican Monument, Istanbul (author’s collection). Figure 10.5a rep-
resents the emergence of the Republic, Figure 10.5b the War of Independence.
Source: Photos by Faik Gür.
these photographs. One side of the monument depicts the national struggle. On
the front is Ghazi, with his soldiers behind him. To the right-hand side of Ghazi,
in front of his feet, is a woman half veiled. Ghazi asks this woman why she
didn’t protect herself from the rain with her veil. Silently uncovering the veil, the
women exposes a set of ammunition and replies that she preferred to cover the
ammunition rather than herself. On the other side of the gate, the declaration
of the Republic is described. Ghazi stands in front of the gate, with his closest
friends gathered close behind him. On both sides of the gate are soldiers with
Turkish fags.100
Taksim is important because it was one of the frst squares the new regime created but
also because its monument represented a high point in the War of Independence by
depicting the events that occurred between May 1919 and October 1923, all of which
eventually denoted the transformation of Istanbul as the capital of empires to a city of
the Republic of Turkey.
Taksim Square came to represent the new and the national in İstanbul as opposed to
Sultanahmet and Beyazıt, the squares of the imperial past, as the new regime evolved
into a coherent political body implementing top down modernization for the sake of
building a modern secular nation-state. As the centre of the city moved from the old
city to Taksim, the newly born nation state and its founding father Kemal Atatürk and
his determined elites almost simultaneously adapted to the new world order: moving
from the age of empires to the age of extremes while spatial art forms and architecture
emerged in what Clark calls ‘the sites most commonly chosen for factories of the per-
fect’.101 They held a dominant position in public life by introducing new patterns of
urban expression, such as Atatürk statues and monuments, in the service of producing
and reproducing new governmentality as both Byzantines and Ottomans have done
before.
Concluding Remarks
In its over two millennium-long history, the city of Istanbul/Constantinople, under
two empires, a kingdom and a Republic, faced many changes. There were diferent
responses by its denizens to its fgurative statuary. In Byzantine times, honorifc col-
umns, statues and temples harked back to a glorious past as the city was fashioned as
a ‘second Rome’. However, a good balance had to be found between such markers of
imperial identity associated with a pagan culture and the empire’s new ofcial religion
of Christianity. Furthermore, Iconoclasm provided another layer of challenge when it
came to fgurative imagery and sculptures. More challenges came in the form of loot-
ing and destruction on the part of both the Crusaders and the Byzantines. Thus, when
the Ottomans took over the city, there were few fgurative statues left. Responses to
statues in early modernity were just as varied—while markers of a previous empire,
such as the statue of Justinian, would not be tolerated, that they were not immediately
destroyed is also remarkable. Indeed, some statues were believed, as they had been
in the Byzantine period,102 to have talismanic powers, protecting the city. What is
perhaps also remarkable is the divergence in how a shared Mediterranean, Graeco-
Roman past refected itself in diferent manners in the Ottoman Empire and in Europe
in early modernity.
For the late-Ottoman context, it is worth probing the extent to which the Ottoman
rulers and their subjects diferentiated between earlier small functional structures that
also commemorated their patrons and newer monuments erected only to memorialize
a person or event. What did a new abide signal to its viewer that an older fountain
with inscriptions did not? Did the hypothetical fountain’s references to a particular
moment or person fall victim to the vicissitudes of time while the new monument
continued to retain its singular, symbolic connotation? Most likely. Nevertheless,
this is a worthwhile and under-examined query from the perspectives of both the
patron and spectator. Another question is whether the predominant non-fgurality
in the choice of monuments (abide over heykel) complicated their indexical, deictic
functions (of connoting a specifc thing, moment or person)? Ultimately, though, one
thing that can be said with relative certainty about the status of new monuments is
that both their erection and destruction were momentous, memorable and deeply
symbolic events.
For the regime of the nascent Republic, monumental statuary along with national
days of commemoration became the constitutive element of the nation-building
process by making the transition of imperial public spaces and public culture into
the domain of the national. As the state turned into a coherent political body in the
late 1920s, it aimed, under the guidance of defensive nationalism within the scope
of high modernism, to create the sense of common memory to be the foundation
of national sovereignty. Republican parks, Republican squares, public memorials of
Kemal Atatürk and national days of commemoration thus, as Young would put it, ‘all
work[ed] to create common loci around which national identity’ was forged103 at the
expense of the option of commemorating any urban identity that was not nationalist
(in three-dimensional human-like structures).
Abbreviations Used in the Footnotes

BCA Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Cumhuriyet Arşivleri (Republic of
Turkey Presidential State Republican Archives)
BOA Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanlığı Osmanlı Arşivleri (Republic of
Turkey Presidential State Ottoman Archives)
Notes
1. Berger 2013, 9.
2. See Chatterjee in this volume, Chapter 5.
3. Jacobs 2010; Mango 1963.
4. Caseau 2011.
5. Lavan 2011, 442; Mango 1963, 64–65; Saradi-Mendelovici 1990, 50; Caseau 2011,
497–498.
6. Talbot 1993, 244.
7. Boeck 2014, 13–22.
8. James 1996.
9. Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938), the founding father of the Republic of Tur-
key, adopted the surname Atatürk, the Father of Turks, after the surname law passed in
the assembly in June 1934, which made the registration of fxed names mandatory. Here-
after, he will generally be called Kemal Atatürk. For the surname law and the way in which
it was received and mediated by ordinary citizens, see Türköz 2007. For a psychological
examination of Atatürk’s life, see Volkan and Itzkowitz 1983. For a more recent biogra-
phy, see Mango 1999.
10. On the damage to and restoration of monuments in the city, see Talbot 1993. On the
Latin conquest and statuary, see Chatterjee 2011; Cutler 1968.
11. Chatterjee 2011, 75.
12. On the transformation of the Byzantine capital into the Ottoman capital, and for her
analysis of ‘selective use’, see Kafesçioğlu 2009.
13. The Church of the Holy Apostles briefy served as the seat of the patriarchate after the
Conquest of Constantinople but was abandoned in 1456. On this, see Kafesçioğlu 2009,
66–70.
14. Raby, on the basis of Aşıkpaşazade’s chronicle, argues that the statue was removed from
the column sometime between June 1453 and the winter of 1455–6. On this statue, see
also Boeck 2014; Mango 1993; Raby 1987.
15. While Islam’s aniconism is well known, the prohibition against images was most extreme
in public spaces. There are examples of statuary in private spaces as early as the Umayy-
ads, in their desert palaces. The question of Iconoclasm and aniconism in Islam has seen
lively debate. See, for example, Allen 1988; Flood 2002, 2013; Grabar 1987; Shaw 2019.
16. Shaw 2019, 51–52 On the fate of the bronze heads of the Serpent column and various
sources, see Ménage 1964. On the Serpent column, see also Stephenson 2016.
17. Ménage 1964, 172.
18. See Chatterjee, this volume, Chapter 5.
19. For the supposed talismanic powers, see Yerasimos 1993, 89–97. The seventeenth-century
traveler Evliya Çelebi, for example, provides a detailed account of the moments and tal-
ismans of Istanbul in his Seyahatnāme. See Dağlı and Kahraman 2000. Aslı Niyazioğlu is
also currently working on the talismanic powers of the statues of Istanbul and has recently
presented a paper titled ‘Urban Talismans and Early Modern Istanbul’ at the Nature and
Supernatural in Ottoman Culture workshop (Istanbul, December 2019).
20. The Hünername, chronicling the talents and deeds of the Ottoman sultans, was begun
by the şehname writer ‘Arif, continued by Efatun Şirvani, who only wrote three parts,
and was revised and fnished by Seyyid Lokman. The manuscript was conceived in four
volumes. The frst volume tells of the skills and talents of the early Ottoman sultans until
Selim I. The whole of the second volume is reserved for the martial and hunting skills and
virtues of Süleyman II. The next two (unwritten) volumes were to be devoted to Selim II
and Murad III, as evinced from the index given in the frst volume, as well as a marginal
note in the second volume. The four books were to be divided each into ten thematic sec-
tions, followed by a supplement and a conclusion. The thematic division was to follow
that of the second volume, enhancing the link between the three sultans through parallel
accounts of the rulers’ skills and virtues. The last two volumes were, however, never com-
pleted. The frst volume was fnished in 1584 and the second in 1588. These volumes are
presently in the Topkapı Palace Museum Library (H. 1523 and H. 1524).
21. By the time of this painting, it seems like there was a confusion surrounding the identity
of the fgures. For a further discussion, see Necipoğlu 1989, 419. Even though the painter
has not accurately represented the three individual statues, whose identities at the time of
the painting were not very clear, he was aware of their existence in 1530, and included this
sculptural group in his representation of the 1530 circumcision festival.
22. The poet was executed for his diatribe.
23. Emecen 2000, 333–335.
24. On Melchior Lorichs’s panorama of Constantinople, see; Westbrook et al. 2010. Hereaf-
ter, Westbrook, Constructing Melchior Lorichs’s Panorama.
25. See, for example, the 1574 Freshfeld Album (Trinity College Library MS O. 17.2.
26. Gilles 1988. On the accounts of seventeenth-century Habsburg travelers, see also Ebert
2003.
27. The Surname-i Humayun (TPML H.1344), dated 1587, is devoted solely to the gran-
diose circumcision festival of Murad III’s son Prince Mehmed that took place just fve
years earlier in 1582. This manuscript, like the Hünername, is a collaboration between
the Şehname writer Lokman and the painter Nakkaş Osman. Containing over 400 paintings
that depict the many performances and processions which took place in the Hippodrome,
the compositional program of the Surname-i Humayun uses the palace of the grand vizier
as a backdrop throughout the work in a manner almost like a cinematic procession.
28. On this celebration and its visual representations, see Atıl 1993, 1999; Vehbi 2000.
29. The style and the depiction of the circumcision festivities in the Hünername bear afni-
ties with the Surname-i Humayun, as well as several paintings from the second volume of
the Şehinşehname (TPML B.200, also composed by Lokman for Murad III, the illustra-
tions of which were fnished under his successor, Mehmed III). While all three manuscripts
are the products of a collaboration between Lokman and the painters of the court, headed
by Nakkaş Osman, the Surname-i Humayun and the Şehinşehname depict the 1582 cir-
cumcision festival, when the fgural statues that Ibrahim Paşa had brought were long
taken down. They also refect changes to the grand vizier’s palace, such as the inclusion of
a three-storey grandstand for the spectators.
30. Westbrook et al. 2010, 67.
31. Kaya 2006, 145–157, 146. On Topkapı’s eighteenth-century landscaping by a European
gardener, see Türker 2016, 305–336.
32. Hamadeh 2007.
33. Renda 2000, 444–509; also see Bağcı et al. 2010, 288–289, 294. It must be pointed out
that Mehmed II was also aware of the potential of diferent forms of media and Western
forms of representation in diplomatic relations and had his portrait medallions made. The
ways in which Mehmed II, Selim III, Mahmud II and other nineteenth-century Ottoman
rulers used Western modes of representation must be distinguished in their own contexts
and is beyond the scope of this paper.
34. On the subtle but pertinent reform iconography of Sultan Mahmud II and globe imagery,
see Akın 1992, 123–131.
35. Acar 2008.
36. On Dolmabahçe’s architects, see Tuğlacı 1990; and more recently, Wharton 2015. On the
palace’s construction history, see Göncü 2019.
37. See the seminal if dated survey on late-Ottoman sculpture and monuments, Kreiser 1997,
103–104.
38. Bağcı, et al. 2010, 146–147.
39. Bağcı, et al. 2010, 147.
40. On the art patronage, particularly of modern visual art, of Sultan Abdülaziz see Roberts
2013, 10–30; also see Roberts 2015.
41. The queen mother also disapproved of her son sitting for the portrait. See Kreiser 1997,
103–117.
42. Renda 2002, 138–145; Uzun Aydın 2013, 39–40.
43. Göker and Erdoğan 2018, 1422–1431; Seçen 2011, 19–40; Acaralp 2011, 41–49.
44. Kreiser 1997, 107–108.
45. On Bartholdi’s Suez canal project and its later conversion to the Statue of Liberty, see
Grimaldo-Grigsby 2014.
46. Anonymous. ‘Intézetek és egyletek’, Nefelejts, szépirodalmi hölgydivatlap, Vol. 4
(1863), 147.
47. On Münif Paşa’s girafes, see Ekdal 2004, 299–300. On Subhi Paşa, see Türker 2021.
48. Türker 2015, 275–276.
49. Erkmen 2011, 76–237. On a comparative reading of the Hamidian towers as colonial
markers, see Çelik 2008, 116–158.
50. Christensen 2017, 124–131.
51. Also note that a monument was erected in a square in Moscow in 1887 to commemo-
rate the Russian soldiers who fought against the Ottoman army and died in the battle of
Plevna. For more information on this monument, see Kapıcı 2010.
52. Kocu 1960, 1499–1502; on the now-lost flm, see Özuyar 1999, 129.
53. BOA, DH.İ.UM.EK 108–165.
54. Lûtf Efendi 1999, 723; also see Ergin 1977, 537.
55. Doğanay 1950, 245–260.
56. For a meticulous retelling of the statue’s grand reveal with military pomp and circum-
stance as a report to Sultan Abdülhamid II, see BOA, Y.A.HUS 515–46 and A.MTZ (04)
160/52
57. BOA, A.MTZ (04) 167/33 and TFR.1.UM. 25/2446.
58. Suavi 1976, 81–86; Nazif 1976.
59. Safa 2016, 42–43.
60. Erkmen 2011, 238–301.
61. For a range of contributors, see BOA, DH.MKT 2810/26 and DH.MKT 2838–2853.
62. BOA, MV 151/70.
63. For the one in Vienna, see BOA, İ.MBH 17/1333R-008.
64. On collecting and the antiquities, see Uslu 2017; Çelik 2016; and Bahrani et al. 2011
65. Shaw 1993.
66. Zihnioğlu, ed. 2007, 59.
67. Uzun Aydın 2013, 81.
68. Upon the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918, Allied forces—British, French, Ital-
ian and Greek—occupied diferent parts of Anatolia. Greek troops landed in İzmir on
15 May 1919, to be opposed by liberation organizations and movements which eventu-
ally transformed into a national resistance movement led by Atatürk. After the Soviet
Union, France and Italy recognized Atatürk and the resistance movement in 1921, the war
became restricted to a struggle between Turkey and Greece. The British supplied the Greek
army, while the Soviet Union helped Atatürk and his fellows to establish a regular army.
The struggle for independence lasted until Greek troops left İzmir in September 1922. In
Turkish historiography, this struggle is called the War of Independence. For a brief history
of the War of Independence, see Zürcher 2005, 133–165.
69. Gür 2013. There is only one exception to this: the Kubilay Memorial erected in 1932 to
commemorate an event that happened in Menemen, İzmir, on 23 December 1930, dur-
ing which an under-reserve lieutenant, Mustafa Fethi Kubilay, was killed by a group of
young dervishes in front of hundreds of bystanders. Two night guards who tried to stop
the mob were also killed. The Kemalist regime considered this an uprising, an act of politi-
cal violence and expression of religiously motivated public discontent and hatred aimed
at the regime itself, and thus took stern measures. Over 20 people were executed about a
year after the event. A monument dedicated to the memory of Kubilay and the two night
guards was erected in 1932.There are some critical works available in Turkish on the
incident, one of which is an article by Nursen Mazıcı, where she goes on to argue that
the Kemalist regime reutilized the event in order to reinstate the authority of the regime in
the early 1930s Mazıcı 2001, 131–146.
70. For Beyazid Meydani, see Yeşilkaya 2003.
71. In 1889, students of the Military Medical Academy in Istanbul founded a secret society
called the Ottoman Unity Society, which eventually became the Committee of Union
and Progress. The C.U.P. demanded the restoration of the constitution of 1876, which
they believed would strengthen the state and thus help to prevent the collapse of the
Ottoman empire. They managed to restore the constitution in 1908. The C.U.P. even-
tually turned into a political party and took control of the political institutions of the
empire between 1913 and 1918. For economic policies of the C.U.P. and the details of
Milli İktisat, see Toprak 1982. For a brief sentetic political history of the C.U.P., see
Zürcher 2005.
72. His speech on monuments at the Bursa Şark Sineması can be considered the beginning of
Kemal Atatürk’s embrace of statuary, which later turned into monumental propaganda.
This public speech demonstrated the importance he attached to statuary (read as Western
art) in the process of modernization:
When our prophet told his people the laws of God, those people had idols both in
their hearts and in their brains. To draw these people to the way of God, he frst
had to break those stone idols and remove them both from their hearts and their
pockets. . . . Thus, it dishonors Islam to assume that those enlightened people
are going to believe in the idols again. Our enlightened and devout nation will
improve the art of sculpting—which is one of the main motivations behind cultural
progress—to its highest point; and every corner of our country will scream the
reminiscences of our ancestors and descendants to the entire world through these
magnifcent statues.
(Atatürk 1952)
The speech also suggested an efort to legitimize sculpture from an Islamic point of view,
which indicates Kemal Atatürk’s search for ways to proliferate and maintain the order.
Lastly, the speech also recognizes this art form as an important tool in achieving the
Kemalist national goal, as well as an acid test to determine those who were not in favor of
the new regime and those who were eager to be part of it.
73. For a list of donors for the erection of a monument in Taksim, see Banoğlu 1973. This
book contains some of the original documents about the statue since the originals and
some records regarding the fnancial issues disintegrated when the municipal library
moved to a new place in the 1970s.
74. According to ofcial documents that this author located in the Republic of Turkey Pres-
idential State Republican Archives (hereafter BCA) in Ankara, sculptors from various
European countries applied to Turkish ofcials to make statues and monuments in early
republican Turkey. Heinrich Krippel and Pietro Canonica were the most successful, pro-
ducing more statues and monuments than anyone else. Anton Hanak and Rudolf Belling
are also worth mentioning here. Hanak produced only one monument, erected in Ankara
in 1934. Belling created a monument dedicated to Ismet Inönü, Atatürk’s successor, in
1942. However, it was not seen in public until 1982 (see below). For related sample decree
laws, see BCA, ‘026 62 5’, ‘11 39 3’ and ‘88 72 1’. It is important to stress that all the
decree laws relating to statues erected before Atatürk died included the word ‘Ghazi’ or
‘president’ in the body of the text, and all of them were signed by Atatürk as president as
well as by various ministers, including the prime minister.
75. Toprak 1982, 9. Today, these periodicals are the only extant committee reports. As men-
tioned above, the originals were lost or left behind the relocation of the municipality
archives in the 1970s.
76. Gür 2006, 70–71.
77. Reported in İstanbul Şehremâneti Mecmuası, November 1925, Year 2, 12 August 1925,
p. 426.
78. Reported in İstanbul Şehremâneti Mecmuası, November 1925, Year 2, Number 15,
pp. 113–114.
79. According to a state decree, one of these hopefuls included the French sculptor Hippolyte
Louis Dutheil, who submitted his ‘voici du reste mon curriculum vitae’ to the consulate of
Turkey in France on 18 March 1938. For the related decree, see BCA ‘030.10.202.377.13’.
80. Milliyet. 16 March 1926.
81. Milliyet. 16 March and 30 March 1926.
82. Milliyet. 30 March and 2 April 1926.
83. Hakimiyet-i Milliye. 5 April 1926.
84. Milliyet. 2 April 1926.
85. Yeni Ses. 4 October 1926. This translation might sound awkward, but that is deliberate
and intended to refect the awkwardness of the original Turkish text.
86. Yeni Ses. 4 October 1926.
87. Yeni Ses. 4 October 1926.
88. Elibal 1973, 194: taken from İstanbul Şehremâneti Mecmuası, October 1926, Year 3,
Number 26, p. 69.
89. ‘Interview with Heinrich Krippel’, Cumhuriyet, 7 December 1927, p. 4.
90. Rifki’s criticism also refers to the way in which intellectuals criticized the statues of
Atatürk sculpted by foreign sculptors in the sense that they did not provided aesthetic
criticisms directly related to the artworks. This was the canon of such criticisms through-
out the monumental propaganda of the early republic.
91. Hakimiyet-i Milliye. 5 April 1926. The ofcial daily ended the news by informing the pub-
lic that the Ministry of Education was already in contact with ‘two of the best sculptors of
the world’, Wilvow from France and Klemike from Germany. The names have undoubt-
edly been misspelled, and it has not been possible to identify these sculptors. There is no
name that resembles Klemike in Oktay Aslankaya’s book about Austrian historians and
artists in Turkey—Aslankaya 1993.
92. Hakimiyet-i Milliye. 5 April 1926.
93. However, it is hard to say that it had all been planned from the beginning, because there
is no document that proves it. Even if the new regime planned a monumental propaganda
campaign right after Kemal Atatürk’s speech in Bursa Sark Sinemasi, they soon realized
that poorly designed monuments were not expressing the greatness of the emergence of
the new Turkish nation and needed to take certain measures such as introducing standards
for statues. This standardization remains an unsolved issue in present-day Turkey.
94. For the frst critical account in Turkish on the subject, which contextualises the statues in
terms of Turkey’s nation building process in the early Republican period, see Gür 2001.
95. About four months before the unveiling of the statue in Sarayburnu, a bust of Atatürk
was unveiled in June 1926 in the garden of the School of Agriculture in İzmir—Resimli
Gazette, October 1926, p. 8; November 1926, p. 8.
96. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art22 [accessed 24.7.2020].
97. Tiryakioğlu 1971, 5.
98. For the list of donors, see Banoglu 1973.
99. Elibal 1973, 205–208.
100. Demirkan 1968, 1–4.
101. Clark 1995, 23.
102. See Chatterjee, this volume, Chapter 5.
103. Young 1993, 6.
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Index
Page numbers in italic indicate a fgure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the
corresponding page.
Abdülaziz 231–232 Antiquarie prospetiche romane 156
Abdülhamid II 233, 234, 236 Antiquities of Constantinople 229
Abdülmecid I 230 Antoninus Pius: bust at Athens 68
Abdulmecid II 237 Antonio da San Marino 161
Abu Haggag, Islamic saint 36 Antverpia 180–181; Antwerp 177–178, 180,
Abu Simbel, colossi of 42–43 181
Adiabene 106 Aphrodite of Cnidus 186
Aemilius Paulus 153 Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius 109
Afyon, Turkey, Monument to Unknown Apollo 157, 158, 160, 161, 162, 165, 235;
Soldier 236 statue of at Athens 107; statue of at
Agnello, Ludovico 156 Constantinople 107
Agrippa, M. Vipsanius: monument dedicated Apollonios of Tyana 109
to at Athens 60 Appuleius Varus, P. 62, 63
Ahmed III 229 Aristogeiton see Harmodios and Aristogeiton
Akbari, Susanne Conklin 115 Arnolfo di Cambio 124
Alberini (elite Roman family): house of 151, 152 Arran, Charles Butler, 1st Earl of 212, 213
Albertini, Francesco 159 Asquith, Herbert: statue of 10
Alexander the Great 23, 235 Assassin’s Creed: Origins 42
Alexander II (of Russia) 234 Aston, Nigel 212–213
Alexander VI (Pope) 147, 155–158, 160, 165 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 227, 236–247, 245,
Alexander Sarcophagus 235 246, 248
Alexandria 111–112, 233, 235 Athene: statue of at Constantinople 107, 226
Alexiad, the 115 Athens, ancient: Acropolis as setting for
Alexios I Comnenos 115 statues 70; agora, statues in 56–80, 59;
Al-Nablusi 43 Bouleuterion 59, 68, 70; City Eleusinion
Amenemhat III 43 58, 61, 69; imperial cult at 68; Library
Ameneminet, Egyptian priest: tomb of 41–42 of Pantainos 56, 57, 62, 70, 71; Metroon
Amenhotep III 38, 41, 42–43, 48, 49 59, 68, 70; Odeion of Agrippa 59, 66;
Amenhotep son of Hapu, Egyptian scribe: Panathenaic Way 59, 60–66, 68, 70, 72,
statue of 48, 49 59; post-Herulian wall 57, 58, 59, 60,
America: fate of pre-War of Independence 63, 70; Roman Agora 59, 60, 62, 65, 70,
statues 215 72; Southwest Temple 66; statuary habit
Amun 35, 36, 46 at 7, 23, 56–80; statues brought from to
Anderson, Benjamin 102, 105 Constantinople 108; Stoa of Attalos 56,
Andromeda 184 57–60, 59, 60–66, 68, 72; Stoa of Zeus
Ankara 237, 238, 240, 242 Eleutherios 59, 66, 68; Temple of Ares 59,
Anna Comnena 115 66, 68, 66, 68; Tholos 59, 70–71
Anne, Queen (of England) 2, 4–5, 197, 198, Attaleia: statues brought from to
200, 207, 210, 211–212, 214 Constantinople 108
Antioch: statues brought from to Attalos II: foundation for statue at Athens
Constantinople 108 60, 68
Antipatros of Phlya: statue of at Athens 62 Attlee, Clement: statues of 6, 10
258 Index
Augustus 155, 204, 217; Prima Porta statue Cafà, Valeria 147, 151–152
of 10 Cafarelli (elite Roman family): house of 151,
Aurelian 81 152, 156
Aurelius Appianus: statue at Athens 70, 72 Cairo 233
Calvete de Estrella, Juan Cristobal 180, 184
Bacchus 154, 155, 162, 164, 233 Calzonibus, Giovanni Paolo de 161, 162
Bacon, John Jr. 208 Cambridge 213
Baghdad 235 Camerino, Signore of 159
Baines, John 36, 37, 39 Cameron, Averil 102, 105
Bakenkhonsu, High Priest at Karnak 38 Canning, George: statue of 10–11, 24
Balfour, Arthur: statue of 10 Canonica, Pietro 245–246
Baltes, Elizabeth 66 Cape Town, University of 16
Bandinelli, Baccio 135, 137 Carafa, Cardinal Oliviero 150–151,
Banksy 18 156–157, 158
Barberini, Taddeo 159 Carpentiere, Andries 210
Barey, Antoine-Louis 232 Carr, Annemarie Weyl 114–115
Barnard, John 209, 211 Cavit Bey 237
Bartholdi, Frédéric 233 Ceen, Allan 164
bases see pedestals Cellini, Benvenuto 124, 133–141, 134
Bassett, Sarah 102, 105 Cesarini (elite Roman family): house of 150,
Behzad, Isa 235 151, 158
Bell, Lanny 36 Cesarini, Cardinal Giulio 159
Benjamin, Anna 63 Chaldeia: statues brought from to
Berger, Albrecht 102 Constantinople 108
Bezm- i Alem 230 Chambers of Rhetoric, amateur players of
Bilezikçi, Pascal Artin 231, 233 177, 188–189
Biondo, Flavio 155 Charles I (of England) 196, 199, 200, 204,
Bird, Francis 207, 212, 213 208
Black Lives Matter 14, 18, 19 Charles II (of England) 200, 204, 205, 206,
Blenheim Palace 4–5 207, 208, 212, 213–214, 218
Boccaccio 139 Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) 177, 182,
Bonheur, Isidor-Jules 232 183
Book of Ceremonies 114–115 Charlottesville, Virginia 16, 19
Book of the Celestial Cow 34 chauve statues see Hathor
Boyne, Battle of the 198, 208, 209 Cheere Company 198
Bramante 161 Cheere, Henry 201, 212–213
Breda, Treaty of 206 Cheere, John 208, 210
Brescia, Jacopo da: palazzo of 165 Chigi, Agostino 160, 161
Bristol 14, 18, 24, 197, 198, 209, 210, 211, Chioggia, church of San Domenico 131, 132,
212, 216, 217 133
British Museum 32, 235 Chios: statues brought from to
Bronze Age, statues 22, 24, 32–55 Constantinople 108
Bruges 182–184, 183 Christ: depictions of 6, 21, 25, 111, 113,
Brunelleschi, Filippo 136, 137, 141 114, 115, 140–141, 188; see also crucifx
Brussels 184, 185, 186, 187 Christensen, Charles 93
Buda 228 Churches: as public space 127–128; as
Bulgaria 234–235 settings for sculpture 102, 127–133
Buondelmonte, Christoforo 229 Churchill, Winston: statues of 6, 9–12, 15–16
Burch, Samuel 209 City Maiden: performance of 180–181
Burchard, Johannes 150, 156, 158–159 Civil War, English 195, 197, 198, 203, 212,
Burckhardt, Jacob 154 218
Bursa 238, 243 Clarendon, Edward Hyde (1st Earl of) 212,
Butler, Charles see Arran, Charles Butler, 1st 213
Earl of Clark, Katerina 247
Butler, James see Ormond, James Butler, frst Claudii Metelli: late antique family
Duke of monument of at Athens 70
Buzarov 234 Claudius: statue at Athens 68
Index 259
Claudius Sopsis: statue at Athens 60 Deir el-Medina 39–40
Clement VII (Pope) 166 Delabriére, Paul-Édouard 232
Clerk, William 206–207 Della Valle (elite Roman family): house of
Clough, Richard 177 150, 151, 156, 162, 166; statue of Pan in
Coecke van Aelst, Pieter 229 collection 163
Cole, Michael 139 Della Valle, Bartolomeo 166
Colleoni, Bartolemeo 176 Della Valle, Bishop Andrea 166
colossi see statues, scale of Delos 23
Colston, Edward: statue of 14, 16, 18, 19, Demosthenes 108; statue of 57
22, 24, 216 Denon, Dominique-Vivant 43
Columbus, Christopher: statues of 14, 19 Diana 155, 162
Commentaries of Pius II 161 Dickenson, Christopher 57
Constantine the Great 23, 102, 105, 106, Disraeli, Benjamin: statues of 6, 10–11
108, 109, 226, 227, 236 Divine Comedy, The 125–127
Constantinople 23, 102–120; Arab siege of Donatello 24, 123, 135, 136, 137, 176, 228
109; Augoustion 106–107; Blacharnai Doumas, Louis Joseph 232
church 114, 115; Church of the Holy Dublin 197, 207, 208, 209, 210
Apostles 227; Forum of Arkadios 109; Dufort, Antony 6–7, 8
Forum of the Ox 109; Golden Gate 227; Duke of Cumberland see William Augustus,
Hagia Sophia 102, 106, 227; Hippodrome Prince, Duke of Cumberland
102, 103, 108, 109, 110, 112, 115, 227, Dupuys, Remy 182, 183, 184
228–230, 234; Kynegion 107; Mese Dursley, Gloucestershire 212
102, 103; Obelisk of Theodosius I 102; Dutch Revolt 177
Ottoman conquest in 1453 227, 228;
Sack of in Fourth Crusade 103, 110, 115, Edinburgh 200, 203–207, 205, 208, 218
116, 226, 227; Serpent Column 227, 228; Egypt ancient: statues in 22, 24, 32–55, 70
Sublime Port 237; Xylokerkos Gate Egypt, Ottoman 233
109–110; see also Istanbul Eleusis: Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at
Cordier, Charles-Henri-Joseph 233 58, 70
Corio, Bernardino 155–156 Elliot, George: statue of 16
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome 150 Elmes, James 199
Corvinus, Matthias 228 Emin Bey, mayor of Istanbul 238
Craftsman, The (periodical) 198, 199, Enlightenment, The 194, 216
211 Erasmus, Desiderius 176
Crete: statues brought from to Esna, temple in Egypt 35
Constantinople 108 Estcourt, Thomas 212
Criado Perez, Caroline 14, 19 Etruscan sculpture 23
Critical Review (pamphlet) 197, 199 Euphranor, ancient sculptor 66
Cromwell, Oliver 200, 204 Eustathios of Thessalonike 115
crosses: as public monuments 200–203 Evagoras: statue of at Athens 66
crucifx 121–146, esp. 123 and 127–133 Eyck, Jan van 182
crucifxion: staged by living statues 188
Crusade, Fourth, assault on Constantinople Fagiolo, Marcello 155, 164
103, 110, 115, 116 Fawcett, Milicent: statue of 7, 11, 12, 14, 19,
Cybo, Franceschetto 156 21, 22
Cyprus: statues brought from to Feldherr, Andrew 110
Constantinople 108 Ferdinand, Don (Cardinal-Infante), of
Austria 180, 181
Dagron, Gilbert 102, 104–105 Ferrara, Duke of 159
Damnatio memoriae see statues, damnatio Ferri, Giovanni 159, 160
memoriae Ficino, Marsilio 126
Dániel, Sipos 233 Figani (poet) 122
Dante 125–127, 129, 131, 135 First World War 234, 235, 237
D’Aronco, Raimondo 234 Florence 24, 121, 122, 123, 124, 128, 154;
David 125–126; statue by Michelangelo 123, Baptistery 136; Duomo 137; Loggia dei
136, 137 Lanzi 133–134; Orsanmichele 123; 124,
Dawkins, R.M. 102, 104 135, 136, 137; Piazza della Signori 134,
260 Index
135; Porta Romana 123; Porta San Gallo Hadrian VI (Pope) 166
121; San Giovanni 121; Santa Maria del Ḥairan: tomb of at Palymra 91–95, 92, 93
Fiore 123; Santa Maria Novella 140–141 Hakimiyet- i Milliye (newspaper) 240, 242,
Floyd, George 14, 22 243
Fog’s Weekly Journal 211 Haremakhet 44
Fosi, Irene 166 Harmodios and Aristogeiton: statues of 7,
France: Bourbon street monuments 215 57, 66
François d’Anjou 180, 181 Hathor 48
Frederick, Prince of Wales 208 Hatshepsut 47
Free Briton, The 211 Haw, Brian 11–12
free speech debates 2 Hawksmoor, Nicholas 207, 213
Fuad Pasa, Keçecizade 233 healing statues, Egyptian 48–49
Fuller, Charles 232 Heemskerck, Maarten van 150, 157, 164,
166,
Galli, Jacopo 151–152 Heizler, Hippolyte 232
Gandhi, Mahatma: statues of 11–12, 16 Hera: statue of at Constantinople 107
Ganymede, son of Liederic the Waldgrave Herakles/Hercules 102, 157, 233
182 Hercules: statue by Bandinelli 137
Gattamelata: statue of 24, 176, 228 Herrin, Judith 102, 105
Gardner, Julian 121, 123 Herulians, sack of Athens 57, 70; see also
Geagan, Daniel 57, 59, 68 Athens, post-Herulian wall
Gell, Alfred 136 Hesychius of Miletus 226
Genealogy of the Pagan Gods 139 Historia Ecclesiastica 111
Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople 228 History of the Rebellion by Clarendon 212,
Gennep, Arnold van 179 213
George I (of England) 200, 208, 209, 211, Hodegetria, the 115
213 Hogarth, William 196, 197
George II (of England) 198, 200, 208, 210, Horus 44, 48–49
211 House of Commons, London 6–7, 9, 21
Germanos, Patriarch of Constantinople 111 Houwaert, Jean Baptiste 186, 187
Ghent 182, 189 Hull 197, 201, 202, 209, 211, 212
Ghent Altarpiece 182, 189 Hummelen, Wim 188
Giacomo of Bevagna 131, 132, 140 Hunt, John M. 158
Gibbons, Grinling 199, 205, 208 Hurlbut, Jesse 179
Giovanni da Tolentino 156 Hussein, Saddam: statue of 22
Giovio, Paolo 159 Hünername (Book of Talents) 228, 229
Gilles, Pierre 229 hyperrealism 1, 20–21, 22
Glasgow 201, 203–207, 211
Glavany, Faustin 233 Ibrahim Pasa, Grand Vizier 228, 229, 233, 235
Globe Theatre, the 179 iconoclasm: in Byzantine culture 106, 111,
Glorious Revolution, the 198, 199, 204, 205, 113–115, 226, 228, 247; Protestant in
208, 213, 216 Britain 200
Good Friday Agreement, the 198 idols and idolatry 21, 25, 115–116, 125; see
grafti on statues 14, 49 also iconoclasm
Greece: ancient, statues in 22, 25, 32, 33, Ikonion: statues brought from to
35 (see also Athens, ancient); infuence of Constantinople 109
statues on later periods (see statues, Greek Ingersoll, Richard 155
and Roman, later infuence of) Ingholt, Harold 91–92
Gregory XIV (Pope) 162 Innocent VIII (Pope) 147–148, 150, 155
Grifn, Kenneth 36–37 Innocent X (Pope) 162; on statue bases 3,
Grub Street Journal, The 211 6, 16, 57, 61, 68, 70, 86, 156, 206; on
Guildhall, London 6, 7, 8, 9, 22 statues 162; see also grafti on statues
Invisible Women project 14
Habermas, Jurgen 216 Ireland 206, 208, 209, 211
Habsburg dynasty 176, 177, 179, 180, 181, Isaac II, Byzantine Emperor 109
184 Islam, aniconism of 228, 235
Hadrian: statues of at Athens 66, 68 Ismail Pasa, Khedive 233
Index 261
Istanbul 226–256; Aviation Martyrs’ kouroi statues 22
Monument 235, 236; Beyazıt Square 236, Krippel, Heinrich 238, 239, 242, 243
237, 247; Beylerbeyi Palace 232; Çıragan Kyllos, Ti. Flavius: statue of at Athens 63
Palace 230, 232; Dolmabahçe Palace 230, Kyzikos, statues brought from to
232, 237; Freedom Monument 235, 236; Constantinople 108
German Fountain 234; Gezi Park 233;
Hamidiye Mosque 234; Obelisks 227, Lakey, Christopher 124
228, 230; Ok Meydanı 229; Russian War Landjuweel (theatre competition in Antwerp)
Memorial 234; Sarayburnu, monument 177
of Attaturk at 236, 238, 239, 241, 242, Lampridio, Benedetto 161
243, 244, 245; St. Esprit Cathedral 233; Land of the Pharaohs (flm) 37
Sultanahmet Square 235, 236, 237, 247; Langford, Paul 216
Taksim Square 236, 237, 238, 244, 247; League of Nations, Covenant of 244
Topkapı Palace 227, 230, 232, 237, 244; Lee, Robert E.: statues of 14, 15, 16, 19, 22
Yıldız Palace 236; see also Constantinople Legaré, Anne-Marie 185
Izmir 236, 237, 238; see also Smyrna Leo III (Byzantine Emperor) 114
Leonardo da Vinci 156
Jacobite cause and rebellions 198, 204, 208, Leo X (Pope) Leo X (Pope) 148, 158,
212–215 159–163, 164, 165, 166, 167
Jacobsen, Carl 90 Le Sueur, Herbert 199, 200, 208
Jacquemart, Henri-Marie-Alfred 233 Liber Chronicarum (Book of Chronicles)
James I (of England) 212 229, 230
James II (of England) 199, 205, 207, Liber Insularum Archipelagi (Book of the
214–215 Islands of the Archipelago) 229
James, Liz 102, 105, 226 Liederic the Waldgrave 182
January, god: statue of at Constantinople liminality 179–182, 184, 188, 189
107 Lincoln, Abraham: statue of 11
Joanna of Castile 184–186, 185 Livia: statue at Athens 68
John Lydos 106–107 Lives of the Artists 122–123, 136
John the Baptist 121, 182 Lloyd George, David: statues of 10, 11, 12
Jolife, William 210 London 195, 197, 198, 199, 204, 207, 208,
Jorge da Costa, Cardinal 156 209, 212, 215; Bank of England 201,
joyous entries 176–193 209; Cavendish Square 198, 199; Charing
Judith and Holofernes, statue by Donatello Cross 197, 199, 200, 204; Great Conduit,
136, 137 Cheapside 197, 209; Great Fire of 195,
Julius Caesar: statues at Athens 60, 65 209; Greenwich Hospital 207; Grosvenor
Julius II (Pope) 147, 148, 155, 158–159, 160 Square 211; Pall Mall (statue of Florence
Juno 185, 186 Nightingale) 235; St Jame’s Square 207,
Justinian I 106, 227, 247 209; St Paul’s Cathedral 207; Westminster
Justinian II 114 Abbey 21, 198, 207; Whitehall 198, 199,
200, 207, 208, 215; see also Guildhall;
Kaisereia: statues brought from to House of Commons; Parliament Square;
Constantinople 108 Trafalgar Square
Kaldellis, Anthony 115 Lorich, Melchior 229
Kallinikos, Patriarch of Constantinople 114 Louis XIV 206, 218
Kara Kemal 237 Louvain 184
Karnak 34, 37, 38, 39, 48 Low Countries 176–193
Karnak cachette 33n6, 36n26 Lucius Verus: possible bust in Athens 68
Keizer, Hendrick de 176 Lutatius, Quintus: statue at Athens
Kernodle, George 179 60–61
King, Dr William 213 Luxor see Karnak
Kleopatra of Myrrhinoutte: family Løytved, Julius 90
monument of at Athens 60
Knox, John 206 Macrea, James 204
Konon, Athenian general: statue of at Athens Madame Tussauds 20
66 Madonna, Maria Luisa 155, 164
Konya 233, 240, 242 Magdalino, Paul 105, 111
262 Index
Magnus, T. Cl. Jason: statue of at Athens 63, 64 Nelson, Horatio: statue of 13
Mahmud II 230, 233, 240 Neptune 162
Mandela, Nelson: statue of 11–12, 15, 16 Netherlands see Low Countries
Mango, Cyril 102, 104 Nicetas Choniates 115, 116
Mantegna, Andrea 153 Nightingale, Florence 235
Mantzikert, Battle of 115 Nikaia 109, 113, 114
Manuel Chrysoloras 108 Nost, John 203, 204, 211
Marcus Aurelius 217; equestrian statue in Nota d’Anticaglie 156
Rome 24, 199; possible bust in Athens 68; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen 90
statue wrongly identifed as, Renaissance
Rome 165 Odorico, Paolo 106
Mars 155, 160–161, 204 Ormond, James Butler, frst Duke of 212,
Marsyas 162 214
Massimi (elite Roman family): house of 150, Orsini (elite Roman family), houses of 150,
151, 152, 156 156, 162
Matelli, Tony see Sleepwalker Orsini, Clarice 159
Matthias, Archduke 186, 187, 189 Osgan, Yervant 235
Maximos the Confessor, Patriarch of Osiris 46, 233
Constantinople 111 Osman Hamdi Bey 235
Medici, Duke Cosimo I de 134–135, 141 Ottoman Empire 226–236, 237, 241, 244,
Medici 160, 165; Villa 166 247–248; Tanzimat period 230, 233, 234
Mehmed II 227–228, 233 Ottoman Imperial Museum 236
Mehmed Ali, Kavalalı 235 Oxford 212–215; Bodleian Library 214; Oriel
Mehmed Ali Pasa (governor of Egypt) 233 College 16, 215; Radclife Camera 213;
Mehmed Münif Pasa 233 Sheldonian Theatre 212–214; as evidence
Memnon, Colossi of 42–43 for statues 91–95, 156, 166, 228–230;
Memphis 34 compared to sculpture 122, 124–127;
Mercury 161, 162 relationship to ‘living statues’ 182–184
Mesopotamia: and the earliest statues 3n6,
22, 24, 36 Pallas see Minerva
Mesrur Izzet 235 Palmerston, 3rd Viscount (Henry John
Michelangelo 123, 135, 136, 137, 140, 152, Temple): statue of 10, 11
233 Palmyra 24, 81–101; column consoles for
Milliyet (newspaper) 239, 241 statues 86–88; types of tombs at 81–83;
Mimesis: Greek theory of 24; see also statues, monumentalisation of 84–85
realism of Palmyra Portrait Project 83
Min 35, 36 Pan 162, 163, 164
Minerbetti, Bernardetto, Bishop 138–139 Pankhurst, Emmeline: statues of 14, 19, 22
Minerva 160–161, 185 Paolo di Giovanni 121
Mitchell, Don 5 paragone debate, in Renaissance Italy 122,
Mokesos: statues brought from to 125, 136
Constantinople 108 Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai 103, 106,
Monte, Cardinal Antonio Maria Ciocchi del 108, 110, 111, 112
158, 162 Paris, judgment of 184–186
Moral Treatise on the Eye 124 Parliament Square, London 7, 8–9, 10–12,
Muhittin Bey, mayor of Istanbul 240, 241 14, 15
Muir, Edward 179 Pasquino 150, 152, 156, 157–158, 160, 161,
museums: as settings for statues 13, 18 162, 164
Patinir, Joachim 182–184
Naldini, Giambattista 165 Patria 103, 106–111, 112
Napoleon 233 Paul II (Pope) 155
Narni, Erasmio di: statue of (see Paul III (Pope) 166
Gattamelata: statue of) Pausanias 56, 57, 60, 66, 67, 68, 70
Nasuh, Matrakçı 229 pedestals 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 20, 22,
Naturalis Historia (Natural History) 125, 24, 49, 60–61, 62, 63, 68, 111, 112–113,
188 136–137, 139, 156, 162, 206, 239–240
Nazif, Süleyman 235 Peel, Robert: statue of 10, 12
Index 263
Pehenwikai: tomb of in Egypt 44 infuence of); statuary practices 23, 32, 33,
Penni, Jacopo 159, 161, 162, 163 85, 89, 105, 218; Trajan’s Column 201,
Perikles 70 218; triumphs 153
Perseus and Medusa: statue by Cellini 124, Rome, Renaissance 140, 147–175; Arch of
133–141, 134, 138 Constantine 149, 154, 156, 166; Arcus
Peruzzi, Baldassare 160, 165 Novus 166; Cardinals’ College 152; Casa
Peter of Limoges 124 di Crescenzio 148; Castel Sant’Angelo 159,
Petrarch, Francesco 124–127, 154, 161 160; Curia 152; Largo Argentina 158;
Petrucci, Rafaello 160 Palazzo Spada-Capodiferro 166; Piazza di
Pharaoh: depictions and statues of 35, Parione 150, 155, 156, 158, 162; Piazza
42–44, 47 di Pasquino (see Rome, Piazza di Parione);
Philae: Egyptian temple 35 Piazza San Marco 156; Sack of in 1527
Philip I (the Fair) of Castille 184 149, 166; San Celso 156; San Giovanni
Philip II of Spain 141, 176, 177, 180, 181, 156; San Marco 150, 155, 156; St John
186 Lateran 147, 156, 168; The Vatican 147,
Philippikos, Byzantine emperor 108 156, 159, 161, 165; Via Papalis 147–167;
Phokas 112–113 Villa Borghese 166; Villa Medici 166;
Pichi (elite Roman family): house of 151, 152 Zecca, the (Papal mint) 161, 165
Pietà, by Michelangelo 140 Rosenmeyer, Patricia 49
Pisano, Giovanni 128–129 de’ Rossi (elite Roman family): house of 150,
Plato 121 156, 158–159, 162, 167
plinths see pedestals Rotterdam 176
Pliny the Elder 125, 188 Rouillard, Pierre Louis 232
Plutarch 153 della Rovere (elite Roman family) 159
Pointer, John 214 Rubin, Pat 123
possesso (Roman papal procession) Russo-Ottoman War 234
147–175 Rustat, Tobias 207, 215
Praxiteles 186, 188 Rysbrack, John Michael 4, 197, 213, 217
prophecy in Byzantine culture 105–106
Ptah 33, 34 Safa, Peyami 235
public space: nature of 5–6; in ancient Egypt Saint Mark: statue by Donatello 123
32–33, 36, 49, 50; in ancient Athens 70 Saint Paul: statue of 121
Saint Peter: statue of 121
Quinn, Marc 18 Sangallo, Antonio da (the Younger) 165
San Nicola (church in Pisa) 128–129
Ralph, James 197, 199, 209 Sanuto, Marino 161
Ramesses II 42 Sardis: statues brought from to
Raphael 164, 165, 167 Constantinople 108
Ravenna, Battle of 159 Sassi (elite Roman family): collection of
Read’s Weekly Journal 211 156
Reid, Jen: statue of 18 Sasso d’Amateschi: house of 150, 157, 165
relics 113, 114 Satala: statues brought from to
Restoration, The 194, 196, 200, 204, Constantinople 108
205–206, 213, 214 Schedel, Hartmann 229
Reynolds, Anne 157 Scheemakers, Peter 201, 202
Rhodes 23; statues brought from to Schmalz, Geofrey 66
Constantinople 108 Scotland 204, 206
Rhodes, Cecil: statues of 16–17, 19, 22, 216 sculptors 6, 18, 24, 66, 123, 124, 133–140,
Rhodes, P.J. 57 140–155, 176, 186, 188, 199, 200, 201,
#RhodesMustFall 16, 19 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212–213, 228,
Riccardi, Lee Ann 63 230–231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 244,
Rıfkı, Falih 240, 242, 243 245–246; in ancient Egypt 33; in
Romano, Marco 129, 130 Renaissance Italy 121, 123–124, 128–129
Rome, ancient: Arch of Constantine 154, Sebasteia: statues brought from to
156, 166; Arcus Novus 166; Arch of Titus Constantinople 108
217; infuence of statues on later periods Sehir Emaneti Mecmusı (journal) 239
(see statues, Greek and Roman, later Sekhmet 38, 39, 40
264 Index
Seleukeia: statues brought from to of 24–25, 36, 44, 49–50; materials of 3,
Constantinople 108 6, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 33,
Selim III 230 34, 46, 60, 62, 63, 70, 84–86, 89–91,
Senenmut, Egyptian ofcial: statue of 47 102, 108, 109, 110, 127–133, 135, 137,
Sennefer, Mayor of Thebes: statue of and his 139, 162, 163, 176, 198, 199, 201, 207,
wife 48 214, 226, 227, 232, 234; as monuments
Serif, Ihsan 235 3, 4–13, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22–25; moving
Sester, Christian and Rosa 233 and talking 107–108, 111–112; painted
Shakespeare 179 (see statues, polychromy); pedestals of (see
Shearman, John 137 pedestals); polychromy 3, 21, 91, 95, 127,
Sheldon, Bishop Gilbert 212, 214 135; as portraits 3, 12, 21, 23, 25, 44–49,
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, memorial to 19, 21, 24 56–80, 81–84, 86, 95, 112, 113, 201, 232,
Sicily: statues brought from to 233; in processions 38–40, 48, 147–175;
Constantinople 109 prophecy, sources of 105–106; and
Sidon 235 publicness 4–13, 22–26; realism of 20–21,
Simmons, Neil 6, 7 22–24, 44, 49, 50, 122; repurposing 44,
Sixtus IV (Pope) 147, 148, 155 48, 147–175, 228; rituals directed towards
Sleepwalker by Tony Matelli 1–3, 2, 8, 9, 35, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 49, 130; scale
12–13, 19, 20, 21–22 of 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 32, 33, 35, 42–44, 48,
Smuts, Jan: statue of 10, 11 49, 60, 63, 102, 107, 109, 121, 122, 123,
Smyrna: statues brought from to 131, 232, 239–240, 243; touching statues
Constantinople 108 13, 21, 48, 130; vandalism of 7, 11, 14,
Soderini, Piero 123 16, 22, 46, 103 (see also grafti on statues)
Sofa, Bulgaria 234 statue wars 13–18, 215–216
Soggi, Nicolò 162 Stewart, Andrew 57
Sophist, The 122, 123, 131 Stinger, Charles 154–155
South, Robert 214 Strode, Colonel William 198, 200
Spadafora, David 194 Suavi, Ali 235
Spagnola, Maddalena 158 Subhi, Abdüllatif 233
Sphinx of Giza 43–44 Suetonius 195
spolia 148, 149, 153, 154, 166 Suez Canal: monuments planned by Faustin
Stalli (elite Roman family): collection of 156 Glavany 233
Statue of Liberty 6n11, 233 Sükrü Ali Bey, vice mayor of Istanbul 239
statues: access to 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 32–33, 34, Süleyman I 228, 229
35–38, 41, 42–44, 45–49, 50, 70, 127, Surname- i Humayun (The Imperial Festival
230, 232; of animals 232, 233, 235; as Book) 229
art 1–2, 3, 6, 8, 12, 13, 18, 19, 21, 24, Surname of Vehbi 229
25, 121–146, 242; bases (see pedestals);
collecting of 148–154, 155, 156, 158–159, tableaux vivants 176–193
162, 163–167; colossal statues (see Tacitus 195
statues, scale of); and damnatio memoriae Tafuri, Manfredo 164
195, 218; dictionary defnition of 3; tapestries 182–184, 188
diferentiated from sculpture 2–3, 8, Tek, Vedat 235
123–124; dressed in clothes 157, 160, Tell Edfu 33, 35
162; in elevated position 85, 86–89, Temperance: image of 186, 187, 188
95, 121–146; equestrian 13, 14, 24, 60, temples: as settings for statues 33, 34, 44, 47,
109, 176, 195, 197, 198–200, 201, 204, 66, 68, 70
205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 211, 227, 228, Thatcher, Margaret 6; statues of 6–8, 7,
232, 233, 234, 235, 243; on facades of 9–10, 12; waxwork at Madame Tussauds
buildings 16, 19, 22, 166, 212–215; of 20
gods 33–35, 37–42, 46–48, 66, 102, Theodosius I 102, 108
107, 147, 154; Greek and Roman, later Theophanes the Confessor, Chronicle of 103,
infuence of 184, 186, 195, 199, 201, 112, 113–115
204–205, 208, 217, 228; history of 22–24; Theophylact Simocatta, History of 111–113
as icons 3, 19–22 (see also idols and Thessalians, Koinon of 63
idolatry; statues, of gods); lifelikeness of Ti: tomb chapel of at Saqqara 45
(see statues, realism of); living presence Tiberius: statue of at Athens 68
Index 265
Times of the Day: Night by William Hogarth Vanburgh, John 207
195–196 Varchi, Benedetto 122, 136
Timotheos: statue of at Athens 66 Vasari, Giorgio 122–123, 158, 162
Tiryakioglu, Samih 244 Vavassore, Giovanni Andrea 229
Toleration Act of 1689 195 Venus 148, 160–161, 164, 185, 186, 188,
Tombs: as settings for statues 33, 41–42, 233; Capitoline 186; Medici 186; see also
44–45, 81, 233 Aphrodite
Tory Party 197, 204, 207, 211, 212, 215 Verrocchio 176
Trachtenberg, Marvin 135, c Virgin Mary 126, 182; statues of 121, 130,
Trafalgar Square, London 13, 196, 204 140
Trajan: column of 201, 218; in the Divine Vita Constantini 226
Comedy 125; market of 201; statues at
Athens 68, 69 Walpole, Robert 196, 200, 210, 211
Tralles: statues brought from to Warburg, Aby 154
Constantinople 108 waxworks 20
Travers, Samuel 207–210 Wellesley College, Massachusetts 1, 8–9, 12, 13
Triumph of Bacchus, painting by Maarten Whig Party 197, 198–199, 207, 209, 210,
van Heemskerck 164 211, 212, 213, 216
triumphal arches 147, 148, 153, 154, 156, Wilhelm II (of Germany) 233, 234
158, 159, 160, 163, 164–166, 177, 178, William Augustus, Prince, Duke of
179, 180, 230 Cumberland 198–200, 204
Triumphs of Caesar, painting by Andrea William III (of England) 197, 198, 199, 200,
Mantegna 153 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 207–212, 213,
Tucker, Barbara 11 215, 216, 217
Turing, Alan: monument to 19 William of Orange 184, 186
Turkish War of Independence 236, 237, 241, Windsor Castle 207
243, 245–246, 247 Winkelmann, Johann Joachim 148
Turner, Edith 179, 186 Woodhead, Geofrey 57
Turner, Victor 179, 186
Tutankhamun 34 Xenokles of Rhamnous: statue at Athens
Tyana: statues brought from to 60–61
Constantinople 109
tyrranicides, Athenian see Harmodios and Yeni Ses (newspaper) 240
Aristogeiton Yofee, Norman 36, 39
Yon, Jean-Baptiste 81
Udjahorresnet, Egyptian ofcial: statue of
46–47 Zeus: statue of at Athens 66
Urbino, Duke of 159 Zochi, Arnoldo 235

(Routledge Research in Art History) Christopher P. Dickenson - Public Statues Across Time and Cultures-Routledge (2021)

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Public Statues Across Time and Cultures

Christopher P. Dickenson is an independent researcher based in Denmark.

Picturing Courtiers and Nobles from Castiglione to Van Dyck

Iconology, Neoplatonism, and the Arts in the Renaissance

History and Art History

Mobility and Identity in US Genre Painting

The Imperial Patronage of Labor Genre Paintings in Eighteenth-Century China

Public Statues Across Time and Cultures

Mapping Impressionist Painting in Transnational Contexts

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-

List of Figures vii

1 Statues and Public Space: An Introduction 1

2 How Accessible Were Statues in Pharaonic Egypt? 32

3 Portrait Statues in the Athenian Agora in the Roman Period:

4 Populating Public Palmyra: The Display of Statues and Their

5 The Statue in Byzantium: Some Questions and Cases 102

6 Looking Up in Judgement: How to See the Early Modern

7 When Venus Mocked the Pope: Ancient Sculptures in the

8 Monumentalising Burghers of the Low Countries: Living

10 From Empires Past to Nation State: Figurative Public Statues in

1. a. A representation in the round of a person, animal, etc., which is sculptured,

Matelli’s ‘Sleepwalker’ certainly conforms to many aspects of these defnitions. Oth-

as baroness—to be set up in a Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parliament.

Figure 1.4 Antony Dufort FRSS, sculpture of Margaret Thatcher.

Statues and Spaces

Calls for New Statues and ‘Statue Wars’

Public Statues Across Time and Cultures

Somewhat paradoxically, therefore, Egyptian sculpture has often been perceived to

Encountering the Divine

Access and Exclusion

The implication is of an aberrant state of afairs, possibly caused by civil unrest,

a programmatic approach to manufacture, for one or more ritual reasons.43 Such a

Approaching the Colossal

Private Persons and Portraits

Problems of the Evidence

An area corresponding approximately to the Athenian Agora can be designated

First, however, a caveat about provenance and chronology. Unfortunately, the

Figure 3.1 John Travlos, plan of the Post-Herulian Wall, 1984.

Portrait Monuments in Front of the Stoa of Attalos and Along the

come two statues of archons of the Panhellenion, a religious organization established

the Panathenaic Way—included at least the following: a chariot monument on top of

Statues of the Roman Emperors in the Athenian Agora

The Importance of Public Portrait Statues in Athens

Palmyrene Society and the Sculptural Habit in Palmyra—

Figure 4.1 Map of Palmyra, after Schnädelbach, 2010.

The Public Sculptural Environment in Roman Palmyra—Social

Figure 4.7 Statue displayed on column console on street, Palmyra.

Other Media Refecting Trends in the Public Sculptural

The Imitation of Bronze Sculpture in the Local Limestone

Evidence for Public Statuary as Refected in Wall Paintings—The Case of

Figure 4.11 Wall paintings superimposed upon niche model.

Palmyra: One World—Many Habits

The Problem of the Byzantine Statue: The Historical Perspective

On the statue of January—The statue of January is represented as a tetramorph

On the Kynegion—Formerly, the condemned were thrown into the Kynegion;

Athens, Kyzikos, Kaisareia, Tralles, Sardis, Mokesos, Sebasteia, Satala, Chaldeia,

Suitably awed by this vision, the calligrapher recounted it to the authorities.

The Powers and Limits of Icons

The Late Medieval Sculptural Encounter

Looking Up at the Sculpted Crucifx

Figure 6.4 Detail of Figure 6.3.

An Early Modern Sculptural Encounter: Perseus and Medusa

Figure 6.6 Detail of Figure 6.5.

Antique Statues and Public Space: The Via Papalis