Saturday 1 October 2011

Roundel Restoration

Hampton Court Palace is renovating some of its famous 16th-century stone roundels, including this clay bust of Tiberius.

After years of detective work and months of restoration, four of the palace's 16th-century roundels are about to be unveiled

Science has revealed a surprising truth about some of the earliest and most spectacular Renaissance sculptures in Britain: the stern-faced 16th-century Roman worthies scowling down from the walls of Hampton Court palace were made out of London clay like any common house brick.

Since they were made by Giovanni da Maiano, a contemporary of Michelangelo, they were assumed to have been shipped from Italy.

However forensic analysis of minute particles of the clay, part of a restoration programme which has saved some from collapse, has proved he must have set up a workshop in London in the 1520s when his grand patrons included Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII.

"Moving to London was his fundamental error," Kent Rawlingson, a buildings conservator, said. "These are really outstanding works by a major artist, but if he had stayed in Italy or even worked in the court of the king of France, there is no doubt that he would be far better known today."

After his time in England, Maiano vanished: there is no record of further commissions, or even when and where he died.

The roundels were carved in fantastic detail, which would not have been appreciated properly from ground level, but almost 500 years in the open air beside the Thames had taken its toll. Some were losing their hair and their laurel wreaths, others were riddled with cracks, the terracotta in places crumbling back into clay.

Now after years of detective work, and months of painstaking conservation including hand-carving replacement features in situ, the four judged most at risk are about to be unveiled, looking better than they have in centuries.

They will then have to be boxed in again within weeks to protect them from the first winter frost. Work judged less urgent will follow on the other heads.

Wolsey commissioned the roundels for Hampton Court, the home he made so disastrously magnificent that it attracted the covetousness of his king, and became a royal palace. Maiano's bill survives: he charged Wolsey £2.6.8d each – plus 20 shillings each to install them.

The restoration work includes the plaques with their names, which are almost certainly wrong. Known for centuries as the 11 Roman emperors, Rawlingson is convinced they are really military heroes and leaders including Scipio, Pompey, and a youthful Alexander the Great.

He has been trying to piece together their history: they were moved several times at Hampton Court, with inevitable damage, so some are 16th-century roundels in 19th-century frames, others 19th-century roundels in original frames.

Henry VIII placed some on a hunting lodge he gave to Anne Boleyn, and two remain in the improbable surroundings of Hanworth. One was recorded discovered "in a dark closet", of which the palace has thousands, in the 18th century.

Two more came from a lost Tudor landmark, the Holbein Gate at Whitehall, demolished in the 18th century for road widening.

"Since the palace first opened to visitors in the 18th century, they've always been admired – but we've never been exactly sure what they really were," Rawlingson said. "The truth is they are masterpieces of Renaissance sculpture hiding in plain sight."

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