Aaron
Victor Alexander Sederbach (fl.1755-1756)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1755
Materials
Terracotta
Order this imageCollection
Lacock, Wiltshire
NT 996412
Caption
Arguably the strangest statuary in England can be found in the Gothick entrance hall of Lacock Abbey. The 27 sculptures populating its walls include a bust of a bull, crowned and sporting a ruffled shirt; a man in a pointed hat; the Greek philosopher Diogenes searching for the truth; and the torso of the angel of death, as a grinning winged skeleton (see page 13). Ela, Countess of Salisbury (1187–1261, the Abbey’s founder), Old Testament prophets, and figures from local medieval history complete the scheme. The sculptures were made in 1755–6 by the mysteriously untraceable Victor Alexander Sederbach (active 1755–7), whose style suggests south German or Austrian origin. John Ivory Talbot (?1691–1772), Lacock’s then owner, recounted that Sederbach modelled the figures directly in terracotta and baked them in the Abbey orchard to make them ‘ring like a Garden-pot’. No other statuary by Sederbach has ever been identified. The goat accompanying the figure of Aaron balances a real sugar cube on its nose. The first sugar cube was reputedly placed there as a joke by a visiting student over 100 years ago.
Summary
Statue - One of 27 terracotta sculptures, by Victor Alexander Sederbach, 1755. Aaron, Moses? The story of the scapegoat from the Old Testament.
Provenance
listed in 1827 inventory in the Great Hall, also recorded in FT photographs.
Makers and roles
Victor Alexander Sederbach (fl.1755-1756)