A Vestal Virgin
attributed to John Nost I (Mechelen c.1655 - London 1710) or Andrew Carpenter (c.1677 - London 1737)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
circa 1717
Materials
Lead
Measurements
1750 x 530 x 530 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire
NT 515151
Summary
Lead, Vestal Virgin, attributed to John Nost II (died London 1729) or Andrew Carpenter (c.1677 - London 1737), c. 1717-37. A full-length figure of a veiled Vestal Virgin, wearing a stola and palla. Looking up to proper left, the proper left arm resting on the proper left leg in contrapposto and the proper right hand drawn towards the collar bone, the index finger pointing towards the heart. Mounted by Viscount Cobham (1675-1749) near the south parterre, Stowe, circa 1717 and by Earl Temple (1711-79) on the east pediment of the Temple of Concord and Victory in 1755. Paired with NT 515150, a vestal virgin. Cast in lead, painted white by the National Trust; mounted on a stone base and pedestal.
Full description
NT 515148-51, four lead statues which today occupy Emperor’s Walk at Anglesey Abbey (NT 515148-51), crowned the Temple of Concord and Victory at Stowe until 1921 (Stowe Landscape Gardens 1997, pp. 47-50). Installed there by Earl Temple in 1755, they in fact come from a much earlier phase in Stowe’s landscape history when the first major improvements to the gardens were being carried out by Viscount Cobham (1675-1749). The figures are thought to have ornamented Cobham’s vast southern parterre, laid out between 1713 and 1717 and flattened in 1742 to make way for a more naturalistic lawn (Stowe Landscape Gardens 1997, p. 61). They can be seen in drawings by Jacques Rigaud (1681-1754) made a decade before the parterre’s demolition, alternately mounted in niches cut into yew hedges enclosing the parterre on three sides (see engravings after the drawings published 1739; Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 701141). Although not visible in detail, we know that ten of the statues represented Apollo and his Nine Muses and four were allegorical figures of the Arts, called the ‘Liberal Arts’ in a footnote to Gilbert West’s topographical poem 'Stowe' of 1732: ‘To Phoebus, and th’ attendant Virgin Train/ That o’er each Verse, each learned Science reign/ And round embellishing the gay Parterre/ Unite their sacred Influences there.’ (West 1732, p. 4) As ‘Sculpture’ (NT 515148) and ‘Painting’ (NT 515149) are not counted among the Seven Liberal Arts, it is possible that West was instead referring to four of the visual and performing arts: painting, sculpture, architecture and music. The Vestal Virgins (NT 515150-51) appear to have come from a different series, since, immediately after his verse on the parterre, West continues: ‘Lead thro’ the Circle, Virgins, lead me on’, the Circle footnoted as the now lost ‘Sundial Parlour’ removed around the same time as the parterre (West 1732, p. 5) This was a circular bed of grass with a sundial at its centre, enclosed by a yew hedge cut with nine niches Bevington 1990, p. 133). Although there is no surviving view of the Parlour it is highly likely that these niches were populated with the figures West calls ‘Virgins’. The statues are attributed to John Nost II (died 1729) or Andrew Carpenter (died 1737), Britain’s principal makers of lead statuary until 1737. Carpenter had been chief assistant to John Nost I (died 1710), the cousin of Nost II who took over the family business until his death in 1729. Carpenter set up independently in around 1703, acquiring premises close to the Nost workshop and building a substantial repertoire of works drawn from Nost models, classical prototypes, and his own designs. Both sculptors supplied leadwork to Stowe: Nost II the equestrian statue of George I (1723, NT 91826) and Carpenter a Hercules and Antaeus (Milles 1735 in Clarke 1990, p. 62; sold 1921) as well as unidentified figures recorded in the Stowe Accounts in May 1737. Although no bills, receipts, or account records exist for the parterre or Sundial Parlour sculptures, ‘Painting’ and ‘Sculpture’ are very similar to two lead figures within a set depicting music, poetry, sculpture and painting now at Hardwick Hall (NT 1129357, 1129360). Attributed to Nost I, these figures were originally made for Chatsworth as part of the 1st Duke of Devonshire’s great transformation of the gardens (1694-1707). It is highly likely, then, that the piece-moulds which cast the figures now at Hardwick also cast those at Stowe. The Vestals, meanwhile, are similar to four sibyls made by Carpenter in 1731 for the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard. As no comparable figures by the Nost workshop exist, it is impossible to establish whether these also derive from Nost models or were of Carpenter’s own design. Alice Rylance-Watson 2019
Provenance
Produced for Viscount Cobham (1675-1749) c. 1717; installed on the east pediment of the Temple of Concord and Victory 1755-1921; sold ‘The Ducal Estate of Stowe, near Buckingham […]’, 1921, the Eighteenth Day’s Sale, lot 3775, p. 255: ‘The Temple of Concord and Victory’, ‘On the roof are 5 life-size lead statues’; purchased Bert Crowther; sold to Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896-1966) by Bert Crowther, 31 October 1944, ‘4 lead figures from Stowe Palace’, £400.0.0; bequeathed to the National Trust by Lord Fairhaven in 1966 with the house and the rest of the contents.
Credit line
Anglesey Abbey, The Fairhaven Collection (The National Trust)
Makers and roles
attributed to John Nost I (Mechelen c.1655 - London 1710) or Andrew Carpenter (c.1677 - London 1737) , sculptor
References
National Trust (Great Britain), Stowe Landscape Gardens., 1997, pp. 47-50, 61. Bevington 1994: Michael Bevington, Stowe. The Garden and the Park, Capability Books, Stowe 1994, pp. 71, 133. West 1732: Gilbert West. Stowe: the gardens of the Right Honourable Richard Lord Viscount Cobham. Address’d to Mr. Pope. London: Printed for L. Gilliver at Homer’s Head in Fleet-Street, London 1732, pp. 4-5. Clarke 1990: George B. Clarke, Descriptions of Lord Cobham’s Gardens at Stowe (1700-1750), no. 26. Buckinghamshire Record Society, Dorchester 1990, pp. 61-5. Adshead and Taylor 2016: David Adshead and David A.H.B. Taylor (eds.), Hardwick Hall, a great old castle of romance, New Haven and London 2016, pp. 235-6. Roper 1964: Lanning Roper, The Gardens of Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. The Home of Lord Fairhaven, London 1964, p. 85, pls. 74a-75b. Christie, Manson & Woods 1971: The National Trust, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge. Inventory: Furniture, Textiles, Porcelain, Bronzes, Sculpture and Garden Ornaments’, 1971, p. 166.