Mr. URBAN, ΤΗ house, manor, and park of Theobalds, with his Minister, Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury; whose descendant, the Marquis of Salisbury, is the present owner. "T Church is a handsome fabrick, dedica to St. Etheldreda, and consisting nave, chancel, aisles, and embattledower, with a Chapel, or Burialplace, of the Earls of Salisbury, on the Northde of the chancel. This Chapel was erected by Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury of that surname, but contains neither monumental inscription, nor other memorial, for any of the family, except the founder. His monument is curious: it represents the Earl in his robes, lying on a slab of black marble, which is supported by figures, in white marble, of the Cardinal Virtues, kneeling, in virgin habits, and with their proper attributes. Beneath, on another slab of black marble, the Earl is represented as a skeleton, lying on a well-sculptured mat, in white marble. The Earl died at Marlborough, in May * "The town has frequently had the honour of being recorded as the place where a Synod was held in the year 680; and also as the birth-place of William de Hatfield, second son of Edward the Third: but the real scene of both those transactions was Hatfield in Yorkshire." GENT, MAG. April, 1818. On Sculpture in England, from its in Europe, after the universal pre- + Beauties of England, vol. VII. pp. valence valence of the Goths, originated in its connexion with Architecture. We have no remains of Saxon Sculpture in England excepting in basrelief, of which there are many specimens upon fonts, upon the capitals of pillars, and over door-cases in Church-porches. When those superb temples were erected in France, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which have engrossed the admiration of succeeding ages, pedestals and canopies both for external and interior decoration were added to the infinite number of ornamental particles; by the combination of which, extreme richness was effected. To fill these niches with representations of the human form, required efforts, long dorinant, of imitative art. The statuaries were necessarily inventors of their own mechanical process of sculpture; for all former rules of execution were lost in oblivion, and the art was once more in a state of infancy. Shrines were the first subjects of their ingenuity, and were ornamented with imaginary figures of the Madonna and Saints; and as the skill and number of these rude artists increased, they took their station in the graud fronts of Cathedral Churches. By the Abbot Sugerius, who built Notre Dame at Paris in the eleventh century, mastermasons and carvers in stone were indiscriminately employed, and a consequent improvement made in the practice. The designs were certainly furnished by Ecclesiastics. Six statues, called "La Galerie des Rois," from Childebert to Philip Augustus, first appeared, as attached to the Western front or façade of that. Church *. The superiority of the French sculptors was apparent in the effigies of Dagobert, and the rich portals of the Cathedrals of St. Denis, half a cen tury before carving, so applied, was known, in any degree, in this kingdomt. A general view of Sepulchral Sculpture in England may be communicated by an examination of the Royal tombs, upon which their effigies are placed. In their several reigns, monuments have been likewise erected to the great Nobility, similar in plan, and scarcely inferior in magnificence, to some of which occasional reference will be made. The effigies of Kings and Princes were more frequently of gilded copper, or latten, a mixture of brass and tin §; those of Nobles, of marble or alabaster; but of Ecclesiastics, never of the first mentioned material, for the outlines of portraits deeply engraven on brass are not the subjects of this disquisition. Every Cathedral retains the cumbent statues of its early Bishops, originally painted and gilt. Small variation occurs in the Royal costume; but the strictest imitation has been preserved in other representations of the human form, with respect to thearmour, weapons, professional dress and habiliments, peculiar to the age in which the individual lived, or died. In the effigies of females particularly, scrupulous attention has been paid to the most minute article of dress, or change of fashion; and every perfect sepulchral monument of the middle centuries exhibits a fidelity of description, extremely gratifying to the iu * Montfaucon, Mon. de la Monarchie Fanc.; Millin, Antiq. Nationales. + Le Noir Musée des Mon. Franc. t. 1. p. 153.-The most perfect series of Statues in English Cathedrals, externally applied, and which have escaped the fury of Reformers and Puritans, are those at Wells and Lincoln. Carter, in his "Antient English Sculpture," has sometimes surprised us with single figures, in which the air of the heads and the free cast of the drapery are far beyond what is usually allowed to the capability of Gothic artists. Royal Tombs from 1216 to 1516. King John, alabaster, Worcester. Henry III. latten, or bronze, Westminster. Queen Eleanor, latten or bronze, Westmin ter. Edward II. alabaster, Gloucester. Edward III. bronze, gilt, Westminster. Edward, Prince of Wales, bronze, gilt, Canterbury. Richard II. bronze, gilt, Westminster. Henry IV. alabaster, gilt, Canterbury. Henry V. bronze, head of silver, Westminster. Henry VII. bronze, Westminster. § In Rymer's Fœdera, vol. VII. p. 1795-7, is the contract for the tomb of Anne, Queen of Richard II. with Henry Yvele and Stephen Lite, "citeins et Maçons de Londre," for 400l. to be paid in two years from 1395, "ouvert et fait selone le manere et fourme d'un patren ent fait"-and with Nich. Broker and Godfrey Prest, citeins et Copersmythes, "l'ouvraige de coper et laton endorres." And in the Will of Edward the Black Prince directing his tomb, "d'ouvergne leve de Latoun surrorrez." telligent telligent Antiquary. In this attention to the drapery of Ecclesiastics, or the armour of military meu, the real form is much neglected; yet the outline is generally more correct than the rudeness of the Gothic ages, with respect to classical art, might lead us to expect *. To elucidate a general view by particular instances of the progress of sculpture, as applied to sepulchral monuments, in England, the inquiry must commence with the 13th century, because the architectural statues, neither in point of number, authenticity, nor excellence, before that period, are deserving of particular notice. It is likewise certain, that their best artists were employed on the representations of the dead. No accuracy either of form or feature was required in the imaginary Saints with which their shrines were decorated; and they are therefore usually inferior to sepulchral figures, both as to design and finishing-Carter has engraven several which will not be considered as unequal. The first, in chronological order, of the Royal effigies is that of King John, in the Cathedral of Worcester, though doubts are entertained of its having been finished soon after he died. It is (as others are, erected in this age) of alabaster, and painted to resemble life, and the armour or habiliment then in use. Those of bronze or laten gilt are in every respect superior as works of art, with the single exception of the recumbent statue of Edward II. on his tomb at Gloucester, which was erected by his illustrious son about the year 1334; the precise date of that of John of Eltham in Westminster Abbey, which is nearly similar in material and plan. Artists had been procured from Italy by Ware, Abbot of Westminster, in the reign of Edward I. to some of whom the two last mentioned may be fairly attributed. Pietro Cavallini was a painter, and it is improbable that he established a school of sculpture in England. The canopy, composed of a series of tabernacle work, rising to a pyramid, nearly resembles those of the monuments of the Scaligeri, Lords of Verona, now remaining in an open street of that city, of the same age, and which are ably delineated and described in the 13th volume of the Archæologia. By means of a mask of wax or plaster taken from the face immediately after death, the most accurate likeness of our Monarchs may be still seen on their tombs, several of which have been *Philippa Duchess of York, 1431, at Westminster; Alice Duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme, Oxfordshire; and Elin or Clifford Lady Percy at Beverley, in Yorkshire; are among the most beautiful in the fifteenth century. There is a peculiarity in the effigies of John Beaufort Duke of Somerset and his Lady, in Winborne Minster; and of Sir Robert Goushil, and the Duchess of Norfolk, at Hoveringham, co. Notts.; both of whom are represented as holding their wives by the right hand, and of the above-mentioned æra. The same attitude occurs in very splendid brass engraven figures of Thomas Lord Camois and his Lady, inlaid in a slab of marble, at Trotton, in Sussex. Such memorials cannot be with strict propriety enumerated as specimens of Sculpture (though Mr. Gough's authority in having introduced them among his specimens might sanction it); being composed by Jines only intagliated upon plates of brass. They were invented in Flanders, and sent to England, chiefly from Ghent; and are found to abound principally in those Counties which supplied the Flemings with wool. See many engravings in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, and Lysons's Magna Britannia. + Henry III. is said to have had a figure of Catherine his daughter, who died in 1257, cast in silver; and Leland (Itin. vol. VI. p. 98.) speaks of a statue, in silver, of Gilbert de Clare Earl of Gloucester, and the head of Henry V. on his monument at Westminster was of that metal, which circumstance occasioned its being stolen. Mr. Stothard, Junior, in his most valuable work (now in course of publication) has discovered, by a process of most laborious investigation, that many of the effigies carved in alabaster of the date of the thirteenth century were beautifully painted and ornamented with gilding particularly describing embroidery in Mosaic patterns as applied to belts and fringes, concealed under washes of lime. Upon this tomb, as a superstructure, is placed a rich canopy of tabernacle work, similar to that erected for Charles V. of France and Jane de Bourbon, in the Cathedral of St. Denis, about 1380. Le Noir designates this kind of ornament, by the word "Couronnement." § The mask taken from the face of Henry VII. after his death, by Torrigiano, is preserved among the curiosities at Strawberry-hill. engraven engraven on a large scale in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, a work splendid and valuable in every point of view. It appears by contracts which have been preserved, that the table or architectural part was furnished by master-masons, and the figures by coppersmiths, and that the artist or modeller is very rarely named *. Two the most remarkable instances of such agreements are that made by K. Richard II. for the tomb now remaining in Westminster Abbey; and another by the executors of Richard Beauchamp Earl of Warwick, in his sepulchral chapelt. We have no documents to prove that many foreign sculptors were established in England; and it is more than probable, that at first the bronze figures were cast in France or Flanders. In 1439, Thomas Porchalion, a founder in brass, is mentioned, as having contracted to make the effigies of Isabella Countess of Warwick-"all nakyd with her hair cast backward."-There is scarcely a Cathedral in England, in which a figure of a man emaciated by extreme sickness, or taken immediately after death, does not occur, usually of ecclesiastics, and placed with another figure of the same prelate, as a contrast to his pride, in pontificals. The art of the sculptor is more apparent in the first mentioned, because much anatomical accuracy was required, and shown. One of the earliest which I recollect, of a warrior so contrasted, is that of John Earl of Arundel, slain in the French wars, under the Duke of Bedford. It remains in the sepulchral chapel of that noble family at Arundel, and is finely sculptured in white marble. The dead figure is, indeed, a masterly performance, and has every appearance of having been originally modelled from nature §. From the commencement of the 13th to the close of the 15th century, it will be evident, upon a compari son of the plates in Montfaucon and other French Antiquaries with those in Dart's Westminster, and Gough's more extended and excellent Work, that through every æra, a very scrupulous imitation of French design and costume prevailed in this country; and, before the Revolution, that France contained the prototype of every fine monument of the Gothic ages, which we now see in our own Cathedral Churches. We can claim few native artists, who arrived at excellence, by name; and though, doubtless, many were initiated into the mechanical parts of sculpture, none are recorded as being either very eminent, or capable of original design; yet to the mecha-, nical process they appear to have been as competent as great mandal ingenuity could make them, without the aid of genius. Upon the revival of the Arts in Italy and France, and as our national intercourse, espe cially with the Papal See, increased during the reigns of Henry VII. and VIII. a new style of sepulchral sculpture was introduced into England, for which none of the sculptors, already established were in any degree qua lified. Florentine artists were engaged, and the sumptuous mausoleum in bronze erected by Henry VII. was entrusted to the skill and design of Pietro Torrigiano, who left England in 1519, after the completion of his work. Benedetto da Rovezzano * About 1520, Thomas Duke of Norfolk directs by his Will 1321. 6s. 8d. for making a tomb before the high altar at Thetford, as devised by of the King's Works at Cambridge, and Wassall, free mason of Bury." Clerk, Master Rymer Fœd. and Dugdale's Warwickshire.-Gough (Introd. to 2d vol. Sepulchral Monuments, p. cxv.) observes, that in the contraet for the tomb of Richard II. "the marbler, founder, and coppersmith are all Englishmen ;" and that "the Beauchamp Monument at Warwick was the sole work of our own countrymen." The last ecclesiastic figure I recollect, is of J. Bush, who had been Abbot, and afterwards Bishop of Bristol, and was placed in that Cathedral after the Reformation. Engraved in Gough's Sepulchral Monuments, and in Stothard's Monumental Effigies. One of the most modern of these emaciated figures is that of Sir Lionel Tanfield, in the Church at Burford, co. Oxon. It is of white marble, and exquisitely carved, in 1625. In the next century, the idea of personifying Death, by the figure of a skeleton in action, originated in France, and was introduced into England by Roubiliac. either |