Thomas Woolner's Wordsworth Memorial, 1851: Pre-Raphaelite sources and slips

• Autores: Anne Neale
• Localización: Burlington magazine, ISSN 0007-6287, Vol. 151, Nº 1275, 2009, págs. 382-387
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Thomas Woolner's 1851 memorial to William Wordsworth in Saint Oswald's Church in Cumbria, U.K., has come to be regarded as a significant early example of Pre-Raphaelite sculpture, but in fact it cuts against the Pre-Raphaelite rejection of conventionalized representations, drawing upon a number of earlier sources. The posthumous portrait of Wordsworth himself represents an indisputable compromise of Woolner's Pre-Raphaelite principles, being based upon a marble bust by Francis Chantrey—an artist whose style, ironically, was decried by the Pre-Raphaelite sympathizer F. T. Palgrave. Further questions about the Pre-Raphaelite nature of the sculpture are raised by the floral relief panels that flank the portrait. These panels are almost definitely inspired by Jean Bourdain's Hours of Anne of Brittany, a manuscript dated variously to the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th. As such, Woolner's piece is significant in its demonstration of the far-reaching influence of medieval manuscripts upon Pre-Raphaelite art.