Portrait bust of the Roman emperor Nero
workshop of Peter Besnier (fl.1643, d.1687-93)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1637 - 1639 - 1672
Materials
Plaster, Paint
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1139678
Summary
Plaster, painted; portrait bust of the Roman emperor Nero; workshop of Peter Besnier (died 1687/88); 1637-39 or c. 1661-72. Wearing armour and over this a cloak. On a rectangular moulded socle. The plaster is painted black to simulate bronze. One of a group of plaster busts installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1671/72.
Full description
A plaster portrait bust of a Roman Emperor, identifiable as the emperor Nero (A.D. 37-68, reigned 54-68) through the reversed inscription on the neck, just above the cuirass. This was no doubt intended as a guide for the sculptors and would normally have been removed as part of the finishing process, but on this occasion was left on by accident. Nero is depicted as a young man with short curly hair, wearing armour over which is a cloak, fastened with a circular brooch at the right shoulder. On an integral rectangular moulded and indented socle. The plaster is now painted black to simulate bronze. The source for the portrait of Nero may have been based on a marble bust that was owned by Peter Paul Rubens, who sold it to the Duke of Buckingham, in whose collection it was recorded in 1635. Its appearance is recorded through a print made by Paulus Pontius after a drawing by Rubens, one of the series of twelve prints by Rubens of famous men from ancient Greece and Rome. The emperor Nero remains one of the most notorious of all the Roman emperors, although a recent exhibition at the British Museum sought to demonstrate that many of the contemporary reports of Nero’s actions were biased and exaggerated (Thorsten Opper, Nero. The Man Behind the Myth, British Museum, London 2021). Nero was adopted by the Emperor Claudius, whose daughter Octavia he married. Among his instructors was the philosopher Seneca. Among those whom Nero was said to have put to death were Britannicus the son of Claudius, his mother Agrippina and his wife Octavia, whilst he forced Seneca to commit suicide. Among major events that marked Nero’s reign were the revolt of Boudica (Boadicea) in c. 60-61 A.D. and the great fire that destroyed Rome in 64. The bust is one of four plaster busts installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1671/72, and recorded in the 1677 Ham House inventory as ‘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), three of which have identical stepped socles to the three other busts on the Staircase today, which are set on wooden console brackets made in 1673. The similar socles would suggest that the three busts were made at the same time and presumably as part of the same order as the four recorded in 1677. 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. It has been 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. Given the close relations between successive monarchs and the owners of Ham, the hypothesis that the Besnier, in the service of the Crown, might have made much of the sculpture at Ham House, is quite plausible. As keeper of the royal sculpture collections, Peter Besnier would have enjoyed privileged access to these collections. Two of the lead busts in oval niches within the garden walls (NT 1140338 and 1140365) have all but identical heads, although the bust sections are different. This suggests that the heads of the plaster and the two lead portraits derive from the same master mould, helping to confirm that the plaster busts on the staircase were made in the same workshop as the lead busts outside. Jeremy Warren January 2022
Provenance
Elizabeth Murray and John Maitland, 1st Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale; installed on the Great Staircase of Ham House in 1671/72; 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., p. 169.