Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain ii Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain Rebecca Wade BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2019 Copyright © Rebecca Wade, 2019 For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Irene Martinez Costa Cover image: Louis Haghe, The Transept of the Crystal Palace, 1851 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-3219-7 ePDF: 978-1-5013-3221-0 eBook: 978-1-5013-3220-3 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Dedicated to the memory of Ben Read (1945–2016) vi Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xiii Acknowledgements xv 1 Introduction 1 Wandering Italians 1 The fortunes of Brucciani’s formatori 14 2 Object Lessons 21 The context of the Schools of Design 22 Brucciani and the educational market 24 The contested classical in industrial education 26 Plaster casts as teaching objects 31 The Leeds School of Design: A case study 35 3 Exhibitions Great and Small 43 Brucciani’s Apollo Belvedere at the Great Exhibition of 1851 44 Brucciani’s Greek Slave and the International Exhibition of 1862 48 Brucciani beyond London 54 The Galleria delle Belle Arti 56 Exhibiting plasters in parks and gardens 60 Plaster casts and production of ceremonial space 65 Decorating the Alexandra Palace (twice) 69 4 Death Masks and Dance Halls 75 Posthumous plaster heads and hands 76 The places of plaster and the spaces of rational recreation 93 5 Building Museum Collections of Plaster Casts 103 The British Museum 103 The South Kensington Museum 105 The National Portrait Gallery 114 viii Contents The Natural History Museum 116 Plasters in ‘provincial’ museums: Leeds Art Gallery 124 Australasia 126 North America 129 6 Casting Aside 133 The death of Domenico Brucciani 133 D. Brucciani and Company Limited 135 The first rescue mission 138 The second rescue mission 140 The Department for the Sale of Casts 146 Conclusion 154 Notes 157 Bibliography 188 Index 196 List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 John Thomas Smith, ‘Unknown man selling toys’, 1815 3 Figure 1.2 Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘Punch or May Day’, 1829 4 Figure 1.3 James Collinson, ‘Italian image-boys at a roadside alehouse’, 1849 8 Figure 1.4 James Collinson, ‘Image boy’, c. 1849 9 Figure 1.5 William Daniels, ‘Self-portrait with casts: The image seller’, c. 1850 10 Figure 1.6 Julian Leverotti, ‘The late D. Brucciani’, 1881, Graphic (19 November 1910), 806 16 Figure 1.7 Lorenzo Giuntini, Portrait bust of Dr Alfred Percival Maudslay, 1885 17 Figure 2.1 ‘School of design’, Illustrated London News (27 May 1843), 375 23 Figure 2.2 ‘The school of design’, Punch (5 July 1845), 21 29 Figure 2.3 ‘The school of design’, Punch (5 July 1845), 21 30 Figure 2.4 ‘Statues’, from D. Brucciani and Co., Ltd., Catalogue of Casts for Schools (London, 1914), 8 32 Figure 2.5 Richard Redfern, Venus de Milo, 1860 33 Figure 2.6 ‘The antique room’, from The Leeds Institute of Science, Art, and Literature: Historical Sketch, 1824–1900 (Leeds, 1901), 8 41 Figure 3.1 Louis Haghe, ‘Refreshment department of the Great International Exhibition of 1851, Hyde Park’, c. 1851 45 Figure 3.2 Detail of ‘Grand panorama (concluded) of the Great Exhibition. – No. IX. – South and north portions of the transept’, Illustrated London News Supplement (6 March 1852), 205 46 Figure 3.3 ‘Statues’, from D. Brucciani and Co., Ltd., Catalogue of Casts for Schools (London, 1914), 10 47 Figure 3.4 ‘Fruit, leaves, vegetables, &c., from nature’, from D. Brucciani and Co., Ltd., Catalogue of Casts for Schools (London, 1914), 42 49 Figure 3.5 ‘Cremorne-gardens. The orchestra’, Illustrated London News (28 June 1851), 619 60