DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.68074#0260
i56 ROUBILIAC
pleasure of passing many happy hours at the table of John Horsley, Esq. late
of Epping Forest, the brother of the Bishop of Rochester, and one day, when
the conversation happened to fall upon the shape of ears, I was agreeably
interrupted in the following manner. After having stated that Roubiliac had
declared that as Handel, whose monumental figure he was then modelling,
had so fine an ear for music, he would look for the best he could find for him;
and that soon after this determination, when dining with his friend Rich [the
manager of Drury Lane], he exclaimed, “ Miss Rich, I vill have your ear,”—
when I had proceeded thus far with my story, “ Bless me ! he did mould my
ear,” cried Mrs. Horsley, to my great surprise; for, until that moment, I was
ignorant that I had so often been in the company of Rich’s daughter.’
Handel has a fine ear for music: therefore his ear must be the finest of its
kind. So Roubiliac argues: were it possible to place a cast of the head side by
side with one of an earlier portrait, the result might be curious indeed. A Pair
of Ears actually formed part of lot 60 on the third day of the Roubiliac Sale;
they can hardly have been anything but Mrs. Horsley’s, cast over thirty years
before her dinner party brought their history to light.
Almost the last, as it is certainly the most famous and most Berninesque of
Roubiliac’s works, is the tomb of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, erected in 1761 in
accordance with the will of her only son (Plate xlviii d). Lady Elizabeth, a
daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers, is represented sinking upon her husband’s
breast; he supports her with one arm, and holds out the other as if to shield
her from the dart of the half-draped skeleton Death, who starts from the open
door of the vault below.1 The scheme of the monument, set in its great niche,
recalls one of the ducal tombs at Warkton; the workmanship is of a beauty
almost beyond belief. Like Blake, Roubiliac, though in very different fashion,
is for ever attempting to express abstract ideas in concrete form, and his con-
ception of a husband’s grief takes visible shape in the attempt to save a dying
wife from the advancing enemy.
The work achieved great and lasting popularity, as every guide-book shows;
only the earliest, Newbury’s Guide of 1764, shall be cited here:
‘ In this Chapel is lately erected a most excellent Monument, to the Memory of Joseph
Gascoigne Nightingale and his Lady ... a capital Performance of that great Master of
Sculpture, Mr. Rubiliac, and has been, and now is, visited and justly admired by all Judges of
Merit, and Lovers of Ingenuity.’
1 He died on 16 July, 1752, and was buried with 1734 for his wife’s death, given on the monument,
his wife on the 25th; he can therefore have had no is incorrect: she died in 1731.
part in the choice of subject or sculptor. The date
pleasure of passing many happy hours at the table of John Horsley, Esq. late
of Epping Forest, the brother of the Bishop of Rochester, and one day, when
the conversation happened to fall upon the shape of ears, I was agreeably
interrupted in the following manner. After having stated that Roubiliac had
declared that as Handel, whose monumental figure he was then modelling,
had so fine an ear for music, he would look for the best he could find for him;
and that soon after this determination, when dining with his friend Rich [the
manager of Drury Lane], he exclaimed, “ Miss Rich, I vill have your ear,”—
when I had proceeded thus far with my story, “ Bless me ! he did mould my
ear,” cried Mrs. Horsley, to my great surprise; for, until that moment, I was
ignorant that I had so often been in the company of Rich’s daughter.’
Handel has a fine ear for music: therefore his ear must be the finest of its
kind. So Roubiliac argues: were it possible to place a cast of the head side by
side with one of an earlier portrait, the result might be curious indeed. A Pair
of Ears actually formed part of lot 60 on the third day of the Roubiliac Sale;
they can hardly have been anything but Mrs. Horsley’s, cast over thirty years
before her dinner party brought their history to light.
Almost the last, as it is certainly the most famous and most Berninesque of
Roubiliac’s works, is the tomb of Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, erected in 1761 in
accordance with the will of her only son (Plate xlviii d). Lady Elizabeth, a
daughter of Washington, Earl Ferrers, is represented sinking upon her husband’s
breast; he supports her with one arm, and holds out the other as if to shield
her from the dart of the half-draped skeleton Death, who starts from the open
door of the vault below.1 The scheme of the monument, set in its great niche,
recalls one of the ducal tombs at Warkton; the workmanship is of a beauty
almost beyond belief. Like Blake, Roubiliac, though in very different fashion,
is for ever attempting to express abstract ideas in concrete form, and his con-
ception of a husband’s grief takes visible shape in the attempt to save a dying
wife from the advancing enemy.
The work achieved great and lasting popularity, as every guide-book shows;
only the earliest, Newbury’s Guide of 1764, shall be cited here:
‘ In this Chapel is lately erected a most excellent Monument, to the Memory of Joseph
Gascoigne Nightingale and his Lady ... a capital Performance of that great Master of
Sculpture, Mr. Rubiliac, and has been, and now is, visited and justly admired by all Judges of
Merit, and Lovers of Ingenuity.’
1 He died on 16 July, 1752, and was buried with 1734 for his wife’s death, given on the monument,
his wife on the 25th; he can therefore have had no is incorrect: she died in 1731.
part in the choice of subject or sculptor. The date