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5 - The Classical and Biblical in Dialogue

A Conversation in Victorian Sculpture1

from Part II - Making the Past Visible

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

Simon Goldhill
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Ruth Jackson Ravenscroft
Affiliation:
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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Summary

Victorian sculpture is less well-served by the scholarship than Victorian painting, and biblical sculpture ignored comparative to pieces inspired by Greco-Roman mythology. Rather than treat these as two separate strands, or, alternatively, assume that statues of Old Testament figures such as Eve and Rebecca were interchangeable with those of Venus and Psyche, this chapter thinks harder about how they relate. Looking first at free-standing sculpture, then at religious works in the private house, and finally at sculpture in the church, it hones in on affect to determine how the classical and biblical and the interactions and discrepancies between the two spoke to nineteenth-century British society, gender, belief and so on. As well as revisiting artists such as Thomas Woolner and John Gibson, it puts an emphasis too on women sculptors such as Emmeline Halse and on female representation, patronage and response to show that sculpture was as important in sermon-making as pictures.

Type
Chapter
Information
Victorian Engagements with the Bible and Antiquity
The Shock of the Old
, pp. 122 - 158
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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