Portrait bust of the Roman Emperor Aulus Vitellius
workshop of Peter Besnier (fl.1643, d.1687-93)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
c. 1671 - 1672
Materials
Plaster of paris, Wood
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1139677
Summary
Plaster, painted; portrait bust of the Roman emperor Aulus Vitellius (A.D. 14-69); workshop of Peter Besnier (died 1687/88); c. 1671-72. Wearing armour in the antique style with a scaled breastplate, his head turned sharply to his left. On a rectangular moulded socle. Mounted on a wooden console bracket; painted in gilded lettering with the reversed cypher JEL surmounted by a coronet. One of a group of plaster busts, some of which were installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1671/72.
Full description
A plaster portrait bust of the Roman Emperor Aulus Vitellius (A.D. 14-69, reigned April-December 69), his head turned sharply to his left. A corpulent figure, with a heavy jowled face and shortish hair. He wears all’antica armour, with pauldrons (shoulder pieces) with straps and a scaled corselet, probably intended to represent shark or crocodile skin. Over his left shoulder is a cloak fastened with a circular brooch. On an integral rectangular moulded and indented socle. The plaster is painted black to simulate bronze. The bust is placed on one of three surviving wooden consoles, made in 1673, painted stone colour and with in gold the ‘JEL’ cypher of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. The bust, depicting a military figure, seems to be a portrait of Aulus Vitellius, who reigned as Roman emperor for just some eight months, before his assassination in December 69. He is said to have led a debauched life when young, when he befriended Tiberius and subsequently the young Caligula. After a political career, Vitellius was chosen to lead the Roman army on the Rhine, making himself popular with the troops, who declared him Emperor, as did other armies in western Europe. Although Vitellius was received as emperor in Rome, his reign lasted only eight months, before he was defeated by the armies of Vespasian and brutally murdered. According to Suetonius and other early biographers, Vitellius was given to gluttony and other vices, which helps to explain why in many portraits he is shown as fleshy and obese. The bust appears to conflate two what would in the seventeenth century have been regarded as among the most celebrated portraits of the emperor Vitellius, although neither is today thought to represent him. The heavy jowled face turned sharply to his left is based on the Grimani Vitellius, a celebrated marble portrait discovered in Rome in 1505 and bequeathed to the Republic of Venice by Cardinal Domenico Grimani in 1523. The Grimani Vitellius was much admired and copied from an early date. The bust section on the other hand, with its distinctive scale corselet, is based on a small bust in the Uffizi, Florence, which was given to the gallery in 1561, probably by Francesco de’Medici. It consists of an ancient head, now thought more likely to depict the emperor Balbinus, upon a polychromed marble bust section made in the sixteenth century (Guido A. Mansuelli, Galleria degli Uffizi. Le Sculture, II, Rome 1961, no. 156). However, Titian’s portrait of Vitellius from his series of Caesars also depicted the emperor wearing scale armour. Plaster busts were installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1671/72, and in the 1677 Ham House inventory were recorded ‘4 heades of plaster’ (Charles Avery, Seventeenth-Century Sculpture at Ham House’ in Christopher Rowell, ed., Ham House. 400 Years of Collecting and Patronage, New Haven/London 2013, pp. 158-77, p. 169). These correspond to the four busts in the broken pedimented overdoors leading off various points of the Great Staircase (NT 1139665; 1139678-80). Charles Avery thought that they were most likely to have been installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1637-39, and that the other three busts on the Great Staircase today were put in place later, around 1671/73. Given that three of the original group of four have identical stepped socles to the three other busts on the console brackets, which were made in 1673, it is possible that the whole group was made around the same time. It has been recently proposed that virtually all the sculpture at Ham House, including the busts on the staircase and those in lead set along the garden walls and on the façade of the house, was made in the workshops of the Besnier family. French in origin, members of the family were appointed as ‘Sculptor in Ordinary’ to, successively, Kings Charles I and II, beginning with Isaac Besnier, who was employed to look after the ‘Moulds, Statues and Modells’ in the royal collections. Isaac probably arrived in London around 1625, perhaps in the retinue of Charles I’s bride Henrietta Maria, and may have left by 1643, when his responsibilities for the sculptures in the royal collections were transferred to his younger brother Peter Besnier (fl. 1643, died 1687/88), to whom is attributed the magnificent bronze bust of Catherine Bruce at Ham House (NT 1139887) as well as the plaster figures of Mars and Minerva in the Great Hall (NT 1139652.1 & 2). After the Restoration Peter Besnier petitioned the new king for restoration of his post and continued to work as a sculptor. His son Thomas (c. 1663-1693) was much praised by George Vertue, whilst another family member, John Besnier, was recorded in 1681 making lead statues for the Duke of Ormonde. The busts on the Great Staircase were originally painted white to resemble statuary marble but were repainted dark in the nineteenth century, to give them the appearance of bronze. Jeremy Warren January 2022
Provenance
Probably commissioned by Elizabeth Murray and John Maitland, 1st Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, and installed on the Great Staircase, c. 1671-73; thence by descent, until acquired in 1948 by HM Government when Sir Lyonel, 4th Bt (1854 – 1952) and Sir Cecil Tollemache, 5th Bt (1886 – 1969) presented Ham House to the National Trust. Entrusted to the care of the Victoria & Albert Museum until 1990, when returned to the care of the National Trust, to which ownership was transferred in 2002.
Makers and roles
workshop of Peter Besnier (fl.1643, d.1687-93), sculptor
References
Avery 2013: Charles Avery, ‘Seventeenth-century Sculpture at Ham House’ in Christopher Rowell, ed., Ham House. 400 Years of History, New Haven/London 2013, pp. 158-77., pp. 169-70.