Meleager
workshop of Matthew Brettingham the Younger (1725 - 1803)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1758
Materials
Painted plaster
Measurements
1970 x 1150 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire
NT 109007
Summary
Painted plaster, Meleager, possibly cast by Bartolomeo Mattevali on behalf of Matthew Brettingham (1724-1803), cast c. 1758. A full-length plaster cast painted white of Meleager, after the antique marble statue in the Sala degli Animali, Vatican Museums, Rome. Meleager, the mythical hero of Aetolia, is shown as a huntsman, with his hunting dog sitting in front of a tree trunk at proper right and looking up at his master. The head of the monstrous Calydonian Boar is mounted on a tree trunk at left. Meleager is nude with the exception of a chlamys fastened at his proper right shoulder and draped around his proper left arm, billowing over the Boar's head. The hero looks to left and holds a staff with his proper left arm, his right arm bent at a right angle behind his back. The cast is after a 2nd century AD Roman marble which is an adapted copy of a lost Greek statue attributed to Skopas. The chlamys, Boar's head, and hunting dog were added by the Roman sculptor. The statue was first recorded in 1546 in the palace of Francesco Fusconi, physician to Popes Adrian VI, Paul III and Julius III, near the Palazzo Farnese, Rome. Sources disagree as to whether it was discovered on the Esquiline or Janiculum. The Meleager was inherited through marriage by the Pighini family, and later purchased by Pope Cement XIV in 1770 (see Haskell and Penny 1981, pp. 263-5, no. 60, fig. 137).
Full description
Nathaniel Curzon (1726-1804) acquired this cast of Meleager from Matthew Brettingham (1725-1803), an architect who primarily dealt in antiquities and casts for the British aristocracy. The cast is recorded as 'Meleager' in a handwritten inventory of sculpture and statuary produced by Curzon himself in around 1760 (MS, Kedleston Archive). It is recorded again in a list inscribed on the verso of that inventory, under the subheading 'Hall Statues' (MS, Kedleston Archive). The Meleager was installed alongside its pendant, a cast of the Apollo Belvedere (NT 109006), in the Marble Hall and has remained there since (see 'Catalogue of the pictures, statues, &c. at Kedleston', 1758 and 1769, pp. 1 and 7 respectively). During his seven-year stint in Rome (1747-54) Brettingham not only dealt in casts and antiquities - furnishing the Earl of Leicester, for example, with casts and marble statues for Holkham - but also commissioned actual moulds to be taken from famous Roman statues. The idea was that casts could then be made to order when he returned to London. The Apollo Belvedere was one of twelve moulds of antique statues Brettingham commissioned, at considerable trouble and expense, owed to its enormous popularity (Kenworthy-Browne 1983: pp. 80, 99, 100). In Brettingham's Rome Account Book, his ledger of statues dealt, casts made, bought and sold when he was in Italy, records for 1754 show that moulds of 'ye Meleager di Pichini' were acquired along with its pendant, 'ye Apollo di Belveder' (Kenworthy-Browne 1983, p.99). Despite bringing back to London an Italian craftsman (Bartolomeo Mattevali) specifically for the job of casting from the moulds, few actually sold. In addition to the Kedleston Apollo, casts of that statue were also sold to the Duke of Richmond for £20 (1756) and the Earl of Leicester. Alice Rylance-Watson March 2019
Provenance
Purchased by Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Baron Scarsdale (1726-1804), from Matthew Brettingham the Younger (1725-1803) c. 1758; identifiable in the 'Catalogue of the pictures, statues, &c. at Kedleston' of 1758 (Hall, p. 1), of 1769 (Hall, p. 7, and 1861 (Hall, p. 7); purchased with part of the contents of Kedleston with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in 1987 when the house and park were given to the National Trust by Francis Curzon, 3rd Viscount Scarsdale (1924-2000).
Credit line
Kedleston Hall, The Scarsdale Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred to the National Trust in 1987)
Makers and roles
workshop of Matthew Brettingham the Younger (1725 - 1803), dealer possibly Bartolomeo Mattevali, caster
References
Haskell and Penny 1981: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique, The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 263-5, no. 60, fig. 137. Kenworthy-Browne 1983: John Kenworthy-Browne, 'Matthew Brettingham's Rome Account Book 1747-1754', The Volume of the Walpole Society, vol.49 (1983), pp.37-132, pp. 80, 99, 100. Kenworthy-Browne 1993: John Kenworthy-Browne, ‘Designing around the statues. Matthew Brettingham’s casts at Kedleston’, Apollo, April 1993, pp.248-252