Bust of a Roman empress, probably Annia Galeria Faustina Minor, or the Younger (c.130 AD - 175/76 AD).
workshop of Peter Besnier (fl.1643, d.1687-93)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1637 - 1639 - 1672
Materials
Plaster
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Ham House, Surrey
NT 1139680
Summary
Plaster, painted; portrait bust of a Roman empress; workshop of Peter Besnier (died 1687/88); 1637-39 or 1671-72. Wearing a loose shift over which is a cloak, part of which she holds up with her right hand. She possibly represents Faustina the Younger, wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. 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 empress, wth wavy hair, parted in the centre, wearing a shift and bare at the right shoulder, over which is a cloak, which sweeps around her back and across her front, her right hand holding up its end. On an integral rectangular moulded and indented socle. The plaster is now painted black to simulate bronze. The portrait of a Roman empress may depict Annia Galeria Faustina the Younger (c. 130-175/76 A.D.), the daughter of Antoninus Pius and Faustina the Elder. Faustina was the wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and became much beloved by the soldiers of the Roman army, accompanying her husband on many of his campaigns. The wavy hair is a characteristic feature of some portraits of Faustina Minor, but there are none known in which her right arm and hand are included, as in the Ham House bust. A marble bust of Faustina in the Vatican Museums has a swathe of drapery that more or less fills the space occupied by the hand in the Ham House sculpture. Indeed, the hand has an invented look, and it may have been added as a conscious reference to the bronze bust of Catherine Bruce, Mrs Elizabeth Murray (NT 1139887), in which the arm across the bust is such a striking feature. It would be tempting to think that the empress might, rather than Faustina, have been intended to represent Julia Agrippina, known as Agrippina the Younger (15-59 A.D.), the mother of the Emperor Nero, who was said by Roman historians to have been murdered on the orders of her son. This would, assuming the busts are in their original positions, have made a powerful trio of portraits above the doorcases on the landing, with Nero facing his mother and flanked by his one time trusted advisor, Seneca. The Empress 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’. 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, where they 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, although Charles Avery suggested that the four busts above the overdoors were likely to have been made earlier. c. 1637-39. 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, seems to have been 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 keepers of the royal sculpture collections, Isaac and Peter Besnier would have enjoyed privileged access to these collections. 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 222
Provenance
Elizabeth Murray and John Maitland, 1st Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, c. 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., pp. 169-70, fig. 147.