Summary

Marble and sandstone, The Twelve Caesars, Italian (Roman) School and British (English) School, c. 1750-1847. A set of twelve marble portrait busts of the Twelve Caesars, after Suetonius' De vita Caesarum (NT 518591.1-12). The busts were probably carved in Rome, Italy, c. 1750-1827. Each bust is mounted on rectangular grey marble socles and on British (English) School tapered grey sandstone pedestals with rococo foliate ornamentation, c. 1801-1847.

Full description

This series of busts depicting Julius Caesar and the first eleven Roman emperors was produced and sold as a ‘Suetonian’ set after De vita Caesarum, biographies by Suetonius chronicling the personal lives and political careers of the Caesars from the end of the Republic to the reign of Domitian. Written whilst Suetonius was serving as Hadrian’s private secretary, the biographies are famously packed with gossip and salacious anecdotes. They also include detailed accounts of physical appearance and personality, characteristics which were reproduced in subsequent imperial portraits. As a decorative theme the Twelve Caesars remained popular in European art well into the 19th century. This was owed to continued antiquarian interest in Suetonius’ Lives and the wealth of surviving imperial imagery available in the form of busts, cameos, and coins. Images of the Caesars in the post-classical world appealed to ruling patrons like popes, royals, and city governments as emblems of dynastic power, the ‘good’ emperors promoted for their virtues, the 'bad' denounced for their vices. The trend for encyclopaedic collections also made the Caesars important for antiquarians who displayed Suetonian sets as a reflection of their knowledge. Sir Robert Cotton (1570/1-1631), for example, mounted busts of the emperors over his library bookcases and press marked his manuscripts according to their names. The collector’s impetus to amass portraits of all the Caesars made them particularly suitable for serial reproduction. In the 16th and 17th centuries printmakers like Marcantonio Raimondi, Antonio Tempesta and Raffaello Schiaminossi were issuing engraved portrait sets (see, for example, inv. nos. 41.72(3.83-94) and 51.501.4997-5008, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), while Giambattista Cavalieri combined prints of the emperors with biographies. Titian’s important series of half-length portraits for the Gabinetto dei Cesari in the Palazzo Ducale, Mantua, was circulated widely in engravings by Aegidius Sadeler, and these no doubt inspired Rubens, who returned to the subject of the Caesars several times in his life (e.g. Julius Caesar, painted c. 1619 for the House of Orange, inv.no. GK I 972, Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin; Julius Caesar, painted c. 1625-6, for an unknown patron, inv.no. PR-100, The Leiden Collection, in a series with Otto, inv.no. 1967.114.3, North Lincolnshire Museums Service). Arguably the finest presentation of the theme in metalwork is to be found in the Aldobrandini Tazze, a spectacular set of twelve silver-gilt dishes surmounted with statuettes of the Caesars and chased with relevant scenes from Suetonius. Although their history is uncertain, recent scholarship indicates they may have been made in the southern Netherlands, the figures based on the 'Roman Emperors on Horseback' series by Stradanus (see, for example, Adriaen Collaert after Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, Julius Caesar, c. 1587-9, engraving, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv.no. 49.95.1002(1)). In the mid-19th century the tazze were disassembled, mismatched and widely dispersed. They were reunited after 150 years in 2014 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and exhibited there for the first time in public in 2017 (The Silver Caesars: A Renaissance Mystery). In the realm of sculpture serial portraits of the Caesars were supplied by the della Porta workshop to powerful Roman families like the Farnese (Sotheby’s, London, Treasures sale, 5 July 2017, lot 12) and in the 18th and 19th centuries imperial portrait busts, both antique and all’antica, were popular amongst British collectors (see, for example, NT 108999 at Kedleston Hall and NT 1181077 at Powis Castle). Purchased by Lord Fairhaven in October 1952, the provenance of this set, given as ‘Headley Court’ Surrey by Fairhaven’s regular statuary dealer Bert Crowther, was queried when the National Trust received a letter from a viewer of the BBC television programme Gardeners’ World some years ago. The viewer had immediately recognised the Caesars, which featured in an episode on the gardens of Anglesey Abbey, as identical to a set with matching Rococo pedestals once installed at Lypiatt Park, Gloucestershire. As a former tenant of that estate, the viewer had been a frequent visitor to the house until its sale by Judge Hubert Woodcock in November 1951. A manor house set in the parish of Bisley near Stroud, in the 19th century Lypiatt Park had a succession of different owners until it was purchased by J.E. Dorington in 1847. It was finally sold to a relation of Judge Woodcock’s in 1919 when the last Dorington heir was killed in action. A photograph of the Gallery of Lypiatt Park reproduced in the 1919 sale catalogue indeed shows a set of identical Caesars mounted on identical pedestals (Gloucestershire Archives D8183/1). The set is later listed in the 1951 sale catalogue under lot 566, ‘Twelve statuary marble busts of the Twelve Caesars on coloured marble socles with sculptured stone pedestals, 7ft. 9in. high’. Whilst not impossible, it is highly unlikely that another set, identical in size with identical supports, was at Headley Court at the same time, particularly as the property had been requisitioned in the Second World War by Allied Forces and thereafter used as a military rehabilitation centre. Whilst the Lypiatt Park provenance cannot be confirmed (largely because of the absence of a Crowther archive), papers in the Gloucestershire Archives shed further light on the set there. An unsigned letter of late April 1847 relating to the valuation of articles ‘to be taken by J.E. Dorington’ in anticipation of his purchase of Lypiatt Park from Samuel Baker, the owner from 1842 to 1847, states that the Twelve Caesars were bought in 1827 by William Lewis, the owner from 1824 to 1842. The letter states that Lewis had purchased the set from a ‘Mr Stuart’ for the sum of £250, and that Stuart himself had ‘brought them from Holland’. The writer goes on to say that the busts were ‘not antique – they / come from Rome – about 200 / years old perhaps – but this is contentious […] / They are very cheap at 200£ / tradesman’s price.’ (Gloucestershire Archives, D745/E2). Other correspondence relating to this valuation, conducted on behalf of J.E. Dorington by Robins & Dowbiggin in April 1847, sheds more light still. Writing specifically about the 12 Caesars, a valuer working on behalf of the firm states that ‘I have seen the 12 marble busts of the Caesars placed on carved pedestals of Forest of Dean stone in the mansion of Mr Baker of Lypiatt Park’ (D745/E2). The Lewis provenance is corroborated in an earlier inventory valuation, produced for Dorington by a Mr John Smart on 5 March 1847, which states that the ‘12 Roman Emperors’ were ‘sold Wm Lewis Nov 1827. £250’. The Anglesey Abbey Caesars are attributed to a lower-grade Italian (probably Roman) studio because of their repetitious and poorly characterised quality. They are most likely 18th or early 19th century. If they are indeed the set from Lypiatt, it appears they were brought from Rome to Holland, and that the Rococo pedestals, attributed to a French or English School, may have been made by local masons in the Stroud area using pink-hued grey stone quarried in the Forest of Dean. Alice Rylance-Watson 2019